36. Jackson
THIRTY-SIX
Jackson
I made dinner knowing she wouldn’t eat it. Which sounds like an asshole thing, but now that I know there’s an issue, I need to test her boundaries. See where things are so I can figure out the best way to approach her. My original plan was to push her for answers, but something in my gut held me back, a whisper telling me if I confront her too quickly, she’ll take it as an accusation. Lash out instead of listen and build up barriers that I can’t break through.
It’s the same thing I did as a kid when people tried to ask me about my father.
So, instead of my original plan, I follow her lead, allowing her to shift the conversation until it lands on my issues.
There’s nothing I want to talk about less than my past. But I can tell by the look in Blakely’s eyes and the bite in her tone that if we don’t, it will just be this thing that festers between us, growing until it pushes us so far apart, there’s no chance of finding our way back.
If opening up and trusting her is what needs to happen, I’ll do it.
How can I ask it of her if I don’t do it myself?
We sit on the couch, my fingers tracing the outline of hers as I try to figure out where to start. She asked about Lee, but there’s this tugging in the middle of my body, drawing up earlier times, urging me to start at the beginning. To get it all out now, so she has the whole picture. So there’s nothing left of mine she needs to discover.
“My dad died when I was sixteen.”
Blakely’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline, but she stays quiet.
“Here in California, actually. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when .”
“He was sick, right?” she asks.
I nod. “Yeah. Had been for a while. Since I was thirteen.” I swallow around the emotion lodging in my throat. “Multiple myeloma—cancer of the blood. I couldn’t believe it. Not him. Not my dad. He was a damn Marine, was trained in the toughest of conditions. Had fought in wars, you know? I didn’t—” My voice breaks. “I didn’t understand how someone like him, someone so strong, could get so sick.”
A small laugh bubbles out of me, remembering how naive I was back then.
Blakely smiles, her fingers squeezing mine. “You really worshiped him, huh?”
My free hand reaches up, tangling in the chain of my necklace. “Yeah.” I nod. “He was my hero.”
“I can tell.”
“Anyway, he told me he was gonna fight. And he did. He fought like hell…and he won, just like I knew he would. A year later he was in remission. The relief, Blake—” I whoosh out a breath. “I can’t even tell you what that felt like.”
“I can’t imagine,” she says.
“But six months before I turned sixteen it came back, and this time it was too fast. Too aggressive.”
The base of my throat swells, the pain of remembering what he went through—what we all went through—making my nostrils flare from the burn. “They gave him two options: go home on hospice and die in peace or continue to fight and most likely die painfully, bleeding out in a hospital bed.”
Blakely sucks in a breath, her hand covering her chest. “Oh my god, Jackson. That’s awful.”
I nod, running my tongue over my teeth. “I begged him to fight. But I saw the light in him dim with every dialysis treatment, with every time they shoved a chemo pill down his throat and told us none of it was doing a goddamn thing.” My jaw clenches. “And he was tired . So, at some point, you have to choose—quality of life or quantity?” I swallow. “Besides that, I could see the guilt eating him alive every time a new hospital bill showed up in our mailbox.”
“You didn’t have insurance?”
“We did. But the VA is a wreck and cancer is expensive.”
She sucks on her lip, her brows drawing in. I don’t expect her to understand struggles for money when money is all she’s ever known, but I’m thankful for her listening either way.
“So, he came home?”
I bob my head. “He came home. At that point, he was too weak to work in the garage with me, but he’d come out there, just…sitting in the sun and listening to me work.” I envision him on our cracked driveway, his eyes closed and his face smooth, finding peace in his choices. Accepting that he was about to leave us forever. “I was so mad at him. I avoided being home because I couldn’t stand the sight of him.”
My hand pulls out his dog tags from under my shirt, my palm pressing into the metal. “And then on my sixteenth birthday, while I was at the skate park with my friends, I got a phone call from my mom. He had died.” I purse my lips, choking back the sting of tears. “I wasn’t there, of course.” Regret ebbs and flows like a wave inside of me and I shake my head. “Three months later, my mom packed us up and moved us to Sugarlake, Tennessee.”
