Loving a Sinner Page 16

  “She is,” I agreed quietly.

  “She’s the one you’ve been trying to erase.”

  Again his words weren’t questioning. He knew as well as I did that I had tried and failed to forget about Ryan through nameless hookups. Now Ben had a face and name to place with my mystery heartbreak.

  “But here she is,” I told him. I scrubbed my face with my hands. Even I was surprised to have this chance. I knew I was a lucky bastard and I didn’t need Ben, or Bob for that matter, reminding me. Just the other day Bob had given a lengthy lecture about not letting her go again.

  “Hopefully she sticks around. I like this new and improved Jackson Bennett.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah, he’s less of an asshole. Makes my job easier.”

  I laughed at that and he responded by muttering something that sounded a lot like, Well, it’s true dickwad.

  “I’m not letting go this time, Ben. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s stuck with me.”

  My words sounded more confident than I felt. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure if I would get to keep her forever.

  Especially after I told her the truth about Jeffrey.

  After a few minutes and no Ryan, I was worried that maybe she wasn’t going to come back, but finally she reappeared, blonde hair whipping in the wind. It reminded me of the photograph she had sold to me that was hanging in my living room.

  She barrelled her way into the car, a huge smile plastered on her face and duffle bag in hand.

  “Is it weird that I’m excited for our grown-up slumber party?” she whispered once we were seated and on our way back to my apartment.

  No, it wasn’t weird. Because I was fucking ecstatic.

  “What do you have planned for this slumber party, Patterson?” I whispered back.

  A smirk played on her lips and she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. I shook my head at her, she was ridiculous and I loved her.

  I loved her.

  It felt freeing to admit that so easily.

  “Hey, this was your idea,” she told me.

  Bullshit. She knew I had only broken down and asked her to say after witnessing her little tantrum she threw on our way to her place.

  “I think we both know who’s to blame for this bad idea,” I replied, moving my mouth closer to her ear to ensure she was the only one who could hear the next part, “We don’t have the best track record when it comes to being alone in bed.”

  She blushed and giggled, pushing my arm playfully. Her eyes darted toward Ben. But he was ignoring us as we acted like two guilty children.

  A sudden movement near my hand had me removing my gaze from her face and toward her hand that was slowly and timidly sliding into mine. She laced our fingers together, and I gave a reassuring squeeze to let her know I wanted her there.

  On an exhale, she leaned her head against my shoulder. I kissed the top of her head and used my free hand to trace circles on the back of the hand that was grasping mine.

  It felt easy, being here like this. As if ten years of silence—ten years of painful memories, ten years of missing a piece of me—hadn’t happened.

  But they had. And we had a lot to discuss. I knew that, even as I tried to ignore the different worries running throughout my mind. I made a pact with myself in that moment. I would give us tonight, whatever it brought, and then I would break the news to her in the morning. I would come clean about everything. Why I had left, why I had stayed away from her for ten years when all I had wanted to do was call her and tell her she was my everything, why Benjamin was threatening me now.

  If she walked away, I would let her go.

  If she stayed, I would never give her a reason to walk away again.

  Ryan let out a slow breath before pulling me closer to her. Although we were as close as we could be in a car, we still weren’t close enough. In that moment, I didn’t think we ever could be.

  The ride home couldn’t have moved any slower. I was dying to pull her into my apartment so we could be alone and I could explore her in any way she would let me, whether it was physically or emotionally. By the time the car slowed to a stop, I was unbuckled and yanking the door open in a rush to be alone with her.

  “Jesus, Jackson,” she laughed as I pulled her through the entrance of the building and to the elevator where Bob was looking smug.

  “You going up?” Bob asked us as he hit the button to my floor. Damn old man. He knew we were going up.

  “Bob, how are you today?” Ryan asked, shyly smiling at the man as if she had any reason to be embarrassed about being caught going back up to my apartment.

  “I’d be better if I didn’t have to help your lazy asses,” Bob huffed. He darted his eyes toward me and huffed again, “Especially this asshole.” He pointed his thumb toward me, and I let out a laugh. As much as Bob hated to admit it, he liked me. The feeling was mutual. He had often been someone I talked to in my drunken stupors. I rambled about Ryan and all of my fuck-ups in my life. He had always rolled his eyes and told me that I was an idiot and deserved what life gave me. But we both knew he didn’t mean it.

  “Why are you here in an elevator instead of home eating turkey?” I questioned.

  I got raised eyebrows and a string of curses in return.

  “Ungrateful bastard,” he muttered low and quietly to Ryan who giggled and nodded in false agreement. He turned his attention back to me and stated honestly, “It’s just me at home, you know. My wife Alma died two years ago, and holidays aren’t the same when they’re spent alone.”

  His admission shocked me. I hadn’t realized he lived alone. Of course I had been the ungrateful bastard he called me, not really caring about anyone but my own damn self for the past years.

  “You should have said something,” Ryan told him in almost a whisper, “You could have had dinner with us.”

  Her words were soft and kind and made my heart swell with even more love for this woman. This kind and generous and thoughtful woman I didn’t deserve.

