Chapter Twenty-One
Jace
“What are you thinking about?” I asked Olivia.
Kaylee was playing on the indoor playground at the pizza place, and I was keeping an eye on her because Olivia seemed too lost in her thoughts for much else right now.
“I was an ass, Jace. To Kayden.” She put her head in her hands and groaned. “He’s a really good guy. I know he’s a really good guy. I’ve been thinking about the night we met all week, and I don’t know why I let myself forget how amazing he was.”
I grabbed her hand and squeezed, and she lifted her head with tears in her eyes again. “It doesn’t take longer than one night with him to realize that, does it?”
She shook her head. “I wish I’d been more compassionate. He’d just found out he had a daughter, and I was too terrified about how that would affect me to really think about how it affected him. He must be terrified.”
I nodded, gently agreeing with her without trying to make her feel worse.
“That was not the situation you planned for, Liv,” I reminded her.
She’d told me about Carl’s medical situation and Kaylee’s sudden drop off when we got here and I knew she’d been more shaken than she’d hoped to be during her confession. “Don’t judge yourself too harshly.”
“I panicked,” she said with a sigh. “I own him an apology.”
“He’ll understand.”
One of the phones buzzed on the table between us and my heart skipped a beat. Mine was still black, but Olivia’s lit up with a text message. She picked it up and fired off a quick response.
“It was my mom. She and Carl are home. They’re going to have him follow up with some outpatient tests in Cardiology next week.”
“Good,” I said.
“I’ve thought about Kayden for years,” Olivia said softly.
I slowly closed my eyes and prayed that when I opened them she wouldn’t see my worry.
They both thought about each other, they shared a daughter, I was falling for him just as hard as I’d fallen for Liv, and the only thing I could think about was losing all of them.
I may have had a lot of therapy and two fantastic moms for the last decade and a half, but I’d also spent the first fifteen years of my life neglected and alone.
It was impossible not to worry about feeling that way again sometimes.
“I’ve often suspected that he wasn’t as meaningless of a hookup as you implied,” I said carefully, calmly.
“Really?” she asked, wrinkling her brow. “I try not to talk about him at all.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And when you do, you get a contemplative look on your face.”
A look that always caused my heart to clench even when I thought he would never be in the picture.
A phone buzzed again, and I grabbed mine off the table as soon as I saw the screen light up, dropping it with a sigh when I realized it was just an email notification.
“You’re really worried about him,” Olivia said, almost as carefully as I’d spoken a moment ago.
I bit the inside of my cheek, tired of constantly hiding my feelings from this woman. I was hiding how I felt about her and now how I felt about Kayden. It was exhausting. She was the person I most wanted to confide in. I owed it to both of us to start being more open with her about my feelings.
“Jace,” she said softly. “You can lean on me too, you know. Sometimes I think you feel like you have to keep it together for me and Kaylee, now for Kayden too. You’re allowed to have feelings and to need us sometimes.”
I stared at her, surprised. I’d never considered it before but when she put it like that, I also couldn’t deny that she was on to something. “I want you all to be okay,” I said quietly.
“We will be.” She squeezed my hand on the table. “You have to trust that we want you to be okay too.”
“I don’t know what it is about Kayden,” I said.
“I really care about him. In the same way it only took me a few weeks to know I’d do anything for you, that’s how I feel about him.
Feeling that way about both of you confuses me.
And right now, I’m worried about how he’s handling earth-shattering news like this because I know he struggles with anxiety. ”
“You don’t open your heart to many people, Jace.
But when you do, it’s all the way open and it is amazing to be on the other side of that.
You are loyal and protective and if you feel that way about him, then I’m certain he knows it and I’m sure he’ll call you if he needs you.
” Olivia smiled sadly at me. “It’s one of the things I love most about you.
I’m sorry I didn’t realize I was putting you in the middle of us with this. ”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Mommy, Jace, watch!” Kaylee called from the top of the play structure. She stood in front of a purple slide with a big smile on her face.
Olivia and I both waved to her before she swung herself down the tube and popped out at the bottom a few seconds later. She smiled proudly and then took off running for the stairs to do it again.
I startled as my phone buzzed.
It was Kayden finally responding to my text from an hour ago asking how he was doing.
Kayden: Just staring at a bottle of Jack and contemplating my life choices. I’ll call you tomorrow.
