Breathe Again by Joelle Charming Page B

sleeping, anyway.
    I rummaged through his cabinets quietly, and found a water
glass next to the fridge. There was a bench near the window in the kitchen, and
I sat down on the padded seat. We were so high up I could see almost the entire
west side of the city. It was beautiful.
    I felt so small up there in that massive apartment. Life was
going on just as it always did down below, but my heart was all over the place.
I knew that I liked Jackson. More than liked him, if I were being honest with myself.
I guess I’d just convinced myself that it was just for fun, that I could have a
fling. But this didn’t feel like a fling, and now I felt like an ass for
keeping it all inside. Jackson didn’t deserve that. He was too kind, too open
and sincere, and here I was, dragging him through my own personal drama.
    I sat there for a while, just looking out at the city below.
This wasn’t my home, but neither was Kansas. Not anymore, at least. I closed my
eyes and just let myself be.
    I’m not sure when I had fallen asleep, but I was woken up
when a pair of strong arms wrapped themselves around me.
    “Mellie Rose,” Jackson whispered in my ear. “My bed is too
empty without you. Why are you out here?”
    I didn’t respond immediately, just let myself breathe in his
scent, the one that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
    “We need to talk,” I said, finally turning toward him.
    “Of course,” he said quietly. “You’re cold, though. Can I get
you a blanket?”
    I didn’t say anything, just stood up from the window and made
my way to the couch. He followed me and sat as close as he could without
actually touching me.
    “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, turning toward me.
“But I want you to know that I don’t care. I don’t care what you’re about to
tell me, I just want you. We all have pasts and we all have baggage, but that
doesn’t define who we are now. I know someone hurt you back in Kansas, but
you’re here now, and you have me.”
    I sighed softly. “There are a lot of things that I haven’t
told you about my life, Jackson. I’m sorry about that. I haven’t told you
because I didn’t know if it would ever get to this point. But it obviously has,
so I have no other choice.” I didn’t look at him as I spoke.
    “I’m sorry if I did something to upset you. I thought it was
what you wanted,” he said softly.
    I couldn’t not touch him—not when I was about to lay bare my
past—so I took one of his hands in mine and started playing with his fingers
absentmindedly.
    “You are only the second person I’ve ever slept with in my
life,” I finally said. He didn’t say anything, so I just kept going. “I’ve been
terrified that if I did sleep with you, I would become just another girl to
you.” I could see him trying to say something, but I held my hand up to stop
him. “I’m still not sure that I’m not, but you can reassure me another time.
Right now, I need to explain myself.”
    He nodded, but kept his mouth shut. “At this time last year,
I was planning my wedding.”
    That simple confession was one of the hardest things I’d ever
had to say out loud. Up until this point, I’d never had to explain myself; I’d
never felt the need to.
    “I started seeing Daniel when I was only fourteen years old.
We’d known each other forever, but it wasn’t until my freshman year of high
school that he noticed me. We were together all four years of high school, and
I waited for him until he graduated college. I wasn’t allowed to go to college;
my parents thought it was a waste of time and money. I didn’t need a college
degree to be a wife and mother.
    “I can tell you exactly when I fell in love with him, but I
can’t tell you when I started falling out of love. We were always the token
couple, the two people who were going to stay together forever. My friends
always said that they were so jealous of me, but I couldn’t help thinking that
I was jealous of what they had. They