Volition (39 page)

My blood gets even hotter. “How do you know them?”

“Tate, what are you getting at? Is this about today with Jasmine?”

I throw my glass in the sink so hard that it shatters.

“It’s always about Jasmine! Everything always comes back to Jasmine!”

Hayden stands there, too calmly. I want him to feel something. I want him to yell back because I’m so incredibly angry at him even though he has no idea what’s going on.

“Tate,” he says, taking a step forward, “what always comes back to Jasmine?”

I put my head in my hands and hold back the rage inside me. I want to break everything in this penthouse. I’m probably going to break Hayden.

My left ring finger starts to throb, and I can’t help but wonder if this is a sign that I should back out now and try to find a new life, the way I stumbled upon this one the very same hour I left Charleston in the first place.

This wasn’t starting over if my old life followed me.

I take a few deep breaths and sit on one of the barstools with my head in my hands. I run my fingers through my hair and pull lightly to try to quell what’s rising up inside of me.

“Hayden,” I say too calmly. It’s an Old Tate trick—switch from angry to calm in a second to let them know how furious you are. “Do you have any idea who Jasmine Saro is dating?”

I hate that word—
dating
. But I don’t know what else to use in this situation. I guess that’s what they’re doing. I guess that’s what I was doing with Hayden before this ring was put on my finger.

“I’m not sure,” he says, “I don’t talk to her that often. I haven’t seen her in years until today.”

“And why was she here?”

“She said her boyfriend had an art gallery opening. She thought she’d say hello.”

I put my head in my hands again like I didn’t hear what he just said.

“I’m sorry. Her boyfriend has a gallery opening? Here? In New York?”

Hayden nods, like he still can’t quite put the pieces together.

“Who is her boyfriend, Tate?”

He looks at me for a few seconds, and I just stare at him, willing him to put it all together.

In a few moments, his expression changes, and he does.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not
him
?”

Hayden hates Jesse’s name like I hate Jasmine’s, so he refuses to say it.

I get up off the stool and start picking the pieces of glass out of the sink.

“Yes,” I say with conviction. “Yes.”

Hayden stares at me in disbelief, and I’m glad someone else is on the same page as me.

He downs his drink in one swig.

“What does that mean?”

He wants me to say it, and it burns my throat more than alcohol when I do.

“Jesse is in New York.”

Then

WHEN I GRADUATED from Vanderbilt, there was no one in my cheering section, except Catherine. She flew down from New York for Colin and me when we became official adults. She finished a semester early and was already starting graduate school, so I felt incredibly behind even though I was doing things right on schedule with what society told me was normal.

I walked across the stage, shook a professor’s hand, and smiled for a photo, and then I had a degree.

I didn’t expect Lara, Julian, or Cece to make the trip. Cece was too busy trying to get her boyfriend to propose. Lara didn’t care, and Julian never went anywhere without Lara, as curious as their relationship was.

Catherine cheered loudly for us both and took us to dinner after.

“Well,” I said, poking at my degree with my drink, “there it is. I guess we’re adults now.”

“We’ve been adults for a long time, Tate,” Colin told me.

“I don’t think that’s true. Is there a mark of adulthood?”

“You have a job lined up,” Catherine says. “I think you’re an adult.”

She was right. I had applied for a position as a staff writer for the
Charleston Tribune
and had miraculously gotten the position. I’d be writing short stories for the Sunday paper.

Colin was set to fly off to Atlanta to work at the CDC in three days, and we’d all be split up for the first time since we met.

I’d had Catherine and Colin all through adolescence until now when school no longer bound us together. I would move into a small apartment closer to the city with Haley, and I’d have to live without the two of them.

I swirled my drink around and watched the ice cubes float.

I hated ice in drinks, but I didn’t want to fish them out either.

There was one more person I was losing, and I wasn’t sure I could.

He’d admitted what I felt was real because he felt it, too, and he had acted on it all semester when he sat in the back where I wouldn’t feel he was there. I hadn’t spoken to him since he left class, so I could pass my test.

I poured the rest of my drink down my throat and crunched on the ice.

“I’m doing it,” I said, putting it back down on the table with committed force.

Catherine and Colin looked at me like I was insane.

“Doing what?”

“I’m going to go talk to him.”

“Tate, don’t leave,” Catherine protested, panic in her eyes. She knew what kind of self-destruction I was headed for if I did that. “I have to fly back in two hours. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

She was right. I didn’t want to waste our precious time together.

Jesse could wait—for now.

Now

HE’S HERE IN the city, and I hate that, but morbid curiosity gets the best of me. I’m cleaning up the pieces of shattered glass, and I’m not being careful, so my blood is going down the drain with the water.

I took my ring off and placed it on the counter, and Hayden decided that meant more than it did. I just don’t want to lose it down the sink.

“What does it matter that he’s here, Tate? We’ve been through this. He’s your past.”

I don’t look up at him.

“I know he’s my past, but now, he’s here. I tried to run away, and this is what I get. If he’s going to follow me to the edges of the earth, I can’t live like this.”

“Then, we’ll leave.”

