Page 81 of Break Me Not
I let her cry against me. It was like all the stress and emotions that had been building up inside her were finally being let out. Her body shook as I slowly rubbed patterns over her back and brushed her hair with my fingers.
She held me tighter, almost as if she were afraid I would leave her.
It made me feel like shit. Jax… I hadn’t even thought about where she came from. This whole time, I had been so focused on her being my daughter’s friend, so eager to put space between us, denying what we had, and I had no idea what that felt like for someone who was already losing as much as she was.
This solidified it. There is no way in hell I’ll ever bring myself to leave her.
I wanted to be here. For all of it. I wanted to be the one to help her when she felt like this. I wanted to soothe her when she needed me. I didn’t want her to go through a life like this alone.
I barely knew her. This was just the tip of the iceberg. My resolve hardened—I would do whatever I needed to learn anything and everything that was to know about her.
I didn't know what the future held for us, but whatever it was, I’d take it.
Right then, all I wanted was to stay in that moment and comfort her.
Because that was what she needed. And I would give it to her.
I would always be whatever she needed me to be.
Jax
It had been a few days since my emotional outburst with Liz, and I felt lighter than ever.
I can't leave you. And I don't want to.
I believed her when she said it, but I was ecstatic to know she really meant it.
Liz listened when I told her how things started going south in high school but that my mom’s diagnosis came when I was in college—the biggest reason why I dropped out and started a business on my own.
She heard me when I told her that every friend or girlfriend I’d had wasn’t really keen on being with a person who had to deal with a mother with Alzheimer's. They just took one look at me and my mother and wrote both of us off because of it.
I knew my mom caught on after a while. Friends stopped coming over. I mostly stayed home. Maybe for other parents that wouldn't have been a big deal, but she knew I never had many friends to begin with.
And when we finally thought I had a real friend, and it turned out to be a lie, I just couldn’t take it anymore. That was when I fully accepted my recluse, weird status and decided to live for myself. To wait until I got out of school to live the life I wanted to live.
Thinking about it, maybe they just couldn’t deal with being face-to-face with a serious condition. With mortality. With knowing I would always find time for my mother, and they couldn’t take a backseat to that.
Or maybe, like Liz put it, “Those people never gave a shit about you. When people care, they stay. No matter what.”
That was right after she told me that she really didn’t want to hear about any previous girlfriends, but anyone who’d left me behind because of my mom was nothing more than a girl. “I’m not. I’m a woman,” she said.
My woman.
She accepted me. And she wasn't going to run away.
We slept together. We woke up together. We ate together.
Every minute I was at work was a minute I wished I were with her. I’d been so afraid of showing my emotions, and, if anything, I felt like we had gotten closer for it.
So now I needed to take the next—and biggest—step.
In order for me to do right by my girl, I needed to be in the line of fire. She would be mad at me—she had every right to—but if we were going to move forward, I had no choice but to do this for her.
For me. For Claire. For all of us.
Regardless of her admitting she wanted to be selfish, I could see the guilt eating her up. I had caught Liz staring at her phone's wallpaper longingly multiple times over the last couple of days. It was a picture of her and Claire back when Claire was still in college.
Seeing her this upset was killing me. So that was why I was going to meet Claire for breakfast. When I texted her, she chose one of her favorite cafés—not too busy and spacious enough for us to talk without feeling like anyone was eavesdropping.
