40
Lila
Dinner was over, the apartment had gone quiet around the edges, and Jackson had disappeared.
That should have warned me.
Jade stood beside me at the kitchen counter, drying plates with the long-suffering expression of a teenager being forced into unpaid labor, while I rinsed casserole from the good spoon.
Water ran warm over my rubber gloves. Dishes clinked softly.
Twenty minutes earlier Jackson had been everywhere at once, teasing Jade through homework, reaching around me for plates, making himself at home in ways that should have irritated me more than they did.
Now there was nothing from down the hall.
“You know,” Jade said, attacking a plate with the dish towel, “for people who were being disgusting in the kitchen twenty minutes ago, you two are suspiciously well-behaved now.”
I snorted. “First of all, we were not disgusting.”
She gave me a look over the dish towel that made it clear she rejected both my version of events and my intelligence.
“Second,” I added, passing her another plate, “you are way too involved in my business.”
“I live here.”
“That does not make it your business.”
“It absolutely does when I have to see it.”
I laughed under my breath just as Jackson appeared in the doorway. He crossed the kitchen without a word, took the spoon from my hand, shut off the water, then reached for me.
I stared at our joined hands. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
There was humor in my voice, but his face had gone unusually calm. No wicked grin. No spark warning me he was about to say something outrageous. Just that quiet certainty he wore when he had already made a decision and the rest of us were several steps behind.
“C’mere,” he said.
I looked up at him. “Jackson.”
“Just trust me for a minute, Princess.”
Behind us, Jade gagged theatrically. “Please don’t make me witness foreplay and dish soap at the same time.”
He didn’t even turn. “Dry the damn pan, baby girl.”
Her laugh followed us into the hall.
Jackson kept my hand in his as he led me toward the bathroom. Curiosity got me moving, but there was something else in the set of his shoulders, something too quiet for this to be another attempt to flirt me into losing my mind. When he opened the bathroom door and stepped aside, I stopped.
Candles flickered along the counter and tub, throwing soft gold over a room I had never once thought of as pretty. Steam lifted from the bath. The clean, warm scent of bath salts filled the air, and on the closed toilet lid sat a folded towel with my tablet resting on top.
For a moment, I couldn’t say anything.
Jackson leaned against the frame, hands in his pockets now. All that size and confidence, and somehow he looked almost uncertain. “Thought it was past time somebody spoiled you a little.”
I turned to him. “You did all this?”
His mouth tipped. “Yeah.” He glanced toward the tub. “Drew the bath. Got those salts a couple days ago. Brought your tablet in here too so you could read.” Then his eyes came back to mine. “Figured you deserved a minute where nobody needed anything from you.”
That was what got me.
The candles were sweet. The bath was thoughtful. But that sentence found the part of me that had spent years being the person everybody needed and asked nothing from.
Jackson pushed off the frame and came closer without crowding me.
“I’m gonna go back and help Jade finish up,” he said.
“Spend a little more time with her, then I’ll head out for the night.
” His gaze stayed on mine. “I want you to relax, Princess. I know how much you work. I know how much has been on you lately. Me coming back into your life. Your dad. Matty. All of it.” He swallowed once. “I just want to take care of you.”
Nobody had ever said it to me quite like that, with no expectation attached.
I stepped into him before I could think better of it and wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing my forehead against his chest. His breath left him softly. Then his arms came around me, slow and careful, holding without squeezing too tight.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
His hand moved once up my back before he drew away enough to hook a finger under my chin.
“You don’t have to thank me, Princess.” His thumb brushed my jaw.
“I love you, and I want to take care of you. I’ve got a need to take care of you that runs bone deep, and I’ll find a way to prove it to you.
” He held my gaze through the part that mattered most. “I’m sorry.
And I promise we’ll work through this. We’ll work our way back to what we were starting. ”
My eyes burned. I blinked hard and managed, “I’m beginning to hope so.”
Something softened in his face before he kissed me.
Slow this time. Deep enough to make me lean into him, but patient, his mouth moving over mine without the urgency that usually turned every thought in my head to static. His hands slid over my sides and waist, settled at my back, and the tenderness of it undid me faster than heat ever could.
Just when I started to sink fully into him, he stepped back.
The sound that escaped me was embarrassingly needy.
Jackson chuckled, forehead nearly touching mine. “That’s not what I wanted for tonight, Princess. Take your bath. We got time for me to rock your world later.”
My jaw dropped. “So sure of yourself, are you?”
The wicked grin finally appeared. “Oh, you bet I remember the noises I could get you to make under me. Those memories got me through plenty of showers and lonely nights.”
“Jackson.” I shoved at his chest, fighting a smile. “Out. Our daughter is in the next room.”
He left laughing, and I stood there in the candlelight with my heart too full and my nerves humming.
The water was perfect.
I sank into the heat until my shoulders finally stopped trying to live somewhere near my ears. The bath salts smelled expensive and clean, and when I reached for my tablet, the quiet felt almost indulgent.
From down the hall came Jackson and Jade’s voices. I couldn’t make out every word, only the rhythm of them together. Jade shot something back sharp enough to make him laugh, and that big, easy sound traveled through the apartment and settled somewhere tender in me.
That was what felt like home.
Not the apartment. Them.
For years, Jade and I had filled every room just fine on our own.
I had never looked at our life and thought it lacked something because Jackson wasn’t in it.
We had built something good because we loved each other and because we had to.
Hearing him laugh with her now didn’t make those years smaller.
It added something I had stopped letting myself imagine.
That distinction mattered.
I opened my reading apps, remembered the upcoming cabin trip, and immediately decided Dad’s no-electronics rule did not apply to a tablet loaded with books. The woods could have me, but they were getting me with a full battery.
