Right Place, Right Time (Second Chances Book 2) (17 page)

Jay

Her tears nearly undo me. I don’t want to hurt her. God…I love her…I just don’t want to make her life more complicated. I’d meant what I said, I don’t want her to have to one day choose between me and her passion because of a stupid decision I’d made when I was eighteen years old.

“I’m sorry, Kate. I’m so sorry.”

“Please,” she begs, looking up at me from the floor. Her cheeks are streaked with mascara from her tears. “Please don’t do this. I don’t want to be without you.”

“You’ll be better off without me,” I say, kneeling down in front of her. I can’t look down at her like that. I just can’t. “Kate, you’re going to do amazing things. You’re going to be an amazing teacher. You’re going to be that teacher that makes a difference in kids’ lives. The one they remember twenty years later because she listened to them and cared about them. In the long run, I’d only weigh you down.”

“You won’t.”

“I will.”

“You won’t! Dammit, I won’t let you!”

She throws herself at my chest and wraps her arms around me. Her body shaking with her sobs. I want to wrap my arms around her. I want to comfort her. I want to forget all about this and just be selfish. But I can’t. This is what’s best for Kate. It’s not even about me, not really. It’s about her.

“Kate, this shit is going to follow me around like a black cloud for the rest of my life. It’s never going to be off my record. Ever. That’s something
I
have to live with, not you.”

“This isn’t new information, Jay. Why now? Why are you doing this now? What has changed? What happened today that made you feel like you’re not good enough for me all of a sudden? I thought we were past this.”

I want to laugh. All of a sudden? Past this? “Kate, I’ve never felt like I was good enough for you.”

She pulls away from me and looks into my eyes, a frown on her beautiful, tear-soaked face. “You’ve never felt like you were good enough for me? Did I make you feel that way?”

I shake my head. “Never.”

“Then why? Why would you feel that way?”

She really doesn’t get it. I abruptly stand up and place my hands on the back of my head. I hate this. I hate this situation. I hate that I let myself get so close…that I let
her
get so close…that I let myself fall in love…that I let
her
fall in love. Fuck!

“I’m a convicted felon, Kate!” I yell. “What part of that don’t you understand? It’s not all rainbows and fucking butterflies in my life. People judge me. People move to the other side of the street when they see people like me coming. There are places I can’t get jobs. I can’t pass simple background checks. I can’t vote. There’s a stigma that’s always going to be attached to me. Forever. If you’re with me, that’s going to be attached to you, too. Don’t you get that?”

More tears fall from her eyes, and I continue to feel like an asshole. But seriously…can’t she see? I’m doing this for her!

“I want you in my life, Jay. I don’t care what other people think. I don’t care if other people can’t accept it. I don’t care if I have to change jobs because some stuck-up assholes believe that one mistake defines a person. Those aren’t people I want to associate with.”

Her words make me love her more, if that’s even possible, but they also frustrate the hell out of me. She’s not making this easy.

But why should it be easy? Why should breaking someone’s heart be easy? Especially the one person—other than my best friend and brother—who has always been there for me. It should be difficult. It should fucking hurt.

Kate gets to her feet and steps up to me. I take a step back.

“Jay, please.”

“No. This is how it has to be.”

“But I love you, and you love me. You can’t leave now; we’ve only just found each other!”

“I don’t love you, Kate,” I lie. “I thought I did, but I don’t. Hell, I don’t even think I know what love is.”

“That’s not true. You’re lying! Why are you lying?” She keeps stepping towards me, and I keep stepping back. “Stop moving away from me. Please don’t do this.”

There’s only one way I know she’ll let me leave. It’s a shitty thing to do, and it makes me sick, but I’d rather her be mad at me and hate me than be heartbroken.

“I never loved you, Kate. I just said what I needed to in order to get what I wanted from you.”

She stops moving. “What? What are you saying? What do you mean?”

“Three years in prison…it’s a long time to be without a woman. I had been thinking about you for a while. I did what I had to do.” It’s a complete and total lie. Yes, I dreamed about the girl with the long blonde hair and beautiful brown eyes, but I never thought to use her in the way I was implying.

She shakes her head. “No. I don’t believe that. You’re lying.”

