Chapter 15 #2
Ben stays so hyper-focused on his breakfast that, a few minutes later, he doesn’t even notice someone approaching the table until a voice booms out.
“Morning, sunshines!”
He startles, glancing up to find a guy with decidedly himbo energy looming above them with a coffee pot in hand. Ben’s pretty sure he’s seen him around the weight room at the gym. The name tag on his apron reads ‘Billy,’ and he tops off Jackson’s mug without asking.
“Didn’t expect to see you out this early, JJ.”
JJ?
Jackson lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Morning, Billy.”
Billy gives Ben a quick once-over, then grins at Jackson, overly curious, just a little too perceptive. And that’s when the realization hits Ben: the hour, his uncombed hair, the rumpled clothes. He probably looks exactly like someone who spent the night.
Which, technically, he did.
Next to him, Jackson doesn’t seem the least bit bothered.
Billy’s grin swings back toward Ben, sunny and unrelenting. “Morning, new face. I’m Billy.”
“Ben,” he says, aiming for polite. It doesn’t quite clear the bar.
“Nice to meet you, Ben. Any friend of Jackson’s is welcome here.” Billy’s emphasis on friend contains about five layers of implication Ben is too flustered to correct. Billy barrels cheerfully onward before he can even try.
“Oh, hey, any luck yet with those weird fish?”
Ben blinks. Weird fish? He shoots a questioning look at Jackson. His mind grabs at something from the interview.
“Still working on it,” Jackson says, voice mild but a little clipped, his eyes suddenly fixed on his coffee.
Billy, oblivious to the shift in atmosphere, punches Jackson in the shoulder, hard enough to make him wince.
“Well, keep me posted. I’ve got money on it being some kind of government thing.
Or aliens.” He beams at Ben, letting him in on the joke.
“Although, I think JJ might be one of the space invaders. It would explain some things.”
Ben forces a smile, unsure what to do with any of that.
Satisfied with his exit line, Billy breezes off with the coffee pot to top off the fishermen at the counter, humming cheerfully as he goes.
Ben watches him disappear into the back, then slowly turns to Jackson. “What was that about? With the fish? I hadn’t even thought about…”
Jackson’s posture shifts, just slightly, but enough for Ben to feel the space open between them.
“Our fish?” Ben asks, heart picking up speed. Ben thought this was about waste. Oh, God, was there something wrong with their product? “Is that why you came to Whitaker Seafood?”
“Ben—”
“You said you wanted to help me,” Ben whispers. He hates how naive he sounds.
Jackson leans back, gaze turning out the window, expression unreadable. Closed off in a way that makes Ben’s chest tighten. “You’re worried I’m going to fuck you over for a headline,” he says flatly.
Ben doesn’t deny it. He can’t. There’s a low thrum of panic starting in behind his ribs, quiet but insistent, like something in him is already preparing to take the hit.
Jackson sighs, the sound resigned, weary. “You’re not wrong to wonder. You’ve given me more than enough to take you apart, if that’s what I wanted. A questionable disposal contract and your name all over it.”
The words fall between them like a wall. Not cruel, just true. Terrifying. Because Jackson’s right. Ben’s given him too much. More than he should have.
And still, he wants to believe he was right to trust Jackson.
Jackson seems to see it.
“I’ll tell you something I don’t usually share.
” Jackson’s voice stays quiet, but the weight behind it shifts, denser now, stripped of any irony.
“Back in Boston, I had a lead come across my desk, practically dropped in my lap: big charity, LGBTQIA+ youth nonprofit, serious allegations against the director. Embezzlement. Fraud. The evidence I was handed looked airtight.”
Jackson stares through the harbor, through the morning, slipping back to a time he never really escaped. “I was tired, Ben. I was just so fucking tired. Burning out. Drowning in deadlines and the pressure to keep delivering.
“I didn’t dig deep enough. I reached out for an opposing quote, didn’t get a reply immediately, slapped on ‘has not responded to requests for comment as of publication.’ I certainly didn’t double-check the source the way I should have.
