The Reluctant Romantics

Chapter Seven: The Same Shadows

A/N: Hi everyone! I'm on the road right now, enjoying the summer, but I wanted to make sure you got your serving of Jake and Tessa this week. We're really getting close to the end of their story with about two chapters left so make sure you stay tuned.

***

Tessa

I didn't have cruel intentions.

No, really, I didn't.

It's the same way a person who cares for you may not necessarily want to hurt you but ripping the band-aid off is the only thing they can do to save you from a festering wound.

And yes, Jake and I were starting to become a festering wound and someone needed to take drastic measures if we didn't want to lose a limb. I'd lost my heart, sure, and only retained bits and pieces of it, but no one would see it missing. No one but me and that's all there is to it.

However, if I let Jake carry on with this temporary madness, both of us would get hurt and drag other people in it too. My family would cut him out completely if they thought he was juggling me with other women and he would resent me for it. And I would no longer be just angry—I would hate him for good. In the end, no one would come out a winner and I couldn't allow that scenario. I had to cut my romantic ties with Jake cleanly and coldly, with the indifference of a surgeon whose only concern was to save a life.

I contemplated a plan throughout my sleepless night at the presidential suite of Boston Harbor Hotel. I ordered an unholy amount of room service and sat by the window gazing at the same skyline Jake and I had watched from his car that one night several weeks ago.

I didn't cry.

I've felt pain before—when someone from school called me real nasty names, when my mother died, when Jake broke my heart the first time around—and there had been tears. That night alone though, all my emotions seemed to have gathered into one tight coil, clutched somewhere deep inside of me just waiting to snap from the tension and lacerate everything it could touch.

It's always so much worse to be brought so high just so you can be pushed off the edge to crash back down.

If I hadn't shoved smart Tessa to the back of my head where her protests were muffled by my raging hormones, I wouldn't have climbed so high at Jake's coaxing. The resulting fall was as devastating as I'd known it would be. Despite being broken and bloodied though, I got off my butt and put my plan into action.

I arrived at the Arts Appreciation dinner at the enchanting Isabella Steward Gardner Museum not only wearing a provocative emerald green dress that hinted at a lot of skin underneath the lace that composed it, but also in the arms of Michael Steinberg. I knew him through a mutual acquaintance even though he was studying law at Yale. He'd asked me out multiple times in the past six months and I'd gone out to get coffee with him a few times, the last one only a few weeks ago. He was preppy cute and very nice—he didn't make me stupid or prone to bad decisions whenever I was around him. I was safe from myself with him and I needed that.

Our appearance didn't go unnoticed—Charlotte and Anna were a little confused, Brandon was polite but assessing and Jake was, well, flipping out. I didn't try to evade him. With a straight face, I made casual introductions as if my insides weren't further crumbling into themselves. His eyes were blazing with a wild fury I almost worried for a second that he would snap and tear Michael apart limb after limb right in front of Boston's high society.

"So with all that time you needed to think, this is what you came up with," Jake said with an edge in his voice when Michael was distracted by a deepening conversation with Brandon about labor law.