Page 40 of Blue Collar Billionaire
He came to a stop and looked her square in the eye. “I love you, Lexi. I love you and it hurts like hell to know that you aren’t where I am. It hurts to know that I’ve finally found the person I want to be with and she’s not sure.”
Lexi needed a minute to absorb the things he’d just said. The thing was, the idea of love wasn’t as outlandish as the reason why she couldn’t bear to hear him say it. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t feel like I do. I get it. I don’t want you to tell me something you don’t feel.” He turned to the window and hung his head. “And now I feel like a jerk for putting you on the spot.”
“It’s not that, Jack. Don’t feel bad. I don’t want that.”
“Then whatdoyou want, Lexi?”
There was something so simple and yet so devastating about that question. Part of her wanted to go back, to a time when she hadn’t been hurt so badly. When she was the old Lexi who took things in stride and had very few troubles. And yet, she knew that she couldn’t go back. She knew it as well as her own name. “I want those three words to not hurt so much.”
He turned back to her, betrayal blazing in his eyes. “How could it hurt to hear that I love you? You spend so much time questioning the way people feel about you, the way they see you.” He stepped closer, his physical presence overwhelming her senses. “And I’m telling you that I look at you and all I know is that I want to see you every day. All I know is that you make me happier than I’ve ever been.”
“Jack. We’ve known each other for a month.”
He froze and his eyes glistened with emotion. “I know. That’s what’s so scary. I feel like this after a month. Doesn’t that mean that what’s between us will just grow into more?”
Lexi wished she could feel so optimistic about the future. Now she really did want to go back—to a mere hour ago, when the genie hadn’t yet been let out of the bottle and he’d said those three little words. “Do you want to know why it hurts when you tell me that you love me?”
“Yes. I need to know. Because it doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Because the other two men who said those words to me didn’t mean it.” She heard her voice cracking and wobbling. “I built my life around two people who told me they loved me, but ultimately didn’t. And the thought of one more person saying it and later changing their mind? I can’t live through that, Jack. Not again.”
“I’m not going to change my mind, Lexi.”
“You don’t know that. They did.”
He sucked in a deep breath. He’d never seemed more exasperated. “I don’t know what I can do to convince you. And whatever it is, I don’t see a way I’m supposed to persuade you in five minutes when we’re standing in Rusty Edmond’s study.”
“What are you saying, Jack? Are you saying you don’t want to see me anymore?”
He pressed his lips together firmly. “I don’t think I can move forward if we aren’t on the same page. I’m a patient man, Lexi, but there’s a limit to that. I think we need to take a break. You need to spend some time thinking and I need to do the same.”
Lexi choked back her tears, mindlessly nodding, even when she didn’t agree with what he was saying. A break was stupid. It meant breaking up, when she’d felt like they were only getting started. “Okay, then. I’m going to go home.”
“You don’t have to go. Stay. Have fun.” Jack reached for her hand, but Lexi stepped back and headed for the door. It was only going to hurt to touch him. It was just going to break her heart.
“You know as well as I do that there’s nothing fun about this.”
Twelve
Lexi couldn’t sleep after the cocktail party at the Edmond estate. Her bed felt cold and lonely, but it also felt like what she deserved. Everything that had happened last night tumbled through her head like a boulder rolling down a hill—building speed and gaining momentum. The faster her thoughts traveled, the worse they seemed to get.
She couldn’t escape the sense that she’d made a huge mistake by telling Jack that it hurt to hear “I love you.” It was the truth, but it wasn’t thewholetruth. It wasn’t Jack. It wasn’t the words. It was the echoes of the pain they’d created. They wouldn’t stop reverberating through her head. Through her body. She had to stop giving her history so much power over her. But she didn’t know how to do that. Meanwhile, a once-in-a-lifetime man might be slipping away.
A little after 4:00 a.m., she’d had enough of tossing and turning, and decided she had to do something. Going through the final box from Houston seemed like the most obvious choice. If she was going to keep her past from ruining her future, she wanted to discard the remaining physical vestiges of it.
Lexi turned on the overhead light in the living room and walked over to the corner where the boxes sat. She picked up the one unopened carton and lugged it over to her coffee table, cutting the packing tape with a pair of scissors. When she pulled the flaps open, she found a smaller box inside. She already knew what was in there. Lots and lots of old photos. Part of her wanted to simply set it aside for another time. Another day when she wasn’t feeling quite so broken.
But no. It was time to do this. She tossed aside the lid and grabbed a stack of photos. They were candids of her and Roger with their friends at a bar. It was the night he’d proposed. Her first reaction was that her hair looked ridiculous. She wasn’t sure what she’d been thinking. Her second thought was that she was wearing her fake smile in every picture. She knew that expression. It was the one that appeared when her parents dragged her to an event she didn’t want to be at. It was the one she painted on her face when she knew everyone expected her to just be happy.
As she flipped through the final photos, she realized what had been the highlight of that night. It hadn’t been the thought of a life with Roger Harrington. Or even the big fat family diamond he gave her. It had been the moment when she’d called her parents and they both cried over the line, telling her how excited they were to tell their friends, how wonderful it would be to plan an enormous wedding.
What she felt with Roger wasn’t love. And she was fairly sure that the same went for her feelings for Brett. She was spending time mourning the loss of something that had never been there. And then Jack walked into her life and she’d told herself she still needed to heal because that was what everyone around her was saying. But did shereallyneed to heal? Or did she just need to take a single step forward into her future, with the only man who’d managed to make her happy?
Her heart was saying yes, but she wanted to make sure she was thinking straight. She needed Bianca.
You up?She texted her sister a little before 7:00.