  “Naw,” Bob waved her sentiment off, “I wouldn’t want to third wheel or nothing.”

  A careful smile crept to Ryan’s face. She bit it back and turned her eyes toward the increasing numbers indicating we were nearing my floor.

  The ding of the elevator and heavy metal of the doors scraping open were my cues to grab her hand and give Bob a quick thank you before rushing to my front door.

  “I wish we could have invited him,” Ryan mumbled, playing with her duffle bag.

  “Well, now we know for next time,” I told her, pushing the door open.

  The urgency we had felt was back, buzzing through the air between us. She dropped her bag at the entrance and peeled off her coat. Her cheeks were still red from the winter air, and her eyes glimmered with something that looked a lot like hope.

  “So now what?” Her voice was playful yet serious.

  So now what?

  That was the question of the century.

  “I honestly have no idea,” I admitted, pulling my own coat off. It fell to the floor, forgotten the moment Ryan stepped closer toward me.

  “We have a lot to catch up on. Let’s start with some of that wine you promised.”

  We both made our way to my kitchen where she seated herself on my counter while I found the wine and glasses. I poured her a decent-sized glass. She took it, and I settled myself between her legs, running my hands over her thighs as she watched me with a hesitant gaze. Her eyes fell from me to her glass, but she didn’t take a sip.

  We stayed like that for a while. Close and silent, neither person wanting to start this long journey we were about to embark. My hands stayed on her while hers stayed in her lap, swirling the wine around in the glass.

  Eventually she took a large drink from the wine and placed it beside her where she sat on the counter. Her eyes were darker now. She was bracing herself for the ugly truths our ten years apart had built. Maybe I should have taken her lead and braced myself for whatever was coming my way, but I wanted
to feel it all. I wanted to hurt because if I could feel the pain of our pasts then I would thrive in the pleasure our future would bring.

  I tried to swallow the lump that was forming in my throat and was the first to break our deafening silence by asking one of the questions that had been burning me from the inside since we reconnected.

  “I thought you would have been married with kids by now,” I started off with an admission, “Why aren’t you?”

  Her tongue darted out and wet her lower lip. With a deep breath she asked, “Why am I not married with kids?” I nodded, and she continued, “I don’t know… Didn’t find the right guy, I guess.”

  I wondered if that meant she had found other men, even if temporarily. But who was I kidding, of course she had. Ten years was a long time to remain celibate for a man who didn’t show any sign of coming back.

  “But you weren’t alone these years.” I didn’t ask. Because I knew the answer. Her shoulders straightened and her eyes dimmed with an emotion I couldn’t quite place.

  “No,” she sighed. She bit her thumbnail as if she were trying to keep from saying anything else about the matter. But I wanted to know. I needed to know.

  “Did you love any of them?”

  It hurt to ask the question even if I had no right to feel that way. I had been with plenty of women in our time apart. And I knew without a doubt my number surpassed hers by a longshot. But still, the ache of thinking about her loving someone else was undeniably the worst kind of torture. Because no matter how many women I tried to use to get over Ryan, no matter the amount of alcohol I had tried to drown in, no matter how high I got every night to forget—my high would end, I would wake up the next morning, and I would remember the pain. I would remember the way she laughed. I would remember the love I had shared with another person for a short time. I remembered it all.

  She let out a frustrated breath and threw her head back, staring at the ceiling. That hurt worse than I had expected. I had my answer.

  “It’s okay,” I tried telling her. She had no reason to feel guilty for moving on after I walked out on her.

  Her head lowered and those pretty, blue eyes met mine again. Biting her lower lip, she studied me before saying, “I didn’t get the chance to find out. I would always leave before it ever got too serious.”

  The air left my lungs.

  She hadn’t loved anyone?

  She hadn’t loved anyone.

  But she had loved me.

  She hadn’t ever told me. Hell, I hadn’t ever told her that I loved her back either. We kept our lips sealed and our hearts off the line—or so we had tried to believe. We guarded those three words like our lives depended on it, refusing to let the each other hear what was so obvious. It was as if the spoken words would have sealed the fate that we had tried so desperately to ignore. But we hadn’t gained any peace from never telling each other the truth. Instead, our unheard truth had been what kept us apart for years. It was why she had been across the country from me. It was why I had gotten in that damn taxi and left her standing in the rain.

  It was why she hadn’t let herself love anyone.

  It was why I hadn’t ever even tried to love anyone else.

  It was why we were still here, ten years later, staring into each other’s eyes, daring each other to finally say what we hadn’t all those years before.

  “Why?” I heard myself ask with a voice that I didn’t recognize. It sounded unsure, and it lacked the confidence I usually exuded.

  I leaned closer to her. Our mouths inches apart. Her breath hitched, and she closed her eyes.

  “You, Jackson. It was always you.”

  Her admission set my soul on fire. I was once again a redeemed man. A man who had been saved and sent on the path of salvation.

  I wanted to dance through the streets the way King David had danced through the streets of Jerusalem, declaring she was mine and I was hers.

