Only when we burn

Chapter 5: The long game

"Sarah." I caught up to her near the rose garden, away from the main crowd. I pulled the little black box from my jacket pocket and held it out. "Take this back."

She turned, her expression already shifting to that familiar mask of wounded innocence. "I know you don't celebrate your birthday, but I thought she might've changed that." The way she said she dripped with disdain.

My jaw tightened. "Her name is Bella."

Sarah's perfectly glossed lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Right. Bella." She looked down at the box in my outstretched palm but didn't take it. "You're not even going to look?"

Against my better judgment, I flicked it open. White gold cufflinks, each inlaid with mother-of-pearl, caught the garden lights. Elegant, understated. The kind of thing she knew I'd appreciate—we'd spent enough time together for her to learn my preferences.

"They're nice," I said, snapping the box shut. "But I can't accept them."

"Why not?" Her voice carried that edge I'd been hearing more often lately. "We had an arrangement, Jackson. A mutually beneficial one. That should count for something."

Our arrangement. Right. What had started as occasional convenience had become something she'd clearly wanted to be more, though I'd been clear from the beginning about what it was and what it wasn't. "That's over, Sarah. You know that."

She stepped closer, her perfume, still that same heady scent, wrapping around me. "It doesn't have to be. You're making this more complicated than it needs to be."

"I'm with someone else now."

"Are you?" Her voice went soft, almost pitying. "Because from what I can see, she's over there flirting with Jesse while you're here dealing with your past."

I followed her gaze to where Bella sat laughing at the bar, and something cold twisted in my chest. "That's not—"

"Look, Jackson, I get it. You're trying to prove something to yourself. Trying to be the settling-down type." Sarah's hand came up to rest against my chest. "But we both know that's not who you are."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I?" Her eyes flashed. "Last month, when you were falling apart, when she was lying in that hospital bed, and you didn't even know if she was going to make it. I was there, wasn't I?"

The memory hit like a punch. That night, when everything had fallen apart, when I'd nearly lost Bella. I'd been a wreck.

"I was there for you," Sarah continued, her voice dropping to that sultry register she used to use. "Ready to give you exactly what you needed. What we'd always given each other."

"And I said no."

"You did." The hurt in her voice transformed into something sharper. "You rejected me when I was offering exactly what you'd always taken before."

I stepped back, needing distance. "Sarah, that was before Bella and I—"

"Before what? Before you decided to play house with someone who doesn’t even trust you enough to tell you she was carrying your child?"

The words hit like ice water. "How the hell do you know about that?"

Sarah's smile was slow, satisfied. "Oh, Jackson. You really think hospital staff don't talk? Especially when Jackson Ivory rushes in during an emergency, looking like his world is ending?"

My jaw clenched. "You had no right—"

"I had every right to be concerned about someone I care about. Someone who was clearly devastated and needed support." She tilted her head, studying me with those calculating blue eyes. "Support you refused, by the way, even though she'd lied to you about the most important thing that could happen between two people."

The guilt twisted, but not for the reasons she thought. "When you got angry about my rejection," I said carefully, "what you said... those threats—"

"I was hurt." She had the grace to look ashamed, at least briefly. "You used me, Jackson. I thought it meant something. I thought when Rosie broke your heart, that maybe you'd finally see what was right in front of you."

There it was. The truth she'd been dancing around for years.

"This was never about us having an arrangement," I said. "This was about you waiting for me to get over Rosie?"

"Can you blame me?" Her mask slipped completely now, showing the raw desperation underneath. "I watched her destroy you when she left. I was there picking up the pieces. I thought... I thought eventually you'd realise that I'm the one who never left. I'm the one who stayed."

"Sarah—"

"But no. Instead, you fall for the first woman who challenges you, who makes you work for it. Someone who treats you like garbage and you still come running back." Her voice turned bitter. "At least Rosie had the decency to break things off cleanly. This one just lies and expects you to thank her for it."

"That's enough."

"Is it? Because from where I'm standing, you're making the same mistake twice. You're so desperate to prove you can commit that you're ignoring every red flag." She stepped closer, her perfume suffocating. "The lies, the secrets, the ex-boyfriend she lives with, the pregnancy she hid from you..."

"I said that's enough."

We stared at each other, the weight of years of misunderstood intentions hanging between us. I could see it now—how she'd interpreted every interaction, every moment of casual intimacy, as something more than it was. How she'd been building a future in her head while I'd been marking time. "I'm sorry," I said finally. "For not seeing what this meant to you. That wasn't fair."

Something softened in her expression, hope flickering. "Jackson—"

"But threatening to ruin my company, to destroy my reputation... that crossed a line, Sarah. You know that."

The hope died. "I was angry. People say things they don't mean when they're hurt."

"Do they?"

She looked away, unable to meet my eyes. "I wouldn't have actually done any of it."

"Wouldn't you?"

The silence stretched between us until she finally looked back up at me. "What do you want me to say, Jackson? That I'm sorry? Fine. I'm sorry I threatened you. I'm sorry I fell for someone who was never going to love me back. I'm sorry I wasted years of my life hoping you'd wake up and see what was right in front of you."

"Sarah—"

"But I'm not sorry about tonight."

The change in her tone made me tense. "What do you mean?"

Her smile was sharp as glass now, all traces of vulnerability gone. "You can pretend the past doesn’t exist, Jackson. But the past has a way of showing up."

Before I could ask what she meant, she was already walking away, her heels clicking on the stone path.

I looked toward the main garden, toward the fountain lit with soft golden light. A figure in a dark dress stood with her back to me, her posture too familiar to mistake.

My blood turned to ice. Rosie.

After five years, she was here. In my life again, just when everything with Bella was getting complicated enough. I looked back toward the bar where Bella was still talking with Jesse, still laughing, still unaware that my past had just walked back into our present.

And I had no idea what the hell I was going to do about it.