"The whole town was rolling up its sidewalks at nine o'clock. I doubt anyone on this street was out later than we were. And it's not even dawn now."
She hated that he could be reasonable when all she felt was acute panic building in her chest. She didn’t know what her life was going to look like now. Where things would end up with Nicholas. But if she had any hope of salvaging that relationship, if word got out that she’d stayed out all night with Jax… She shivered. She didn’t want to think about what Nicholas would think about that.
And she also hated how safe and comfortable she'd felt wrapped in Jax’s arms. His smell was seared into her nostrils. He still used the same soap. She'd scrubbed it from her memory banks once, but now the scent clung, breaking open the wall of memories she'd once painstakingly bricked over.
She pressed shaking fingers to the bridge of her nose. What was she supposed to do now? She was so turned around, she didn't know the right thing.
"You're trying to sabotage my relationship with Nicholas," she said, the words emerging before she'd really consciously thought them.
"What relationship?" His tone carried an edge. "He left you."
The words were a blow, one that struck true. Nicholas had walked away on what was supposed to be their wedding day.
But… “You left me, too." She reached for the door handle blindly, fumbling with the electronic locks. "This was a mistake, leaning on you for help."
"Claire, wait."
She wouldn’t listen to him anymore. No doubt he'd have some smooth-talking way to keep her in the truck, to keep her close.
So that... what? So he could hurt her all over again when he left for Dallas?
"You should go back to your baseball team," she said, finally getting the door open.
"Baseball wasn’t the only reason I left."
She froze, her gaze darting to his face at the unexpected words. She was really shaking now. Not sure whether she really wanted to hear what he had to say.
"Enlighten me, then." She’d meant the words to snap, but her voice was shaky instead. "Maybe I can learn why I keep driving the men in my life away."
He frowned. "It's not like that." He looked out the front windshield, away from her. "It wasn't about you at all. I left because of—because you didn't really know me. And if I let you get any closer, I knew you'd start to see the real me."
She was confused. They'd told each other everything back then, hadn't they? "What are you talking about?"
He glanced at her, at her hand on the still-open door. Maybe he was trying to decide if she was getting ready to jump out of the truck. She should get out. Get far, far away from him before he could convince her to stay.
His frown deepened as if he could read her mind. He'd always been able to sense her mood.
"Claire, I came from nothing."
His words made no sense.
"Didn't you ever wonder why I never invited you to my apartment?"
She hadn't. Not really. "I thought you were trying to be gentlemanly. Not pressure me to be physical." She'd lived in a dorm with her homebody of a roommate—at her place they'd been limited to goodnight kisses.
His smile was twisted. Wrong, somehow. "I didn't want you to see the real me. I slept on the floor until about a month before I met you, when I could finally afford a mattress. Not a bed frame, or even a box spring. Just a mattress on the floor. And a used one at that. I didn't have a TV, no furniture. But I was lucky to eat three meals a day, even if most of them were rice and beans."
The early morning humidity had filled the truck. She should close the door. She still wasn’t sure, though, if she should be on the other side of the door when she did. Compassion filled her for the college kid he was describing. That wasn't how she remembered it at all. "You worked so hard."
"Harder than you knew. I had three jobs so I could string together enough hours around the baseball schedule to make rent and buy food."
He'd never told her that. She'd known he worked at a coffee shop on campus, and she’d never questioned it further when he'd claimed to have to work through the evening on a weeknight.
"Working hard isn't something to be ashamed of," she said. "You should be proud of what you've made of yourself."
There was still a darkness, a bleakness in his eyes. There was more. What more?
I came from nothing.
Did he mean more than poverty?
Jax didn't know if he could do this.
He didn't even know how he'd gotten here. He'd come to Sawyer Creek yesterday to track down Claire, and now he was spilling secrets he'd once left to protect.
But she still had that hand on the door. She was one step away from walking away from him forever.
He would never forget the look of utter despair that had crossed her face just a few moments before—maybe I can learn why I keep driving the men in my life away.
He hated that he'd made her feel defective when he’d walked away. The reality was, he'd been a coward.
He had to do this.
But he couldn't look at her. He focused on a pot of red geraniums on her dad's neighbor's porch.
"Your dad walked out when you were twelve," he said. "Mine walked when I was two. The only difference was, he never left."
He hated thinking back to that time in his childhood. He hadn't known anything different until elementary school, when he'd realized not every kid got slapped around by their old man. Other kids had moms who came to sit with them during the school lunch period. Other kids' dads weren't despicable.
"My old man was... pretty mean." Understatement of the year. "He used to knock me around. Until I was a teenager." That’s when Jax had started mouthing off, threatening to call the cops on his dad. Not that it had done any good. Turned out his dad was a lot better at threats than Jax. He'd lived in a state of perpetual fear until he'd run away.
Claire made a soft noise, but Jax still couldn't look at her. If he stopped talking now, he'd never start up again. "He was... mixed up in some bad stuff. Dangerous stuff." Drugs, women, booze, guns.
