Maybe, just maybe

by Emmel1118

Start just after the episode Locked Away. 'If his love could survive all that had gone before, maybe, just maybe, there was a chance, however slim, that he would forgive her and let her back into his life.' Jac/Joseph

20. Chapter 20 Breaking Apart

Chapter 20 Breaking apart

3 months later

All this time and Jac still hurt; still ached from his words. She saw him, walking in with Faye, Faye who didn't know the truth, that her man had cheated on her again, but if it was what Joseph wanted she wouldn't ruin it by telling Faye what had happened. She just had to grit her teeth and bare it. Get on with working while inside she was breaking, bit by bit, but she was and nothing would stop her decline, except from him, and his love.

He had made excuses not to talk to her, not to be near her. He almost ran away from her every time she came near. She had been so naïve that he would be different from the rest of them, that he wouldn't hurt her, like all the people she had loved before. She had thought he was different, that he wouldn't hurt her, but in a way he had ended up hurting her more than she had hurt him. What she had done was a moment of madness, of complete and utter self-preservation that she would regret for the rest of her days, whereas what he had done was lie to her and then lead her on just to break her heart in the morning. The first time she had understood his mortified reaction, they'd both been dead drunk, and lonely. They had found comfort in each other in their drunken states and then he had regretted it in the morning, she could never regret a night with him. The second and third times had been even harder. He wasn't drunk those times. He had been stone cold sober, and still he had given himself to her. She probably would never know what had brought him to his house on those occasions. The first time he had told her that he didn't think he loved the woman he now lived and had a son with. The second time he had told her that he loved her, that he wouldn't leave because he loved her, but that hadn't stopped him in the morning, from breaking her heart.

She wondered where he was now, in Faye's arms? God it hurt so much, and it was getting harder to bear, each day the torture dragged on. She would forever be in love with a man who had, it seemed, forgotten the fact that she loved him.