40. Jack
Chapter forty
Jack
“ Q uite the day you’ve had, boy.” My dad leaned against the kitchen counter, popping the tabs of two Pilsners. He held them out to cheer with me, and I clinked my own beer with his.
I hadn’t had a drink in months, but tonight felt like the occasion to celebrate. No way in hell I would tell anyone I was buzzed after two beers, though.
“Cheers to that.” I smiled.
Life was fucking crazy. If you had told me a year ago that I would be celebrating my wedding with my neighbor-turned-employee-turned-babymama-turned-wife, I’d have sent you to receive professional help. And my dad wholeheartedly voiced his agreement.
“Can’t say I would have ever pictured this life for you.” He looked around the house. All the guests had become a support system for Maggie and me since living here. I was damn lucky. “Although there is a hint of both of you as kids sprinkled on all of this,” he chuckled.
I took another swig of beer, eyes landing on Maggie. She was in the living room laughing with Lina and another woman I didn’t recognize. Her white dress fit her like a glove, and there was no doubt I’d be taking it off her with haste later tonight. “What do you mean?” I asked absently.
My dad let out another chuckle, noticing the way I looked at my wife. “Well, that right there for starters.”
I threw my head back with a laugh. He was going to hold my troublesome childhood antics over me for life. I’d be lucky if he didn’t recount stories to my own kids and give them ideas. “Don’t tell me the apple falls far from the tree.”
“Oh, it sure doesn’t. I just didn’t think I’d see you married with a kid on the way at twenty-three. You’re a changed man.”
I continued gazing at my wife. “Yeah. I feel like one.”
“Can I ask you something without you going off the rails?” My head swiveled back at his question.
“What’s going to make me go off the rails?”
He sighed. “Possibly me mentioning your mother.”
Hope rose in my gut. “Did you find her?”
My father’s eyes softened. “More like she found me.” Hope still rising, I motioned for him to continue. “I talked to her last week, actually. Turns out, she did have our phone numbers, but she was off the grid for the last few months on a volunteer mission in Zambia.”
Not going to lie, part of me felt relieved as hell that she was alive. But another part of me questioned why she hadn’t contacted her son when she received cell service.
“I think…” Dad shook his head. “She wants to legally separate. It’s nothing sour—we just need to find other people.”
Holy shit. Everything my mother said in those letters was true.
I just need a bit more time away from your father.
It has nothing to do with you, darling. I am just so happy here.
I’ve met people with as much passion for adventure as I have.
And now she really was leaving my father. I should have spiraled—it was what I expected myself to do. But all I cared about was my father’s well-being. Family first.
I wanted to ask, what about you? What are you going to do with the rest of your life without your wife ? How can you stand living without her?
But I couldn’t. The guilty part of me wanted to drag him along with me for the rest of my polo career, let him be a grandfather to my child, and feel included in our family.
The idea of losing Maggie and accepting that she no longer wanted anything to do with me would fucking crush me.
I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, least of all, my own father.
So, I just nodded.
Except Lenz was my father. He read my every expression.
“I’m going to be okay,” he grinned softly. “I didn’t want to mention it to you on the phone yesterday, given your…state of mind.”
I nodded and took another swig of beer. It wouldn’t have done me any good to hear about it anyway. Re-reading the letters my mother sent me did quite enough. In fact, those letters might have been the sole reason I wasn’t shocked about this separation.
But Lenz was an incredible fucking man. He deserved happiness. And if he could find it somewhere else, it was all I could hope for.
“So, about your freakout yesterday…” He trailed off. “You get that all sorted out?”
My shoulders relaxed in memory of the weight lifted off them after last night's events.
Of Maggie finding me on the floor, unable to control myself, soothing me back into normality.
It rattled me that it took a severe panic attack and an ambulance ride to the hospital to reveal my fears to my wife, but I was learning.
I was growing. We were growing together. The way a family should.
“Yeah, we did.”
“Did you talk to her about it?”
I nodded, glancing over at her again. She was holding her belly and shifting her weight from side to side.
A sign that she was getting tired and needed to get off her feet.
Not exactly ready to share the fact that I had a panic attack in front of my wife—he thought those stopped when I turned fifteen—I took another swig of my beer and turned back to my dad and answered, “Yeah, we talked it out. Turns out communicating can actually fix things.”
He shook his head, a small, teasing smile growing. “I’m proud of you, boy.”
And this time, I felt like he truly meant it.
All those years of building up my career, becoming a better player, making myself and my horses the best we could be…
it never seemed to be exactly what he wanted to see in his son.
While my delinquent self throughout my teenage years didn’t care about what he wanted for me, I cared now.
I was the only family he had left. His legacy lay on my shoulders.
Lenz deserved to feel proud of the son he raised.
“Thank you.” I held out my bottle to toast with him again. “I am proud, too.”
***
Later that night, after we locked the door after the last guests left, and our fathers were tucked away in the downstairs bedrooms, I lifted Maggie beneath her legs and carried her, bridal-style, all the way up to our bedroom.