"I left when I was sixteen. I was tall enough, and my beard had already started coming in." He scraped one hand along the stubble at his jaw "I found this homeless shelter and lied about my age. They let me stay there while I figured things out."
An ache pounded behind his eyes, but he needed to get through this.
"While I was there, this one guy who volunteered helped me get some textbooks. I got my GED. He helped me find work, and I started saving up for my first month's rent. And then I got that crappy apartment and got in to junior college, and..." And met Claire. He'd made her coffee ten times before he'd gotten up the courage to ask her out.
Before he’d met her, baseball had been the best thing about his life. He’d played in junior high and high school, until he’d run away, and his sophomore coach had seen something in him. Had worked with him. Then he’d had no way to play while his life had fallen apart. When he’d walked on the junior college team and found his skill hadn’t left him, it was like a gift from above. Baseball was the only thing that made sense. Baseball didn’t judge. The fans didn’t care where he came from or what kind of life he’d lived. So he made baseball his life.
Until Claire. The months they'd been together—as often as his work schedule and games had allowed—had been the best thing in his life.
"And then I started getting some interest from scouts. And my dad started calling me." He laughed bitterly. "He's always been able to sniff out a paycheck."
"But he didn't have anything to do with you," she said softly. She was still on the precipice. Halfway out the door.
Jax shook his head. "You don't know my dad. I told you he was dangerous. He had a long reach. Connections to crooks everywhere. You asked me last night if I was scared to move across the country. I wasn't. I was glad." He took a breath. "There were a lot of times I wished him dead—wished a deal would go wrong and he'd be on the wrong end of a bullet. Sometimes I still do."
There
was a long beat of silence. He couldn't look at her. He didn't want to see the censure—or worse, the pity—in her expression.
Finally, she spoke. "So that's it? That's your big secret? That’s why you broke up with me?"
Surprised by the sarcasm, he snapped his gaze to hers. Her eyes were sharp, angry.
He shook his head. He'd known he was going to mess this up. "I didn't want… There's this whole ugly side of me." He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. "And I never wanted you to see any of it. You came from this other life and..." Back then, he'd been so afraid that she'd see the real him and reject him.
And maybe he hadn't grown up that much, because right now, he'd do or say anything to keep her from walking away.
His phone buzzed again. The worst timing ever.
He tapped the screen to reject the call, and it went dark.
She grabbed the device out of his hands. "Who keeps calling you?"
He shook his head.
She tapped a few times on the screen, but she wouldn't find a name for that number in his contacts list. He didn't even know how his old man had gotten the number. Didn't need to know.
"This same number has called you forty-five times in the last week." Her nose was almost pressed to his phone.
He huffed out a breath. She wasn't going to leave it alone.
"It's him," he said. "He left me some messages. He got sent to prison about a year after I ran away. Now he claims he's got cancer. And religion. And he wants to see me before he dies."
Her gaze met his. "Aren't you the least bit curious?"
"Nope. It's been all over the place that I made the majors. He knows I have money now. That's all he cares about."
And Jax had promised himself when he crawled out of his old life that he was never going back.
Chapter 5
How in the heck had he ended up here?
Jax stared at the squat brick building surrounded by chain link fence topped with razor wire. The prison where his dad was supposedly in the sick bay. Dying.
If you could believe someone for whom lying was second nature.
He didn't want to go in there.
A cool hand met his palm, fingers twining around his.
He looked down at Claire. She was how he'd gotten here.
He knew she didn't harbor romantic feelings toward him anymore. At least he didn't think so. She meant the hand-holding as a friendly gesture, and he was glad to have her beside him.
He was still hanging on to that one-in-a-million chance that he could win her back. This was part of it.
She'd been angry, hurt that he hadn't let her know all of him. Well, this visit would cure that. Once they went inside and saw his dad, she'd know the ugliness that he'd been born from. She’d understand why he’d hidden it from her.
He forced his feet to move. There were no trees around the place—probably as a measure to keep inmates from escape—and by the time they'd crossed the parking lot, Jax was sweating through his T-shirt.
The glass door was plastered with warnings. No firearms, no knives, no contraband. And on and on.
Real welcoming place.
Inside, the linoleum floor was old and cracked. A uniformed guard sat on a stool behind a glass partition. Jax headed there.
It took a good half hour for them to sign in, go through metal detectors, and then be escorted through an iron-barred gate and down a long, dim corridor.
The gate clanged closed behind them, and Jax couldn't help looking over his shoulder. All of a sudden, he couldn't breathe. He was trapped in here. The guards had cut off any escape.
At his side, Claire squeezed his hand.
He took a stuttering breath and told himself to stop being so dramatic.
The antiseptic smell hit him first. It smelled like a hospital. They were led into a room that stretched nearly the length from home plate to right field. It was lined with curtained cubicles. The few they could see into were empty.
At the end of the cubicles was another room that had a large viewing window. Inside, a man in scrubs was holding a clipboard, his attention fixed on a shelf beside him.
Everything was sterile. Cold.
