“Your intentions don’t change what happened, Jamie.”I kept my voice level.Losing it would only give her an out.“I had plans with my son.Plans he was looking forward to.And you took that from him without a second thought about how it might affect either of us.”
She flinched.“You’re right.I handled it badly.”
“You’ve handled a lot of things badly when it comes to me.”There was no heat behind the words, just fact, and somehow that made it sound even worse.“I’ve been trying to figure out for years why that is.Whether it’s something I did.Or something I am…”
Something neither of us had ever acknowledged out loud.
I liked women and men, but I’d loved Jamie most.In the end, that should’ve been all that mattered.
It hadn’t.Not to her.And I’d spent years shrinking that part of myself to fit inside the space she was comfortable with.Biting my tongue, guarding every glance, performing a version of myself that was easier for everyone else to swallow.
But I was the one choking on it.
Her eyes filled with tears.“I do care about you, Dylan.I just?—”
“I know you do.In your own way.”I held her watery gaze.“But caring about me and respecting me aren’t the same thing.And I need you to respect me as Hunter’s father.That’s all I’m asking.”
The silence that followed was different from the ones we usually shared—less charged, less weighted with everything unsaid between us.
“I guess it’s just hard for me to let go,” she said finally, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.“But I promise…I’ll do better.”
Her soft voice, the tears, the arms pulled tight around her middle—all of it should have done something to me.Six months ago, it would have.I’d have read into it, filed it away as progress, convinced myself it meant there was hope for us.For a future.
Now, it didn’t do a thing.
My mind was already somewhere else.On the kitchen floor, with Chantel and the sounds she’d made, the way she’d held onto me like a lifeline, the relief when she took my orders without question.And on a frosty car ride with Sean, the way he’d gone soft and willing under my hands, no expectations attached to any of it.
No history.No damage.No carefully maintained distance between who I was at my core and the person I was supposed to be.
Jamie looked up at me, like she was waiting for me to say something that would put us back on familiar ground.The push and pull we’d been doing since we were teenagers.
I didn’t give it to her.
I'd spent half my life trying to be the man she could love.Pretending I didn't want what I wanted.Swallowing every honest thing I could've said about who I was and what I needed, because I was terrified that saying it out loud would be the thing that finally made her stop loving me for good.
It never occurred to me that she'd stopped already.That the pieces of myself I'd been hiding were the parts that might have made her stay.
Or maybe they wouldn't have.Maybe she would have left anyway.But at least I'd have been honest about who I was while I lost her.
Either way, I was done lying.
“Take care of yourself, Jamie.”I straightened and called Mojo over one last time, giving him a final scratch.“And tell Hunter I’ll see him on the weekend.I’m taking him to a movie.”
I walked out without looking back.