Kiss Me, Break My Heart: Episode 10
Three's a Crowd, Jace.
Cassie
Jace takes one of the seats next to the small table where he placed the coffees, and I sit opposite him. Every Monday morning, we have an unofficial business meeting; however, I’m concerned that the purpose of this meeting might not be just business. I take a sip of my coffee and close my eyes as the sweet caramel flavour rolls across my tongue. It’s from the coffee shop across the road, and it’s my favourite menu item.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I say when I open my eyes.
He nods like it was nothing, his hazel eyes studying me intensely. “How are you feeling?”
“Better than I was on Friday.”
“You opted out of watching the game with the guys and me, so I assume your migraine lingered over the weekend.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t want to take me up on my offer to shop or bring supplies.”
“Flick was there. I didn’t see the need to put you out.”
He shakes his head. “It wouldn’t have put me out, Cassie. You’re my best friend. Friends do shit for each other. I wanted to help.”
“I know.”
Frustration crosses his face before he takes a deep breath and looks at me with so much openness and earnestness that I feel my stomach dip. “I missed you,” he says softly. “It’s the first weekend since you moved home that we haven’t hung out.”
“I know. I just… wasn’t up to it.”
He nods, and I’m sure he can see through my lies. I did have a headache, but it was mild, likely brought on by Thursday night. By Friday night, it was gone, meaning I could have caught the game with him and the guys if I’d wanted to.
He leans back and looks at his cup before looking at me. “I was wondering if you were… avoiding me after what you heard on Thursday?”
I neither confirm nor deny. I just wait for him to continue because he’s going to address it anyway, and we might as well get it over and done with.
After a moment, he clears his throat and then says carefully, “How much did you hear me tell Deck?”
I look away. “Enough.”
For years, I was so good at covering my feelings, pretending I didn’t love him, faking being okay with keeping the status quo. Back when it was Eve, Jace, and me, I accepted it was the three of us, and after I got back from Queensland, I managed to fool myself—at least for a little while—that being just friends was enough. Right now, I wish I could go back to that forced mindset. Sure, it was less authentic, but at least it would save us these kinds of awkward conversations.
“Cassie, I’m sorry. I never should have said all that.”
“It’s how you feel; nothing wrong with it.” I shrug, hoping I’m not displaying every ounce of how much it hurts to love him and know I’ll never be loved by him in return. I play with the lid of my coffee cup.
He leans forward in his chair. “You understand why I feel that way, though, right? After everything that happened with Eve, I’ve learned that you don’t mess with friendship. Mistake learned and not to be repeated.”
Even with everything I know about their breakup and how devastated Jace was, there are times when I forget just how much it affected him. Subsequently, he forgets he was happy right until she walked out. Which, in hindsight, probably doesn’t give him much faith in his ability to predict relationship outcomes, but that doesn’t take away from the fact he loved her, and they’d be married and living happily ever after had she not walked out on him.
“I understand that,” I say slowly. “But I really don’t understand why you felt the need to spell it all out to Declan like that.”
Jace winces, shifting in his seat and looking away. “He believed I was jealous of Thom because… my feelings for you were more than they were. Are.”
“Right.” There’s a touch of bitterness in my tone I can’t quite hide.
“I made a mistake with Eve, putting my hormones and shit before our friendship. It was an unequivocal mistake. I wouldn’t make that mistake with you.”
It’s not about not acting on feelings—if he ever felt about me the way he felt for Eve, he wouldn’t let anything stand in his way.
The thing is, friendship doesn’t one-up love. It’s not more valuable. More importantly, they can even benefit each other. Friendship is a great basis for a romantic relationship. He fell for Eve, and there was nothing that could keep them apart. Yes, I know he didn’t want me to go to Queensland, and he was prepared to end things with Eve, but he didn’t want to. The fact that he asked her to marry him only makes me surer they belonged together. I was the third wheel, even if I didn’t want to be. He’s never had those feelings for me. He never will.
