Chapter Eighteen
Linden
I’m sobbing so hard by the time I pull back into my driveway, I can hardly see Jack pacing back and forth in front of my house.
Before I even park, he’s at my door and pulling me out of the car. I collapse in his arms and let my tears soak his shirt.
“If they can do this, they can take her from me,” I cry.
“That won’t happen. It won’t.”
“You don’t know that. They can do anything!”
“Linden, look at me.” His hands cradle my face, forcing me to look up at him. “She is your daughter. They can’t have her. No judge in their right mind would take custody from you.”
“One of them was willing to create a grandparent’s rights custody agreement.”
“Two hours. Twice a week. That’s not the same as taking her out of your custody.”
“This is only the beginning,” I warn ominously, and he doesn’t even bother denying it.
He doesn’t know about the bedroom they’re hiding in their mansion fit for Avery, but I do. I can’t stop thinking about what it implies.
“What can I do to make this more bearable for you? Can I make you something to eat? Do you need a punching bag? Anything.”
“Nothing will make this easier,” I utter brokenly.
“I know,” he admits, looking more unsure than I’ve ever seen him. He really doesn’t know how to handle emotions from someone like me.
“I want you to tell me something.”
He stiffens. “About what?”
“Something about you.”
He rubs at the crease between his brows as if my question has truly stumped him.
“You’re a closed book… And it’s not my place to demand answers. But I just want to know something about the man who keeps rescuing me,” I whisper against his chest, and his arms tighten around me.
“I played baseball in school.”
Surprisingly, despite my sour mood, a smile pulls at my lips as I look up at him. “I bet you were good.”
The corner of his mouth curls upward slightly. “I was alright.”
“Did you want to play in college?”
“No. No college.” He takes my hand and pulls me over to my porch steps, forcing me to sit, and leaving just enough room for him to sit beside me. “After my parents died, I lost a lot of my optimism for life. Playing baseball seemed ridiculous when there was no one left in the stands to support me.”
“It was just you and your parents? No siblings?” I ask hesitantly. It seems if I keep with questions far in his past, I might keep getting answers.
“No siblings. My parents met at a conference in D.C., and nine months later, I was born. Luckily, it worked out, because they were soulmates. They were never apart after that. They even left this world together.” He shakes his head at the thought.
“Jack O’Connor, that almost sounds romantic.”
A small dimple forms in his cheek that’s facing me, and my lips part in surprise. I’ve known him all this time and didn’t know he had dimples.
“They were romantic people. I grew up with a lot of love in my house, just like you’re doing for Avery.”
“We don’t have much, but I know I can give her a good life.”
“You are. All of this bullshit will be over soon.”
There it is again. Those cryptic promises he keeps making.
“Can I tell you something that might make you angry?”
He tips his head to look at me with curiosity brewing.
“It’ll only make you angry for me, not at me.”
“I could never be angry at you, Linden. You could never do anything to warrant that.”
Grief stirs in my gut for the girl that endured so much of a man’s anger. Turner was angry at me for everything, even the things that I had no control over.
I never deserved it, but it rewired my brain. It will take me a long time to be brave enough to stand up for myself, and not to cower.
I wrap my hand around Jack’s bicep and rest my head against his shoulder.
“I was four weeks postpartum the first time that Turner yelled at me. Like true, uncontrollable screaming. I couldn’t believe it because he had never treated me that way, but my hormones were going wild, and I assumed he was stressed.
He dropped Avery into her bassinet so hard, I cried, and that made it worse.
She was okay, but it infuriated him that I reacted that way.
” Jack’s muscle is tense beneath my hand, but I keep going.
“He admitted that he was never meant to be a dad, and that it was my fault that we got pregnant. When I asked him how, because it was an accident, the condom broke… He admitted that he lied. He took it off without telling me because he was drunk, and I should have been on birth control like ‘every other college whore’,” I quote.
