Chance Encounters (13 page)

Caroline nodded. “Okay.”

Bailey stretched and let out a yawn. “I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”

“Thanks.” Caroline reached across the bed toward the nightstand. She grabbed her phone and pressed the button to call Jackson. As it rang, her whole body began to shake uncontrollably. She was nervous. It rang more times than it had in the past six months. She thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he did.

“Hello.” His voice sounded ragged, tired, and beaten.

“Hi.” She didn’t even know where to begin. “How are you?” She wanted to kick herself after those words escaped her lips.

“Um, I’m pretty terrible, Caroline. How are you?” He was still angry, hurt, and bitter.

Her heart twisted into knots at the tone of his voice and made the bile in her stomach rise into her throat. “I’m a mess,” she admitted.

“I don’t want to play games.” His voice sounded cold and uncaring.

That sentence instantly made her defenses rise. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as anger spread throughout her body. “Then don’t, Jackson.” She spoke his name with disdain.

“Why are you calling, Caroline? What do you want?”

The harshness of his questions infuriated her. “Nothing. My mistake. Sorry to have bothered you. Have a nice life.” She hung up and then hurled her phone at the bedroom wall. Thankful it didn’t break, she slowly got up to retrieve it.

Suddenly her phone started to blare Jackson’s ringtone and she considered briefly letting it go to voicemail just to make him suffer. But she couldn’t do it. She answered with only a breath before Jackson immediately asked, “Don’t you want to be with me?” His voice cracked with emotion.

She was quiet at first and knew he felt stupid when he quickly added, “Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t have called back.”

“No! Jackson, wait!” Caroline pleaded. “I do…want to be with you.”

“You do?” His voice sounded lighter…hopeful.

“Of course I do,” she stressed. “But it’s not that easy.”

“It
is
that easy, Caroline. You want something, then you do it. Why won’t you just do it?”

“Do what? Leave Clay and be with you? Is that what you want?”

“Of course that’s what I want. Isn’t that what you want?” His voice sounded desperate.

“What would people say?”

“Who gives a shit what people would say? You’re going to just stay in this relationship, marry this guy and have his kids, because you don’t want to deal with what people might say if you leave him?” Jackson spat, his tone rising.

Silence thundered between them before Jackson spoke again. “You’re not the person I thought you were.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” She choked the words out through her obvious shock.

“I just never pegged you for the kind of girl who lived her life to please everyone else. It’s pathetic, really.” He spoke the last sentence with as much disdain as he could muster up.

“That’s not fair.” She wasn’t going to sit there and let him talk to her like that. “It’s easy for you to sit there and judge me when you’re not the one who has to make the tough decisions.”

“God damn it, listen to me,” Jackson lashed out. “I want to be with you. I don’t want you to marry this guy, no matter how great he is. And if you wanted to marry him, you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me right now. Hell, we wouldn’t have done anything that we’ve done the last six months.”

“I know. It’s just…”

He cut her off. “Let me finish.”

She fell quiet as he continued. “I’m not sure I could live through you marrying someone else. I think about you all the time. And I think about
us
all the time. I want there to be an
us
, Caroline. We belong together. And if you’d stop worrying about what everyone else thought, you’d see that too.”

Caroline leaned her head into the bed and tried to muffle the sound of her heart breaking. “I don’t think I’m strong enough,” she admitted softly.

“Strong enough…for what?” his voice faltered.

She paused a moment before answering, “To leave Clay.”

The silence hung between them like thick smoke in a slow burning room, until Jackson choked out, “Caroline?”

“I’m here.” She spoke the words so faintly, he barely registered the response.

“I’m in love with you.”

It was the final blow. She broke down. “I just don’t want to hurt anyone. And leaving Clay would hurt so many people.”

“So I guess it’s better you live your life unhappy so everyone else can be happy?”

“Don’t be mean. It’s not that,” she fretted.

“Then WHAT is it? Tell me. Help me see what the hell it is that you’re thinking? Make it okay for me that I let you go. God, Caroline, do you love me or not?” he asked half-crazed.

“Of course I love you. The thought of not being with you makes me feel like nothing will ever truly be right in my life again.”

His heart beat wildly with hope against the confines of his chest. “When two people love each other, they should be together.”

Filled with guilt, she asked. “At what cost? Any? That’s so selfish. I can’t live my life only thinking of myself with no regard for anyone else.”

“No. You can’t. But it’s not like you’re already married. You haven’t taken that leap yet.” His voice quivered as his tone changed. “I’m just asking you not to take it, Caroline. Because once you do that…well, I can’t keep doing this. Not if you choose to marry him.”

“Clay doesn’t deserve this.”

“But I do?”

“I never asked to meet you!” Caroline pulled the phone away from her face and yelled into the receiver. Once the words passed through her teeth she desperately wished she could stuff them back into her mouth and swallow them whole.

“As much as I’d love to say I didn’t ask to meet you either, I can’t.” The dejection coursed from his lips to her ears. “I’ve waited my whole life to find someone like you.”

“I didn’t mean that Jackson, I’m sorry…”

“I know.”

