“He barely knows me.”
“Fine. Maybe he’s not in love yet, but he’s headed that way. Guys don’t make promises about the future. That’s commitment, and guys run from commitment. He wouldn’t talk like that if he wasn’t really into you.”
“Look, I’m not going to make the same mistake I made with Parker and date a guy just because he’s hot.” The room suddenly felt confining, so Jess walked out onto the screened porch. “Believe me, that would be easy to do. I mean, Parker was hot, but Cord makes Parker seem like Antarctica. You should see him without a shirt on. We’re talking melt-your-contacts hot. And his eyes. They’re so blue you could swim in them. Every female guest we’ve had ends up flirting with him.”
“And you want to scratch their eyes out?”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But I don’t have to. Cord acts very professional with the guests. He said he wants me to know he’s not playing games.”
“Good gravy, Jess!”
“What?”
“Tell him you love him. Or at least tell him you like him a lot.”
“But I don’t. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain. We’re just—”
“If you say the word friends again, I’m going to hang up right now.”
“But—”
“Uh-uh. Don’t want to hear it.”
“Okay, I won’t say it. But don’t you see? When I got engaged to Parker—”
“Why do you keep going back to Parker?”
“I’m not going back. I’m learning from my past.”
“Parker ruined an entire year of your life. Don’t let him ruin the rest of it.”
“It wasn’t really Parker’s fault, you know. I’m the one who put him on a pedestal and pretended he was something he wasn’t.”
“Jessica, you need to hear this.” Laurel’s heavy sigh sounded in Jessica’s ear. “Parker was controlling and abusive. I never prayed for anything so hard in my life as I did for the two of you to break off that engagement.”
“Why…” The room spun, and Jessica’s throat swelled until she could barely speak. “Why didn’t you say this before?”
“I tried. But you wouldn’t listen. You had an excuse for everything he did. All the way up until you found out he wasn’t really a Christian. I swear, you would’ve married him if he hadn’t tried to make you drop your faith.”
Jess remembered the moment. Parker had expressed that he went to church only because it was necessary to impress certain people.
“I guess that did open my eyes.” Her voice sounded hollow.
“Thank God! I mean that, literally.”
“I remember the first time I refused to do something he asked for. His face turned so purple I thought he was going to explode. But he never hit me, Laurel.” Jess felt a desperate need to defend him.
“No. His abuse was verbal and emotional.”
“He never tried to push me into sleeping with him. We were together nine months.”
“That’s because he was cheating on you the entire time,” Laurel said, in a flat tone. “You ignored all the signs, but everyone knew he was doing it.”
Her stomach churned, threatening to expel her dinner. She collapsed onto a white wicker chair, gasping for air like she was on top of a high mountain peak.
“He didn’t yell at me.” Jess knew the argument was weak.
“He didn’t have to,” Laurel said. “When you first went out together, he was nice. But then he started putting you down and criticizing everything that made you special. He forced you to drop out of every activity you loved and change your friends and try to be something you weren’t, just to please him. And he belittled you for not doing a good enough job of changing. By the time he was finished, you were a shell of the Jessica I knew.”