Page 78 of Fierce-Baker

He’d have to accept that... for now.

“The thing is, I got a call when Jolene was in my office. I’d been texting with Brittany and then she called. She’s coming next week on vacation. She’s not staying with me. She’s vacationing here with Emme, her girlfriend, and hopes to spend some time with me. She wants to meet you.”

“Wow. You’re okay with me meeting your family?”

“I just met your son,” he said. “That’s bigger than meeting my sister.”

She got up from the chair next to him and sat on his lap. “That you understand that means the world. But if that is the only reason you want to tell me about your past, because your sister might slip, then it’s not reason enough. Not in my eyes. You have to want to say it because it can’t stay hidden inside anymore.”

“It might just be time I let it all out,” he admitted.

She put her head against his chest. “Then I’d like to hear it.”

He ran his hand over her hair. “It’s not horrible.”

“I think it is. I think that emotionally it scarred you and has made you fearful of trying again. Trust me, if anyone understands that, it’s the woman on your lap wiggling around right now.”

He laughed, and the soft sound of it rumbled out of his chest.

She soothed him in a way he’d never felt before.

It was what made this the right time to say the rest.

“I started dating Alexa my junior year of college.”

“Wow, going back some time.”

“Yeah. We got along well. She was funny, energetic, but a little high maintenance. Not always with the way she looked, just life. She was afraid to drive, so she walked, I drove her, or she took public transit. She had crazy anxiety over things I could never understand.”

“I see that now with some of my students. I hate to say that their parents foster it, but I believe they do. It’s the whole everyone deserves a trophy thing. And if you push them to try harder, it’s like you’re picking on them rather than helping them hone their skills.”

“That sounds like Alexa. She was the youngest of five kids and was babied. I did the same thing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but growing up with how my father treated my mother, I said I’d never do that. I think I went so far in the other direction that she came to expect it from me.”

“Ouch. And if you stopped, she had problems with it?”

“Not really. I didn’t stop, but didn’t have a problem either. I ended up doing a lot for her, but she gave it back too. It wasn’t one-sided. Don’t think that. Fast forward, we graduated from college and she moved to Nashville with me. I was working for a brewery there that was branching into liquors. Just starting out. She went to school for communication but was almost terrified of working in that field.”

“What? Why?”

“I think the fear of failure. I’m not sure. She was a server in a high-end club and brought in great money. Probably more money than she would have made working a desk job, even though she said it was temporary. She wanted the right job, not just any job.”

“I’ve got friends like that.”

“Yeah, well, a few months turned to a few years. It’s not that she wasn’t paying her way. We split everything. Neither of us had a problem with that, but I didn’t necessarily like her working nights. We didn’t see much of each other. She had this great degree, why not use it?”

“Was she still fearful or just lazy and content?”

“I think the last two. At this point, we’d been together five years. We were pushing twenty-six and I was seeing us settling down. There was no reason to continue living like college kids, nor acting like them. Time to buckle down and be an adult.”

“That is how I felt right after college,” she said, her hand moving around his thigh. “I had my fair share of fun, but I really wanted to start my life and career.”

“I was there too. I thought she was too. We didn’t fight often. I understood her and gave her space. She did the same. Talk about an easy relationship.”

Proof that easy wasn’t always the best.

“Then what happened?”

“One day she just said she wanted to be single. That she wasn’t ready to settle down. Her parents liked me a lot. I was confused. I thought maybe she had someone on the side, but she insisted she didn’t. Her parents said they didn’t think so either. They actually were pissed at her and blamed me for giving Alexa everything she wanted. That I put her on a pedestal she didn’t deserve to be on.”