A few pay-per-chapter ads had tempted me lately until I started recognizing how many of those stories had been lifted from actual authors. Now, if something caught my attention, I searched the character names and premise until I found where the story really belonged.
The latest stolen version I’d seen had been called Reclaiming Lila. Before that came Losing Blue, which Evan had found hysterical for obvious reasons. I’d tracked both originals down, subscribed where the authors actually posted them, and downloaded them for the cabin.
If the next one featured a ridiculous biker named Deacon, I was throwing the tablet straight into the bath.
A few chapters later, someone knocked softly.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
Jade cracked the door open enough to lean against the frame. “Dad left. I’m gonna study a little more and then head to bed.”
I frowned. “He left?”
She shrugged. “Said you were supposed to relax and he wasn’t gonna push his luck.”
Warmth slipped through me before I could stop it. “Okay. Make sure you start on your history paper too.”
Her face fell immediately. “Already did. And let me tell you, if I ever need material to put me to sleep, capitalism versus communism would absolutely do it.”
I laughed. “History is not that bad.”
She looked at me like I had personally assigned the paper. “You say that like I didn’t just write three pages on economic ideology and want to walk into the sea.”
That got another laugh out of me before she disappeared down the hall.
I stayed in until the water cooled, then pulled the plug and watched it circle away beneath the candlelight. Jackson had left lotion beside the towel too, because apparently he had thought of everything. I reached my bedroom smelling faintly of lilac blossoms, my body soft enough to pour into bed.
I grabbed my phone and stared at his name for all of three seconds.
Lila: Thank you for the pampering session. I appreciated it.
His reply came almost immediately.
Jackson: You deserved it, just wish I coulda been in the tub with ya
I laughed and dropped back against the pillows.
Lila: Maybe next time?
The pause before his answer made me grin.
Jackson: Don’t tease, you suggest it and I will def make it happen
I bit my lip.
Lila: Who says I’m teasing?
Jackson: Princess you are starting a fire you won’t be able to put out
My pulse jumped.
Lila: I might be ready to burn
His answer appeared almost before I could lower the phone.
Jackson: Then get ready because you just started an inferno
Another message followed.
Jackson: And before I say something that’ll have me showin up at your door tonight, I need to tell you somethin. I talked to Matty yesterday.
I pushed up onto one elbow, the heat in me giving way to surprise.
Lila: You did?
Jackson: Yeah. I’m meetin him Friday at 3:30 at Harbor & Bean. I didn’t want you to think I was keepin secrets from you.
That mattered enough to make me sit up fully.
Lila: What are you meeting him about?
Jackson: Jude. The way he keeps turnin up around you. Somethin ain’t right and I don’t like it. Me and Matty are gonna look into it together.
I stared at the screen. A month ago, I might have bristled at both of them deciding to investigate something involving me. Tonight, Jude’s repeated appearances had stopped feeling easy to dismiss, and Jackson had told me what he was doing before I could discover it another way.
That mattered too.
Lila: Thank you for telling me instead of letting me hear about it later.
Jackson: I told you. No more keepin things from you if I can help it.
The words pressed against the one part of this I still couldn’t settle.
Lila: I appreciate it. And honestly... I’m glad you’re trying with him.
His answer took a little longer.
Jackson: Don’t get carried away. I ain’t doin it because we are suddenly best friends.
Jackson: I’m doin it because he loves you and I love you and that creepy little bastard is startin to piss me off.
Despite myself, I smiled.
Lila: He’s starting to creep me out too.
Jackson: Then me and Matty will handle it.
Jackson: Together.
I read that last word twice.
Lila: That actually makes me feel better.
Jackson: Good.
Jackson: Now go to sleep before I start talkin about that bath again and make us both miserable.
A laugh slipped out of me.
Lila: Goodnight, Jackson.
Jackson: Night, Princess
I set the phone on the bed beside me and let the quiet settle.
Jude still bothered me. Something about him had been wrong often enough that even I was done calling it coincidence. But Jackson had reached out to Matty, and Matty had agreed to sit across from the man he had spent years hating because they both cared what happened to me.
That should have been the thing I carried to sleep.
Instead, Jackson’s earlier message stayed with me.
No more keepin things from you if I can help it.
There it was again. If I can help it.
The doubt wasn’t about his love anymore. I believed that now, probably more than was safe. It lived in the way his face changed whenever Dad or Matty came up, in the anger he swallowed and the explanation that always seemed to stop one step before the end.
Something was still missing.
For months I had treated that missing piece like proof I needed to keep one foot outside whatever was rebuilding between us.
Except tonight he had drawn me a bath, cleaned my kitchen with our daughter, left when staying would have been easier, and called the brother who hated him because I was uneasy about another man.
None of it erased what he had done seventeen years ago.
It did make pretending I felt nothing increasingly ridiculous.
I had never really fallen out of love with Jackson.
I had learned to build a life around loving someone who wasn’t there, and I had built a good one.
That mattered. Choosing him now couldn’t be about filling some hole in me or pretending the years without him had been incomplete.
It had to be a choice made with my eyes open.
Now he was here, giving me reasons to make it.
I didn’t need to decide tonight whether everything between us could be repaired.
I needed the whole truth. What happened after he dropped me off that night.
Why my father’s name still put that look in his eyes.
What he thought he had been protecting me from.
Why Matty carried so much rage, and what Jackson still couldn’t make himself say.
Then we could decide what came next.
Dad would have feelings about it, and Matty and Jackson had years of anger to untangle.
Jackson would have to trust me enough to finish the story.
Jade, judging by the way she already called him Dad and teased him like she had known him forever, had apparently skipped several steps ahead of all of us.
For once, I wanted to catch up. I looked at Jackson’s name glowing on the screen and let myself smile, because we still had too much left to face before I could call us healed. But I was done pretending I didn’t want us to get there.