Stubborn Love (22 page)

Today, 3:22pm – Jared

I don’t know how long we
hold each other for, but at some point, we end up lying down on my bed, wrapped
in each other’s arms. We are both crying and holding on to each other. I can
feel shaking and at this point I can no longer tell if it is Mia, or me, or
both of us. Mia’s lips are still pressed against my neck and my face is buried
in her hair.

I don’t know what to say
to everything she has told me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel or what
I’m supposed to do. But somehow, for whatever reason, all of my anger, every
single bit of it, has now gone. Somehow, it’s just disappeared and it’s no
longer a part of me. Maybe it never really was. All I know, is that all of my
frustration at not understanding, at not being with Mia, it’s all just…gone.

It’s like, now I know the
truth, now that I understand it wasn’t something
I
did…

Fuck, I don’t know what it
is really.

I have no fucking clue.

But I do know that I no
longer feel pissed off. Right now, all I feel is regret. Regret that we never
talked, that we didn’t force this conversation to happen earlier. Regret that I
didn’t fight harder, find some other way to fix this. Regret that Mia is so fucking
stubborn that I let her get away with this.

But most of all, the one
thing I feel more than anything else, the one thing I can no longer deny,
because it’s right here, in my arms, slamming me in the chest with how big it
is.

I feel whole again.

Because I have Mia in my
arms, because I now know the truth, and even because I sort
of
understand it.

I feel whole again,
because Mia is here and I can have her back if I want to. She wants me back and
I know I have never stopped wanting her at all.

I never stopped loving
her. I never will stop loving her.

And now, she can be mine
again and there is nothing else that compares, or matters.

Today, 3:31pm – Mia

We lie wrapped in each
other’s arms, neither of us saying anything. We are both holding each other tightly,
as though neither of us can bear to let the other one go.

My crying has finally
stopped, all of my tears have fallen, drenching Jared’s shirt, which lies
beneath my cheek. His arms are wrapped so tightly around me that I can barely
breathe, but right now it feels as though it’s the only thing holding me
together.
He
is the only thing
holding me together.

“Tell me about our baby,
Mia…” he eventually whispers. “…Please…”

I take a deep breath, as
the tears I thought were all dried up threaten to start falling again. “What do
you want to know?” I ask having no idea where to even begin.

“When did you find out?”
he asks me, his voice sounding broken.

I tighten my arms around
him, wondering if he needs to be held together too. “About five weeks after,” I
tell him, the memory of that day still crystal clear in my head.

“After what?”

I bite my lip, wondering
how to say it. “After that weekend in Chicago, when you came to visit,” is what
I eventually get out, pressing my lips against his neck to soften the blow. “I
didn’t even know you could find out that early.”

“And…” he starts, his
voice breaking this time.

I glance up at his face
now and see tears falling silently down his cheeks. Without thinking, I lift my
hand and slowly, gently, wipe them away. Jared’s eyes close as I do and I risk
leaning in and pressing a soft kiss against his temple, desperately wanting to
make this okay for him. A low moan falls from his throat and I can’t tell if
it’s from pain or longing. I pull back.

“And?” I prompt.

His eyes open. “And…what
happened Mia?”

I take a deep breath and
rest my head on my hand, propped up beside his face. I want him to be able to
look me as I tell him all of this. So he knows how sorry I am, knows how much I
feel his pain.

“At first I thought it was
all because of the show, quitting my job, getting ready to come back home.”

“What?” he says quickly.

“The nausea, the tiredness,”
I say, brushing the hair back from his face again. “When I started to feel
sick, I assumed it was just because I’d barely eaten. When I was tired, I
thought it was because I hadn’t been sleeping.”

I stop for a second,
trying to work out exactly when I’d realised what it could be.

“We’d always been so
careful,” Jared says, as though he is reading my mind.

I almost smile,
remembering Jared’s face when I told him I’d gone on the pill. How amazingly
good that first time had been. “I know,” I say, my fingers brushing his hair
again. “But apparently these things can happen when you forget to take the pill
a few times.”

Jared finally looks at me
and his eyes are full of sadness. I try smiling at him, but it’s weak,
pathetic, a poor excuse for a smile. What have I got to smile about anyway; I’m
slowly destroying this man.

“You forgot?” he asks.
He’s not accusing me or laying blame, he just sounds genuinely surprised.

“I wasn’t really thinking
about much except the show and then getting back home to you.”