“It wasn’t a mistake, Jace. You were deeply in love with her.” Perhaps he still is. “And had things been different, you’d be happily married to her.”
His laugh is ugly, full of bitterness and resentment. “But things weren’t different. If I had my chance all over again, everything would have been different. I would have done my life so differently. You wouldn’t have left, and Eve wouldn’t have walked away.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Jace. Eve still would have wanted to travel, see the world, and experience more in her career.”
“Fine,” he glares. “She wouldn’t have fucked me up beyond all recognition by walking out on a wedding that was a matter of weeks away. She would have talked about her desire to travel and experience more earlier, instead of feeling like she couldn’t say anything because she thought I wanted to keep her here and expected she should be some kind of happy housewife to me. Fuck,” he runs a hand through his hair with agitation that I tell myself isn’t aimed at me. “I never expected anything from her except for her to talk to me about what she freaking needed.”
The agony in his eyes still cuts through me. It was years ago, yet he’s reliving that pain all over again. I’ve heard him say before that he would have postponed the wedding and done anything for her. He loved her the way most women who have never experienced that kind of love can only dream about. Perhaps she’s finally figuring that out, if our conversation about her breakup with Sam on Wednesday was anything to go by.
“So, you would have ignored how you felt about her, how she felt about you.” I hold his gaze. “How I felt about you.”
He closes his eyes, and when they open again, I see the flash of sorrow, regret, and apology there. “Not ignored, just not acted on it. We were a threesome. That’s the way it should have stayed.”
“Three’s a crowd, Jace.”
“I never thought it was.” He pauses. “But then I never really understood how strongly you felt about me, at least not until it was too late.”
How strongly? What a way to word it. Sitting back in my chair, I hope this isn’t his lead-in to talk about my feelings now. He studies me in a way that makes my pulse race and my heart skip from fear. I don’t want him to see how strong my feelings for him still are. After a moment, he says, “Sometimes I wonder if we did our friendship a disservice by not talking about it. Burying shit and covering it up doesn’t make it gone.”
“I told you when I came back that I was over it.”
I was lying to myself, but I doubt that’s what he wants to hear. He wants me around as his best friend, as his business partner. Meanwhile, I might stay trapped in a hellish Groundhog Day kind of love that feels inescapable.
“Yeah, but maybe we still should have talked about it.”
“There wasn’t that much to talk about,” I point out. “I loved you. You loved Eve, and she loved you back. Sometimes things just are what they are, and they suck for someone. In that situation, the person it sucked for was me. Even still, I was happy for you both.”
His eyes scan my face as if he’ll be able to guess all my secrets if he looks hard enough. “You once told me you’d loved me since you were ten.”
“And you told me I couldn’t love you at ten,” I remind him, trying to suppress the wave of agony that remembered conversation brings back.
He shakes his head. “Cass, I was eighteen, and my best friend was slipping away from me, and I couldn’t stand it. I was filled with the dreams we’d carried for years. I was selfish and oblivious. Obviously, once I had more time to digest it…”
“We didn’t speak for a year.”
“What can I say?” he shakes his head. “It took me a while to digest it.” After a moment, he adds, “I still can’t understand why you never said anything before then.”
“You don’t remember? I told you, Eve said someone would feel like a third wheel.”
He looks away. “And she was right.” His gaze meets mine again. “You have no idea how much I regret everything that happened.” He leans forward. “I don’t want anything to come between us again.”
At Logan’s birthday more than a year ago, he made me promise nothing would come between us again. I remember the look in his eyes as he told me he didn’t want anything to come between us and made me promise that nothing would. Just like Eve leaving did a number on him, I know that my leaving did a number on him too. Eve and I were his girls—he loved both of us, even though it was a different sort of love. But I left, and then Eve left, and I know that left marks on him, scarred him.
I know how important it is to him that I don’t leave, and I understand why he says he doesn’t want to be with a friend again. I understand it all on a logical level, but that doesn’t make it any less soul-crushing or heart-breaking.
