The Truest Thing: Hart's Boardwalk #4

by Samantha Young

  I nodded. I’d already looked that up. Apparently, some women with longer abdomens had more space for the uterus to develop upward rather than outward, which meant a smaller bump.

  “Okay, let’s get started.”

  I jumped as she gently pressed the ultrasound wand to my belly. I turned my head to look at the screen set up by the bed.

  Amy moved the wand across my stomach. My whole body was tense as we waited to hear—

  My breath caught at the whooshing sound of a rapid heartbeat.

  “There we go. There’s the heartbeat.” Amy smiled.

  And it hit me. Like a tidal wave.

  I was really, actually, truly going to be a mom.

  I was going to have this tiny little person to love and raise and show them everything my parents hadn’t shown me.

  I’d finally have a family.

  Although I’d thought about this from the moment I’d found out I was pregnant … it hit me. There was a little person growing inside me.

  Tears filled my eyes, spilling down my cheeks. And suddenly, I could smell Jack’s cologne, I could feel his lips whispering sweet kisses across my temple and down my cheek, catching the tears. His fingers curled tight around mine.

  Turning my head on the pillow, I looked at him, his face close, and through the wet in my eyes, I saw his were bright with emotion too. As if he couldn’t help himself, he pressed his lips to mine, and I let him.

  In fact, I kissed him back.

  It was the sweetest kiss of my life.

  “Sorry,” he whispered hoarsely as he broke away. “Caught in the moment.”

  I squeezed his hand to reassure him it was okay and then saw our tech beaming at us. She clearly thought we were a loving couple. It hurt that we weren’t.

  Looking away from her, I turned back to the screen to listen to that beautiful heartbeat.

  Not long later, we left with an envelope filled with scan snapshots that we could share with our friends and Jack’s family. Rosalie was itching to meet me, and Jack and I were putting it off because we didn’t want to deal with any questions about why we weren’t together. I knew neither of us could put off that meeting much longer.

  “March,” Jack said. It was the first word either of us had uttered since leaving the hospital.

  “Yeah.” Our baby was due March 1. I was definitely twelve weeks along. I clutched at the envelope with the images. “We’re going to be parents, Jack.”

  “I know, Em. I still don’t think it’s fully hit me. I’m getting there, but …”

  “It hit me harder, hearing the heartbeat … But I know what you mean. I don’t think it will fully hit us until the little one is here.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. And then he said, “You’re right.”

  I looked at him and he flicked me a remorseful look before turning his eyes back to the road.

  “You’re right, Em. I have made decisions for us both without taking your opinion into account. I never even thought about it like that. I just … you have to know that wasn’t me being a controlling, bullying bastard.” He glowered, but I knew it wasn’t directed at me. “I’m not my father. I thought I was protecting you.”

  Sympathy and exhaustion hit me at the same time. “Jack, I know you’re not your father. That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know. But I need you to know that it came from a place of good. Pushing you away … I did that for you. If I’d made those decisions for me, we would’ve been together a long time ago. I was trying to be unselfish, and protecting you is just something my instincts scream at me to do. But somehow, I’ve ended up being high-handed. I’ll stop doing that. If you want to come to the trial, then that is absolutely your prerogative.”

  Relief flooded me. It wasn’t the first time Jack had admitted when he was wrong and vowed to do better. And he’d proven last time that he meant it. “I do. I want to be there for you. You’re my friend.”

  His hands tightened around the wheel. “Yeah.”

  This need for him to assure me that he wasn’t his father bothered me, though. For weeks, I’d been concerned that my decision not to be with Jack because I didn’t trust him romantically was still causing him to think he wasn’t worthy of trust, period. I’d known that when he suggested we spend time together because I had to learn to trust him if he was to be the father of my child. I’d agreed at the time, but afterward, it bugged me that he thought I wouldn’t trust him to be a good dad.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know you’re a good man, right?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I know you’re a good man. Cooper knows. Jess. Your mom and sister and brother and uncle. Everyone who matters knows you’re a very good man.”

  Jack flicked me a soft look. “Okay.”

  “But do you know that? Do you feel that?”

  Understanding crossed his expression. He let go a long exhalation before he replied, “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it these last few months. Despite my past concerns, I know I’m not my father. If I were my father, I wouldn’t have been miserable living the life he wanted for me. I’ve made mistakes. A lot of them. But I know I’m a good guy. I know my intentions.” He cut me another look. “But if you know that … then why don’t you trust me?”

  Despite the topic of conversation, I hadn’t been expecting him to ask me that, nor so bluntly. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—I just don’t trust you romantically.”

  “See, that makes no sense to me.”

  Hearing his frustration, I knew that words were not enough, that if I wanted him to understand my stance between us, I’d have to tell him the truth. Now. I’d have to open the store a little later than usual, but it was time I told Jack everything. “Do you need to get back to work right away or can you make some time to talk?”

  “I’ll make time.”

  I smiled nervously. “Then when we get to my place, you should come in. I have some things to explain.”

  Jack looked taken aback but relieved. “That’d be good, Em.”

  Yeah, not really for me. It was not a trip down memory lane that I particularly enjoyed.

