by Odette Stone
“Pleased to meet you,” Jackson’s voice rumbled low.
Julie’s eyes fluttered. “The pleasure is all mine.”
She turned back to me, her eyes wide. She was sending me a message I’d recognized. She wanted me to be her wing woman. “Sweetie, it has been way too long. Seriously. Come now, we need to get together.”
I glanced up at Jackson who had zero expression on his face. “I know, I'm so sorry, this wedding has been taking up all my time.”
A complete lie unless you counted stressing about something and not taking action as good reason for being busy.
“I still can’t believe you're getting married before me, how’s that even possible?” She shook her head with a teasing smile. “How’s the wedding planning going?”
I sighed. “Slowly. We ordered the invitations today.”
“We?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Jackson helped.”
She smiled up at him. “You don’t look like a typical wedding planner.”
“Jackson introduced me to the process of elimination. It’s very effective.”
“I can’t wait to see what you both chose.” Her laugh sounded louder than normal. “Are you bringing a plus one to the wedding, Jackson?”
I blinked at her brazen approach. Julie had no fear when it came to men.
“Not currently attached.”
She beamed at Jackson and then turned to me. “The four of us should get together for dinner.”
The last thing I wanted was to spend the evening watching Julie bust moves on Jackson. I nodded. “Okay. Should I make a reservation somewhere?”
“Why don’t you cook for us? Not all of us are swimming in money like you.”
I had no idea why she said that. When we ate out together, Julie never paid because I always picked up the bill. “Okay. I don’t mind cooking.”
“Perfect, I'll bring the wine.”
Julie bestowed Jackson with a beautiful smile and tossed her brunette hair over her shoulder. “How long are you in town for?”
He glanced at my face. “Twelve weeks.”
“Are you here on vacation?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I can’t wait to hear more about this something,” she flirted, batting her eyelashes. I gritted my teeth together. I recognized Julie’s signature moves. They usually didn’t bother me, but today annoyance tickled my skin.
My voice sounded thick to my ears. “Great. How about Saturday night?”
Jackson glanced down at me. I feared he was reading my flaky tone.
“Perfect.” She beamed another megawatt smile towards Jackson.
“Great,” I repeated, struggling to keep the displeasure out of my voice. “How about 7 PM?”
“Love it,” She had eyes only for Jackson.
“Well, we should be going,” I hedged. “I’ve taken up enough of Jackson’s time today.”
“Okay.” She cooed as she pulled me into another hug. Her voice changed as she whispered in my ear. “If you tell anyone else about him, I'll seriously kill you. He's mine, okay?”
I pulled back and worked to keep the shock off my face. “Uh, okay.”
“Bye.” Her eyes clung to Jackson before she turned and sashayed off.
Jackson and I continued to walk through the mall, this time in silence. I fumed over Julie’s last comment. That exchange had pissed me off. She wasn’t allowed to call dibs on Jackson just because she saw him first. I bristled at her assumptions. She always did this. She found someone she liked and declared her feelings to the world so that no one else could make a move. But did that ever stop her when someone else liked a guy? I remember actively hiding my crushes from her in University because the moment she found out whom I liked, it seemed like she inevitably found a way to date the guy. She would give me a sympathetic look and say, “It just happened. We couldn’t help ourselves.” Julie was never to be trusted when it came to men. I didn’t tell her Matt’s name or introduce them when we first started to date. It wasn’t until we got engaged that I let them meet.
What did it matter to me that she wanted to get her little man claws into Jackson? Was it any of my business?
“You okay?” Jackson asked. I worked to keep pace with his long easy strides.
“Yes, why?” I huffed. Julie gobbled up men like they were going out of style. Matt called her a man-eater.
“Is she a close friend of yours?”
Air puffed out of my lungs. “Yes.”
“She upset you.”
I refused to look up at him. “They teach you to read minds in the Navy SEAL program?”
“You’ve adjusted the zip on your jacket four times, your lips are moving, but you’re not speaking. They teach us how to read body language, and I would say that you're seriously agitated.”
I stopped walking, and he turned and stopped too.
“I hate you right now,” I said without feeling.
He half-smiled. “I like to fix stuff.”
“Like my car?”
“And other stuff.”
“I’m unfixable,” I said. A hollowness carved out my chest. I hated my emotional response to the idea of Julie and Jackson. It occurred to me that I was a terrible partner to Matt. I allowed myself to notice how thick Jackson’s forearms were and how soft his hair looked which was the ultimate betrayal. I deserved my misery.
“Come on,” he said. “We need something to cheer you up.”
“I'm un-cheerable.”
He laughed. “I love the drama queen act. And I would kill to know what just happened.”
“Nothing.”
I started walking. He matched his gait to mine.
“So is this a setup?”
Again, my teeth started to grind. “Why would you say that?”
“Just a question.”
“Julie’s sophisticated, and she’s single.”
My words hung between us.
“Okay.”
I worked not to grab the coffee maker from his hands and toss it on the ground. “Okay.”