She giggled as I gently sat her on the bed, her arms still wrapped around my neck.
I began to kneel to the floor in front of her, but before I could, she moved her hands to cup my face, holding me in the position I wanted to stay in forever.
How vastly different tonight was from the last would never fail to baffle me, but I could only thank Maggie for that. This woman was perfect.
Her shining emerald eyes stared into mine, and the world closed in on us in a different way.
I didn’t feel like I was running out of oxygen.
I didn’t feel like my sight was blurring.
I didn’t hear distant echoes of my own breath.
In fact, I never wanted anything to puncture this fantasy bubble.
I wanted this to close in on me for the rest of my life.
Everything but us felt so unimportant. How could I panic when I had this astounding woman who would fight tooth and nail for my well-being?
All my life, I wanted something beyond my imagination to make me feel whole.
Like I wasn’t an empty shell of a man with a successful career and no shred of sustainable happiness.
I filled the void with an endless list of women, working my ass off to become an unbeatable player, networking with everyone in the polo world to keep a steady stream of income, but it never fulfilled me in the way I needed it to.
Every day ended with my head on a pillow, staring at the ceiling wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life.
Maggie found me. After all the years we spent as little kids running around our dads’ horse trailers, turning to strangers as we got older, becoming each other’s first everything—kiss, time, child…marriage—we had turned our lives into this. Together.
I wanted this forever. Settling into her gaze, I brushed a thumb beneath her eye. Where I knew another tear was bound to fall. And it did.
“Jack…I don’t even know what to say to you after tonight.
” Her eyes shimmered, and I braced myself for the impending tears.
“It was so perfect. No, it was more than perfect. I couldn’t even imagine what you had planned for tonight.
A surprise wedding in place of the one we never had?
It was out of a fairytale,” her voice wavered.
I couldn’t help the pride that swelled in my chest. I made her feel like this.
“I just-” she sobbed. “I can’t believe you did all this. I swore I would never get married, and you just went and made me fall in love with you anyway.”
I let a moment of silence ring between us. She promised she would never get married. And she married me anyway.
I didn’t think there was anything more powerful than that.
“And Lina was in on the whole thing?”
Brushing tears away as quickly as they fell, I nodded. “Everyone was.”
Maggie threw her head back in a tearful laugh. “ God. She really had me. I was so busy trying to help her with Felix, I didn’t even realize what was happening right under my nose.”
“Felix?” I asked. I caught him staring at Lina more than a few times throughout the party, but that would be a story for another day. Tonight was Maggie’s.
“Yeah. Apparently, something is going on there,” she waved a hand. Her tears were clearing up, so I took the opportunity to take her hand in mine.
“Do you like your new rings?”
She inspected them as I twisted the two rings around her finger. “I love them. I didn’t know wedding bands could have this many diamonds on them.”
I smiled. The amount of money I spent was trivial compared to the way she looked at it. The way she looked at me . “Did you count how many diamonds are on it?”
She shook her head in confusion, then looked down to count them. “Eight.”
“Eight.”
“What is eight?”
“Eight months ago. When I saw you again for the first time. When you came to work for me.” I placed a hand on our baby. “What led to making Anya.”
My wife looked at me in disbelief. The ring between us glimmered in the soft glow of the bedroom, but I couldn’t bring myself to look anywhere but her eyes.
“You are so beautiful, Mags.”
More tears fell from her face. She was overwhelmed with the same kind of love I felt. “ God , Jack Hennicke, where did you come from?”
“A little town in Pennsylvania. Next door to the love of my life.”
A small laugh escaped her lips, and she leaned into me.
She kissed me softly, unwilling to let me doubt the slightest bit how much she felt for me. Her lips tasted of the familiar honey and cider mixture I could never get enough of. But I let go, because my girl needed to be comfortable after standing all night.
Returning to the kneeling position I meant to take minutes earlier, I dipped my head to her feet to unbuckle the small heels she’d had on all day.
Though they weren’t tall, I could tell they were killing her, swollen ankles and all.
My fingers worked nimbly to unbuckle the trim strap, and Maggie let out a soft moan as I slipped the shoe off her foot.
A sigh of relief escaped her when the second heel fell to the floor, and I couldn’t resist rising to take her into my arms and pulling her onto the bed, showering her with kisses and pressing my body into hers as she laughed and smiled under my touch.
She was so warm, so sweet, so soft. And just between my hands that gripped her ribs was our baby. I couldn’t fucking believe my life. My fortune. How lucky I was to have the most breathtaking and caring woman in my arms.
“Jack?” she asked after I gave her a break from my lips.
“Hm?”
“Is this really our life?” Her face held as much awe as I felt.
“I was just thinking the same thing.” There was no way in hell I would let go of my wife. I wanted her right here with me through everything.
Maggie tugged me closer to her, warmth emanating from her skin. She felt like electric and a soft fire all at once, her luminescence brightening everything around her. This work of art was mine.
And I’d never let her forget it.