And I know that at some point, he is going to hold me to that promise. The question is, what will it do to me to keep it?
“I know,” I say softly.
“So, you understand then why that conversation with Declan took place?”
I nod. “I do. Your need to have your best friend back and to not let anything come between us again was misinterpreted by Declan as you feeling a different way about me, and you needed to correct that.”
He nods, looking relieved that I do understand. When he stands, I think that this must be the end of the conversation and that he’s going to leave. Instead, he gives me a soft look and says, “Can I have a hug?”
Reluctantly, I rise to my feet, and we meet somewhere between the two chairs. As Jace puts his arms around me, I’m enveloped in his warmth, his scent. The hug feels both wonderful and heart-wrenching. My heart races, each beat a painful reminder of the love I have for him and the reality that it’s unrequited. I close my eyes, savouring the fleeting closeness and intimacy of the moment while trying to hold back the tears threatening to spill over.
When he lets me go, he’s still watching me, but I’m hopefully masking the turmoil within. I’ve had to practice keeping him out of my head and not sharing everything the way that I used to—well, everything except the way I felt about him.
Instead of leaving, he sits back down in his chair. “Now we can get down to business.”
“Right,” I agree.
Business is better than more talk about my feelings.
The conversation jumps around as we cover the week ahead and concludes with Jace asking me some questions about Von Gruber. To say I’ve had a mild fascination with what happened five years ago is an understatement. While going through the archives of The Herald, I discovered that Jules and Brady, a married couple who used to work for The Herald, were hypnotized and made to do all sorts of things while undercover at a marriage retreat.
In a bizarre twist, however, it wasn’t them but a different pair of journalists who were responsible for bringing Von Gruber’s greed, corruption, and depravity to light. They made Von Gruber sound like a lunatic who controlled some of the wealthiest people in the state. He used his twisted imagination to extort money and other favours from them, even recording some of the most disturbing activities to ensure his hold over them or to sell to others. By the time I started working here, Jules and Brady had moved on and no longer worked in the state, meaning I couldn’t talk to them about it.
Adding to the mystery and deepening my intrigue is the chilling fact that after his arrest, Von Gruber never made it to prison. It’s as if he vanished into thin air. The prevailing theory is that he hypnotized the police guards into letting him escape, a terrifying possibility that has never been validated. This lack of confirmation only heightens my unease, as it’s been impossible to uncover any further information or trace his whereabouts. The thought that such a manipulative and dangerous individual could still be out there, lurking in the shadows, sends shivers down my spine.
By the time I’ve gone through everything I know about Von Gruber with Jace, he looks as horrified as I feel. When he stands this time, I know our meeting is over.
Instead of walking out, however, he stays standing, putting his hands in his suit pockets. “Cass, the contract and bank loan still need signing. Your dad is getting anxious about it.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“He asked me to talk to you about it.”
If Dad went to Jace instead of me directly, he’s getting more desperate, meaning my window of procrastination is over.
I nod. “I’ll talk to Dad about it today.”
After Jace leaves, I sit in my office, staring blankly at the laptop screen in front of me. My mind is racing with the fragments of conversations I’ve had over the past week: my conversation with Eve, Jace’s overheard conversation with Declan, my conversation with Gavin, and then my conversation with Jace this morning.
Buying out our fathers and becoming partners in this business isn’t marriage, obviously, but it is a partnership that legally binds us together. Maybe not until death do us part, but Jace is likely thinking in terms of the rest of our working lives. After that? Once upon a time, we envisioned our kids would buy us out in the future. This was the dream when we were younger, but the feelings I have for Jace complicate the simple dream from our younger days. Tying myself to a man I’m in love with feels like the epitome of stupidity. Yet, the thought of skipping out on Jace and telling my father I’ve changed my mind and no longer intend to buy him out, that his legacy is one I no longer want…
It’s not even true. The idea of letting go of the business completely is…unfathomable.
I rub my temples, feeling a headache coming on again. After taking a deep breath, I pick up the phone and dial Dad’s number.