I frowned at my phone and Olivia reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. The comforting gesture sent a ripple of warmth through me.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I set down the phone. “I wouldn’t say drowning his sorrows is ideal, but I can’t say I blame him after a shock like that. He said he’d call tomorrow.”
“He’s drinking?” she asked, her voice rising in panic and her eyes wide.
“Apparently,” I said, taking a swig of my beer.
“Jace, how well do you know Kayden?” She searched my face, clearly surprised that I wasn’t concerned. Her level of alarm kickstarted my heart and I passed her the phone so she could see his text.
“What, Liv? He’s not exactly an open book. What do you know?” I asked, already pushing my chair back from the table.
“When I met Kayden, he’d been sober for three years. He’s an alcoholic, Jace. And this sounds like a cry for help.”
“Fuck,” I said, my chair hitting the ground as I threw myself out of it. “We have to go. We have to go now.”
“I know,” she said, calling for Kaylee while I spiraled. How did I not know this? I thought back to all the times I’d drank a beer while he’d had sparkling water and the way he’d said the rehab facility was important to him. Fuck, I thought that was because of his father.
“Fuck,” I said again, tossing a bunch of cash on the table as Kaylee came running over, looking disappointed. I picked up my chair and pushed it in.
“Jace, I’m going with you,” Olivia said definitively.
“Are we leaving?” Kaylee asked.
“Yes,” Olivia said, looking at me with a question in her eyes.
“Of course you can come,” I said.
Olivia bent down to Kaylee’s level. “Mommy and Jace’s friend needs our help, baby. We need to go check on him.”
I squatted down to join them. “Do you want to visit Sloane and Lavi while we do that?” I asked Kaylee, putting one hand on Liv’s shoulder. My moms’ place was only a few blocks away and I knew they’d take her without question.
“Yeah!” she yelled.
“Great.” I picked up Kaylee and steered Liv toward the door. Liv took Kaylee from me to strap her into the car seat in the back of my car and I pulled at my hair. My heart raced and my mind was a complete fog as I struggled to pull the keys out of my pocket. “Liv, I don’t think I can drive.”
“It’s fine.” She took the keys from me. “I’ve got this. Get in and call your moms.”
I nodded, feeling like I was in a haze, and got into the passenger seat. I called Mom, giving her the high-level version of the story while skipping the part about Kayden’s tenuous sobriety.
“Ima will meet you downstairs. Don’t worry about us or Kaylee, just go check on Kayden, okay?” Mom said calmly as Liv wove through the streets of Boston.
“We don’t have much of her stuff with us,” I said.
“Jace, drop her off,” Mom said sternly. “We’ll figure it out.”
I thanked her and hung up the phone. Olivia put her hand on my knee, and I gripped it tightly. Ima was waiting outside the condo building as promised when we pulled up a few minutes later.
“Thank you so much, Lavi,” Olivia said, giving her a hug. My moms had watched Kaylee a couple of times before and I was grateful that Liv was comfortable leaving Kaylee with them right now.
“Anytime, Olivia. We love having Kaylee visit,” Ima said.
Kaylee smiled at her. “Can I sleep over?”
Olivia smiled and bent down to hug her. “Let’s see how much help Mommy’s friend needs first, okay? I love you and I’ll see you soon.”
Kaylee nodded and I hugged her goodbye. “Love you, kiddo.”
“Seriously. Whatever you need,” Ima said, giving me a quick hug. “We can do an overnight, no problem. Just give us a call when you know more.”
We thanked her and got back into the car. Olivia followed my directions to the address Kayden had given me last week. I hadn’t been to his place before, but it was easy to find his apartment building and Liv and I skipped the elevator, running up the stairs to the third floor instead.
I frantically banged on his door. “Kayden, it’s me,” I yelled.
I waited five seconds before pounding on it again. “Kayden, please open the door.”
I heard nothing coming from inside the apartment and I wound up to bang on the door again when Liv reached in front of me and turned the handle. It clicked open and I looked at her with surprise.
“It was worth a try before you had the neighbors calling the cops on us,” she said.
I pushed through the door first and she followed right behind me, stopping next to me as I saw Kayden sitting on his couch with his head tipped back and his eyes closed, a full bottle of Jack Daniels on the coffee table and an empty glass tumbler beside it.
I breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t drink it yet.
Kayden sat up and faced us with red-rimmed eyes. “What are you doing here?”
I took a tentative step toward him, afraid to spook him. Is this how it feels to talk people off a ledge?