I watch as he blinks
slowly. When his eyes open again, I can see a tiny bit of sadness has been
replaced with what looks like understanding. Maybe he never realised just how
much all of this had hurt me. How could he, when I was the one who did it all
to him.

“I was just done throwing
up in the toilet for the fourth day in a row, when I noticed the packet in the
bathroom cabinet,” I continue, trying to clear it up. “I realised then, I
hadn’t taken any for weeks. I couldn’t even remember when I’d last had one.
And…” I say, trailing off. “I was late too.”

“What did you do?” he
asks.

“Well,” I say. “I dragged
myself out to get a pregnancy test.”

“And?” he asks.

I exhale loudly. “It was
positive,” I tell him. “And I couldn’t wait to tell you when I got home in two
days.”

I can remember as soon as
I saw those two pink lines, I actually felt two completely different and
opposite emotions, right at the same time. I had no idea if I was ready for a
baby, if Jared even wanted one at all. But at the same time, seeing those two
lines, side by side, changed something. I was carrying a piece of him, a piece
of us, and there was a part of me that was unbelievably happy about that.

“You knew before we broke
up?” he whispers, as if he’s afraid to hear the answer.

“I did,” I tell him sadly.
“I was coming home to tell you.” I smile at him. “And now I understood why I’d
been feeling like shit for the past couple of weeks.”

“And…” he asks, his voice
a little stronger now. “The baby…were you…when I came to Chicago?”

“Well…” I continue, trying
to just get it all out. “I had no idea how you’d feel about the idea, hell, I
had no idea how I felt about it all. But I did know I had to tell you. You
deserved to know Jared, and I knew whatever we did, it would be a decision we
made together.”

“Yes,” he whispers, his
eyes back on the ceiling.

“And I also knew, even if
you didn’t want to have it…”

“I would have wanted to,”
he says, interrupting me.

“Really,” I ask, smiling
as I brush his hair back from his face. “There was a part of me that hoped you
did. But at the same time, I would have understood if you didn’t. Hell, even I
didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

Jared exhales loudly. “Why
didn’t you call Mia, just call me? I would have come to you.”

“I know you would have,” I
tell him, my fingers smoothing the worry lines between his eyes. “But I was
coming home in two days and it just seemed so much more important to tell you
to your face.”

“I wish I’d known,” he
whispers, breaking my heart as his eyes briefly close. “So what happened then,
what happened Mia?” he eventually asks. “You never came home, you didn’t have
our...”

“No,” I say, my heart
beating a little faster now. “He showed up and the things he said, the threats.
I knew I couldn’t come back, but I knew I couldn’t let you come to Chicago
either. And then…then after everything, I…I just wasn’t pregnant anymore…” My
words are a rush and I know they make no sense.

Jared rolls over a little
now, so he’s lying on his side, facing me. “Tell me what happened, please?”

“My father,” I start, a
shudder running through me as the memory comes flooding back. “I was packing
and about to leave and there was a knock at the door…” I tell him, wishing even
now, that I had never answered it. “Even though it was stupid, a small part of
me was hoping it was you,” I say, trying to smile at him.

“It was
him
?”
Jared asks. “He did this?”

“Well…”

“What did he do?” Jared
asks, anger in his voice. “What the fuck was he doing there, did he hurt you
Mia, did he do something to you, something to the baby?” Jared is trying to sit
up now, but I gently push him back on to the bed. I don’t want him to let me
go, not while I tell him all of this.

“
Shhh
,
no, he didn’t hurt me, Jared,” I say. “Not physically anyway.”

“Tell me what he did Mia.”
Jared’s voice is like steel now.

“My father never liked us
being together,” I say, the ache in my chest deepening at having to say these
words.

“He didn’t?” Jared asks, his
voice a little softer now.

I shake my head, not
taking my eyes off of his. “No, he didn’t.”

“He told you this?”

I nod this time, my heart
breaking at what I have to say, at just how fucked up my own father really is.
“He called me once, after I’d moved in with you, when we’d told everyone about
us.”

“What?” Jared asks. “He
knew we were together, how could he possibly have known that?”

I bite my bottom lip,
trying to work out how I am supposed to tell him this. “He’s powerful, Jared,
well connected. He used people in his company to find Luke, and I suspect he
did the same to keep an eye on me,” I say. “And there were photos,” I add on,
nervously.

“Photos?” Jared asks
surprised. “Your dad had photos of you?”