The guard pointed them to the last cubicle. Jax felt like he was swimming through concrete. Even the noise around him seemed muted, as though he were underwater.
He could still turn around.
But he pressed on.
As he neared the cubicle, Claire hung back, her hand pulling back on his. Her fingers went lax.
He tugged her forward. She'd insisted he come. She might as well see all the ugliness.
Jax looked down at the hospital bed and the man who lay there. His dad was asleep. He had oxygen tubes in his nose, and several softly-beeping monitors showing his vital signs.
He looked so old. He'd lost his hair, and his face was etched with deep lines.
Had he always been that small? He was nothing like the monstrous villain in Jax’s memories.
Jax stood there in shock. Stared in silence for far too long.
His father really was dying.
The man came out of the glass-window room. As he bustled into the cubicle, Jax saw the RN on his ID badge. "Let's see if he'll wake up. Hate to waste your visit without talking to him."
Jax cleared his throat, surprised to find his voice rough. "What's wrong with him?"
The nurse checked a bag of clear liquid hooked to the IV stand. "Heard him leave a voicemail for you. It’s cancer. Late stage. Glad you didn’t wait any longer. You might’ve missed him."
Cancer. So it really was the end.
His father roused with a groan. "What?" he growled, and while the voice was weaker, it was the same voice from Jax's nightmares.
The nurse was unfazed. "You've got visitors."
It took his father several seconds to focus on Jax. He'd woken with an aura of pain in his expression, but when he realized who was standing there, his face smoothed as clear as a pane of glass.
"You finally showed up," the old man said. "Decided to pay your final respects after all?"
There was nothing to respect in the man in front of him. Jax didn't say a word.
Claire felt like she was watching a train wreck in slow motion. Helpless to stop what was happening, even though she wanted to.
Jax's dad coughed, the sound wet and weak.
She'd never met anyone with eyes like his. They were a pale blue, but it wasn't the color that made her unable to look away. She felt... transfixed at the absolute cold, deadness inside.
"Read about you in the newspaper," the older man said. "Kinda thought my own flesh and blood would've called to let me know he was coming home."
I don't have a home.
Jax had played off the statement—had it only been yesterday?—pretending he'd meant he was house-shopping, but that hadn't been it at all. Today, he'd flayed himself open and showed her the beating heart inside his chest.
He'd brought her here to meet the father who had knocked him around. And probably worse. Who hadn't given him a home.
Jax had been searching for one ever since.
This train wreck was all her fault.
Up to this point, Jax hadn't said a word, but it seemed he'd finally found his voice. "We might have blood ties, but we've never been a family."
The old man's lips twisted in an ugly grimace. "Hear you're rakin' in the big bucks now that you're in the bigs. You might think your money can buy you a new life, put some distance between what you come from. But blood always outs."
Jax was fairly vibrating with tension beside her.
Whatever she'd hoped this visit with his dad would solve for Jax, this wasn't it. She'd listened to his story and judged it against her own past. Had thought that his dad must want reconciliation if he'd called Jax so many times.
Obviously, she'd been wrong.
She tugged on Jax's hand. "C'mon."
She wasn't going to let the man in that bed hurt him any longer.
Jax looked dow
n at her as if he'd forgotten her presence entirely. But he let her pull him away from the cubicle, down the hall, back to where the guard stood ready to escort them out of the prison.
Jax was silent, the clatter of their footsteps on the tile floor the only sound as they retraced their steps.
They collected her purse, his wallet, their cell phones, and his keys from the front counter where they'd been required to leave them. Then, they stepped out into the sunlight that seemed harsh after the dim interior.
Jax silently trudged across the parking lot and opened the passenger door for her.
She was about to apologize when her cell phone rang. The wedding march played. Nicholas's special ringtone.
She dug for the phone, not sure whether she intended to silence it or answer it.
It continued ringing in her hand as she looked into Jax's face. He wore a sad smile, one that was both resigned and bitter. "You'd better answer that."
Chapter 6
Nicholas had asked her to meet at the gazebo back at the bed-and-breakfast.
She wasn't sure whether that was a hopeful sign or a bittersweet one.
At this point, she wasn't sure she deserved to hope for reconciliation. She'd jumped back into...something—not friendship, something more—with Jax before she'd even shed her wedding gown.
Maybe she was the one who didn't deserve Nicholas.
Jax let her off at the front porch of the B&B. He didn't ask her for a promise—or even a phone number. He didn't say goodbye. He just drove off in a swirl of gravel dust.
Nicholas was already in the gazebo when she made her way across the artfully manicured lawn. He stood with his back to her, looking out toward the undeveloped woods at the back of the property.
When she stepped up into the structure, he turned to face her. His hands were in his pockets. He looked as if he hadn't slept since she'd seen him last at the rehearsal. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair rumpled. She’d seen him run his hands through it when he was worried or tense. How many times had his fingers traced the pattern since he’d left her the day before?
"Hey." She hung back, wrapped one arm around one of the gazebo pillars.
Someone Old: sweet contemporary romance (Jilted in Sawyer Creek Book 1) Page 5