We walked again in silence.
“Kind of a lot of pressure, don’t you think?” he asked. A smile teased his voice.
“Totally,” I said. “I thought so too.”
“Do you think I can handle it?”
“I think it is rude of me to make you try.”
“Huh.”
“An intimate dinner party is too much.” My mind whirled.
“You think?”
“So I think I should have a party instead. I'll invite a lot of people.”
My eyes locked on his face. An enigmatic expression reflected back on me. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
We walked outside to the truck. He put the coffee maker in the back behind my seat and then turned around and looked at me, blocking my path into the truck. “So, is that what upset you?”
I stared up at him. My heart pumped in my chest. “What?”
“The fact that Julie wanted you to set me up with her?”
“No!” I sputtered, unable to think of a quick response. I avoided his gaze. I envisioned her slender arms wrapped around that thick neck. My stomach burned. I wanted to rage when I imagined him leading her up to his guest room for an overnight stay. My emotional response was disturbing. This was Jackson, my fiancé’s childhood friend. Desperation stabbed me, as I drowned in these swirling dark feelings. Shame flooded me too.
“So you would be okay if I dated your friend?” He brought me out of my thoughts.
My gaze clashed with his. His words stabbed my heart. I imagined her tall and willowy body snuggled up to his massively strong frame. Ringing sounded in my ears.
“You can do what you want.”
He hesitated. “I can’t always do what I want.”
I struggled to keep my breath even. He regarded me with his green gaze, making me feel like he could read everything I was feeling. I felt naked and exposed. I needed to remember that I was engaged. I loved someone else. I
had this monstrous thing growing inside of me, spinning me out of control. I hated it.
My voice wavered. “Me either.”
He reached out. Big hands wrapped around my waist and then I was being lifted onto the passenger seat. My breath slammed into my lungs.
“You don’t have to do that anymore. I'm not wearing a skirt.”
He looked at me. “I just like how little you feel.”
Then he shut the door.
Chapter 11
In the coming week, Jackson and I fell into a comfortable routine. He woke up early to work out. When I came downstairs, he had already made me breakfast.
I would work at the gallery or spend the mornings painting, while he worked on my car or disappeared to one of his standing appointments at the hospital. He never talked about his treatments. I was worried that something was seriously wrong with him, but I refused to ask. He was fiercely private about it, often not even telling me where he was going.
After lunch, we always ran some sort of errand together. With my car still in pieces, he acted as my chauffeur, and I used him shamelessly in helping me plan my wedding. Jackson was decisive, pragmatic and extremely good at coaxing decisions out of me.
Despite the fact that he was stupidly good looking, he was a lot of fun. He teased me into making decisions. We talked about safe subjects like art and travel. He told me almost nothing about himself, but we found our rhythm. He was nice, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel lonely. It didn’t matter when Matt didn’t come home for dinner because Jackson was there. Sometimes we watched TV together. Sometimes he worked on my car, and I sat on the steps and hung out. It was easy, and he kept his flirting to a minimum. Sometimes he teased me, which made me blush, but mostly he was pretty good about just treating me like a kid sister. Although Jackson was sincere, he wasn’t very forthcoming about himself. Despite his apparent reluctance to share, I did my best to ferret information out of him.
One night, we stood in the kitchen cooking dinner together.
“So, Matt told me about a fight you were in during elementary school.”
He glanced over at me and then focused his attention back to the salad he was making. “Sounds like me.”
“You don’t remember? Matt said you took on all these older boys, and you didn’t back down, and you ended up in the hospital with a bruised kidney.”
He momentarily stopped chopping. “Not sure.”
“How can you not remember this?”
“Ted and I shared many visits to the hospital, so it doesn’t stand out.”
“Matt said there were half a dozen boys and they were all bigger than you, but you refused to back down.”
A smile traced on his mouth. “Yup, then that was me.”
I turned to face him and crossed my arms. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Not back down. Matt said he ran to the lunch lady, but even though you were outnumbered, you stayed to fight.”
He glanced at me, his expression one of curiosity. His question was genuine. “Why would I back down?”
“Because you could get hurt!”
“That isn’t a reason to back down from a fight.”
“Why fight at all?”
“I never start fights. I just finish them.”
I stood there thinking for a long moment. “Why did you have so many visits to the hospital?”
He continued to chop his tomato without speaking. I waited. Finally, he rewarded me with an answer. “Ted was a drunk. Either he was getting hurt, or he was hurting me. Hospitals were avoided, but sometimes they were necessary.”
I tried to hide my dismay at his words. Ted had hurt Jackson. This was the reason that Jackson had spent time with Matt’s family. The man he lived with had beaten him. And Matt’s parents had saved him.
“How were you hurt?”
His face concentrated as he remembered. “Broken leg, broken sternum, broken arms, broken collarbone…but only when he could catch me.”
I froze. “And when he did?”
“He just punched, but when he kicked, that’s when my bones got broken.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. “Jackson.”
