“Where’s your father?”
“He died ten years ago. In jail. He was stabbed in the gut.”
He could tell by her face that none of this was sinking in. She wasn’t listening; she was choosing to believe in her fairy tale.
“J.D.” Her smile was tremulous. “Don’t you see—”
God, she was forgiving. It was ridiculous, really. Sad.
“Are you so desperate,” he whispered, deliberately cruel, trying to push her away with both hands, “for someone to love?”
It hurt, even though she saw right through him and recognized his insult as a desperate attempt to drive her away, it hurt that he so badly wanted to wound her.
But she ached for him. She had wanted to see him vulnerable, to see him honest, but she never expected this pain lived inside of him.
“You don’t mean that,” she said, shaking her head. Standing resolute. Hoping he’d see that she was on his side. Praying that he wouldn’t say something more, something that couldn’t be forgiven, or taken back.
He was silent, giving himself away by breaking any contact for just a moment, as though he couldn’t stand to meet her gaze. “Do you want me to leave?” he asked, his voice burning through the darkness.
“Leave?” she asked, stunned. “No. Why—”
“Then good night,” he said, turning.
“J.D.,” she cried. “You can’t just walk—”
“I can, Sam. And you should, too. It’s late.”
And then he was gone.
Sam stood stunned in the kitchen long after he left. Part of her knew she should go after him, prove to him that he wasn’t the man he thought he was. That he’d been a boy raised by wolves and he couldn’t hold those sins against himself anymore.
But her legs didn’t work. Her body was tired. Her soul weary.
The hallway to the bedrooms was too long, miles and miles too long. J.D. was too far away right now. Everything she said would fall on deaf ears. She could scream herself hoarse.
And right now, this night, nothing would get through to him.
Suddenly, everything was too much. Too heavy. Every facet of her life demanded more of her than she could give. The shelter. The boy. J.D.
Everyone was injured and hurt and bleeding from terrible places and she couldn’t keep it all together anymore.
Christ, he beat his father’s head in with a baseball bat.
And convincing him that that crime didn’t prove his worth was too big a task. A mountain too high.
She didn’t have the energy to stand. To walk down that hallway and do battle with his demons.
Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I will help J.D.
Tomorrow I will deal with this.
On numb legs she crept up the stairs to her apartment, past Spencer’s bed to her bathroom, praying she didn’t wake him. Because she really didn’t know how to explain to him that she was freaking out because his father had just confessed to murder. Well, attempted murder.
Thank God that bat had slipped.
A hysterical chuckle bubbled out of her throat.
In the darkness she collapsed on the edge of her tub like an old rag.
“Oh, wow,” she breathed. Of all the reasons she’d dreamed up for J.D. to lie to her about his identity, she’d never dreamed this nightmare.
Could never dream this nightmare.
Almost made her wish he’d been married or something.
She groaned, rolling her head back on her neck.
Are you so desperate? His words reached up and poked at her tender vulnerable places, just as he’d known they would. What was ridiculous was how she thought she’d kept those secret wishes and dreams hidden for ten years. Her embarrassment burned that he saw so completely through her.
She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the ceramic sink, her head in her hands. Her whole body began to shake as adrenaline drained. As her nerves faltered and weakened.
Those angry words he’d thrown in her face tonight were bang on. She’d wanted him to be her white knight. To save her from herself. From a long lonely life living above a women’s shelter. She’d wanted him to love her.
And now she wasn’t sure what she wanted. Or felt.
She wasn’t scared. That she was sure of. If he had wanted to hurt her he would have done it years ago.
And that look on his face when he’d told her…that resigned despair…thinking about it broke her heart. He’d expected her rejection. He’d expected to be kicked out.
It was the same look she saw in the eyes of some of the women who walked in her doors. Women who’d done what they had to survive and society would never understand it. Never forgive it. Women who sold drugs or their bodies to feed their kids were thrown out of a lot of places.
No doubt J.D. had, too.
Sympathy slammed through her and a whole new understanding of him, like a hidden room, appeared. No wonder he didn’t tell her the truth. No wonder he reacted the way he had to Spencer. No wonder he was never able to give her more than a few nights a year.
J.D. thought he was a monster.
It was late but she needed some comfort, so she reached over and wrenched open the hot-water valve to her tub. The scent of roses hit her from the bubble bath residue on the enamel and she was assailed by the memory of him in this tub not two days ago.
Her stomach twisted, her heart burned.
He’d been so tender. So caring. In ten years he’d never hurt her. She’d thought over and over again, every time she was with him, that he was the most conscientious man she’d ever met, much less had the pleasure to love.
Try as she might she could not place the crime J.D. had told her about on the man that had sat in that tub with a splotch of suds on his chin.
It just didn’t fit.
She shed her clothes like skin and slid into a bath so hot it stung.
She’d wanted vulnerability from the man. Honesty. And she’d gotten it tonight in spades. In horrifying bloody spades. The look on his face when he’d told her he was scared was the worst thing she’d ever seen. He’d been a boy at that moment, all the adult in him stripped away and he was just a scared boy.