“And that’s where you met Alina?” She hesitates on her name.
“Yep.” I sigh, a small smile crawling on my face. “She pranced onto my porch and shoved her mama’s banana bread into my hands. I was a dick to her because I was just…buried in my grief.” I shrug. “But then a few days later, her neighbor Chase came around. And he, well—Chase saved me from myself, I guess.” The middle of my chest throbs from old wounds that never healed. “I doubt he knows it though.”
“How’d he save you?” Blakely asks.
“By being the asshole that he was.” I laugh. “He was so damn broody. He didn’t pry, never asked questions. Didn’t push me to deal with things I wasn’t ready to face. But he showed up in my yard every day and sipped on the beer I convinced Sandra from the corner store to buy us, and just kept me company.” I chew on the inside of my cheek. “He gave me friendship when I had nothing, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”
As I continue purging my past while Blakely listens, my feelings shift and change, my memory being lent a new perspective.
“So, this guy Chase, he cheated on her and now they’re back together?” Blakely asks after I finish.
I nod. “Pretty much.”
“And he was your best friend.”
“Yep.” I smack my hands on my legs.
“So, okay, I’m sorry.” Her palm cups her forehead, her eyes squeezing shut. “You’re telling me that you were there for this girl for years, held her up through the worst moments of her life. Meanwhile she was keeping major, life-changing things from you? And then she picked the guy who not only cheated on her and had it posted all over social media, but broke both of your hearts?”
My chest spasms. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“And she just…expected you to be okay with it?” Blakely crosses her arms and huffs, her back smacking against the couch cushions. “No offense, Jackson, but she sounds like a bitch.”
I cringe. “No. She’s amazing.”
Blakely scoffs.
“She is. She’s just…not meant for me.”
Blakely’s teeth bite on the left corner of her lip, and she glances down before peering at me through her lashes. “And you’re okay with that?”
“If I wasn’t, then I wouldn’t be here with you.”
I’m not 100 percent honest when I say it. I am over my heartbreak. Being with Blakely has opened my eyes to all the ways it’s possible to feel for another person, ways that I never had with Lee. But it doesn’t change the fact that, at least at first, I used Blakely as a distraction to get through the heartache. To bathe in her attention, while I tried to wash away the pain of not being anyone else’s choice.
And now…
I forgive Lee. But the thought of Chase is like friction on a rug burn.
It drives me insane knowing he’s slipped effortlessly back into place, like he didn’t disappear for the better half of a decade. And maybe, my hurt and anger isn’t so much over the fact that Lee didn’t choose me as it is that no one did. They were both integral to me, but to them, I was just insurance. The spare tire that’s kept around just in case .
And that’s one hell of a pill to swallow.
“Are they why you moved to Cali full-time?” Blakely’s voice pulls me out of my thoughts.
I shrug. “It makes more sense for me to be out here, especially working for your dad. Easier to accomplish everything I came to do.” I wink, trying to lighten the mood.
She cocks her head, smiling. “And what is it that you want to accomplish, Jackson Rhoades?”
“Right now?” I lean in, ghosting a kiss across her lips. “I can think of plenty of things.”
She laughs and it lights up my insides.
Slapping my chest, she pecks my mouth, her hand scratching at the stubble on my jaw. “I’m serious.”
“I just want my cars in the movies. That’s what my dad always dreamed of. What we always talked about.”
The corner of her eyes crinkle. “Well, you’re already doing that.”
“This is true.” My palm slides up her thigh, pushing her back until she’s flat against the couch, my body leaning over hers, my nose skimming along the expanse of her neck. Heat spreads through me.
“Are we done talking now?” I whisper, my breath causing goose bumps to sprout along her skin.
She tilts her head to the side, my cock hardening as I drop my hips between her legs.
“Yeah,” she gasps. “We’re done talking.”
“Thank God .” Our lips fuse together, my heart cracking open, happiness filling every cell.
I told her everything. And she’s still here.
She’s still choosing me.