At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [53]
Jeremy brought his hands together. “Does he have feelings for you?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
When she saw Jeremy’s expression of disbelief, she went on quickly. “I know that’s a cop-out, but I’m not sure what else to say. Does Rodney still care about me? Yeah, I think he does, but we’ve known each other ever since we were little. The question you want me to answer is whether he would be seeing Rachel if we weren’t engaged, and all I can say is that I think he would. I’ve told you before that I always thought those two belonged together. But . . .”
She trailed off, her brow knit with concern.
“You don’t know for sure,” Jeremy finished for her. If he were Lexie, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to come up with an answer either.
“No,” she said. “But he does understand that I’m engaged to someone else. He accepts that it’s not going to work between us, and I know he does care for Rachel. But Rachel is sensitive about me, and I think that Rodney inadvertently makes things worse. He told me that Rachel got mad at him one afternoon when they were driving because he glanced up at the library. She accused him of looking for me, and they ended up arguing for hours. He was telling her that it was just a habit, that he didn’t mean anything, and Rachel kept saying that he was never going to get over me and that he was making excuses. The next day, he was still upset and dropped by the library to get my advice, so we went to the boardwalk to talk.”
She straightened up with a sigh. “And tonight, like I said, it just happened. Since I know both of them, since I care about both of them and want it to work out between them, I feel like I should try to fix it. Or at least listen when one of them wants to talk to me. I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of something, and I don’t know how to get out or what I’m supposed to do.”
“Maybe you were right not to tell me. These southern soap operas aren’t my thing.”
For the first time since she’d arrived, she seemed to relax.
“Mine either. There are times when I wish I were back in New York where everyone was a stranger. Things like this get old, and it’s even worse because I made you angry. I made you suspicious, and then I made it worse by trying to cover it up. You have no idea how sorry I am about that. It’s never going to happen again.”
Her voice had grown even softer and began to break; when she swiped at the corner of her eye, Jeremy rose from his chair and took a seat beside her on the bed. When he reached for her hand, her shoulders began to tremble and she drew a ragged breath.
“Hey,” Jeremy whispered, “it’s okay. Don’t cry.”
His words seemed to release her emotions, and she lowered her face into her hands. Her sobs were deep and heavy, as if she’d been holding them in for hours, and when he slipped his arm around her, her crying only intensified.
“It’s all right,” he whispered.
“No . . . it’s . . . not,” she choked out between sobs, her face still buried in her hands.
“I mean it,” he said, “I forgive you.”
“No . . . you . . . don’t. I saw . . . the way you were . . . looking at me . . . at the door . . . when I got here.”
“I was still mad then. But not now.”
She shuddered, her face still hidden. “Yes, you are. You . . . hate me. . . . We’re having a baby, and all we ever do . . . is fight. . . .”
This wasn’t going well. Feeling lost, Jeremy reminded himself again about her surging hormones. Like most men, he assumed that hormones were the explanation for every emotional outburst, but in this instance it really seemed to be true.
“I don’t hate you. I was mad at you, but that’s over now.”
“I don’t love . . . Rodney. I love you. . . .”
“I know.”
“I won’t ever talk to Rodney ever again. . . .”
“You can talk to him. Just not at his house, okay? And don’t hold his hand, either.”
If possible, his comment made her cry even harder.
“I knew you were . . . still mad at me. . . .”
It took almost