Avoiding Temptation (Avoiding #3)(112)

What was she going to say to him? How could she begin to explain what she had just done? Jack wouldn’t judge her, of course. He had never judged her, but it didn’t change how she was feeling in that moment.

“Lex,” Jack whispered when he answered the door.

His brow furrowed when he saw her face swollen and red from tears that she hadn’t been able to hold back. And when she looked up into his handsome face—his hair, dark and shaggy, his eyes, her favorite color of blue, that jawline so well-defined—she started crying all over again.

He sighed and pulled her into his arms. She grabbed the T-shirt he was wearing between her fingers and buried her face in his shoulder. His hand came down on her back, holding her securely against him as he toed the door closed.

“Shh,” he said softly.

He ran his hand through her hair over and over again, stroking it soothingly, until she settled against him. The tears were still flowing, but the hysterics subsided, and she felt like she was able to breathe again.

“You know,” she said against his T-shirt, “that I don’t hate you, right?”

He chuckled softly and kissed the crown of her head lightly. The gesture seemed so perfectly in tune with what she needed in the moment that it didn’t even make her freak-out.

“I know you don’t.”

“I kind of hate myself though.”

“If you don’t hate me, you can’t hate yourself,” Jack said, holding her at arm’s length with a smirk.

Lexi grinned and shook her head. “You don’t know the kind of person I am.”

“Oh, believe me…I do.”

“I was a total bitch.”

“Yeah?” he asked. “And no one deserved it.”

Lexi sighed and looked away. “I walked out on Ramsey.”

Jack sputtered and then coughed to try to cover it up, but he did a terrible job at it. For someone usually so collected, he was anything but in that moment. She didn’t know how to read him then, and all she wanted was to curl into a ball on the floor and feel bad for herself. She deserved that at least.

“You guys broke up?”

“Well…no,” she said, twirling the ring on her finger. “I mean…I don’t think so.”

Jack put his hand on the small of her back and guided her to the couch. “I think you should sit down and start from the beginning. Do you want something to drink? I think I only have Jack Daniels and water, but—”

“I’m fine. I think drinking is a bad idea. I’m too much of a lightweight,” she said, plopping onto the couch and pressing her head back into the cushion.

Jack took a seat next to her, mirroring her pose before speaking. “I never thought y’all would break up.”

“Me either.”

The very thought made her throat constrict and her head dizzy. She couldn’t break up with Ramsey. She loved him. He was her fiancé. They were going to get married. But did she want that? Wasn’t that what Chyna had been getting at from the beginning? Lexi needed to determine what she wanted, not what someone else said she should want. And she couldn’t stick with this just because she had told herself she would no matter what.

“What caused this? There had to be something, right? Most people don’t just wake up from an engagement…even when they should,” he all but whispered the last part. Surely, he was reflecting on the idiocy of his own marriage.

Lexi shook her head and pressed her palms over her eyes. She didn’t want to cry anymore.

Tears were the words she had left unspoken.

They spoke volumes about her pain, her grief, her despair for a relationship that she had put all of herself into. They broke a seal on the emotions she so tightly contained to the point where she could literally feel the pain in her chest, in her lungs, in her very being. And yet, she hated the vulnerability of it all. Knowing that once invested in her tears, she couldn’t take them back. They consumed her.

As another tear rolled down her cheek, she realized then how much she really needed them though. They were her heart’s way of speaking of that pain.

So, she let herself feel.

Tucking her feet up onto the couch, she hugged her knees to her chest and wept openly. Jack wrapped an arm around her shoulders, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. His comfort was all that she needed.

After a few minutes, she found her voice again. “Do you remember that night on the beach last summer?”

“How could I ever forget?”

His hand trailed circles into her muscles, and she bit back the sigh that threatened to escape as he physically massaged the tension out of her back.

“I took Ramsey back that night because he told me he wanted to prove to me that everything I was freaking out about with Parker was nothing. And it wasn’t.”

Jack’s hand stilled as her words sank in. “Did he…do something with Parker?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“No. I mean, I don’t think so…but I came home, and she had found paperwork that said she had been discharged from an abortion clinic without anything happening. She proved what she had been saying all along…that she’d had a miscarriage.”

“That’s kind of huge for them, isn’t it?” Jack asked softly.

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I probably wouldn’t have cared as much if it hadn’t all been handled behind my back and if he hadn’t freaked out about the whole thing. I mean, if he’s still so hung up on this thing with Parker,” she said, turning to face Jack, “then how can he even want to marry me?”