Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
JACK
I stared at Hannah’s text about her mom needing to get her kidney removed in surgery and frowned. What if she died? What if I’d spent the last three months paying for high-profile Seattle doctors and her mother just died on the operating table and then Hannah was all alone? Anxiety over this woman’s health consumed me.
Was she really getting the best care out there in Idaho? Maybe she should come to Seattle for the surgery. Right after Hannah sent the text, I had Chloe check with the private team of doctors I’d hired here, and now I was pacing my office carpet, waiting for her response.
Hannah had also asked me if I would come to town for her concert, and I hated that I had to say no. I would have loved to. I wanted so badly to hear what her singing voice sounded like—and honestly just see her again—but I couldn’t travel easily. Not with having to ask my probation officer every time I crossed state lines.
There was a knock at my office door, and I stopped pacing.
“Come in,” I called out.
Chloe stepped in.
I collapsed into my office chair. “Tell me everything.”
She nodded, pulling out some notes. “Dr. Hughes and the rest of the Seattle team completely agree with Dr. Reed’s plan to operate and remove the tumor and affected kidney.”
I exhaled slowly, calming my heart rate. “Okay, can Dr. Hughes do the surgery here in Seattle? Is it complex?”
Chloe tapped her paper. “He said, and I quote, ‘I would love to take Jack’s money, but an intern could do this surgery. Mrs. Phillips is in good hands.’”
Relief flooded my system, and I hooked my hands behind my neck and nodded. “Okay, that’s good.”
Chloe peered at me with concern. “You really care about this one, huh?”
I released my hands and rubbed them on my jeans. “I…Hannah has become a friend. I’m invested in her happiness.”
Chloe nodded, giving me a knowing look. “You’re invested in everyone’s happiness but your own, Jack.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. This was the same old argument we kept having. I’d hired Chloe the day I got out of prison. I’d designed the app in jail on the computer in the prison library. Jason had it go live and collected all the money. When I got out, I already had a hundred and fifty million—my half—waiting for me in the bank. She’d been with me through it all.
“Do I pay you enough? You do too much for me,” I told Chloe.
I trusted her. That was something I didn’t have with many people.
Chloe pointed a finger at me. “Yes. I’m the highest-paid executive assistant in the world. Stop changing the subject.”
I grinned. The year Jason and I had made our first billion, I’d made Chloe a millionaire. She probably was the highest-paid executive assistant in the world.
“I do care about my happiness,” I told her. “Making other people happy makes me happy.”
She rolled her eyes. “A girlfriend would probably make you a lot happier. Someone sweet like Hannah,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes.
I didn’t like where this conversation was going. I was a guy. Of course, I wanted a girlfriend. I’d had a few over the years, but whenever they got too close, I cut them off. It was better for everyone that way.
“Hannah deserves better than me,” I told Chloe. “She invited me to some church concert this weekend, and I can’t even go.”
“Why not?” she asked.
I gave her a look. “You know why not. I have to clear all travel with Cedric.”
Chloe pulled out her phone and typed something.
“What are you doing?” I sat up straighter.
She watched her phone for a few moments and then smiled. “Cedric said he can see you tomorrow at noon if you bring him lunch from Salty Burger. He’s squeezing you in.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t want to push anything. I only have two more years left and then I’m home free.”
Chloe nodded. She knew all too well the details of my early release. She and Jason were the only ones who knew about my life before, besides my lawyers and my crazy uncle Rod. “That’s why we’re going through the proper channels and asking your probation officer,” she told me.
A thrill of excitement rushed through me. My work was in Seattle. I had no need to leave the state and had only gotten conditional approval to travel to Willow Harbor at Christmas time. But what if I could go see Hannah’s concert? I mean, we were friends, and that’s what friends did, right? They supported each other. If Chloe had a performance, I would one hundred percent be there to cheer her on.
Yes. This was me being a good friend.
“Find out where Hannah goes to church, but don’t let her know. I want to surprise her,” I told Chloe, and she nodded.
The next day, right at noon, I knocked on my probation officer’s door downtown with a bag of Salty Burgers in my hand.
“Hey, Jack!” he greeted me as I stepped into his office. Cedric was a genuinely kind human being who loved his job.
At six foot four, with a large build and dark-brown skin, he looked like he’d recently retired from pro football, but when I’d first met him, he told me he’d become a social worker right out of college and then moved over to being a probation officer. He said he felt that he could enact the most change that way, and I really respected the guy. But he was very by-the-book, so I couldn’t break or even bend any rules or I’d go back to prison no matter how much the guy liked me.
“Hey, Cedric. Thanks for meeting me last minute,” I said and handed him the bag of food. The guy was nice, but his power over my life terrified me.
He pulled out his burger and took a bite. “Your assistant tells me you want to take a trip on short notice?”
I swallowed hard. Would a short-notice trip look suspicious? I felt guilty even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
I nodded. “My friend Hannah has a church concert in Willow Harbor this weekend. I was hoping to go support her.”
Cedric swallowed a bite of his burger and nodded. “Willow Harbor is the place you go every Christmas, right? In Idaho?”
“Yes, sir,” I told him. It was a special place to me, and it had been ever since I was a kid.
“Is Hannah your girlfriend?” he asked casually.
I wished.
Would that make him more or less likely to let me go?
“No, sir. Just a friend,” I said nervously.
Cedric laughed. “Relax, Jack. I’m just making conversation.”
I realized I was holding my posture stiffly, so I relaxed. “Just trying to avoid going back to prison, sir,” I joked, though it was anything but a joke. Going to federal prison at twenty-one years old was no laughing matter and going back now years later was less funny.
Cedric nodded seriously. “That would be tragic, and I would take it as a personal slap in the face. My goal is to graduate you to full freedom.”
This was why I liked Cedric. He believed in me.
“Do you think that by going on this trip you would be tempted to break the law in any way or ruin any progress we have made here?” he asked.
“No, sir.” I hated that I had made one mistake in life and I was forever marred by it. But I also understood. It was a huge mistake.
He reached into his drawer and handed me a pee cup. “You know the drill.”
I sighed. I’d never done drugs in my life, and this had to be the hundredth pee test I’d taken. Cedric said it was all evidence he was gathering to show the court system that I was a good citizen and no danger to society. So I went into the bathroom, peed in the cup, and left it in the little metal box.
When I came back out, Cedric was waiting for me in the hallway.
“I’ve approved your trip. Have a nice time, Jack.” he told me with a flash of pity in his eyes.
I thought we were over the pity, but every time I saw him, it managed to creep in there at some point. What did he think of me? Poor twenty-one-year-old kid got locked up for two years and ruined his life over a stupid mistake?
It hadn’t been a mistake, though. It hadn’t, and that’s what kept me awake at night.
I’d drunk those beers willingly. I’d grabbed those keys willingly. I’d driven home willingly.
I deserved everything I got. I deserved so much more than two years in prison and six years of probation. I deserved a lifetime of agony, and that’s what I was living.