But I… I didn’t care, not enough; it was a good story, a hell of a hook, and I told myself it was clean enough to run. That it would hold.
“It blew up. Exploded across every outlet that syndicated us. Tanked the charity organization’s reputation in under forty-eight hours. And it should have felt great, but it didn’t. It took me too long to realize that the reason it didn’t feel right was because it wasn’t.”
He pauses. His jaw tightens.
“It was fake. All of it. Cooked up and handed to me on a silver platter by a bitter ex-employee. They used me, and I let it happen because I wanted to believe the worst.”
Jackson’s voice cracks slightly, not loud, just raw and devastated. Ben wants to reach for him, to offer something, anything, but Jackson’s so far inside it, it’s like he’s forgotten Ben is even there.
“By the time we printed the retraction a month later, it didn’t matter. The damage was done. Money went elsewhere. The charity folded not long after. And the director? He was clean. Honest. Just trying to help kids who needed it. I screwed that up, in about a dozen cynical little paragraphs.”
Jackson breathes into the silence that follows, steady but not effortless.
“That’s when the insomnia started,” he admits quietly. “Not out of guilt, exactly. Just… not knowing what kind of person I’d become.”
Ben doesn’t speak. He just listens, the way Jackson had listened to him the night before, without flinching or pulling away.
“My editor told me it was on all of us,” Jackson goes on, almost absently now. “But he didn’t care. Not really. He just moved on to the next thing that sold papers. Like it was just some sort of lesson for us. Like we didn’t break something forever.”
At last, he turns to Ben. There’s no defense left in him, just something wrecked and completely unguarded. “I could’ve stayed. But I knew the danger I’d become. I didn’t want to be that kind of journalist anymore.
“I’m not out to hurt you, Ben. I want the truth, but I’m not trying to sacrifice you to get to it.”
Jackson sits back in the booth, the spell around him shattered. This is a man who has learned to live without grace, from himself or anyone else.
Ben understands him at that moment. The breath-stealing ache of regret. The fear of who you really might be under pressure. The slow, painful work of trying to do better, be better.
He just doesn’t know how to say it. He doesn’t have Jackson’s command of language. So Ben says the only thing that comes to him. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Jackson laughs, incredulous. “What for, Ben? How could you possibly be sorry for this?”
“Just…that you had to go through it.”
Jackson’s mouth twists. “I didn’t go through it. I inflicted it.”
“Still,” Ben says. “Thank you. For telling me.”
Jackson goes very still. Ben catches the initial flicker of resistance, the self-protective flash of skepticism that moves across his face like a shadow. But then it fades. What’s left is quieter, softer in a way Ben hadn’t realized he’d been hoping for.
“Sure,” Jackson says, voice low. He’s the one who reaches out first, thumb skimming lightly over Ben’s knuckles. Fleeting as it is, Ben still feels it all the way down to his toes.
They finish breakfast in comfortable silence, the kind that suffuses rather than oppresses. When the waitress sets the bill down, Ben angles it toward himself.
“You covered me last night,” he says, already pulling out his wallet. “My turn.”
“Are we keeping score now?”
Ben shrugs, a grin forming. “It’s more of a sliding emotional scale. Whoever’s not having an existential crisis when the bill shows up has to pay.”
Jackson laughs under his breath. “High stakes, given the competition. What if neither of us qualify?”
“We’ll just have to take turns being functional,” Ben says, handing the receipt back with his card.
Jackson finishes the dregs of his coffee, grimacing slightly. “You always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Offer something back,” Jackson says, like he’s trying to work it out. “Even when you’re off-balance, you still try to meet people halfway.”
“Yeah, well, that policy has had some… mixed returns.” Ben shifts in his seat, a little embarrassed.
Jackson’s eyes stay steady on his. “For what it’s worth, I meant what I said earlier. I’m not out to try to hurt you.”
“I know,” Ben says softly, gathering his things.
Against every anxious instinct telling him to brace for impact, he believes it.