by Skyla Madi
He chuckles. “Even with so many unanswered questions and half-truths, you’re still so optimistic about the outcome. Your light is one of the reasons I’m so fucking in love with you, Olivia.”
Jake breathes my name, and I pull him with me as I gravitate to the fizzling sunlight in the backyard. The cool breeze tickles my skin, but I don’t care. The door opens with such ease that it’s hard not to want to drift into the fresh air. I feel like I’m walking into another world—and I would’ve believed it if his hand wasn’t clutched tightly into mine, guiding me through my haze.
I breathe the October air deep into my lungs. “I’m ready to know it all now.”
“Let’s go inside; I’ll tell you everything.”
I reluctantly follow him back inside and into the living room so he can stall a little to figure out what to say to me. “I want to know it all. From the beginning. No more lies.”
The war that wages in his head when he decides what to do makes me sad, but it’s not enough to stop me from putting my foot down. He starts a fire in the fireplace, trying to stall long enough to start the story off right.
“Okay, I’m ready.” His voice trails around his body as he faces away from me. “You have to promise me one thing, Olivia. Just one thing.”
My body feels like lead. “What is it?”
When he turns to finally face me, tears stain his cheeks and his chestnut eyes are on fire. He takes his hands from his pockets and falls to his knees—he’s weak, and I can tell this is going to be one hell of a story. He sniffs some of his sadness back into his body before forcing his eyes to meet mine again.
“You have to promise me that you won’t leave me again when you find everything out.”
“Jake—”
The growl that leaves his throat is alarming. “Promise me.”
“I promise I won’t run away screaming. Is that what you want to hear?”
He nods. “When you find out my part in this, you’ll hate me.”
“I won’t hate you.” My lips tense. “Why would I hate you?”
A long pause lingers between us, and neither of us dares to move closer.
“It’s my fault you lost your memories.”
Chapter Seventeen
Daddy issues
I know I’m glaring at him.
I feel the tension of the room suffocating me.
“I told some bad people where your father would be, and they fucked with the car, making it crash. You weren’t wearing your seat belt, and Michael was…you smashed your head against the dashboard. I swear to God, Lacey…I mean, Olivia…I never knew you were in the car. I wouldn’t have told them a damn thing if I knew you’d be there. When I found out what I’d done—”
I hold up my hand for him to stop. This is the first time he’s slipped up and called me Lacey instead of Olivia. “Is that what our plan was?”
“Our plan…what? What do you mean?”
“Our plan, Jake. I dreamed about the last night we saw each other on the way up here. I know we had a plan. Was that the plan?”
Jake swallows and runs his hands down my arms. “The plan was for us to get the fuck out of here before any of this happened, baby. That was the plan. Nothing else matters beyond that.” Inches from me now, his hand snakes around the side of my neck, and he smiles down at me. “You deserve to know the truth, and I want to be the one to give it to you. I know you inside and out, Olivia. I know the pain in your eyes, and I know the empty holes in your heart.”
My eyes narrow. “I didn’t realize I was so hopeless.”
“Not hopeless.” He smirks and runs his thumb along my bottom lip. “What do you want to know first? What haunts you the most? Let me guess. You want to know who your father is.” Jake stands up and slowly moves to the sofa, where he plants me. “Michael Cervase was your father.”
He finds my hand and squeezes it, keeping me grounded so I don’t fly away. “I’m telling you the truth, Bug. Here.” He pulls a few large photo books from the table next to him. “Look through these.” He places the heavy books next to me and then the first one in my lap. I don’t want to open it, but something inside of me is telling me that this is my only hope for knowing for sure.
I open the book.
The first picture makes me slam it right back closed.
“I-I d-d-don’t want to do this,” I stutter. “Jake, I d-d-don’t want t-this.”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Everything is up to you, understand?”
I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly before opening the book again. The first picture is the gray-haired man from my dreams, and he’s sitting next to me at a fancy restaurant table. Our happy smiles don’t look deceiving, but the pain in my eyes staring back at me makes me feel things deep inside my stomach. Picture after picture, it’s the man and me with happy smiles and love in our hearts.
“This is crazy,” I whisper and turn the next few pages.
“That’s Michael; that’s your dad.”
I wet my lips. “I’ve never seen pictures of myself before the accident.”
“What did they tell you about it when you asked?”
“They always told me boxes were lost in the move to Silver Lake, and all of our pictures were one of the lost ones.”
The last half of the book are pictures of Jake and me doing romantic things together; we both look so happy that it hurts my teeth from it all being so sweet. He watches me closely as I get to the end of the book and close it, my mind straining so hard that it’s giving me a headache. “These pictures are just confusing me more.” I blink away a few tears.
The sofa that I’ve cuddled into is so comfortable that it makes me sleepy. Alongside the warm fire only a few feet from us, the entire day catches up with me. My eyes are droopy with sleep. I feel Jake’s electric presence next to me, and I allow myself to be someone else—somewhere else—for the first time in a long time.
My fingers trace where his dark tattoos are over his sweater.
