What Endures (11 page)

“Megan,” Sean cut in. "Breathe." She forced herself to stop the rush of words and drew in a slow breath. Sean laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “So he didn’t know until the reporter sprung that on him?”

She shook her head. “No wonder he’s pissed,” Sean mumbled. He quickly shot her a look of apology. “Sorry that was-“

“The truth,” she acknowledged.

Sean smiled at her sympathetically. “This isn’t easy for you is it?”

“No, it’s not,” she said softly. “But I tell myself it’s not easy for Jason either and that makes things OK somehow.”

“You know, I’ve always thought Jason was lucky to have you. From the first moment he introduced me to you, I’ve thought that.”

She felt her throat constrict at Sean’s words. “Thank you.”

He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “It’ll be O.K. Even with that slight. . .glitch, the press conference was a success. The Mariners are happy and I’m sure the suits who handle his endorsements are too. And the press is none the wiser.” He smiled at her encouragingly. “You know Jason might not be quite himself but his temper, while bad, tends to burn out pretty quickly.”

“Yeah,” she murmured, as a half a dozen scenarios as to how her impending confrontation with Jason would go flashed through her head. Not one of them was pleasant. “Is he waiting for me?”

Sean nodded. “Unless you’d rather. . .”

She shook her head. “I’ve delayed this as it is.” She reached over and gave Sean a hug. “Thanks, Sean. For everything." She gave him a wan smile before heading for the exit. She was grateful the Mariners had provided a limo to transport them to and from the press conference, and had kept the press away from the car in the meantime. All she needed was a picture of her entering the limo with what could only be classified as a stricken expression.

She absently nodded to various people as she headed for the door and once there, paused before she pushed it open. The limo had been pulled up so that simply taking a few steps from the door would lead her directly to the passenger seat. The driver was standing by the door, hand on the latch and waiting patiently. When he saw her, he smiled and gracefully opened the door.

She froze then. Knowing she needed to get in there, and yet not wanting to. What the hell was she supposed to say to him?

The driver looked at her questioningly and she forced herself to keep moving and before she knew it, she was climbing into the limo. She heard the door shut softly behind her and it wasn’t until that moment that she realized that she had been focusing, too intently, on the carpeted floor of the limo.

She drew in a deep breath and shifted her eyes up, and then around the limo’s expansive interior. She found Jason instantly. He was sitting at the far end of the limo, nearest the partition that separated the front and back. He had shed his suit jacket and his tie was undone and hanging loosely around his neck.

She shouldn’t have worried about confronting Jason then, because he was doing a great job of ignoring her. He stared fixedly out the window and didn’t acknowledge her presence at all.

“Jason, I-“

“Not now.”

His voice was cold. The kind of tone he used when he was dead serious about something and didn’t want to argue. He didn’t even turn to look at her when he had responded, continuing to stare out the limo’s tinted window.

She sighed and sank back into her seat as the limo began to pull away. She didn’t know whether to be relieved at the temporary reprieve, or even more anxious about the impending confrontation.

She glanced at him. To those who didn’t know him, outwardly, Jason seemed perfectly fine. He was simply staring out the car’s window, enjoying a quiet limo ride. But she did know him, and she knew better. Underneath that calm exterior was a volcano waiting to erupt. Subtle things like his clenched jaw or rigid posture, or even the way his hands were clamped tightly together in his lap belied that calm exterior of his.

It was the longest car ride of her life, and more than once, she had wanted to just blurt out the explanation to him, but she knew a rambling, incoherent explanation in the backseat of a limo was not the best way to resolve things. So she had forced herself to sit quietly.

Not once had Jason turned to look at her during the ride. She may as well have been invisible and yet she knew he was acutely aware of her, just as she was of him. Just when she thought she could no longer bear the tension between them, the limo pulled up to the house and she scrambled out, thankful for the open space and fresh air.

She opened the door and keyed in the security code to disable the alarm. Jason brushed past her wordlessly and headed for the living room. She sighed and waved to the limo driver as he pulled away.

