27
Lila
Is he flipping kidding me?
The question had been grinding through my head since Jackson admitted there were things he still couldn’t tell me. After seventeen years, he had finally given me part of the truth and somehow expected part to be enough.
I stood among half-open boxes in my new living room and watched him hold our daughter for the first time. Anger should have been easy while I looked at him. Instead, the expression on his face kept cutting through it.
He held Jade like he couldn’t quite believe she was real.
The wonder there was so open it hurt to witness, because suddenly every year between then and now had weight.
Birthdays and fevers, scraped knees and school projects, all the ordinary pieces of a childhood he had never known existed.
I had spent years telling myself his absence mattered more than whatever he had missed because leaving had been his choice.
Watching him with her, I could no longer pretend the loss had belonged only to us.
Jade pulled away first, eyes still damp. Something tentative had softened her expression when she glanced at me. “I’m gonna head to my room and unpack a little,” she said. “Let you guys talk.”
My chest tightened, but she deserved the chance to step away from the wreckage the adults had made of her afternoon. I nodded. “Thank you, baby.”
She looked back at Jackson before heading down the hall. “We can talk more tomorrow?”
His face softened. “Yeah, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
The certainty in her answer landed on both of us. Then she disappeared into her room, leaving Jackson and me alone with seventeen years of unfinished business.
I folded my arms over myself, needing something between his explanations and the part of me that still remembered too much about him. “Is your explanation just gonna piss me off more, Jacks?” I asked. “Or is it going to make this situation worse? Will it actually answer any of my questions?”
He came close enough to settle his hands on my shoulders. The touch was warm, careful, and horribly familiar. “I don’t know if it’s gonna make you more pissed, Princess,” he said. “But it’ll be honest. Come sit.”
I let him steer me toward the couch because my legs felt less reliable than my temper. Jackson lowered himself onto one knee in front of me and immediately betrayed the pain he was trying to hide.
“Jacks, I forgot, dammit, you’re still healing. Get off the damn floor and sit on the couch.”
“Nah, Princess.” He stayed where he was, stubbornness apparently surviving gunshots intact. “Need you lookin’ me in the eyes when I tell you this. Need you to really see me. Now hush and listen.”
I glared at him. “Stubborn old jackass as usual.”
That crooked grin appeared for a heartbeat. “You know it, Princess.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Never.”
He said it as if the years between us had never happened, and my heart was stupid enough to remember how that name used to sound when I still believed he would always be there.
The humor left his face. “First and foremost,” he said, “what happened at the lake that night…”
His palm cupped my cheek, thumb moving once across my skin. The tenderness hurt more than I wanted it to.
“It was real. Every moment. Best night of my life. Most important night of my life. Every word I said to you, I meant.”
My throat closed around everything I could have thrown back at him.
“I had every intention of coming back to you the next day after I dropped you off. But after I left, I got a text from Tiny, one of the prospects. Said he needed my help with somethin’.
So I headed over there.” His jaw tightened.
“When I got there, I went lookin’ for him and walked past an office where I heard a conversation I had no business hearing.
Heard information I should not have heard.
Information that could’ve gotten me in a lot of trouble. Maybe killed.”
The details were thin enough to frustrate me, but the danger in his face wasn’t.
“And if you’d been caught bein’ with me, your world would’ve been destroyed.”
My hands curled together in my lap. He had built an entire life-changing decision around what might happen to me and never once let me into it.
“I knew you,” he said. “Knew you wouldn’t just accept ‘we can’t be together.’ Knew you’d fight me on it. So I did the only thing I knew would keep you safe from me.”
I already knew what came next. Hearing him say it still hurt.
“I left,” he said.
There it was. Two words carrying years of rage.
His gaze dropped briefly. “I didn’t know you were pregnant, baby. God…” He dragged a hand over his mouth. “If I’d known…”
“I could have gone with you.”
His eyes snapped to mine, and he closed both hands around mine. “And take you away from your family?” he asked quietly. “I couldn’t do that to you.”
“You didn’t get to decide that.”
“I know.”
“No.” I pulled one hand free. “No, I don’t think you do. You don’t get to stand here now and tell me you made some noble sacrifice for me when what you actually did was take my choice away.”
His expression tightened, but he took it.
“You loved your family,” he said. “You needed them. Your mama was your best friend. They were your whole world.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Jackson got to his feet, discomfort flashing across his face before frustration buried it. “It means I couldn’t put a wedge between you and them,” he said. “Couldn’t make you choose between me and your family. So I didn’t make you choose. I left.”
I surged up from the couch hard enough to bump the coffee table. “You didn’t have the right to take that choice away from me.” My voice shook with seventeen years of living inside the decision he had made for me. “That was my choice to make. Mine alone. You had no right.”
My fists struck his chest before sense caught up, once and then again. Jackson caught my wrists against him, firm enough to stop me without hurting me.
