Chapter 41 Jackson
Jackson
The night heaves around Jackson. The wind is still one minute, gusty the next, nicking his face from different directions, wringing the necks of the pine trees—sooty against the night sky—that line the walk to the pond.
He can’t believe he’s out here, but he couldn’t stand it one second longer.
He tried to call Ethan late last night, as Ethan had requested, but Abigail answered, her voice brittle over the line. “Swifts.”
Jackson’s tongue fumbled in his mouth. Should he hang up? But what if she pressed *69, dialed him back?
“Yes, hi, is Ethan available?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Jackson. Ford. We’ve met a few times. Hi.”
“Yes,” she said plainly.
“I’m a local decorator, and I told your husband I’d try and refer some clients his way.”
At this, she warmed, her voice whirring like cotton candy spinning in a vat at the county fair. “Oh, hi, Jackson! Forgive me! Long night. Just finished with the dishes. But I’m sorry, Ethan’s out.”
Jackson’s heart plummeted. Had he waited too long to call? Could he be out with Ethan right now if he’d just called half an hour earlier?
“No problem! Just tell him I called. He’s got my number. My business card, I mean.” Hang up the phone, Jackson, before you screw this up.
“Will do! So lovely to talk! He’ll be so happy you rang!”
Jackson stirred in his living room for the rest of the night, debating going to Sullivan’s to see if Ethan was there. But Ethan could’ve called him from the pay phone. No, he didn’t want to look desperate.
Like he does right now, traipsing through the Swifts’ pasture, hunting for signs of life.
Ethan’s truck is parked out front, and like the other evening, the house is darkened, curtains drawn, cloaked.
Jackson phoned a few hours ago, but the line just rang and rang.
Call me later tonight. I have to see you again. Soon as possible.
Ethan’s words from yesterday are what drew him out here, hoping that, like last Sunday night, he’d be by the pond, sipping whiskey.
Jackson’s halfway to the water when a crow caws at him, causing him to start.
He turns back to look at the house, making sure the ruckus hasn’t stirred the occupants.
But the house lies dormant, asleep. Ethan’s probably inside, snoozing next to his wife; Jackson entertains the juvenile thought of sneaking up to their bedroom window, softly pelting it with pebbles, then realizes that might get him shot dead.
It’s pitch-black out, only a sliver of moon and a few stars straining from behind the clouds in the crushed-velvet sky, and Jackson can just make out the footpath encircling the pond.
As he crests the hill, the rickety dock comes into view, a postage-stamp-size square from where he’s standing.
There’s someone on it. Lying on it.
It must be Ethan.
Jackson has to suppress the urge to break out into a sprint.
He’s ready to get on that dock, do what they did the other night. And more.
But as he gets closer and it comes into clearer view, it’s not Ethan he sees at all.
It’s Abigail.
Naked from the waist up, full breasts glowing in the sieved moonlight, her dress pooled around her hips. She arches her back as she grinds over someone underneath her.
Jackson gasps, scoots over to the tree line to take cover.
Fuck. He’s just walked up on Ethan having sex with his wife.
Tears bite his eyes; he hates himself for his wishful thinking: that Ethan and Abigail’s marriage is a farce, a sexless thing that Ethan is trying to escape.
And now he’s gotta find a way to creep back out of here, get away unnoticed.
Abigail is rocking even harder now, her face contorted with pleasure, her moans skidding across the water. Evidently, this woman’s feminine divine capacities are in full effect.
Jackson is transfixed. He can’t stop watching, though he knows he should, even as it cracks his heart, but he needs to watch.
Not for pleasure—this is not a turn-on to him; it’s torture—but in order to sear this into his brain.
That Ethan very much wants to have sex with his wife, is still evidently quite passionate about her.
Watching for a sec longer will help him get over it more quickly. This fantasy of him and Ethan.
He’s about to pull his eyes off Abigail when she wrenches Ethan up from the dock to kiss him, clasping the nape of his neck so forcefully, it’s like she’s riding a mechanical bull.
But it’s not Ethan who rises from the dock, straddled by Abigail.
It’s another man.
Long torso, lean back, a shock of short blond hair.
What the hell?
Jackson gasps for air a second time.
Sticking near the pines whose trunks bray in the breeze, he creeps closer to the dock to get a better view.
The pair is locked into a kiss, Abigail writhing faster, her form enveloped by the ropy arms of the man whose body thrashes against hers.
He can hear the man’s grunts, can see his bare ass against the slats, but can’t glimpse his face.
Shit.
He’s gotta get even closer.
He takes advantage of the swell of sound between them, the fury of the pace they’re keeping, and crunches over the carpet of pumpkin-colored pine needles that litter the ground.
As they unlatch their lips, the man turns his head ever so slightly in Jackson’s direction.
And Jackson gasps a third time, so audibly that he slaps his hand over his mouth to quiet himself.
Because he knows the man that Abigail is mounted on, is pleasuring with each jolt of her hips.
It’s Alexander, whose eyes are thankfully screwed shut, his hips continuing to sway as he jolts Abigail into ecstasy, her moan twisting into a full-throated cry.
Whirling around as fast he can, Jackson staggers along the edge of the forest, all but high-fiving the pine branches.
Dueling emotions swirl in his gut, joust in his mind.
First, elation. Because the man fucking Abigail isn’t his Ethan. Because Ethan’s wife is having a torrid affair on him, cheating. Their marriage is, indeed, a farce, the sexless thing that Ethan hinted about. Which means that what he and Ethan shared the other night was real.
The other emotion? Pure horror.
His best friend’s husband is fucking another woman.
And not just some other woman, but this woman—Abigail. The very bane of Charleigh’s existence.
How could Alexander do this to Charleigh?