For an instant, she wanted to flee. Her car was right in the driveway and she was standing less than 10 feet from it. Bag with keys in hand. It would be easy. Nothing was stopping her. Nothing except her conscience and that was enough. She owed him an explanation. Slowly, she shut the door and then walked quietly down to the living room.

She found him standing with his back to her, hands in his pockets. He was in front of the large patio doors that led out into the landscaped backyard and pool. She looked at his back for several seconds, trying to gather the courage and sense to explain to him what couldn’t really be explained.

She was about to call to him when his quiet voice filled the room.

“When?”

“Wha. . .” she started, momentarily startled. But then her brain engaged and she understood his question. “It was a long time ago, Jason.”

“When?” he repeated, this time the edge in his voice was unmistakable.

She sighed. “After high school graduation.”

She wasn’t even sure he had heard her because he hadn’t moved at all. It was as if he were frozen there by the patio doors. She hadn’t so much as seen a single muscle on his back twitch.

Suddenly he turned and she flinched at the raw emotion she saw in his eyes, now a mossy green. “Why?”

“We were in love and-“

“You know what I mean.”

She did. She had just chosen to answer the easier ‘why’ question.

“I didn’t know how,” she said quietly. “With the doctor’s advice and then our compromise, it-“

“Oh no,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “Don’t you dare use our compromise to get out of this.” He limped over to the couch, closer to her.  She wanted to back up, but stood firm. “There are things you just automatically tell someone if they can’t remember! Things like. ..like if you killed one of their relatives. Or you had their secret love child.” He pinned her with a hard stare. “Or if you were married!”

Jason’s voice had grown louder so his last sentence had basically been shouted at her. She flinched. “You’re right. I’m-“

“You’re damn right I’m right! Is this some kind of game for you? Some sort of sick way of controlling me? Let’s just string the poor brain damaged idiot along and tell him about his life when I want to. ‘Cause I feel like playing God with someone’s life!”

She could feel the tears prickling her eyes and fought to contain them. “That is not what I was doing!”

“Could have fooled me!” he spat out. “Do you know what it feels like to be the only one who isn’t in on the joke? Especially when the joke is your life! I’ll bet everyone at that press conference knew about us except me!”

“This isn’t a joke!” she cried. “That’s not why I didn’t tell you!”

“Oh right. You were
protecting
me.” His face twisted into an expression of exaggerated irony. “Great fucking job on that front! Do I look like I feel protected right now?”

She involuntarily closed her eyes, hoping the action would somehow shield her from his words. A beat later and she opened them to find Jason still glaring at her, his anger now completely in the open. “Jason, I. . .I didn’t know how. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”

“That’s bullshit Megan and you know it! It took that reporter one sentence to tell me! It isn’t that hard! You just say ‘Hey, you know, when we were kids, we did something really stupid and got married.” He shrugged. “See? It’s not that fucking hard!”

He’s just angry and lashing out,
she told herself, hoping it would help quell the pain that was literally spreading through her body. She felt her hands shaking and clasped them together. Jason’s words cut her deeply. The way he was describing their marriage, their relationship, their love. That he was so dismissive, as if it were nothing more important than having a one-night stand, wounded her to her very soul.

She drew in a shaky breath. “It wasn’t stupid,” she said quietly.

He met her eyes and for a brief instant, she saw remorse. But that was quickly replaced by his raging anger. “It was clearly a mistake right? After all, we divorced.” He looked at her. “So in the interest of the truth, just how long was our marriage? A few months? Did we even make it to our first anniversary?”

She turned away from him, unable to bear it. Rationally she understood what he was doing. If she thought long enough, she would probably be almost comforted by how familiar his actions were. He had been blindsided and hurt, so now he was lashing out. That’s what Jason did. He had matured, so he did it less and less, but his anger, especially when it took hold like now, overrode any internal control that he may have developed over the years. Even a brain injury hadn't robbed him of this coping mechanism.