Jack launches up from his seat and starts pacing in front of me, swiping his hand through his hair roughly before righting his hat. “That isn’t right. He took advantage of you.”
“I know.”
“You should have told someone!”
I shrug. “Who could I tell? We were already married at that point, and my situation was the same as it is now. His family owned me. I had a newborn baby without any place to go, no job, no childcare. I was stuck.”
“You could have told me,” he says under his breath. “If I had known you then, I would have gotten you out.”
He’s so serious, I have to believe it, but the past is in the past. There’s no changing it now.
“Yeah, where were you three and a half years ago?” I tease, trying to lighten the mood.
“The Middle East, probably.”
Our eyes clash, but I know it would be wasted breath to ask him any follow-up questions. So, I don’t.
“Tell me something else. About when you were a kid,” I say instead.
He finally joins me back on the steps, breathing deeply as he thinks. He takes his hat in his hands, rubbing his thumb absently over the middle where a team emblem would go… Except now that I look closely, I can see that it might’ve been there once, but it’s gone and faded instead.
“I grew up outside of Boston. We moved to South Dakota when I was 11.”
“Oh, wow. Why?”
He shakes his head, shutting down that question, and I sigh.
“That one isn’t really a secret. Just not something I like to talk about.”
“Okay,” I relent, respecting his boundaries.
Just because I’m an open book doesn’t mean he has to be.
“The Boston Red Sox were my favorite team growing up. When I was still a naive kid, I thought I’d play in the MLB one day,” he admits listlessly.
“I’ve never been to a professional baseball game.”
“You’d love it. It’s easy to follow. The crowd roars. You’d fit right in. Avery would love it too,” he says confidently, making me smile.
“When’s the last time you went to a game?”
“Long time ago.”
The way he says it makes me think he really means a lifetime ago.
We sit in comfortable silence for a while because I’m stuck in limbo. I don’t want to go inside and pretend everything is okay. All I want to do is count down the minutes until I can get Avery.
Jack seems to understand that, not bothering to try to sway me from this spot.
Every time I get the notion that it might be safe enough for me to skip town with my daughter, something like this happens and reminds me that I’m fighting a losing battle.
Years ago when I started my plan to leave Turner, I was determined to be gone and settled into my new life by the time Avery started preschool. Now we’re months away from her turning four, and I’m still trapped.
There are no schools in Twinflower, and I can’t afford to live or send her to school in Noddingbell. And I definitely don’t want a single handout from her grandparents.
All I wanted for Avery was a decent home, a good school, and a place where she would make so many friends that she didn’t miss her lack of family.
That dream seems out of reach at this point.
My phone alarm rings, and Jack looks at me as I silence it. “I knew if I didn’t set an alarm that I would be constantly checking the time.”
“It’s still a little early.”
“It’ll take me 15 minutes to get there, and I don’t want to rush. I want to be sitting outside waiting right when their visit is supposed to be over.” I stand up and dust my shorts off, and Jack follows.
“I’ll fire up the grill and have a steak waiting for Avery when she gets home. Call me if they give you any trouble,” he states seriously, looking at me from under the brim of his hat with his arms folded over his chest.
He’s still such a mystery. Closed off in so many ways but always rescuing me like he can’t help it. Like the possibility of letting me struggle has never occurred to him.
And yet, when I take a step closer and rest my palm over his taut forearms, his whole posture stiffens.
“I know that my overly affectionate nature makes you uncomfortable… So I won’t force another hug on you, or anything like that.
Not until you want me to.” I grip his shirt in my fingers, just above his chest, and use it to loft me to my tiptoes.
“But just so you know,” I whisper against his ear. “I could kiss the shit out of you right now.”
My grasp releases as I stride away from him, and I don’t look back until I’m tucked behind my steering wheel.
He’s standing motionless in the same spot, staring at the air I just existed in.
When I start my engine, though, his gaze snaps to mine, and a surprised gasp escapes me.
He’d better get his grill going pronto, because that man is starving.