“It’s the truth. Believe what you want,” I shrug, displaying my indifference. The slap that follows is both painful and freeing. Painful because it was right across my face, freeing because now I know she’s pissed. Now I know she’ll let me go.

“Get out,” she says quietly. Now, I almost don’t want to leave, knowing that this is truly the end, but that’s just me being selfish again. “Get out!”

I take one long last look at her, knowing I’m never going to see her again, and walk out the door.

I pass a wide-eyed Casey and Decker, who I’d forgotten were even in the apartment, and go to pick up my helmet. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Casey take off down the hall, probably for Kate’s room, but Decker is still standing there…watching me.

“That was all bullshit, wasn’t it?” he says. I ignore him as I pull on my leather jacket. “Casey pulled the same shit with me. Tried to push me away for my own good because she was sick and didn’t want me to be miserable. She didn’t give me any credit that I could handle it. You’re doing the same thing. You’re not giving Kate any credit. She’s tougher than she looks.”

Don’t I know it…

“Take care of them,” I tell Decker as I walk out the door for the last time.

***

I should probably be concerned that I don’t remember the ride back to my hole-in-the-wall apartment. But the truth is, I don’t really give a shit about anything right now.

Once inside my apartment I start packing my bag, grateful I’d picked up that pull-behind for mine and Sean’s trip to Sturgis since I’ve accumulated more shit since moving here. I’ll leave most of the household stuff, but I’m taking everything else. Except Kate’s drawer. I’ll bag that up and drop it outside her apartment before I go. She left her little pink duffel bag here a while back.

I get everything set up on my bike and leave my apartment key in an envelope with next month’s rent and a note, and slide it under the super’s door. He’ll probably pocket the cash, but I don’t really care. I’m getting the hell out of here.

I make sure the rigging for the pull-behind is secure and hop on my bike. I ride over to Kate’s place and park around the corner, I don’t want her to hear my bike. If she comes out…if I see her again, even for a second, even from afar, I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up the charade. I sneak up the stairs and leave her bag outside the apartment door, pausing for a moment.

“Goodbye, Kate,” I whisper to the closed door.

I head back to my bike and get on the highway heading east…it’s time to go home.

Kate

I’m still lying in a heap on my floor when Casey comes in.

“Kate?” Her voice is full of concern, and it makes me cry harder. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. We didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it was hard not to overhear.” She’s on the floor beside me now, rubbing my back. It’s a gesture a mother would make to comfort her child, I guess, if I had any idea what a caring mother was like.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“He left me,” I sob.

“I know, hun. I’m sorry.”

“I love him.”

“I know you do. I think he loves you, too. I think he’s just scared. I don’t think he meant the things he said.”

“Then why say them?”

“Because he was afraid. Afraid of being with you…afraid of hurting you…afraid of losing you. That’s how it was for me when things got real intense with Decker. I was scared to death that my secrets would hurt Decker, so I pushed him away.”

I remember just a few weeks ago when Casey and Decker had gotten into their fight right before Casey ended up in the hospital. She’d pushed him away because he was getting too close to finding out the truth, and she’d freaked out.

“But Jay isn’t hiding anything, Case. I already know all his secrets.”

She’s silent for a moment, then asks, “Was he really in prison?”

I sit up, wanting to look her in the eyes and see her reaction to what I say. I haven’t told anyone about Jay’s past, it’s not relevant to his future—or to mine—but Casey is my best friend. If I’m going to tell anyone, it’ll be her.

“Yes,” I say, waiting for a reaction. When I don’t get one, I relax. See? It’s not the end of the world. Why couldn’t Jay just see that? Not everyone is going to judge him poorly. At least not those who matter.

“What happened?”

I adjust my position so my back is resting against my bed, and my knees are pulled up to my chest. Casey mimics my position beside me. Taking a deep breath, I tell Casey the truth.

“Jay didn’t always hang out with the best people. One night, shortly after we’d first met, he stopped at a gas station on his way home. It was in a not-so-great part of town, but it was close to the apartment he shared with his brother. He came out of the store after paying, and bumped into an old friend of his. The friend asked Jay for a ride, so Jay gave him one. The guy had a black duffel bag with him and was acting all paranoid; Jay just figured he was on something.”