Rationally, she understood it. But emotionally, it hurt like hell. And pain had a way of negating everything. It demanded to be felt and to be dealt with and anything and everything else faded away.

“We made it,” she said softly, each word seemingly taking Herculean effort to get out. She didn't feel like clarifying that technically they had broken up before then and that their divorce was finalized shortly after they had hit that milestone.

“So what is this?”

She forced herself to turn back around and look at him. But her eyes wandered and seemed to look anywhere but at him. “What do you mean ‘this’?”

“This,” he said impatiently. “You being here. You apparently run my charitable foundation and I gave you my power of attorney. I mean I don’t know much about divorced couples but they don’t tend to hang around with each other all buddy-buddy like.” He paused and looked at her, his expression both questioning and accusatory. “Unless one of them is hoping to rekindle something.”

“What?” she managed, her voice raspy.

“I’ve seen how you look at me.”

Something in her snapped then. Jason’s implication that she was hanging around him in some sort of desperate, pathetic attempt to reignite their romance caused her to lose whatever control she had been fighting to hold onto.

“We don’t need to rekindle anything,” she said, her voice dull-sounding to her ears. “We already did.”

His eyes blazed at her revelation and where normally she would have backed off, she pushed harder ahead now. She was vaguely aware of her head warning her that dangerous territory lay ahead but she easily ignored it.

“What?” he asked.

“You want to know Jason?” she challenged. “You really want all the truth about your life? Everything?” He didn’t respond but she didn’t really give him a chance. “Fine! I’ll tell you.”

“We’re engaged,” she threw at him. “We ‘rekindled’ our relationship a long time ago and we were set to get married again. How’s that for the truth?”

He flinched at her words and yet she didn’t care, plowing right ahead. “We’re in love.” She laughed then, a bizarre-sounding laugh like you would hear in a mental ward, from someone tied down to their bed, waiting for the brain-altering medication to kick in.  “Do you feel in love? Are you ready to get hitched? Walk down the aisle with me when our wedding date gets here?” She made an exaggerated show of looking at her watch. “Which by the way, is a mere seven months away! So you better get cracking Jason!”

“Megan-“

She shook her head. “No! This is what you wanted right? I asked you if you were ready to deal with it all. Well I guess now you have to. And so do I.” She looked at him then, knowing that what she was going to do next was akin to emotional suicide, but she didn't care because she was in so much pain already that she didn’t think anything could hurt any worse. “So, now you know. We were married. We got divorced. But we’re supposed to get married again. Does that change anything?”

He looked down. “Megan, that-“

“What? I’m the only one that has to answer questions around here?”
Stop, please!
her head screamed at her futilely. “They’re simple questions. Do you feel any differently about me knowing that I’m your fiancee? You still want to get married? Do you love me?”

“Don’t-“

“
Do you
?”

He looked down for what seemed an eternity before he slowly shook his head. “No.”

She had been wrong, of course. There was something that could hurt her worse. And she was feeling it at that moment. His answer hurt so much that if someone were to plunge a knife directly into her heart at that instant, she didn’t think she would even feel it.

“Right,” she choked out in a ragged whisper.

He looked at her and she was dimly aware of how tortured he looked then but she had no energy left to consider the implication of it. “Megan, it’s not-“

“I think we’ve said enough,” she said quietly. Without looking at him, she turned and walked out. Somehow, she managed to drive back to the hotel before she collapsed and shuddering sobs overtook her, shaking her small frame.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Early May. . .

This time, Megan could honestly say that she wasn’t deliberately avoiding Jason.

Even if she was sure that he would want to see her, she simply didn’t have the time to stop by. Besides, there wasn’t much of a need. Tyler was back in the house. She had learned, through Tyler, that Jason was not acting out, but had taken to staying in his room. He had fired Ms. Clark, but he had done so in a professional manner. No childish, bratty antics.

Even without Ms. Clark, Jason was eating, going to his doctor’s appointments and continuing his PT sessions. And she knew that Tyler would look out for him, no matter how difficult or unbearable he could be. So she knew that Jason would be fine.