The dying tree.
The mockingbird.
I don’t even care what my heart is screaming at me.
My mind wants to launch my body on top of his and latch on forever.
Examining his rough fingers as they tangle around mine, there’s a tattoo on him I haven’t seen before. I take his left hand and turn it over a few times in mine; he exhales slowly and kisses the tips of my fingers. “That’s our promise to each other.”
The infinity symbol in black ink wraps around his left ring finger.
As Jake thinks about the meaning behind this tattoo, he smiles, and his eyelashes touch his cheeks. “We were too young to get married—well, I was eighteen and you were still sixteen and too young—so I got this instead. You were against using a fake ID to get one, so you would draw it on your finger with a magic marker whenever it would fade. It was our promise to each other that nothing, not even infinity, would stop us from loving each other.”
I frown at my naked left ring finger. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t, so don’t feel bad. Maybe someday you won’t have to draw it on, right?”
The warmth of the fire has won me over into exhaustion. “Hey, do you want to go to sleep?” His velvety smooth voice tickles my ears. “No one has slept in our bed since the day you…”
“Since the day I what?” My ears perk up a little, although sleep is still kicking me in the ass.
His arms are around me, pulling me into his chest while he stands up. “Since the day you left.” There is so much sadness in his voice that it seeps into my heart as he sways with me in his arms. He treads up a large spiral staircase to the second floor in silence. We go through an enormous doorway, into a bedroom that looks like something straight from a designer catalog.
“Home sweet home.” He gently puts me down on the soft, pale green comforter overlapping the king-size bed. “You still have some clothes here if you wanted to change.”
This is so weird.
I feel like I belong here.
“That entire closet is yours, actually.” His laugh thickens as my nerves go crazy. “I haven’t touched anything since you left.”
I breathe in deeply and walk toward the closet door Jake’s talking about. I expect to open the door and see a few items left behind, but instead…it’s a big enough walk-in closet to have a sofa sitting in the middle of the room. My lips turn into a frown as I scan the room and notice nothing that looks familiar to me. It’s frustrating because I know these things belong to me; I feel it.
He notices my sadness, coming up behind me and wrapping his long, hard arms around my torso. “I don’t need you to remember anything, Olivia. It’s okay if you don’t. I love you just the same.”
A tear falls down my cheek. “How can you love someone I used to be? What if I’m not the same person?”
Jake twirls my body around and wraps me in a bear hug; the hardness of his chest is welcoming, and his spicy cinnamon scent caresses my nose. “You’re the same person, I promise. Just a different name.” His lips quiver like they do when he’s said too much. “You’re kind and considerate, you love your family, and you’re…” He looks down with a bashful smirk. “Exciting.”
I chuckle and place my palms on his chest; our gazes dance together long enough to make my insides melt. I see his full lips lower down to mine like it’s in slow motion, and I let him press them together, sending waves of warm pleasure down my body.
“Wait,” I murmur against his lips, “I want to talk about my father. Tell me more.”
He doesn’t act annoyed that I’ve broken our kiss; he’s more excited that I haven’t run away yet. He keeps one arm around me and leans to his left, opens the top drawer of a dark oak chest of drawers, and smiles. “You get changed and I’ll tell you anything you want.”
He kisses my forehead and leaves me to rifle through the closet. It’s more of a room than a closet, and it makes me feel awkward just being in here; it’s like I’m rummaging through someone else’s things and Jake’s cheating on her.
My stomach drops.
“Jake?” I call for him. “Can you come back in here?”
His copper blonde curls emerge into the room almost immediately; the look on his face is half-twisted in terror and excitement. “What’s wrong?”
How can I say this?
“I, uh, well…” I feel the instant flush in my cheeks. “I just want to make sure you’re not seeing anyone.”
He snorts. “Besides you?”
I shrug. “I guess. You’ve never really mentioned it.”
He sits on a bench across from the oak dresser and stares up at me with sadness shadowing his round eyes. “You’re the only one I’ll ever want for the rest of my life. Even if you would’ve never remembered me, I’d still be in love with you.”
Ouch.
“Just checking.” I blush. “But none of this stuff is going to make me any less awkward. It just feels right and wrong in here at the same time. Does that make sense?”
A wicked grin paints his lips. “You can wear my things if it makes you more comfortable.”
I can’t help but to match his smile. Being around Jake is just so easy that it’s hard to believe it’s reality sometimes. A man who’s willing to do anything for me, even lay down his life, apparently; I find that completely sexy and unnerving at the same time.
He’s imperfectly perfect.
“Bug?” His smooth, deep voice cuts through my brain. “Do you want me to leave while you change?” His large hand extends toward me, and in it is a white t-shirt and blue basketball shorts. “The shorts will be a bit big, but I’m sure you’ll be fine. Besides, if you have to take them off during the night, I won’t be upset about it.” I take the clothes from him and don’t bother answering his question, because we both know we’re beyond the shyness stage of our relationship.
My body shakes.
Relationship.
