Page 5 of Broken Silence
I was doing it forme.
I stayed downstairs after Mum had gone to bed, curled up on the sofa.
Jasper sat down, finally resurfacing from his room. “We’re really doing this. We’re going back.”
“Yes.” I wasn’t a scared child anymore, so I wasn’t going to hide.
“What are you going to do about Cole?”
Not him, too.
Jasper was better at avoiding the topic of Cole, knowing it hurt me to talk about him, but apparently he was going for it now.
“I’m not going to do anything.”
“Right. So, you’re going back to where the guy you love is, and you plan on doing nothing?” he asked in the most sarcastic tone I’d ever heard him use.
I nodded in reply, giving him the finger.
“Oh, come on, Oakley. You’ve been moping around here forfouryears. I’ve never even seen you look at another guy. Are you seriously going to waste your chance at being happy again?”
I sighed.
We lived here. He lived there. I’d left him.
There had been no one else because I couldn’t stand the thought of being that close to anyone else. There was nothing wrong with the guys here, but I didn’t feel safe with them.
They couldn’t make me forget every disgusting thing that happened to me with one flash of their smile.
“What do you expect me to do, Jasper? Turn up on his doorstep and ask to get back together with him until the trial ends? We’d have to say goodbye again, and it was hell the first time. Like you said, it’s been four years. He has a whole new life. He could be married for all we know.”
“I think Jenna would have mentioned something like that,” he replied and raised a brow.
Okay, yes, she would have, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone in his life. This wasCole.He was the sweetest, funniest, sexiest, generous, and most caring person in the world.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid and mess up his life.”
“Then, maybe you shouldn’t have left him behind.”
I gasped at his words, and before I could stop it from happening, my eyes filled with tears.
That was low.
“Shit! I’m sorry, Oakley. I didn’t mean that.”
He grimaced as I pushed myself off the sofa.
I raised a hand to him in warning. “It’s fine. I’m going to bed. Night, Jasper.”
He groaned in frustration when I walked away. The problem was that Jasper was half-right, and that was what had stung.
As soon as I finished in the bathroom, I got straight into bed. I hadn’t done much all day, but I felt exhausted. Tucked under the pillow on the spare side of my bed was Cole’s hoodie—theonly thing of his I had. It’d stopped smelling of him a long time ago, but it was his, and it meant everything to me.
I lay awake in bed for most of the night, thinking about what Jasper had said. I tried not to let any doubt enter my mind, but when he said things like that, I couldn’t help it.
Soon enough, though, I’d get to see whether Cole felt I’d done the right thing or if I’d made the biggest mistake of both our lives.
Chapter 2
