She watched me quietly, a hint of a smile on her face. “Just two friends reminiscing, Pax. That’s all.”
My eyes remained on her face as I considered how hazardous it was for me to be friends with her, but instead of pointing out that fact, I remained quiet.
“Thank you for all the help you’ve been giving me with Joseph lately. No one’s helped me like that since….”
I knew what she was going to say.
“Since Cade,” she finished.
Bringing his name up during the conversation left a taste of treachery in my mouth. One minute, we were remembering the time that we were together, and the next, she brought up the very person who had come between us. Not only that, but it was Cade whom she had called when she first learned she was pregnant. Not me. Cade. Not that I blamed her. I’d made it clear I didn’t want to talk to her, but that didn’t keep jealousy from rippling through my body.
I loved my brother. I’d finally been able to forgive him for taking away the one person for whom I was willing to sacrifice my own happiness. And I’d done just that. Unfortunately, the despair of losing her had been multiplied by the fact that she had found comfort in my brother’s arms.
But my forgiveness had been a recent occurrence, and still in its fledgling phase, it was tentative at best. I fought with the feelings churning in my chest. It had been a long time ago.
I knew I should let it go for good, and maybe if it had been anyone else, I would have been able to. But it was Jessica, and she had engulfed me so completely, I knew that even if I lived beyond my life expectancy, I would never be able to fully purge her from my soul.
She had captured me completely, possessing more power over me than I would have granted willingly.
And that was a damn scary feeling.
“Tell me one thing,” I said, trying to keep my voice even to conceal the emotion coursing through my body.
“What’s that?”
I tried not to picture those red lips kissing my brother. I tried not to imagine him holding her in his arms, whispering soft words to her when it should have been me.
“Paxton?”
I tensed my jaw and forced myself to look in her eyes. I wanted to watch her response to help me discern whether she was telling the truth. “Did you sleep with him?”
“Good grief,” she muttered, pushing her chair back and standing abruptly. “If I had one of those kettlebells you keep at the gym right now, I’d hurl it at your thick skull. I’ve already been through this with you. I told you back then that we kissed, nothing more.” She pointed at me, her eyes squinted. “And let me remind you, that happened after you dumped me.
“If you were so damn worried about what I was doing with Cade, you shouldn’t have tossed our relationship away as if it meant nothing to you.” She thumped her finger against her chest. “As if I meant nothing to you.”
I jumped to my feet, too, unleashing my anger. “You meant everything to me!”
She lifted her palms in the air. “Then why, Paxton?” she asked, her voice cracking. “If I meant so much to you, why did you tell me you didn’t love me anymore? You broke up with me, then refused to even talk to me about it. You said you were done, that we were over. Those were your words.”
I clamped my jaw shut.
Rivulets of tears streamed down her face. “I loved you,” she whispered. “I didn’t want our relationship to end. It was you who abandoned me. I wanted to….” She drew in a breath, her chest rising and falling, tears pooling at her lip. “I wanted to marry you.”
My fingers wove through my hair until they clasped just above my nape. I stared toward the floor, unable to look at her.
“I was devastated,” she whispered. “Cade was only trying to calm me down. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t function without you. But you refused to talk to me. Do you know how much that hurt?”
I lifted my head. Her brow was creased, her eyes glistening with tears. “Yes,” I said, my voice low. “Because it killed me to say those things to you.” My hands dropped to my sides. “You had a scholarship waiting for you in California, Jess. If we were together, would you have taken it?”
“That’s why you did it? Because of that damn scholarship?”
“It was a good opportunity. I couldn’t be the reason that you didn’t take advantage of it.”
Anger glittered in her eyes. “That should have been my decision! You took that away from me.”
“You and I both know that if I hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t have taken the scholarship. I let you go because I loved you, Jess.” I blew a breath out between clenched teeth. “And yes, I know how much it hurt to hear those things because when you turned to Cade, it ripped my damn heart out.
“You turned to my brother, Jess! My brother!”
“I wanted you, you asshole!” she screamed. She launched herself at me, pushing me on the chest. “I wanted you! How could you do that to me? How, Pax?”
I captured her wrists in my hands. She tried to pull away, but I held tight. She looked up at me, her face streaked with tears. “I hate you, Pax.” Sobs racked her chest. She shrieked, and I could see the pain etched on her face, hear it in her cries. The sound ripped into my soul like shrapnel. “I hate you!”
She writhed in my arms, trying to yank her hands from my grasp, but I was much too strong for her to be successful. I pulled her into my embrace and held her against my chest. She only fought a moment before she succumbed. Her arms circled my waist, and she clung to me, grieving our missed opportunity at love.
I wasn’t prepared for how much my heart ached for her. I’d told her those things because I’d loved her, and I’d known that if I didn’t stay away from her, I would have folded. I would’ve given her anything she wanted, and she would have missed her chance at going to college. It was unfortunate that her mother’s death would lead her to drop out. Hell, if I’d known the way things would have turned out, I would have known there was no need to let her go.