  We were seated on the sectional. I was curled in the corner while Jack lounged a few seat cushions away, his long legs sprawled, his arms resting along the back of the couch.

  A cup of coffee sat on the coffee table, opposite my cup of decaf.

  Untouched.

  Jack was laser focused on me.

  So, I began. To get to the root of our problem, I had to start at the beginning. I told him about my parents, their negligence, about their death, which he already knew a little about. I explained about my complicated feelings for my grandmother. How she gave enough of a shit to teach me some manners, but how she stifled me. How I knew it was partly overprotectiveness and partly her controlling nature.

  “I had no friends. The one time I snuck out to be with a boy, it was part of a cruel joke and my grandmother found out and …” I sighed, looking away from Jack’s concerned expression. “I was sixteen, had never been kissed, had no one to talk to, and I was vulnerable. Enter Tripp Van Der Byl. He was twenty years old. A junior at Columbia. He was the son of the CEO of Paxton Aeronautical.” My gaze returned to Jack’s; his expression was tight, like he knew whatever I was about to tell him wasn’t going to be good. “At first, I just saw him like every boy in our circle. Preppy, arrogant, that clean-cut kind of handsome that made me want to mess up his hair and unbutton his collar.”

  Jack grinned.

  I smirked, but it fell away as I remembered what it was like to be sixteen and think I was falling in love. “It was summer, and he was home from college. We were always invited to the same stuffy dinners. Knowing how strict my grandmother was with me, he would talk to me whenever her back was turned. As we got to know each other, he didn’t seem like any of the boys I went to school with or had met. He seemed as exasperated by the pretentiousness and suffocation of our privilege as I was.
We liked the same books. He made me laugh. He told me he couldn’t believe how much more mature I was than the girls he went to college with. It was innocent at first. But then we started to sneak around. He was my first kiss.” I blushed and looked at the carpet. “He was my first everything.”

  “He slept with a sixteen-year-old?” Jack bit out.

  Hearing the indignation in his voice, I looked at him. I nodded. “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. He was only four years older. I looked older, I acted older. And I just … I wanted to be loved, Jack. He told me he loved me.”

  “You were sixteen.” He looked angry. “A four-year age gap isn’t a lot at other times in life, but no way when I was twenty years old would I have dreamt of touching a sixteen-year-old, no matter how goddamn smart and beautiful she was.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Well, Tripp did. We had a secret relationship behind our families’ backs for almost a year.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Then one night, not long after spring break, I lied to my grandmother and told her I had a study session at school I couldn’t get out of. There was a session—she checked. I just didn’t go to it. Tripp came home and took me out that night. He left his cell on the table of this little out-of-the-way restaurant we were at and it went off while he was in the bathroom. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did.”

  I remembered that awful, sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw the text from some girl called Freya. “It was an explicit message from another girl that sounded like he was cheating on me. So, I confronted him. We argued, but he convinced me she was a girl he’d met who wouldn’t take no for an answer. That she was harassing him. I was so stupid.” I laughed bitterly at myself. Tripp had been so mad at me for being faithless. He’d been so desperate. He’d pulled the car off to the side of the road and begged me to believe him.

  “I love you, I love you so fucking much, don’t you get it?”

  We’d had sex in the car. It was not our first time. And frankly, back then, sex hadn’t been a big deal for me. It was okay. I did it because Tripp liked it so much and I loved him. But his intensity, his passion for me, had excited me that night. It was the first time he’d made me come during sex.

  I was so naive. For minutes after that moment, I’d felt guilty for not having faith in him.

  “I believed him. Ten minutes later, a car came careening around the corner too fast and slid onto our side of the road. Tripp swerved to avoid it and we hit a tree. He sustained a concussion and a broken arm, and I had broken ribs. And our families found out about us.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somehow, and I do not know how because Tripp’s car was totaled, but my grandmother found out that a”—I looked away and sighed in half embarrassment, half frustration—“used condom was recovered from the vehicle. She asked if we were having sex, and I said yes. She asked for how long. I told her. And I also explained that I loved him.” I turned to Jack. “She lost her ever-loving mind. She said he was just using me to get his claws into the Paxton Group. That his father was a ruthless, ambitious bastard she’d been trying to oust from Paxton Aeronautical for eighteen months. She called the police.”

  “Shit.”

  I shook my head, remembering the mortification and guilt and shame she’d made me feel. “She wanted Tripp charged with statutory rape, but since I was seventeen, the police couldn’t do much. And I wouldn’t admit to them what I’d admitted to her about our relationship starting before then.”

  “Em.”

  Hearing his censure, I narrowed my eyes. “I stand by it, Jack. She tried to have him charged with rape but rape didn’t happen. Should he have pursued a relationship with me? No. Maybe I was mature in other ways, but I was a lonely, vulnerable kid, and he took advantage. But I wasn’t going to ruin his life over it by slapping a sex offense on his record.”

  He sighed heavily. “Okay, sunrise.”

