Page 78 of Man Candy (After We Fall 1)
Well, she’d try to turn them off. But love wasn’t like a fucking oven or faucet or lamp. There was no OFF switch. How was she planning to do it? She’d said something about being friends that occasionally hung out—and I was pretty sure by “hang out” she meant fuck—but there was no way I could do that.
Did she honestly think we could still have sex without feelings?
She wants to think that. She wants to believe that she’s above falling for someone this way.
But she wasn’t. I saw it in her face—she could hardly look at me while she was talking. And then she’d expected me to argue with her, as if that wouldn’t just make her dig her heels in deeper. If I’d thought for one second that hearing me say “I love you, don’t do this” would change her mind, I’d have said it.
But that wasn't the answer.
Jaime wasn’t like any woman I knew. She didn’t need me to declare my feelings—she knew how I felt. This really didn’t have anything to do with me.
It was about her.
She had to get over her fear and her skepticism, and it was something she had to do on her own.
She had to miss me, miss what we had. More than that, she had to see it as something she didn’t want to live without, something worth the risk. I knew she’d miss the sex, and fucking hell, I would too, but she had to miss more than that for her to change. She could get great sex from any guy with half a brain and a functional dick (although I do like to think mine is more than just functional). What we had was something special.
At least, I’d thought it was.
I’d tried hard to be what she wanted, give her the space she needed, respect her boundaries, but if it wasn’t enough, then I’d have to get over her somehow. Move on. Try to forget.
The thought was like a sledgehammer to my chest.
I fucking loved her. I wanted to be with her. I didn’t need her to be perfect or wear a ring or spend every waking moment with me, I just wanted to share my life with her, make her laugh, make her happy—and I wanted some assurance that she wasn’t going to run away whenever she got scared.
I thought about the way my father had taken off on my mother and felt a rush of sympathy for her. Did I love a lost cause, too?
I knew one thing—I’d been wrong to think I could prove to her that love existed…she’d refuse to see it. She didn’t want to see it. She wouldn’t let herself.
And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
I couldn’t stay here any longer. Knowing she was up there, probably miserable and too stubborn to come down here and talk about it, would drive me crazy. I’d give in and go up to her, and we’d either end up fighting or fucking, neither of which would alter her point of view.
No. She’d turned me away, so I’d give her what she wanted.
No matter how much it hurt.
Twenty-Six
JAIME
He moved out the next day.
Without a word to me.
He didn’t call or text or leave a note or anything. He just packed up and left.
I realized this because I actually went down to talk to him after I got home from work. I’d spent the whole night crying and the entire day at work agonizing over what I’d done and his reaction to it. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say to him when I knocked on his door; I just knew that I hated where we’d left things, and I didn’t want him to move out without at least one more conversation.
Maybe I’d been too hasty in calling things off. Maybe I’d let Margot’s situation influence me too much. Maybe this time he’d try harder to change my mind.
I knew my face looked puffy and terrible—people at work kept asking if I’d had an allergic reaction to something—but I knocked anyway. When he didn’t answer, I realized that I hadn’t seen his car on the street. (Never did clean out the other half of the garage. Yet another thing to feel bad about.) I’m not sure what made me check the handle to see if the door was locked, but when the knob turned, I pushed it open.
I knew right away he was gone. It just felt empty. All the furniture was still there, obviously, but none of his things—no books on the coffee table, no boots by the door, no photos of him and his mom on the built-in shelves next to the fireplace.
Wandering into the kitchen, I noticed he’d left it spotless—no dishes in the sink or even in the dishwasher, no crumbs on the floor, no spills on the counter. I opened the fridge and saw that he’d emptied it out, and the freezer as well.
In his bedroom, I checked the closet and nightstand drawer. No condoms. The thought of Quinn needing condoms at his new place hit me hard in the gut, and I sat back on the bare mattress as if I’d been pushed.