How did a person’s soul survive such a travesty? Is this where his will to fight back came from? His determination to protect others? My heart ached for the little boy who was alone with an abusive alcoholic man who rained down on him with his fists and kicks, hurting him to the point that his bones broke. The images I conjured in my mind were almost bringing me to tears. How alone he must have felt. The fear and pain he must have endured ripped at my heart.
He moved to put the salad in the fridge. “Did Matt say he was coming home tonight?”
“How did the doctors not know about this?”
He started to walk out of the kitchen. “They knew. They called the cops.”
I followed. “Matt’s dad.”
“Yup.” His voice remained even. “I’m going to go work on the car.”
I flung myself at his broad back, awkwardly wrapping my arms around him from behind. He stopped walking, and I tightened my arms around his solid waist.
“What’s going on?” he sounded amused.
I lay my face against the middle of his warm back. “I’m sorry.”
I felt him laugh. “For what?”
“That Ted hurt you.”
I felt his entire body go still. We stood there for a long moment, the side of my face pressed against the warmth of his back. I tried to inject light and happiness from my body into his. As if to heal his childhood wounds. To try and take away some of that pain.
I began to step back, but his hand reached up and pressed my hands into his stomach, preventing me from moving. I sighed and sank back into our hug. I matched my breath to his and concentrated on pushing all my positive energy into his body through his back. It might sound stupid, but I like to think that stuff like that worked. His hand remained on mine, trapping me against him.
Moments ticked by and we stood sharing our awkward hug. He made no motion to remove me. I squeezed him even harder. As if I could squeeze the pain out of him. My mom had taught me the value of hugs. She used to say that there was precious little in this world that a decent hug couldn’t fix.
I heard a car door slam and then the sound of Matt’s feet pounding up the stairs. I began to step back, and this time Jackson let me. I moved with haste back to the kitchen and bent over the island, staring unseeingly at my phone. All in an attempt to hide the emotion that I knew was fraying my expression.
“Hey,” Matt said. “How was your day?”
“Pretty good and you?”
Matt strode into the kitchen. “Good. Em, I can’t stay for dinner. I have to take some clients to a game.”
I glanced up. “Okay.”
“I just came home to change.”
“Do you want me to save you a plate?” To my own ears, my voice sounded wooden.
“Nah. I'll eat at the game.”
I glanced behind me. Jackson had disappeared. A moment later I heard his truck roar to a start.
Matt left in a whirlwind, barely affording me a second glance. I waited until 8 PM to eat dinner, but Jackson didn’t return. I sat at the island, turning over the thought of Jackson in my mind. I was still trying to put the crumbs of information together that I could garner from Matt and Jackson.
Jackson had lived alone with Ted, a man who was not even his father. His mother had died. So where was his birth father? Why had Ted, a man obviously not interested in loving or caring for a small child, continued to keep Jackson in his life only so that he could abuse him?
And what about all the trips to the hospital? A seven-year-old who was at the mercy of a violent drunk was an impossible situation to imagine. I could not wash away the image of a small boy wary and alert, hiding and running from a drunk and menacing man intent on causing pain. Why hadn’t the authorities protected him?
Matt’s father had been a police officer and h
ad taken Jackson into his home, but apparently not full time. Why hadn’t he called social services? Why had the system failed Jackson as a boy, to the point that he was riddled with broken limbs and probably unimaginable emotional scars? The whole situation made me so angry on Jackson’s behalf. I wanted answers, but the past was something that both Matt and Jackson preferred not to talk about. I had a weird feeling that they needed to talk about their history, to bridge the issue that hindered them now.
These days, Matt was almost never home. He avoided Jackson and myself like the plague. Jackson seemed more patient about the entire thing. His energy was very neutral when Matt did show up, but there was not a lot of warmth between the two of them. They were both on their guard and were excruciatingly distant and polite with each other. Matt had adamantly expressed to me that he did not want Jackson to leave and Jackson continued to stay which told me they both wanted to mend whatever had come between them. I got the sense neither of them knew how to fix it, so we were left in this uncomfortable impasse.
I sighed and dumped my half-eaten plate in the sink. The fact that Jackson took off indicated to me that maybe my hug had been a little bit too much. Yet he hadn’t wanted me to let go. The man was complicated.
I sat downstairs until 11 PM reading the same page in my book over and over again, but neither Jackson nor Matt came home. Finally, defeated, I went to bed.
Chapter 12
“Why did I think that a party was a good idea?” I wailed from the kitchen. Fifty people were about to descend into my space in a matter of hours. I hated parties. I knew no greater punishment than to host a party.
Jackson stood shirtless at the door, drinking from a water bottle. The man liked to grind his body through the most intense, insane workouts imaginable and this afternoon was no different. Did people even realize that a body that looked photoshopped was the result of ruthless determination and constant work? No wonder the dad bod was coming back in style.
“I think you wanted me to have more selection than just Julie.”
I pointed a knife at him. “After this, you and your sex life are completely on your own. You're the last person that needs help in that department.”