“I want to know more about you, too.” My voice is rough as I peel off my jeans and sweater. Jake’s eyes burn into my flesh as he watches me untangle myself from each article of clothing and slip the white t-shirt over my head. I take down my long, chestnut hair and bite the inside of my lip. “Are you too tired to stay up and talk?”
“No,” he growls instantly. “You need to put on those shorts.”
The air around us settles, and the silence slips away. He leads me back into the bedroom where I make myself at home on the bed—and it’s so comfortable that it’ll be hard not to drift off to sleep. I have questions, and I need answers; I’m not about to let the only chance I may have slip through my fingers.
“Okay…” He’s still larger than me as we both sit in the bed. “I’m not exactly sure how to make you believe that Michael Cervase was your father other than just telling you—once again—to trust me. I can show you all the pictures and videos in the world, but you need to feel it in your heart to believe.”
My feet accidentally slide against his leg. “Maybe let’s just start from the beginning.” I take a deep breath and hold it inside for a few seconds longer than I should. “As far back as you can remember.”
“When I was eleven, I met you for the very first time. You were eight, maybe just turned nine, I don’t really remember that part. It was my eleventh birthday party, and you’d just moved in across the street with your parents. You crashed my birthday party with your nanny, Miss Claudine.”
There’s a twinkle in his eyes when he talks about our past. It’s calming to see the light return to his mind and the happiness return to his heart. He sits down so he can look into my eyes as he tells me a story of our life together. I don’t know what depresses me more: having an intimidatingly gorgeous man sitting a foot away from me or knowing that he holds a special place for me in his heart that I’m scared to death I’ll never quite fill like he wants me to. I let him continue on without interruption; I don’t want anything standing in the way of hearing the story of a lifetime.
“And the other kids were taking over the place, acting crazy and destroying the party decorations. But not you. You sat in the garden by yourself; you didn’t need chaos to feed your emotions, and it drew me to you. Of course, we became best friends, and my brothers all loved you, too. I know it seems textbook or whatever, but you gotta believe me, Olivia…we had the perfect life.”
I sit on my knees and snuggle my body closer to his as he talks. “Then what happened?”
He chuckles. “Puberty happened. I started noticing girls more and stopped hanging out with you as much when I hit middle school. My mother had gone through her second divorce by the time I was fourteen, and your dad pulled you completely away from me after I started going dark. I hated everyone, especially my mother, and I wasn’t in the mood to let anyone tell me what I could or couldn’t do.”
“Sounds like you were a bad boy, Jake.”
“I guess that’s what you’d call it.” His blonde curls find the curve of his forehead as he looks down and blushes. “I started hanging out with really bad people, doing really bad things. I wasn’t myself, and you desperately tried to help me find my way back, but I resented you for it somehow. You were the best thing in my life, and in my mind, I didn’t deserve you so it made me hate you.”
“That seems cruel.”
He nods. “Now that I look back on it, it was. But when I turned seventeen, everything changed. You came over late at night on my birthday and handed me a note.” He leans toward the nightstand and pulls out a folded-up piece of notebook paper from the drawer. His hands shake as he gives me the note; I don’t waste any time tearing into it and reading each line several times over.
Jake,
Happy Birthday!
I know we haven’t talked in a long time, but I just wanted you to know that I’m still here for you. There isn’t anything bad you can do that will make me hate you. I’ll always love the person you are, no matter who that person is.
I see you in there, Jake. I see your light.
Never forget that you’re not alone.
I’ll never leave you.
Love,
Lacey Bug
My eyebrows shake when I read the name carved at the end of the letter. I hand the note back to him, and he carefully folds it and places it back into the drawer before shutting it like it’s a priceless artifact he’s been sanctioned to keep safe from harm.
“That note changed my life, Olivia. It’s like something shifted inside of me, and I knew that no matter where I go or what I do, you belong by my side. You’re my one true love, and no matter how cheesy it seems, it’s true.”
I lower my eyes to my lap. “Then why didn’t we have a happy ending?”
He grits his teeth. “Daddy issues.”
“Daddy issues?”
He nods. “Your father hated me for the person I’d become. He didn’t want me tainting his beautiful, perfect daughter any more than I already had. I tried so hard to show him that I’d changed by getting better grades and staying out of trouble. But he wouldn’t let me see you.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Did you get this from Romeo and Juliet?”
He laughs, and my throat burns with fire. “I know it seems like it, but no. We started sneaking around again when you were eighteen. The more time we spent together, the deeper we fell in love. The more my love grew for you, the more I feared that your father was going to take you away from me. Then he surprised me by offering me a job in exchange for staying out of our way.”
I smile and try so hard to remember what he’s telling me that my head hurts. “That sounds promising. Did you take it?”
He nods. “I was good at it, but he had me shaking people down for money to invest in bogus businesses and such.” Jake notices the glare in my eyes. “He stole people’s money and left them penniless. I was totally blind to the whole thing.”
“My mom always got a sour look on her face when someone asked about her family.”
Jake doesn’t look surprised. “He was never good to her, not one bit. You were always his favorite daughter out of the two.”