“Yes. Photos of me and
photos of us, together.”

“What the fuck?” Jared
asks, angry. “Someone was fucking watching us?”

“You don’t know my
father,” I tell him. “He’s a powerful man and he’s very controlling and if
someone does something he doesn’t like, he’ll stop at nothing to fix it.”

Jared slides his hands
into his hair and grips it tight. I can see how angry he is, how frustrated and
confused. And I know why. He might have thought he knew my dad when he saw what
happened to Luke, but that is only one side of him. His anger is one thing, but
it’s the non-physical side, the emotional manipulations that he uses, which is so
much worse. I think that’s why him hitting Luke surprised me so much.
Because he would see that type of behaviour as beneath him, as a
loss of control.
I guess somehow Luke just provoked him too hard that
day and as a result, paid the price.

“I don’t get it, he didn’t
want you and me to be together,” Jared says, his eyes still on the ceiling.
“But this was only a problem in Chicago?”

“Because of what I was
giving up,” I say quietly.

“What?”

I take a deep breath. “In
Boston, he let it go, I guess because it didn’t interfere with school and my
future or whatever…”

“But you moved here from
LA,” Jared says, interrupting me. “How come that wasn’t an issue?”

“RISD has a much better
program, better reputation,” I tell him, remembering even now how that still
didn’t soften the blow of me moving to the same city as Luke. God my father was
pissed the day I told him about that transfer.

“And Chicago?”

“The best of them all,” I
say. “So me giving that up…it was like a black mark against our name. Against
him.” I stop and take a deep breath. “Image is all my father cares about. It’s
why Luke leaving school pissed him off so much. It’s why me giving up that
opportunity in Chicago pissed him off. We aren’t children to him, we’re not
even family. We’re just…I don’t know… assets,” I say, not really knowing how to
describe it. “We always have been and we always will I guess. Anything we do,
reflects on him, and that’s all he cares about.”

Jared turns to look at me.
“So…I couldn’t come to Chicago because of Luke, but you couldn’t come to Boston
because of me, because of an image?”

I can feel the tears
coming back because I know he won’t understand. He doesn’t know how much I was
trying to protect him. How it wasn’t just a matter of me telling my dad to fuck
off and mind his own business. It was never going to be as easy as that.

“Basically, but that’s not
the whole story,” I say, my voice catching. Jared looks at me now, saying
nothing. I stare back at him, at his deep blue eyes as they watch me, waiting
for the rest of the story. “He knew who you were Jared, remembered you from
that day he came for Luke.”

“Did he tell you this?”

I’m nodding my head,
remembering what had happened next, just as I was about to leave and come back
here.

“So when he showed up,” I
tell him, crying again now. “I knew it wasn’t going to be good. And when he
threatened you, your family, everything, that’s… that’s when it got awful. I’m
sorry Jared, I’m so sorry,” I whisper now, my voice choked by tears that I can
no longer stop.

Today, 3:55pm – Jared

“…I’m sorry Jared, I’m so
sorry,” she says, her voice catching on her tears.

“What happened Mia?” I
ask, pulling her into my arms again. God I can’t believe her fucking father,
that he actually thinks he can control her like that.

“After he showed up…” she
gets out in between sobs, “…I tried talking to him, tried to tell him that I
love you and I wanted to be with you, but…” Her tears cut her off again and I
tighten my arms, trying to comfort her, tell her it’s okay, even though I’m
fucking fuming on the inside.

“But he didn’t want to
hear it?” I guess, trying to help her out.

Mia’s head shakes in my
arms and I know that not only did he not want to hear it, but he probably
wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I’m surprised he gave up so easily with
Luke all those years ago, but then I guess Mia was his favourite, so maybe her
doing something he didn’t like, was worth fighting for. He must really fucking
hate me, given my connection to both of them.

“No,” she eventually gets
out, her tears slowing down. “He didn’t and I couldn’t let him do that to you,
to your family. Not after everything you’d done for us.”

“So you didn’t get on the
plane?” I say, just needing to know everything now. “And you texted me
instead?”

“I didn’t,” she says. “I
wanted to, but then he showed up and he had those photos and he threatened you
and afterwards I ran to the bathroom and was sick. After that, well…”

“What?” I ask, my arms
tightening again.

“Then I lost the baby,”
she says quietly. “And…”

“And then you texted me?”
I ask, a sick feeling in my stomach as I remember.