But I wasn’t a fortune teller. And I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d asked her to stay. And I certainly didn’t have the money to up and move to the other side of the country. Not to mention that my presence in California would have prevented her from getting the full college experience. I would have crumbled slowly each day if I had deprived her of the chance to do something with her life, and I had loved her too much to do that.
I had done it because I loved her.
But holding her, knowing how much my actions had devastated her, made me question whether I’d done the right thing, after all.
I lowered my cheek to her head, my palms smoothing over her silken hair. I wanted to release her from her pain.
She pulled back, clearly more composed. “I’m okay,” she whispered. She pulled her hands away from my waist and swiped at her tears. “I’m okay,” she repeated.
I wasn’t convinced.
Grabbing her hand, I led her out of the kitchen.
“Where’re we going?” she asked.
I stopped and glanced at her over my shoulder. “Did you have other plans?”
She shook her head.
“We have a free night. I’m exhausted. You’re exhausted. I thought we might relax and just talk.” I guided her to the bedroom.
When I saw my neatly-made bed, it looked like heaven. I’d been sleeping on the couch for more than a week, and it just wasn’t the same.
I grabbed a pair of shorts out of my chest of drawers. “I’m going to change. I’ll be right back.”
I shed my clothes and shoes, opting to wear nothing but the shorts. When I returned to my room, Jess stood in the same spot I’d left her. The curtains let in enough evening sun, so that the room was light without being overly bright. I crawled in the bed, leaving enough room for Jessica to lie beside me. I stretched out the arm closest to her, fluffed a pillow over it, and patted the mattress. “Come on.”
She kicked off her sandals and crawled in, leaving a couple of inches between u
s. I pulled the sheet to our chests.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, wiggling until she was finally comfortable.
“Tell me about college.”
“It was okay at first. California is a lot different than Tennessee. But then my mother died.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I told her.
“I was trapped in a downward spiral after that. I didn’t care about school. I didn’t care about anything, really.”
We lay quietly a moment as I waited to see if she would continue.
“She used to send me homemade cookies, and they would be loaded with both chocolate chips and white chocolate chips. She definitely believed there was no such thing as too much chocolate. Something about knowing she had made those cookies just for me made them taste so much better than anything I could have gotten at a local bakery. It was like she was sending me a little bit of home.”
“Your mother always was a sweet lady.” I smoothed her hair away from her face. “You’re a lot like her, you know.”
She released a shattered breath and turned toward me, her hands brushing against my side. “I miss her so much. I got out to California, and I didn’t have you. Then the accident happened, and I didn’t have her, either. When my mother died, I didn’t have anywhere to call home. I wound up dropping out of school, and I thought I’d try to find somewhere to make a new start.”
“What prompted you to pick Kentucky?”
“I saw a story on the news about a little old lady who made homemade cookies for her diner. There wasn’t anything special about her, really. I’m sure lots of people make homemade cookies for their restaurants.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it was timing more than anything. It made me think of my mother, and I decided that was where I was going.”
“Is that the diner you worked for?”
“Yeah, the lady who made the cookies was the one who hired me.
“I was doing okay until one night when I was having a particularly tough time. I was so lonely, Pax. Do you know how frightening it is to know there’s not a single soul on the entire planet who gives a damn whether you live or die?”
“That’s not true, Jess. You still have friends here.”
“I hadn’t really talked to anyone since I left town. If I had died in Kentucky, no one would’ve even known it.”
“What about California? Surely you made friends while you were in college.”
“A couple, but after my mother died, I talked to them less and less. Eventually, they stopped calling. I know it was all my own doing, but I just really wasn’t in a good place mentally. Anyway, I threw myself a pity party and went to this big shindig one night. I had a pretty good buzz going, and this guy showed some interest in me. One thing led to another, and about five or six weeks later, I realized I was pregnant with the father long gone, no family to help me, and very little money. That was when I reached my lowest point. That was when I knew I was going to bring an innocent child into my screwed-up world.”
She sighed. “Joseph is such a wonderful little boy. He deserves so much more than what I can give him. It makes me feel like a total failure.”
Melancholy clung to her like an aura. I gathered her in my arms and hugged her, and I realized how little physical contact she had with anyone other than Joseph. “Jess, you’re a fantastic mother, and it’s obvious that you love him and want what’s best for him. That’ll be enough for now, and everything else will work out.”
“The poor kid doesn’t even have a grandmother.”
“He has you,” I countered. “And he’s bonding with Cade and Seren as we speak.”
“I hope he doesn’t cry all night.”
I chuckled. “They want to have a baby, so whatever happens tonight, it’ll be a good preview for them.”
Jess yawned. “I’m so tired,” she whispered. I pulled her closer and stroked the length of her arm. Listening to her talk made me realize how fortunate I was to have my parents and both of my brothers, flaws and all. “Close your eyes,” I said softly. “Let’s get some rest.”
Her hand rubbed my chest, and a moment later, she stilled. I heard her breathing softly, and I knew she had fallen asleep.