“Like drugs?” Casey asks with wide eyes. If only that was the worst of it…

I nod my head. “Yeah. Jay didn’t do drugs, but he used to hang out with some guys who did, and he was a bit of a troublemaker. His brother—Mac—is a cop, and he’d been trying to straighten Jay out. It was working, and he was steering clear of that crowd, but he’s a nice guy, and he didn’t think there would be any harm in driving a friend home. Anyway, they had just left the convenience store parking lot when he got pulled over. His friend started freaking out, trying to stuff the bag under the seat.”

Casey’s eyes widen again. “What was in the bag?”

“Money and guns.”

“What?!” her mouth drops.

“Turns out his friend had robbed a pawn shop a couple hours earlier. A video camera caught an image of his friend at the pawn shop, and the cop had spotted the guy getting into Jay’s car at the gas station. Jay’s brother was one of the cops that showed up on the scene.”

“But how did Jay end up in jail? He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He told them he had no idea, but was his word against theirs. With his history of being a troublemaker, they didn’t believe him. And his friend didn’t say anything to the contrary. In fact, he said Jay had been waiting to give him a ride after the robbery.”

“What a dick!” Casey shrieks.

“Yeah,” I nod.

“His brother didn’t believe him?”

“He wanted to…but Jay had let him down so much before. Their parents were bad news and weren’t around much, so Jay was a wild child. Anyway, the whole thing really put a strain on their relationship for a while. It took Jay a long time to get past the anger of his brother arresting him and not believing him, but eventually he got over it.”

“His brother is the one who arrested him?”

“Yeah. His friend was arrested for armed robbery, and Jay was arrested as an accessory.”

“Wow, that’s pretty rough.”

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he just hadn’t stopped for gas or not given his friend that ride, things could have turned out so different.”

“If his friend hadn’t robbed someone…”

“Yeah, there’s that,” I agree with a frown. “So, Jay spent over three years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit or didn’t mean to commit, I guess. We wrote each other letters for a little while. I looked him up at the Department of Corrections website after I’d found out he went to prison,” I admit bashfully, feeling like a total stalker. Though he did come to California for me, so I guess we’re sort of even now.

“Wait a minute,” Casey’s eyes dart to mine, suddenly realizing something. “You told me you met him at the restaurant.”

I look down at my hands in my lap, feeling incredibly guilty for lying to my friend. I should have known she wouldn’t judge Jay, especially once she knew the whole story. I should have just told her the truth back then.

This is exactly one of the things Jay had been afraid of…that I would have to hide our history because I was ashamed of him. But that’s not the case at all. I’m not ashamed of him. I just don’t want to deal with the attitudes of people who would judge him without knowing him…without knowing the truth. People love jumping to conclusions. That’s what I’ve been afraid of. I’ve never been ashamed of him. I never would be.

More tears drip down my cheeks, and Casey pulls me into a hug. I take my friend’s consolation, careful of the stitches on her chest.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. I was just afraid of what you might think if you knew he’d been in jail, and I didn’t want to get mad at you for making a snap judgement.”

“I understand,” she says. “If I were in your shoes, I’d probably be apprehensive about telling people as well.”

“But you’re my best friend, I should have trusted that you would hear me out.”

Casey shrugs. “It’s not a big deal. You would have told me eventually. You
did
tell me eventually. That’s what’s important.”

“I guess so.”

“So tell me…how did you meet?”

I smile at the memory. “It was kismet, I swear.” Casey squeezes my hand and gives me an encouraging smile. “You know I did a lot of volunteer work in high school. I’d gone to Greenville for the day to help at an event for a free health clinic. Turns out the event was canceled, but no one told me. So I turned around and drove home. I was on I-26 when my car broke down. I had been out there, baking in the sun on the side of the road, when he showed up like a mirage.”

I tell Casey all about the short time I’d spent with Jay four years earlier. How he’d helped me on the side of the road, and how we’d met again by chance in the coffee shop and spent hours talking about everything and nothing. Then how he’d stood me up for our dinner date…because he’d been arrested.

That night, when I’d seen his picture on TV, it was because he’d been arrested for armed robbery. The local news had all sorts of foul things to say about him and his “friend.” But I swore that wasn’t the Jay I’d met. I hadn’t spent more than a few hours with him, but I just knew.