“Yeah,” she says sadly. “I
guess I just thought none of it was meant to be. Or that I didn’t deserve it
anyway.”

No, your fucking father is
the one who doesn’t deserve anything, I think to myself. If he hadn’t done any
of this, then not only would Mia have gotten on that plane, but we would’ve had
a baby, we would be together.
He
is
the reason she lost the baby, and
he
is the reason I lost the woman I love. Him alone. Fuck, I want to kill that
fucking man.

“I’m sorry Jared,” she
whispers, her lips against my neck. “You must hate me right now.”

I’m shaking my head before
she even finishes. “I don’t hate you Mia, I hate your fucking father,” I
finally admit out loud. “But not you, never you baby,” I tell her. And it’s the
truth.

I’ve tried never to bad-mouth
her family, even though just the thought of them makes my stomach turn. But it
was never my place. I can’t pretend I know what it was like growing up in that
environment, and I can’t pretend to understand why either of them would ever
give their parents the time of day again. I don’t know what it was like, but I
am starting to understand things. I understand now why Mia would always want to
protect her brother, why she’d look out for him like that. Why she could so
easily give up Chicago for him, without blinking an eye. And as it turns out,
when she couldn’t do that, she even gave up me, and everything we had together.
Even if the consequences were devastating, her motivation was always right. And
even though I don’t like it, not one fucking bit, I do
finally
understand it.

“Jared…” she whispers, but
doesn’t say anything more.

I take a deep breath,
knowing I have to say these words, knowing she needs to know I wouldn’t have
run from this. “We would have worked it out Mia, we would have worked it all
out you know, the whole thing with Luke, your dad, our baby. We would have
worked it all out.”

Mia starts crying again
and I say nothing more, just breathe out and pull her even closer to me.

Eventually I whisper in
her ear. “You should have told me baby, you should have told me everything.
None of this would have stopped me from loving you. I would have understood
,
if I only knew what was going on. Living without you, not
knowing what I’d done wrong,” I say, struggling to get the words out now. “It
nearly killed me Mia, every single day, it nearly killed me. We could have
found a way to make it work, baby, we would have found a way.”

Her arms wrap tighter
around me, her sobs now coming in hard bursts against my shoulder. My hand
gently rubs her back, as my other arm wraps tightly around her waist. Mia
doesn’t talk anymore and I don’t dare say anything else, but everything I
thought I knew has changed now. Nothing about the year Mia and I have spent
apart was what I thought it was.

“You never told Luke about
any of this, did you?” I eventually ask her.

Mia shakes her head, her
sobs finally growing quieter. “How could I?” she whispers. “When I couldn’t
even tell you.”

I don’t say
anything,
just pull her back against me as I wonder how it
was that everything got so fucked up.

Mia’s hand slides under my
t-shirt and rests against the skin of my stomach. It sends a jolt through my
whole body because it’s the first time she’s touched me like this in forever. I
want to believe this is possible, that we can really be together again, but I
know that the things that broke us
up,
are all still
very much a factor in us getting back together again.

“When your dad showed up,
Mia?” I ask. “What exactly did he say?”

I feel her exhale against
me and I squeeze my hand on her hip, wanting her to know it’s okay to tell me,
that I really want her to keep talking. “My dad is not a nice man, Jared.”

Yeah, I already fucking
knew that.

“I never told him where
Luke was when he ran away. I eventually knew he was in Boston, but it wasn’t me
who told my dad that.”

“So who did?” I ask her.

“I don’t know really, but
someone who works for him I suspect,” she says, her fingers brushing lightly
against my skin and giving me goose bumps.

“Someone who works for
him? What exactly does your dad do Mia?”

Her hand leaves my skin
and moves so it’s resting against my heart, outside my t-shirt this time. I
move my own hand from her hip and rest it over the top of hers.

“He works in security,”
she says, her voice serious.

“Security, like what,
security for people?” I ask.

Mia lifts her head from my
shoulder and looks at me. I can’t believe this is another one of those things
that we’ve never talked about. That I had no idea what her dad even did for a
living, even after sharing an apartment with her brother and a bed with her.

“For very important
people,” she says. “Important and I think…sometimes bad people.”

“So he has connections
then?” I ask, wondering exactly who this guy is. Mia’s hand slides out from
under mine and brushes my hair back. I’m staring up at her, watching as she
watches her fingers. “Mia?”

“What?”