  “It didn’t matter anyway. She told me she’d prove he was just trying to use me.” I reached for my decaf, needing something in my hands. Although the pain had faded, I still remembered how much it hurt to realize my grandmother was right. “She got us all in a room together. Tripp, me, his father. And she offered to back Mr. Van Der Byl from now on as long as he promised to keep his focus on Aeronautical and no other part of the company. And then she offered Tripp $20 million and a high position in any area of the Paxton Group he wished to take after graduation … so long as he stayed away from me.”

  “Holy shit.” Jack sat forward, anger darkening his gaze.

  “He took it. And not just because his father immediately urged him to. Tripp didn’t even look at his dad or me. Wearing this smug little smirk like he’d won, he just said, ‘I accept your terms, Mrs. Paxton.’”

  “And just like that …” Emotion clogged my throat. “I was alone again.”

  “Fuck … Em—”

  “Oh, it gets worse, Jack. My grandmother made me get tested for STIs. I naively told her, with much embarrassment, that we’d always used protection. And I had to sit through the most uncomfortable, mortifying reminder given by my grandmother that you can catch an STI from oral sex.” I gave him a pained smile, and Jack shook his head in sympathy.

  “Sunrise …” He sounded just as pained for me.

  “Yup.” My smile fell. “He gave me chlamydia.”

  Understanding dawned and the muscle ticked in his jaw as he looked away.

  “It’s not evidence that he cheated. He could’ve had it from before … but between that text I found and the proof that he’d been using me all along, I think he was most definitely cheating on me the entire time.”

  Jack rested his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands. “You think I’m just like him?”

  “No,” I rushed to assure him.

  Jack’s head flew up and he gave me a disbelieving glare. “You think I’d fuck around on you.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to explain why I find it so hard to trust people.” I stood, my agitation making me restless. “For so long after moving here, it wasn’t just my shyness that stopped me from letting people in. It was the fear of being hurt again … because he broke my heart, Jack.” Tears filled my eyes. “Everyone I’d ever loved before moving here had broken my heart. And I know now that my feelings for him were borne from the desperation of a kid who needed someone to love her. I know that now. But it doesn’t change the way I felt back then. Or how easily he fooled me.”

  “Em—”

  “No, let me explain.” I held his hurt gaze even though it filled me with remorse. “When we met, all those fears just … I didn’t feel them with you. There was something about you I instinctively trusted. I once told you that you have the kindest eyes of any man I’ve ever met. I spoke the truth. And I wanted to believe in them, in you. And even though I told myself it was stupid, I couldn’t help it. I wanted to trust you. I wanted … I wanted you.”

  Something soft, something like awe, filled his eyes. “Sunrise.”

  “But you kept hurting me, Jack, whether you meant it or not. The other women. Pushing me away. Vanessa. Abandoning me after we made love, hours after your father held me at gunpoint.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed again, as if he couldn’t bear to hear anymore.

  “The purpose of me telling you all this isn’t to berate or hurt you. But you said weeks ago that I had to learn to trust the father of my child.” I took a step toward him. “I know you, Jack. I know you spent years of your life miserable to protect your sister. That you abandoned me to protect your mom. That you, as wrong as it was, pushed Cooper away to protect him too. You’ve sacrificed so much for other people, and I think you are honorable and true. I think my baby is lucky to have you as a father.”

  When he opened his eyes, they blazed fiercely with feeling.

  “Trusting you as a father, as a friend, is something completely different from trusting you as a lover,” I finished softly. “And there’s jus
t too much hurt between us in that respect.”

  Jack quickly looked at the floor.

  I watched him swallow hard.

  After what seemed like minutes of agonizing silence, he finally cleared his throat and stood. When he met my gaze, I was relieved to see he didn’t look angry. Or hurt. There was understanding there. “Thank you for trusting me with this. I get it now.”

  I relaxed. “Okay. I’m glad.”

  “You’re still my best friend,” he said, the words a little hoarse. “Even if I’m not yours.”

  Emotion choked me. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m going to head to work.” He moved around the coffee table and stopped by my side. “Will we drive to the trial together?”

  More relief moved through me. “Absolutely.”

  Then my breath stuttered as Jack’s head dipped and he pressed a soft but electrifying kiss to the corner of my mouth. “See you tomorrow,” he said casually as he pulled back. “Call me if you need me.”

  “I will,” I pushed out, watching him leave.

  The corner of my mouth still tingled hours later.

  34

  Emery

  There were parts of the day in court that I couldn’t remember, mostly because my focus had been solely on Jack. I watched him constantly. When he moved to take the stand, it was the only time my attention drifted to his father. Ian sat on the other side of the courtroom, at the front with his attorney and Kerr. Father and son were being tried together since Kerr was intrinsically tied up in the crimes, and surprisingly he hadn’t let his father take the blame by accepting a plea bargain.

  I could only see Ian’s profile. But his jaw was tight and his skin pale. His eyes narrowed as Jack took the stand.

  Holding my breath, I relaxed a little when I realized the prosecution would question Jack first. Jack answered their inquiries, confirming evidence he’d provided to the prosecution, that he’d witnessed and been party to his father’s blackmailing and racketeering. They got into individual examples and my stomach twisted as I listened to the awful things Jack had knowledge of. Knowing him, it must’ve been eating away at him for years.