The Will (Magdalene #1)(158)
Author: Kristen Ashley

Jake didn’t reply.

He didn’t reply.

Jake, who laid it all out about everything, didn’t reply.

Oh God, he was absolutely hiding something.

“She gave me to you before she gave me to you,” I told him something he well knew. “You had me in your house.” I motioned to the picture and then to the letters. “All of me. Every thought. Every secret. All of me that should be mine to give.”

“Would you have given it?” he asked gently.

“I would have liked to have had the option,” I shot back.

“Would you have given it, Josie?” he pressed, still going gently.

“Maybe not,” I conceded sharply. “But even so, if she had some grand scheme, as she had to have had seeing as the evidence is clear.” I swiped the room with my arm. “Perhaps you could have shared it with me as she obviously shared it with you. Doing this, I don’t know, maybe one of the times I wondered out loud why on earth she did the things she did. Telling me, I don’t know, just how much you actually knew about me and that you had everything.”

“Babe, it happened and we are where we are now. Why does it matter?”

That was the wrong answer.

“Because I’m asking questions I think are important and the only person in this room who has the answers isn’t giving them to me,” I retorted.

He said nothing.

Nothing.

Just held my eyes and said nothing.

Why?

“Why won’t you tell me?” I asked.

“Because it doesn’t matter,” he answered.

“It does to me.”

He again said nothing.

And, again, why?

“You’re keeping something from me,” I whispered.

“Baby, you got all of me.”

“No, you have all of me,” I returned. “There’s something of you that you’re keeping from me.”

“Can we please let this go and move on?” he requested.

“Whether you agree or not, Jake, the extent of her sharing meant my grandmother betrayed me,” I informed him. “To you. And in the time we’ve spent together, the things we’ve shared, you not telling me the extent of it is, by extension, a betrayal too. So, no. We can’t move on from this until you explain to me what precisely you and Gran had been up to in regards to me for the last five or six years.”

“What matters to you is important to me, honey. Straight up, bottom of my heart, it is. Believe that. But I gotta tell you, it’s important to me that you let this go.”

“How would you feel, someone you didn’t know knew every word written on your soul for years and then they become important to you and they don’t share that with you and won’t tell you why? How would that make you feel, Jake?”

“I’ll say what you have to know, that both Lydie and I had your best interests at heart.”

“Really?” I asked, throwing out my arms. “Because if you did, I would have met you five or six years ago instead of you and your children being kept from me.”

At that, he flinched.

Oh God.

Why?

“Jake—”

“Let it go.”

“Jake!”

“God damn it!” he suddenly shouted, leaned into me and roared, “Fuckin’ let it go!”

I took a step back.

Jake scowled at me.

“You know when my father threw my diary at me and gave me a black eye,” I whispered.

“Let it go, babe,” he ground out.

“You know when I got my period.”

“Let it go.”

“You know when I lost my virginity.”

“Jesus, f**kin’ let…it…go.”

“You got to share your life with me in your truck. Over dinner. In bed. I didn’t get that luxury, Jake. Why?”

“Josie, for f**k’s sake—”

“Why?” I shrieked.

“Let it go!” he thundered back.

“No,” I whispered and watched him wince even as his jaw got hard. “Tell me, Jake.”

“No,” he returned.

We stood there, silent, staring at each other and we did this a long time.

It was me who broke the silence.

“How can this be?”

Jake didn’t respond so I kept on.

“How is it that we were as close as two people could get half an hour ago and now we’re done?”

I watched Jake’s body jerk. “We’re not done.”

I didn’t reply to that.

I asked, “How could she do this to me?”

“She didn’t do anything to you, Josie, except give you your dream.”

Oh yes.

He’d know about that too.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

“Own her, no,” he’d said at the reading of the will. “Do precisely what Lydie wanted me to do with her, yes.”

Yes, he knew exactly.

“I know you’d know that,” I said quietly, my voice awful and I knew Jake heard it because his jaw again went hard but his eyes went warm and alarmed. “I know you’ve read that. You know what I don’t know?”

He didn’t answer.

So I kept speaking.

“What the foundation of my love for a man is based on. And I don’t know that because he won’t tell me.”

His face changed, softened and he said, “You love me.”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

His face softened more and his voice was utterly beautiful when he went on, “Baby, I love you too.”

“Not enough.”

His body again jerked.

I walked out of the room.

Jake followed me.

I went directly to my bag and when he put a hand on my arm, I yanked it free and took a step back.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Josie, dammit—”

“I’ll ask that I can speak to the kids at some point to explain why I have to sell Lavender House and leave.”

He took a step toward me, his body alert, his eyes back to alarmed. “What the f**k?”

“We’re done.”

“We are not done.”

“We are, Jake.”

“We f**kin’ aren’t, Josie.”

I locked eyes with him and declared, “We very much are.”

“Jesus, do not do this shit. Trust me, it’s not worth it.”

“I think it’s me who gets to make that determination and as I don’t have all the facts, I can’t make it. I can only make a decision. And I’m doing that.”