“It’s just that I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror and like the person I see there. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I do,” he sighed.

“I just need a little time to figure this all out.”

Caroline’s stomach knotted with anticipation as she waited for his response.

“I can’t wait.” Jackson’s words came out resolute mixed with disbelief.

“What do you mean, you can’t wait?” Anger coursed through her body with the intensity of white-hot heat.

His feelings spilled out into the phone. “I can’t just sit here and wait for you any more. I’ve been waiting for the last six months and look what it’s got me…a girl with a ring on her finger and a completely shattered heart.” His tone changed back to the cruel one meant to cause her pain.

“So, what then? This is it? We end it just like this?” She spat back, her head pounding.

“I can’t keep doing this to myself. It’s torture. And it’s not fair to me.”

She felt the warmth of her anger dissipate as cold shock rapidly filled its place. “What about how I feel?”

“If you’re not going to leave him, then it doesn’t really matter how you feel, does it?” A breath tore from her mouth with a loud huff as her head shook with disbelief at his words.

“Goodbye, Caroline. I love you. Please don’t call me any more.” He hung up the phone before she could respond.

Caroline sat on Bailey’s bed, staring at her cell phone. What the hell just happened and how did things go from him telling her he loved her, to saying goodbye forever?

“Bailey!!!” Caroline yelled out through her tears, which once again, fell uncontrollably down her cheeks.

The door swung open and Bailey ran into the room. “What happened?”

Caroline shook her head. “I don’t know. One minute he was begging me not to marry Clay, telling me he loved me. And the next, he’s telling me he can’t keep doing this and not to call him ever again.”

“He said that?” Bailey scrunched up her face and gave her a weird look.

“Yeah.”

“Well, wait, hold on. Back up. He told you he loved you?” Bailey smiled.

“Among other things, yes.”

“Did you tell him you loved him back?” Bailey grinned.

Caroline eyed her friend. “I did. Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“Of course not! But, oh my God! You love him?”

“I think I do.” She shrugged her shoulders and then quickly recanted. “I mean, I know I do. I just don’t know if it’s real.”

“What do you mean; you don’t know if it’s real? Of course it’s real.” Bailey reassured.

“Well, how do I know for sure? What if I’m just convincing myself that I love him? What if I’m imagining feelings that aren’t based in reality?”

“I’m sorry, Caroline, but when in your life have you
ever
done that? And why
would
you? What would be the point?”

“I don’t know, but he’s not here and I don’t have to see him every day—so what if that’s why I think I like him so much?” Caroline shook her head and closed her eyes. “I feel completely out of control.”

“Why?”

“Because it feels like my world is spinning a million miles an hour and I’m barely holding on.”

“You can stop the spinning, you know. Or at least slow it down.”

Caroline wished she believed Bailey, but she didn’t.

“So how did it end? I mean, how did you guys get off the phone?” Bailey wondered.

“He basically hung up on me after saying not to call him again.”

“Wow. He’s got it bad.” Bailey covered her heart with her hand and stuck out her bottom lip.

“What do you mean?” Caroline was tired of feeling clueless. “And why do I feel so stupid right now? I mean, shouldn’t I be the one with all the answers? Why are you so insightful all of a sudden?”

“I’ve always been insightful, brat! You’ve just never needed my insight before because your life has always been perfect. Even when your choices were hard, you always knew exactly what you wanted, so no one could stop you. You never needed advice from anyone, because you never cared what anyone would tell you.”

Bailey shook her head and went on. “I think that’s the weirdest part for me with all of this. I just don’t really get why this situation is so different for you.”

“I think because I’m in so deep. Like I pushed for me and Clay to be here. I mean, there is no reason why Clay would feel like I wouldn’t want to marry him, you know what I mean? This was always part of my plan.”

Bailey interrupted her flow. “Until now…”

Caroline nodded her head in agreement and repeated, “Until now…”

“Well, listen. Jackson’s just telling you that you guys can’t talk any more because he’s hurt. And having you in his life is too painful. Since you’ve agreed to marry your freaking boyfriend, he can’t keep talking to you. That can only end badly for him. He’s not winning this battle, so he has to bow out before it literally kills him.”

“You should be a love counselor or something.” She smiled at her beautiful friend.

“It’s about time you appreciated my awesomeness,” Bailey remarked.

“I do,” Caroline said before she wrapped her arms around her friend’s neck. “Thank you so much, Bailey.”

Chapter Thirteen

Caroline mentally kept count of the number of days it had been since she and Jackson last talked. It surprised her that the pain in her heart never seemed to lessen as the days quickly turned into weeks.

The intercom blared and she looked down to see Bailey’s extension number on the phone’s monitor.

“What’s up?”

Bailey’s sympathetic tone asked, “Just making sure you’re okay.”

Caroline stared at the tan fabric lines of her cubicle wall. “I’m okay, thanks.”

Bailey sensed her unease. “Still counting days?”

Caroline winced. “It’s so hard, Bails. I guess I never realized how deeply he had become a part of me, you know? But it’s like I can literally feel the emptiness inside of me now that he’s gone.” She paused and her voice turned into a whisper. “It hurts to breathe.”