I wanted to give her a tiny piece of the security that she craved, and I turned toward her, wrapping my arm around her waist and tucking her just beneath my chin. Then, I closed my eyes and drifted to sleep.
Chapter 9
Resistance Training
Jessica
I quickly dressed in my new uniform, which consisted of black slacks and the ugliest shirt I’d ever laid eyes on. When I was in high school¸ I had a friend who would take me with her when she visited her grandmother on occasion. Her house was filled with antiquated relics, including appliances straight from the seventies. Some of them were an ugly golden mustard color, and some of them were pea green. The plaid pattern I was now sporting was the exact same awful, outdated colors.
After affixing my name tag, I tugged a shirt over Joseph’s head as he squirmed on the bed. “You need to look nice for Cade and Seren,” I told him, as I pulled a pint-sized pair of jeans up around his waist and fastened them.
The doorbell rang, and I picked Joseph up, balanced him on my hip, and rushed to open the door.
“Hey, Cade,” I greeted, never failing to notice how much he looked like his older brother.
Seren rushed up the sidewalk. “I’m coming. I had to take a call from my boss.”
“Take your time,” I urged her.
“No, I’m good now.” She immediately held her hands out to take Joseph. “So I hear I’m supposed to call you Baby J now,” she told him.
I laughed. “I see y’all have been talking to Pax.”
“Cade actually told me about it,” Seren said. “Apparently, it was discussed during the Mayfield meeting last night. I’ve also been told that Baby J is going to be the official mascot for the big football party that Paxton’s throwing tomorrow.”
“Yeah, Pax has been filling him in on the rules of football all week. I did mention a couple of times that he was only six months old and he probably wouldn’t retain most of that information, but Pax didn’t seem to care.”
“I wouldn’t complain. For someone who’s always claimed that he didn’t care for kids, it amazes me just how much he actually talks about Joseph,” Cade said.
I waved them in. “Believe me, I’m not complaining. It warms my heart to hear them having their conversations when they don’t realize I’m listening. I don’t know about Pax, but I think Joseph might even miss their conversations when we move out.”
“When are you moving?” Seren asked.
“Oh, it’ll be a little while. I can’t afford to yet, but I’m hoping I’ll make decent tips at Mandy’s. Once I get some saved, I’ll start looking for a place.”
Seren sniffed Joseph’s crown and kissed him. “I love the way babies smell.”
“Where are your car keys?” Cade asked. “I’ll switch out the car seat.”
I pointed to my keys on the end table, and he scooped them up and headed outside.
Seren sat on the couch, juggling Joseph. “Well, no luck this month.”
Glancing at her, I immediately felt bad. “You’re not pregnant?”
She shook her head. “We’ve been trying for over four months.”
I sat down beside her and laid my hand on her shoulder. “That’s not really that long. Don’t stress yourself out.” I bent down to slide on my no-slip shoes.
She sighed. “I know, but I want a baby so badly.”
“It’ll happen, and when it does, you and Cade will make amazing parents.”
“I can’t wait to see Cade be a dad. When we do finally get pregnant, I don’t really care whether it’s a boy or a girl, but I have to admit, seeing him with Baby J does tip the scale towards boy a little bit. I think he would love having a son.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about the gender too much because I can guarantee you a little girl would ha
ve him wrapped around her pinkie in no time. I can just see him wearing a boa while attending a grand tea party.”
Seren grunted. “More like he’d have her decked out in camouflage teaching her how to nock an arrow.”
I nodded in agreement, smiling at the image. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Reflecting on our conversation, I added, “At least you have someone who wants a child. I’m in love with someone who has no desire to be a father.”
“Well, maybe that’s no longer true,” Seren said, hopefully. “You have to admit he’s warmed up to Joseph.”
“Yeah, but he also knows that it’s only a matter of time before Joseph and I move out. So, it’s more like a momentary amusement—not a lifetime commitment.”
“If Paxton isn’t meant to be the one for you, then you’ll find someone who will be more than happy to raise Joseph as his own. You just have to wait for the right man.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier when the man you want and the man who’s right aren’t the same man.”
“I know.”
Cade came back in and grabbed the diaper bag. “You ready, Flanagan?”
She stood, pressing another kiss to Joseph’s temple. “We’re ready, aren’t we?” she asked Joseph. He cooed and reached out to grab her earring. She gently dislodged his fingers and walked with Cade to the door.
“Thanks, y’all,” I called. “I’ll come and pick him up as soon as I get off.”
“No hurry,” Seren assured me. She took Joseph’s arm and made him wave. “Bye, Mommy.”
After they left, I finished getting ready and drove to Mandy’s. When I walked in, Mandy was standing behind the checkout counter with the cashier. She glanced at her watch. “You’ve got two minutes to get on the floor, Jessica.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I rushed past her toward the kitchen. I walked into the breakroom, locked my purse in a locker, and headed back out to look at the section I would be working.
Betrayed (Whiskey Nights #4) Page 9