Immersed in hot water she still felt a chill down her back, through her bones.
In what J.D. had not said she got a fairly good impression of what his childhood must have been like. Those scars on his body, the old ones he didn’t talk about. The ones he’d told her, over and over again, that he didn’t remember how they’d come about, she wondered if they’d come from his father.
It explained why he’d do what he did.
She imagined whatever documented abuse his father had dished out over the years had been used as extenuating circumstances, but she didn’t know the details.
She thought of that Google search. The answers were out there.
Glancing over her shoulder at the darkness of her apartment, she listened to the laptop downstairs practically whispering her name.
It would be so easy.
Come on, she told herself when her instincts balked, don’t you deserve some answers? Don’t you feel entitled to the truth?
She did. She ached for the truth.
But she couldn’t get it from a computer. She’d wanted trust from him. She’d wanted him to give her a piece of himself and tonight he had. Too late for there to be any relationship between them, but she could honor and respect that trust.
J.D. would tell her or she wouldn’t know.
She leaned back in the tub and placed a warm washcloth over her eyes. That sympathy she wished she didn’t feel morphed and grew and filled her. Not unlike the excitement she used to relish when she knew she’d see him. The warmth, the thrill of his touch. The comfort of his arms, the sound of his breathing in her ear. And she realized she had the only truth she really needed: J.D. was not the monster he thought he was.
11
Spence sat at the kitchen table eating his third piece of cinnamon sugar toast. It was like a doughnut but with butter. No wonder
he’d never had this before. Doughnuts were a rare treat and breakfast with Mom usually consisted of yogurt and cereal—nice, but no butter. No heaps of white sugar and no cinnamon.
His mom would totally lose it right now if she saw him. Doughnuts two days ago and now this.
But Sam had said she only knew how to cook three things for breakfast: coffee, ham and egg sandwiches and cinnamon sugar toast.
It would have been rude not to accept her offer to make him breakfast.
But then the phone had rung and she’d plopped the toast, butter, cinnamon and sugar on the table in front of him and ran for her office.
He’d figured out the rest.
But that was a half hour ago and he was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to come back. He was beginning to wonder if staying here had been a mistake.
I miss my mom, he thought.
“Hey.”
Spence nearly choked on his toast.
“Hey, Jane,” he said, trying to act cool as the pretty pregnant teenager strolled into the kitchen. Her stomach looked bigger than it had the other day, or maybe it was just her T-shirt under the open hoodie she wore was tighter. She looked better, the brown stuff was off her arms and her eyes were sparkly. “How are you?”
“I’m starving,” she said.
Excellent. He was a man with breakfast skills. “Can I make you some cinnamon sugar toast?” he asked, expecting her to light up at the offer. It was, after all, sugar for breakfast. But instead she looked, if it was possible, a little whiter. A little sadder.
She pulled the bright pink hoodie she wore higher on her neck and zipped it up past her big stomach.
“Or not,” he said, shrugging. “I think there’s yogurt and stuff in the fridge.”
Spence thought Jane was going to leave, or puke or something. He heard pregnant women acted weird. But after a second Jane smiled and sat down at the table. “I’d love a piece of toast,” she said. “With lots of cinnamon and sugar. My mom always made that for me when I was home sick.”
“Coming right up,” he said, so relieved she wasn’t going to upchuck everywhere. He put two slices in the toaster and pushed down the lever. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her pull her cell phone out of her pocket and check something.
“So your mom left,” Jane said, putting the phone back in the front pocket of her sweatshirt. “You sad?”
“No,” he said fast, because he was a little. “I’m getting to know Sam and J.D. They’re, like, my birth parents, you know?”
Her eyes went really wide and she leaned forward. “You’re adopted?”
He nodded, focusing on the toast because he felt embarrassed for saying anything.
“Did you always know that?” she asked. “I mean, like, did your mom tell you right away?”
He nodded again.
“Are you pissed?”
“About what?”
“At Sam?” she asked. Her eyes were like lasers or something. “For giving you up?”
The toast popped and he concentrated on spreading an enormous amount of butter on the white bread. “No,” he said. “Well, not really. I mean—” He paused to sprinkle his cinnamon sugar mixture on the bread, making sure it got into every corner, and tried to think of ways to put what he’d only written in his notebook into words he could say. “I wonder why she did it.”
“She probably didn’t know what to do with a baby,” Jane said. “She was probably scared.”
“Then why’d she get pregnant in the first place if she didn’t want a baby?”
“Well,” Jane snapped, “sometimes that just happens.”
“Oh, man,” he said fast, because he was a total idiot. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she sighed, brushing her bangs off her forehead. “I mean, I understand why you’d be mad at Sam. But it’s not like I was stupid or anything. We used a condom. This was just a total accident.” She patted the top of her round belly.
His ears burned at the mention of the word condom and he nearly dropped the toast he handed her. But he nodded, playing it cool.
“So,” she said with a sigh. “You’re hanging out for a few days?”
“Yeah. Mom will be back on Friday. How long are you staying?”
Jane went real still, her eyes glued to the toast she held halfway to her mouth. “Not long,” she said.