“I’m sick of running. That’s all I do. I run. I don’t want to be that person.”

“Can you live in the city with him here?”

I shake my head.

“I don’t know. If he’s not here permanently, that might be okay. But if he’s here with Jasmine and he’s opening an art gallery, it doesn’t sound like he’s just passing through.”

Hayden’s brow furrows, and I rinse my hands off. There are several small cuts still oozing blood, but I dry my hands and reach for my ring.

He gets there before me and holds it up.

“I meant this,” he says, referring to the ring, referring to our relationship. “I still mean this. If you don’t, if you can’t mean it the way I do, walk away.”

I mean it. I just hate the fact that Jesse is finding his way back into my life the way he always does. I don’t think I can coexist with him, even in a city of millions.

I hold out my left hand and look at my ring finger, which is ever so slightly tilted off. No one notices it, except for me because I know I injured it more than Colin said that night in the mud hole.

Hayden slides the ring back on my finger without breaking eye contact, and I know he’s not going to do it again. He’s trying to read my facial expression, but there’s nothing to decipher.

We’re getting married in less than a week.

I love him. I choose him. I don’t want Jesse anymore. I want him out of me for good, and I want to scream in frustration. I want to throw my phone against the wall and watch as it shatters into a million pieces, just like me.

I want to do the same to Hayden’s, so Jasmine and Jesse can’t ever contact us again even if they wanted to. It gets under my skin that Jasmine’s phone number is sitting in Hayden’s phone at all.

“Hayden…” I ask him as calmly as I can. Even though I’ve already put the pieces together, I want to hear the whole story. “Why was Jasmine in your office today?”

“I told you,” he says. “She was just saying hello.”

“And you know her through Addison.”

“Yes. We’ve known them for a long time.”

I sit down on the couch, and he does the same.

“Your brother married Addison Saro,” I say. It’s not a question.

“Yes.”

“And Jasmine is her sister.”

“Yes.”

“Jasmine used to want you.”

Also not a question. I know Jasmine well enough to know that Hayden is exactly her type even though she’s with Jesse. Hayden is probably even more desirable now that he’s attached to me because Jasmine seems to want to dedicate her life to ruining my relationships.

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t want her?”

“I was never interested. She tried a few times, but I told her a long time ago that it was never going to happen.”

“And you’re sure she knows that?”

“Yes.”

I run my hands through my hair because I don’t know what else to do with them.

“What else do you want to know?”

I have a million questions for him, and I’m glad he’s offering, but I don’t know how to ask without having to reveal why I hate her so much.

“If Addison lives here, why did Jasmine move to Charleston?” I ask. I’ve never known the answer to that question, and frankly, I never cared until now.

“She lived here until John and Addison’s wedding day. After the car crash, her father didn’t want her here. He said the city was too dangerous, but I think it was just an excuse for him to move. He never liked it here. Addison was old enough to make her own decisions, so she stayed. Since she and John were already legally married before he died, she decided to take up his shares in the business since I was in school. If she hadn’t stayed, I would have had to drop out of school to help. Their parents are divorced. Their mother stayed here, and Jasmine’s father took her down to Charleston because it’s where the other half of his company has headquarters.”

I try to process what he’s telling me.

Jasmine’s move to Charleston was a direct result of John Rockefeller’s death. If he were still alive, she would never have left New York, and I would never have met her. Jesse wouldn’t know her. I would still live in Charleston because Jasmine and Jesse wouldn’t be together.

“Oh my God,” I tell him, putting my hand over my mouth.

Chills run down my spine, and he looks alarmed, but he doesn’t have the whole picture now like I do.

“What?”

He puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close because I might lose it at any second.

“Hayden,” I tell him softly, “I’m here because John died.”

He doesn’t understand.

“Jasmine left the city because of the car crash. She moved to Charleston, and I met her right before our debutant ball. I hated her, she hated me, and because she saw what I felt for Jesse, she went for him. I don’t think she liked him at first. It was just a ploy to cause me pain because everyone knew I’d never be with him. He wouldn’t allow it. Propriety wouldn’t allow it. He was a groundskeeper at the Hale house.”

Hayden listens intently, and I can see the pieces of the puzzle starting to click in his head.

“Then, she got attached,” I continue. I want to curl up into a ball, thinking about it. “She started to love him, and I think he feels something for her, but I don’t know. I didn’t see him as much in college even though we went to the same school. Whatever had always been there was still there once I graduated, and one night, I decided he and I needed to talk it out once and for all. I knew he and Jasmine were together, but finally seeing it broke me. I knew I had to leave, so I called Catherine and booked the first flight out of Charleston the next day.”

“The flight where you met me,” he supplies.

“Yes.”

There are tears brimming in my eyes as I look at him, and he pulls me close, so his chin is resting on my shoulder.

“People say that everything happens for a reason,” he says. I can feel his voice vibrating through my body. “But I never believed them. I never thought I’d be grateful to hear a reason that my brother died, but you wouldn’t be here if not.”

I shake my head.

“I’m sorry he died, but I’m not sorry I’m here.”