I reach up and grab her
hand, pull it back to my chest again and hold it in mine. “Your dad, he has
connections?”

She nods. “He does.”

“And you think they’re bad
connections, dangerous ones?”

She bites her bottom lip
now and nods again.

“You’ve seen things?” I
ask.

She nods again.

“What, what sort of
things?”

She presses her lips
together, as though preparing herself. My hand instinctively grips hers a
little harder as all sorts of
things
start to flash through my brain.

“I’ve seen photos,” she
finally says. “Photos of things he shouldn’t have had, private things. And…”
she trails off.

“And?”

“And…I’ve seen the photos
of you and me, together.
In Boston and in Chicago.
There was even a fucking photo of me at school, quitting my job, buying the
fucking pregnancy test,” she says, her voice angry now.

“Fucking hell,” I say. “Do
you think he’s still watching you now?”

“Yeah, probably. But
because I stayed in Chicago, he hasn’t done anything…” …
yet,
is the obvious word she leaves off.

“Tell me what he said to
you?” I ask, needing to know everything now.

Mia takes a deep breath
and looks me right in the eye. “He knew about your dad’s company, Jared, which
he threatened to destroy,” she says, her voice strangely calm. “He knew about
your job in Damien’s record store, which he said he would buy and shut down,
he…he knew about the band with Luke, he, fuck…he just knew everything Jared,
everything about you and me and us and everything.”

“Baby,” I say, pulling her
against me again. “I’m not scared of him you know. I’m not scared of him and
neither is Luke. You shouldn’t be either, because I would never let him do
anything to hurt you. I will always protect you Mia, always.”

“But he could hurt you
Jared,” she says against my chest. “You and your family.”

“No he can’t,” I tell her,
not entirely sure if that’s true or not, but knowing I don’t really care anyway.
I am not giving her or us, up for this man, no matter how powerful he thinks he
is.

“I’m afraid of him,” she
whispers now and I can hear the fear in her voice. “I always sort of was, but
now more than ever.”

My arms tighten around
her. “Don’t be Mia, I’ll look after you. I will
always
look after you.”

“And your family?” she
asks and my chest aches as I realise how much she worries, how much she cares
about them too.

“I’ll talk to my dad,
okay, but it will be okay baby, I promise.”

Her fingers grip my
t-shirt and I know she’s struggling to believe me. I don’t even know if it’s
the truth either, if it’s even possible to stop someone like that, but I know
I’m going to try. I have to, because I would do anything for her,
anything
.

Neither of us says
anything more, Mia lies in my arms and I hang on to her, never wanting to let
her go. I’m not sure what she’s thinking, but I’m wondering how this time around
is going to be any different. What happens when her dad finds out about us? Is
she going to stay in Chicago still, or what? What’s changed this time around,
what’s made her decide to tell me all of this, now?

“Mia, what made you change
your mind?” I eventually ask her. “Why have you suddenly decided to tell me all
of this now?”

“I’ve always wanted to
tell you, Jared,” she says, her voice quiet. “I just never knew how, not after
everything I’d done, everything that had happened.”

“That’s not what it seemed
like last night though,” I say, remembering how she’d stormed in here and
basically never left.

“I know,” she whispers.

“So?” I ask. “Why now?”

I feel her exhale against
me, a big heavy sigh. “I don’t know exactly. Maybe it’s just been a year of
building up to this point, or maybe I just decided…” Mia trails off, as though
thinking about what she’s trying to say. “Part of it was what happened between
us in the bathroom last night. I’d always known that connection; all those
feelings were still there, for me at least. And last night just made me realise
how much I’d missed them,” she says, smiling at me now. “Maybe another part was
talking to Ash, seeing how happy her and Luke are…the things she said and you…”
she trails off again as though trying to find more reasons. Even now, despite
everything she’s said, she still doesn’t sound entirely convinced.

I want to ask her if she’s
really sure about this, if she really wants us to happen again. I do, more than
anything, but I can’t go through losing her again, so as much as it might kill
me, I’d rather stop this now than go any further, only to have it end in a
week, six months, a year. I can’t go through that again. I can’t go through
losing her again.

Eventually, Mia takes a
deep breath.

“But I think the biggest
reason,” she whispers, raising her head to look me in the eye. “Is just that…I miss
you,” she finally says and even though it’s only three simple words, it’s not
only more than enough; it’s the perfect answer.

“I miss you too,” I say,
closing my eyes as I pull her even closer.