“If I hadn’t taken that choice away,” he said, voice rough now, “you wouldn’t have had those last years with your mama.”
Everything inside me went still.
His hold loosened. “You would’ve been gone somewhere on some base,” he said. “In hiding. No contact with your family. And then Rose would’ve died, and you wouldn’t have been there. She wouldn’t have gotten to know our daughter.”
The words found the one wound I could never defend against.
I hated him for saying it. Worse, I could see the life he meant: Mom dying while I was somewhere I couldn’t reach her, Jade growing up without those years with the grandmother who had adored her. Maybe Jackson had been right about what leaving with him would have cost.
That still didn’t make the choice his.
My hands slipped free of his as I backed away. “That’s not fair, Jacks,” I whispered. “That’s cruel and not fair.”
“It might not be fair, Princess,” he said. “But it’s true.” His voice roughened. “I hate it. I hate that I didn’t get all those years with our girl. I hate that I wasn’t here to help you through what your mama was goin’ through. I hate that I wasn’t here for Rose.”
Tears blurred the boxes and bare walls around me.
“But I am damn happy Rose got to know Jade,” he continued. “For the time she had with her. I loved that woman. She had a heart of gold. She took me in, saw somethin’ in me nobody else did. And I miss her every damn day.”
The grief in his voice stripped away whatever answer I might have had. Mom had loved Jackson too. She had fed him, defended him, and made room for him in our family long before either of us understood what we would become.
“I saw it too,” I whispered.
Jackson came up behind me and drew me against his chest. I should have resisted. Instead, exhaustion won for one aching moment, and I let myself remember how safe those arms once felt.
“I know you did, baby,” he murmured into my hair. “’Cause you’re just like your mama.”
That nearly broke me.
I pulled away before grief could blur into forgiveness.
Understanding why he had left changed the shape of the wound, but it didn’t erase what he had done.
He had protected me by taking my future out of my hands, then carried the reason alone while I lived with the consequences.
Even now, more remained hidden. I could see it whenever his answers reached the edge of whatever secret he still guarded.
“Okay,” I said once I trusted my voice. “I think it’s time for you to go. I’ve gotta call my dad before he storms back over here. I do not need another showdown between you, him and Matty.”
A smirk tugged at his mouth. “I could take ’em.”
The idiot had been shot, punched, and nearly killed, yet confidence remained untouched. “You have bullet holes in you. Or did you forget?”
He leaned close enough for his breath to warm my ear. “Baby,” he murmured, “when I’m around you, I forget just about everything other than the feel of your body under my hands.”
Heat rushed through me before outrage could catch it. “Jacks. Our daughter is in the other room.”
His chuckle held enough wickedness to make seventeen years vanish from my body’s memory. “Tell me, baby, how do families get to havin’ multiple kids?”
“Out.” I planted both hands against his chest, mindful of his injuries despite wanting to launch him through the door. “Time for you to go.”
He laughed and let me herd him toward the exit. “You can push me out tonight,” he said, still grinning, “but I’m comin’ back tomorrow.”
“I already told you I won’t stop you from seeing your daughter.”
The look he gave me had very little to do with fatherhood.
“If you think it’s just my daughter I’m comin’ here for, woman,” he said, “you’ve got another thing comin’.”
Before I could answer, he cupped the back of my neck and kissed me.
Hard. Certain. Familiar enough to turn my anger useless for one dangerous moment. My hands caught in his shirt before my brain remembered every reason they shouldn’t be there. When he drew back, my pulse was everywhere.
“Night, Princess,” he said, rough amusement threaded through his voice. “Dream of me, like I always dream of you. And make sure you lock this door behind me.”
Then he walked away as if he hadn’t just blown another hole through the emotional wreckage of my day.
A muffled giggle came from the hallway.
Jade stood there with one hand over her mouth and absolutely no shame in her sparkling eyes.
I narrowed mine. “What exactly are you laughing at?”
She lowered her hand, innocence failing before she even attempted it. “Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just that you are in so much trouble.”
I stared at her.
Her grin widened. “That man is absolutely going to be a problem for you, and honestly? I’m kind of here for it.”
“Jade.”
She was enjoying this far too much. “And Guncle Evan,” she added, pointing down the hall like she was announcing a prophecy, “is one hundred percent going to bring popcorn.”
I let my head fall back against the wall. “Dear God.”
Her laughter filled the apartment, warm and alive after an afternoon that had given her far too many reasons to cry. For that sound alone, I could survive the rest of this mess.
I pushed away from the wall. “I have to make a phone call before your grandfather sends in the cavalry.”
Jade’s delight followed me toward the kitchen. “You should probably also prepare for Guncle Evan to enjoy this way too much, because I’m making a call of my own,” she sang out.
“Not helping,” I called back.
“Very much helping,” she said.
Judging by the joy in her voice, Evan probably already had the popcorn ready.