Page 38 of Love.V2 (Occupational Hazards #2)

Tess

If you really had it handled, she’d have been gone a long time ago.

I bent over backwards to build that life for us, and you threw it away, anyway.

You’re the one who left.

It must have shown on my face. Molido’s owner, Santiago, stopped by the table, tapping the shining wood to get my attention. “Caffeine or booze?”

“It’s not even three in the afternoon,” I responded, woodenly, hunching forward in my chair until my shoulders touched the table.

Tiago and Jas exchanged a look .

“That’s chocolate. Maybe a beer,” Jordan, Santiago’s partner, grunted, kneeling to place a huge, meaty hand on my shoulder. His touch was light. Warm. “You good, Tess?”

He, Jas, and Santiago peered at me. Their attention made tears well up in my eyes. The café bustled around us, but the two owners had stopped everything to check in on me. I must have looked as miserable and confused as I felt.

“I’m okay.” I did not sound okay. Jas reached her hand across the table.

“Is it Superman? The guy?”

“Yeah,” I croaked. “We fought, and it was bad. I think we said a lot of things we had been holding back for a really long time, and now I’m not sure where that leaves us.

And this woman who hates me…we had to fire her today.

Well, Dylan did, but I should have done it and I’m probably not cut out for my job.

” As I spoke, my voice dragged, lurching and tightening until it was a mere squeak.

They exchanged looks.

“All of it?” Santiago asked.

“Three alarm heartbreak,” Jordan agreed.

“We’ll need backup.”

“I already texted Lainey. She’s off today, so she’s on her way.” Jas scooted her chair closer as the men retreated behind the counter in a flurry of cups and plates.

“I really only came for a workout,” I whispered. “You don’t have to bug Lainey.”

Failing at my job and everything with Dylan and imposing on these people who I hoped to call friends but worried I wasn’t close enough to was too much. A tear dripped down my cheek as Jas rubbed slow circles across my back.

“You’re not bugging her. We’re your friends. We’re here for you.”

“Connor’s working, and I made you stick him with the baby,” I sniffled.

“He is that baby’s father. If he has a problem with holding his son, I have bigger issues than you do.”

“And Lainey is so busy, and she has Sam, and she doesn’t have time to come down here just because I’m sad.”

“…Okay, and?”

Jas’s reply caught me off guard. I blinked down at the wood grain in front of my nose. “And…Tiago and Jordan have other customers they need to focus on.”

“Uh huh. What else?”

“I…I don’t know you all that well,” I whispered, the tightness in my throat squeezing to the point of pain.

“Well enough for what, hun?” Jas’s hand kept up those slow, soothing circles across my shoulder blades. She was probably a really excellent mom.

“Enough for…this. To drop everything just because I’m…having a bad day.”

She was silent beside me for a moment, still stroking. “When did you learn you had to do everything on your own, Tess?”

My eyes met hers, and tears began streaming down my face. Because I’d learned I was on my own from the first minute I could comprehend it. Sometimes, it felt like I’d always been on my own .

And that thought, more than anything else that had happened today, or over the last month, or years, cut me so deep that everything I’d been holding onto, all the strands of anxiety winding me so tight, frayed loose.

Because I’d been alone before, but with Dylan, I’d thought maybe I didn’t have to be. I’d been wrong. He’d abandoned me for work, just like my dad abandoned me and Mom. Just like Mom abandoned me for the men and drugs and booze that ultimately killed her.

I was so tired of being alone.

“Okay.” Jas pulled me into her arms, hugging me close. A sob escaped my mouth. “We can work on that later, maybe.”

“Okay,” I whimpered, laying my head against her chest. She felt solid, but soft. Like I could fall apart on her and it would be okay. So I did.

***

“And all this has gone down over the course of, like, a month? Where the frack have I been?”

“Starting a new job, living it up with your hot new boyfriend,” I supplied.

Eventually my tears had dried. Santiago had delivered a tray full of iced, caffeinated, carbonated, and alcoholic beverage options, and Jordan had presented a mammoth cheese board, complete with a heaping plate of his signature brownie bites. My favorite.

I loved Jordan.

I loved all these people. I wanted to shrink myself down and live in their pockets .