“You gonna go home? To your mom and dad?”
She laughed but it wasn’t funny. It was sad and mean at the same time. “Not likely,” she said. “They’re not too thrilled with me right now.”
Spence thought of his mom yesterday morning, about how he’d been a little scared of her, and didn’t know what to say.
With nothing else to do he put some more bread in the toaster and at the same time Jane’s pocket rang and she dropped the toast like it was burning hot and dug out her phone.
Startled, Spence just watched as she looked at her screen and practically started to cry.
“Where are you?” she asked into the phone. “I’m totally freaking out.” She jumped up from her stool and ran back to the rooms.
After a minute, when it was clear she wasn’t coming right back, Spence reached out and grabbed her toast.
No sense in letting it go cold.
“You gonna spend the day in here?” Deb asked from the doorway of Sam’s office.
“Well,” Sam sighed. Her morning was slipping away on a flood of sudden paperwork and she couldn’t seem to stop it. “It wasn’t my intention, but the accountant called saying there was an error on our grant application. I got that fixed. Then Alex called in sick and can’t teach her résumé class and we’ve got six women coming in to take that class in—” she checked her watch “—a half hour and I can’t find the damn handouts!” Sam slammed the desk drawer that didn’t catch and bounced back to bang her knee. She slammed it again with the same result. She was about to slam it again when Deb put her hand on her shoulder.
“Stop,” she said. “You got J.D. in room two and a boy out at that kitchen table and you’re having a hissy fit in here.”
After the revelations of last night she’d gotten about ten seconds of sleep. And just hearing J.D.’s name made her heart pound and her head hurt. And she knew Spence was out there, waiting for her, but she didn’t know what to do with him. About him. For him.
She was emptied out. Hollow.
“I’m not having a hissy fit.”
“Right. Because no one else can teach that résumé class, huh?” Deb asked, her hands on her hips. “No one else can find those handouts? And that accountant you pay the big bucks to can’t fix a grant application?”
“I told him to contact me,” Sam said. “It’s policy.”
“Policy.” Deb shook her head. “It’s policy that you do everything. I’m supposed to be your assistant and all I do is drive people to doctors’ appointments.”
“That’s not true,” Sam said, wondering what Deb was talking about. “You do so much.”
“I do plenty of the things you tell me to do,” Deb said and finally Sam gave up and sat down.
“What are you getting at, Deb?”
“I’m getting at the fact that it’s policy that you do everything around here. Someone can’t teach, you do it. Someone makes a mistake, you fix it. You don’t let me help.”
“You want to teach the class?”
Deb reached out and pulled Sam to her feet.
“Deb.” Sam groaned. “What are—”
“Your son is out there,” Deb said, giving Sam a little shake. “He’s here, on his own to get to know you and you are locking yourself up in here. You got a man out there who keeps coming back to you for more and you are locking yourself up in here. You’re hiding because this stuff—” she gestured to the cluttered boxes and the broken chair “—is easy for you.”
“There’s work—”
“There will always be work,” Deb said. “Always. But you keep doing it and that’s all there will be.”
Sam’s stomac
h did a free fall to her feet and she went slack in Deb’s arms. This was easier. The doctors’ appointments and bad plumbing and everyone else’s problems were simpler.
Spence. J.D. Her life. Was so damn hard.
“Oh, no.” She groaned and dropped her head down on Deb’s shoulder.
“You’re dumb but you’re not stupid.” Deb laughed, stroking her back.
“I just don’t know what to do with him,” Sam admitted.
“Spence or J.D.?”
“Either one of them,” she said, wanting to cry.
“I’ll teach that class. You go take your son out for a walk to the pond. Take a lunch. Take J.D. Go for a swim.”
Really? she thought. That works? It’s that simple?
“Trust me, sweetie,” Deb said, reading her expression. “A cool swim on a hot day puts lots of things right.”
“What would I do without you?” Sam asked, looking her friend right in the eye.
“Well, I’ll tell you when my review comes up,” Deb said and pushed her out the door, toward her son. Toward her life.
J.D. heard Sam’s voice coming around the side of the shelter and pulled his shirt out from where he’d tucked it in the back of his pants. Even covered in sweat and hotter than hell, he set down the old scythe and yanked the blue shirt over his head.
He didn’t need to be any more naked in front of the woman.
He heard Spence’s voice, then the higher-pitched tones of what had to be Christina Conti. Sam said something else and everyone laughed.
J.D. picked up the scythe and resumed attacking the ever-creeping kudzu vines. Grateful there was something here he could take a knife to.
“Hey, J.D.!” Spence yelled as they emerged from the side of the house. The boy took a few running steps toward him and then stopped. “What are you doing?”
“Cutting back the vines,” he said, resting his elbow on the top of the scythe. He thought about what Sam had said, the way the boy had asked about him and felt guilt like stones roll through his stomach. “What are you up to?”
“We’re going for a swim,” Spence said, pointing down at a pair of cutoff jeans that showed off his bird legs. Something about those knees made J.D. smile.
The Story Of Us: A Secret Baby Romance (Serenity House Book 1) Page 13