  I brushed my lips against hers but didn’t kiss her. Instead, I spoke the words I had fought against. The words I didn’t think I deserved to utter.

  “I love you.”

  She didn’t say it back, but when she kissed me, I felt it. I felt our pain mixed with a sweet ecstasy as her lips moved against mine. Each kiss was sealing and damaging.

  I love you too, she spoke wordlessly against me.

  But I heard the words as if they had been spoken aloud.

  And silently I returned them. Together, we spoke the truth wordlessly again and again.

  I love you, Ryan.

  I love you, Jackson.

  I know.

  I know.

  He loved me.

  He loved me.

  He loved me.

  The moment his lips had touched mine, all was right in the world once again. He took my breath away and yet gave me life all at once. When he finally pulled away from me, his lips revealed the most beautiful smile I had ever seen on that man, and I knew that we were going to be okay. We had found each other again. This time it would work.

  “Ryan,” he sounded as breathless as I felt, “baby, I’ve missed you.”

  The ache in my heart could not be ignored. I had missed him too. More than he would ever know. I wanted to tell him that I felt the same way. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but the years of uncertainty still resided within me. I was worried I would give my heart over to a man who would leave me again. I couldn’t handle that—to be left.

  When he realized I didn’t know what to say back, he just gave me a wink and pulled me from the counter. “Come here, I have something to show you.”

  Holding my hand, he pulled me from the kitchen to his living room area. It was the same room that he had shown me when I first came here a couple weeks before. I was reminded of the shock I had felt when I saw Jackson pull open his door, and the mirrored shock in his face to see me too.

  We stopped in front of a large wall, the one that had originally donned a New York skyline photo. The New York piece was now replaced with my own. The black and white photo looked amazing in his home. Everything about his house was clinical in a good way. The dark metals paired with white furniture made the space look clean and perfect and masculine.

  “What do you think?” he asked me. He almost sounded shy which was completely unlike Jackson.

  “It’s perfect,” I told him honestly. A rush of guilt seeped into my veins when I realized that he still didn’t know that the photo hanging on his wall was mine.

  He nodded in agreement and furrowed his brows. “I wish I knew who took it… I would love to see their other pieces. There hasn’t been an art piece that has spoken to me like this one has in a long time… if ever.”

  Guilt. That was the only thing I felt in that moment. I had to tell him. He needed to know.

  “It was me,” I blurted, covering my face with my hands. “It’s my piece,” my muffled voice told him.

  The silence that followed was excruciating. I waited from behind my hands for him to say something, anything. The huge clock that hung across the room was the only thing that made a sound. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  I peeked from between my fingers not to find Jackson angry or upset, but instead looking rather amused.

  Taking a deep breath, I lowered my hands and shoved them into the back pockets of my jeans. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you… I was worried you’d change your mind about wanting it once you found out it was mine.”

  His amused looked turned to one of confusion and something that looked a bit like anger.

  “Why wouldn’t I want it if I knew it was yours?”

  I debated whether to tell him the truth, but I decided we had spent too much time not being honest as it was, so I went for it. “Honestly? I thought you’d find it weird to have it in your house… With our history and all.”

  I watched as he licked his lips and sighed, “You really thought that little of me?” he asked quietly.

  I knew my assumption had left him hurt, I could hear it in his voice. But part of me couldn’t help but
be defensive. What did he expect? I hadn’t heard from him in ten years, and he had left me without much of a goodbye. He had made me feel cheap and dirty by the way he left things, and I had carried that with me all those years. Even now, standing and staring at a man who claimed to love me, I couldn’t help but feel the rejection from our past. How could he be so surprised that I had wanted to keep the identity of the photographer from him?

  “Well, it’s not like we left things on good terms…”

  I was trying my hardest to not drudge up the past. I wished we could pretend like we had only been away from each other for days rather than years, but we needed to get everything out in the open. We would never move on if we kept everything buried.

  “I thought we had… I thought…” I watched as Jackson’s face scrunched in confusion. He groaned and ran his hands through his hair. “Shit, I don’t know what I thought. Maybe I just told myself we left things okay because I didn’t want to admit I hurt the one person I never wanted to.”

  Unwanted tears stung the back of my eyes, threatening to show up as uninvited guests to our discussion.

  “You did, you know.” Breathing through my nose, ignoring the lump in my throat as I spoke, “You hurt me.”

  “I know…” He took a step closer to me, but I pulled back, not ready to feel his touch. His nearness always had a way of making me forget everything bad, and right now we needed to remember the bad.

  “Why did you? Hurt me, I mean.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted his answer, but I prayed that he would be honest with me for once. Years of trying to dissect every moment we shared together, every conversation, to try to find an answer for his disappearance had driven me insane. I needed to know, even if the truth was ugly.

  Jackson looked away from me and turned his attention to the photo of the happy girl on the beach. The juxtaposition of the emotions found in the photo and the emotions that filled the room we stood in were almost funny if any humor could be found in our love story’s tragedy.

  “I didn’t think you would want to keep me,” he whispered.