“Oh, that.” Lainey waved her hand casually, like those big life events didn’t matter, but her lips quirked up in a smirk. “It sounds like things were going well, though. With you and Dylan. And work? I’m just wondering if this is a fight or a fight .” She arched her eyebrows on the last word.

I sighed, picking at the brownie in front of me. “The second one, I think. Everything was going so well, but…I don’t know. I guess we were still holding on to a lot from our past.”

“I have a question. And feel free to tell me to fuck off, but why didn’t he ever propose?” Santiago was taking a rare break, propping his feet up on a chair next to me and plowing through a salad and espresso.

“Tiago,” Jas warned.

“No, it’s a valid question. I mean, I know some people don’t want to get married.

There are amazing couples who can live their whole lives together without involving a church or legal documentation.

I’d understand if that was Dylan’s position, but…

we always talked about it.” My stomach seized up when I remembered how I’d flung it in his face today.

“We talked about it, but it never happened. It was always after this promotion, or after we settled into the house, or whatever. I thought he was putting it off because he wasn’t sure about us, but now I’m realizing it’s because I… ”

My tear-soaked brain churned through these new realizations. It really had felt good to lay it all out there: Dylan’s workaholic behaviors, how they’d driven me to withdraw, how I hadn’t recognized myself for a long time, until recently.

Jas was right. I shouldn’t have tried to muscle through life on my own .

And I didn’t have to. Everyone at the table remained silent, allowing me to process my thoughts.

“I understand now why he was so focused on success. It just wasn’t what I considered success. He thought he was providing, and I thought it was abandonment. I just pulled away.” Seeing both sides of our story was a real punch in the gut. “I wouldn’t want to marry someone like that, either.”

I appreciated that my confession wasn’t met with empty platitudes about me being enough, or how Dylan was in the wrong. The table absorbed the comment and thought on it.

“I hate to play the doctor card,” Lainey started.

“You love to play the doctor card,” Jas countered, making us all laugh. Lainey shrugged.

“Ok, well, forgive me for playing the doctor card, then. And I’m no psychologist, but the way you’re talking about withdrawing and losing yourself makes me wonder if your avoidance is something deeper. Have you talked to someone about all this? A professional?”

“Not since after my mom died. That was…not a good time, and my relationship with my mom was complicated. It all hit me at once, and it felt like a crisis I actually needed help to get through. But this has just been…”

How to describe what it felt like to look up from your life one day and realize you’d been slowly freezing? Every time Dylan walked away, every time I made the choice to sink further into myself, was a quiet, incremental slide into frigid water .

Then, all at once, I’d found myself neck deep in ice, unable to move or feel or break free. It wasn’t like the shock of losing my last remaining blood relative.

“The death of a relationship is its own type of grief, isn’t it?” Jas said. “It doesn’t have to be dramatic. The ending of something so big, however slowly it happens, is its own sort of implosion.”

I’d thought it would be impossible for me to become more limp, but taut muscles turned to jelly, and I slumped further in my chair. “That’s…exactly right.” My tears had run out, but my throat could still signal the emotion choking me up. “I’m not the person I used to be.”

“What changed?” Tiago took a swig from his espresso, nearly black eyes swallowing me up.

“Well, I…I’ve always been alone.” I glanced at Jas, who nodded like I’d just confirmed something she’d known all along. “Then I found Dylan right at this moment when I was ready to strike out on my own. He made it easy for me to be bold.”

I trailed off, voice scratchy. I gulped the glass of iced tea Lainey slid in my direction.

“Then, after a few years, when I started losing Dylan…Maybe I felt like it would be easier just to give up. To lose myself, too. I mean, it hurt . He was supposed to be my other half, and I kept reaching for him, but he wasn’t there. ”

Nods around the table as they considered.

“You said he started withdrawing into work more?” Lainey asked, biting her lip and staring off into the distance.

“When I was going through a tough time, I threw myself into becoming a doctor. I got transferred to the best cardiac hospital and decided I’d be the best resident I could be.

Then the best fellow. Then the best doctor.

My ex and my friend…they hurt me. I couldn’t control that, but I could control how I did in the OR.

I realize now I was self-isolating for years , trying to avoid being vulnerable again. ”

More nods. Jordan stopped by to drop a kiss on Tiago’s cheek and give him another espresso. He nudged the plate of brownies in my direction before he walked back to the counter.

“I don’t know Dylan, so I can’t speak for him,” Lainey continued, laying her hand flat on the table, “but maybe he was reaching, too, and you just didn’t see it? And when he got hurt, he pulled back into what he could control?”

Jas hummed. “When Connor or I hit a rough spot, usually one of us gets really distant.”

“You and Connor have rough patches?” My voice was small and stunned. “You two are solid.”

They were one of the most stable couples I’d ever encountered. They joked and laughed and seemed to genuinely like being around each other. Maybe it was my upbringing talking, but it had never occurred to me that two people like that, so in sync, could have issues.

“Oh, Lord, yes! We’ve been together since we were seventeen.

We’ve both lived like six different lives since we met.

Two of them in the last year. We work really well together, but not because we never have issues.

Because we’re willing to talk about what’s going on.

Get on the same page. Sometimes it’s a struggle, but it’s worth the fight. ”

I was willing to fight. But you never were.

My eyes prickled again.

The more I gave you, the more you pulled away.

Maybe Lainey was right. I’d always assumed Dylan had retreated into his work because he was more interested in that than spending time with me.

Something about the money and the clients and the wins were more compelling than coming home on that random Tuesday to watch TV on the couch.

Maybe I’d been wrong, though. Maybe he’d only pulled away because I had.

The thought burned a hole straight through my chest.

“Dylan said earlier he was willing to fight, and I never was. Is that…am I the reason everything is messed up, then?”

“No!” they all spoke at once, but Tiago was the loudest. “You both drifted apart, sure, but he lost himself, too. Besides, it sounds like he wasn’t really fighting all that hard, was he? If he were, wouldn’t he have said something to you when you started getting distant? Forced the conversation?”

“Yeah…” Tiago had a point, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I felt like I was sitting alone in the crater of my relationship’s implosion, and I wasn’t sure who’d pressed the red button.

“I don’t think it’s something that can be blamed on one person,” Lainey offered gently.

“Takes two to tango.” Jas nodded.

I felt heavy. “So, where does that leave me?”

“Do you still love him?” Lainey asked.

Jas held her hand up. “Rephrase, do you still want him? You can love someone and still need space.”

I paused, even though I didn’t have to think about it. “Of course.” It was that simple, and that complicated.

“Of course?” I wasn’t sure who asked, still too caught up as the gears of my mind sluggishly turned .

“He’s the best person I’ve ever known. Smart and confident. He’s so kind. He believes in people; that’s what makes him so good at his job. He’s…” mine . Even after all this, he was still mine.

“That is a great place to start. You still want him. Now what?” Jas asked.

“Now, go back to his place, bang it out, and tell him you’re both going to stop being idiots.”

I snorted at Tiago’s suggestion while Jas frowned. “As hard as this might be for you to comprehend, not every relationship issue can be fixed with orgasms.”

“But have you tried?”

Despite everything, the day, and the emotional exhaustion, I grinned.

I really, really liked these people.

“Okay, well, let’s say that’s Plan B.” Jas glared, throwing a napkin in his direction, where it fluttered to the floor.

“You’re picking that up.” Tiago pointed at her. I bent to retrieve it.

“So, if that’s Plan B, what’s Plan A?” At Lainey’s question, all eyes turned to me.

Well, if that wasn’t the question of the hour. The question of the last few months, even.

Dylan had come here on the slimmest hope. He had put everything aside—his life, his career—to make this work, even though there was no guarantee I’d give him another chance. If he hadn’t showed up, where would I be ?

Probably still miserable. Alone in a new city with hardly any friends or hobbies. Still quietly collapsing into myself, like a black hole that would eventually cease to exist.

I thought back to the first night Dylan and I met. The hopes I had, the incredible, massive crush. How he’d made everything seem possible. He’d turned my list into our list. He’d been on my side since day one, fighting to give me everything I wanted.

Maybe he lost sight of what, specifically, that looked like, but he really hadn’t ever stopped.

My heart squeezed.

“I need to see what he’s thinking. We need to talk about this. And not just skip over it and forget this ever happened and start fresh. I mean…I need to know if he still wants this, too.”

“And if he does?” Jas was smiling as she asked, like she already knew the answer, and just wanted me to say it out loud.

I gulped, glancing around. That crater wasn’t so lonely anymore. It was their faces that gave me the last push, that last hit of confidence I needed.

“Then I fight. Like hell.”