by A. J. Pine
Ava had shown him beauty in a place where he’d only ever found pain.
But that wasn’t the whole truth. Was it?
Yes. His last years in Oak Bluff had wiped out any good memories of the place. But there had been good here at one point. The realization of it had crept up when he wasn’t looking, whether it was Jenna recounting his parents’ courtship or the revelation of what they’d built together, not just in that damned spare room but in the ranch as a whole.
Then there were these past two weeks working on the vineyard with his brothers and the only woman who’d ever been able to break through his carefully constructed walls. He’d made new memories in a place he’d thought it impossible to do.
He’d always thought his past would be trampled to dust the day Jack Senior was laid to rest. But Ava was right. His father was gone, but he was still hanging on to the pain. He needed to be the one to let go.
“How?” he asked aloud. “Someone tell me how, and I’ll do it.”
But no one was there to answer. So he grabbed the painting and brought it inside. But he didn’t bring it to his truck.
Convincing himself she’d left it on purpose, he decided to keep it—his best new memory, and the hope that it wasn’t his last. New York might be on the other side of the country, but he wouldn’t stay away like he had before. He didn’t need to anymore.
“So, Red’s parents seem nice,” Luke said sarcastically as they approached the Ellis clan sitting on the bleachers behind first base. “You piss in their rosebushes or something?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “More like I got their daughter pregnant and then disappeared for ten years.”
“Shit,” Walker said. “’Not like that’s on you. You didn’t have a fucking clue.”
Jack shrugged. “I’d rather they take issue with me than make Ava’s life hell.” He side-eyed both his brothers. “Just—don’t be a dick,” he said before they were close enough for anyone to hear.
“Which one of us?” Luke asked.
But they were within spitting distance of Ava and her parents now, which meant he couldn’t give Luke a proper, brotherly response.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ellis,” he said in a professional tone. “I’m not sure you ever met my brothers, Luke and Walker.”
Luke extended a hand to shake, but Walker simply crossed his arms.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Mrs. Ellis said with a genuine smile. Mr. Ellis did not reciprocate the gesture.
“Luke is pretty big in the local rodeo circuit,” Ava said. “And Owen got to have his first rodeo experience last night.”
Mr. Ellis narrowed his eyes at his daughter. “You brought my grandson to a rodeo?”
Luke cleared his throat. “Actually, sir, we took Owen on our own so your daughter and Jack could have a night to themselves.”
Christ. Smacking his brother on the back of the head would only fuel the fire. He opened his mouth to play defense, but Ava beat him to the punch.
“Jack worked all day and well into the early evening in the vineyard,” she said. “I wanted to give him a home-cooked meal as a thank-you.”
Walker scoffed. “Yeah, while we had to eat nachos and hot pretzels.”
Mrs. Ellis laughed, but Ava’s father didn’t even crack a smile.
“Rumor has it you got a pretty nice offer on that broke-down vineyard of yours,” he said.
“You told him?” Jack asked Ava, but she shook her head, her eyes wide.
“Dad,” she said, her voice shaky, “do you have something to do with that offer?”
He didn’t have a chance to respond as Owen ran off the pitcher’s mound where he’d been warming up.
“Grandma, Grandpa, did you guys see that curveball? Jack taught me that. Did you know he was a pitcher?” He squinted past them toward the parking lot. “Hey, isn’t that Jenna? It’s so cool you all came to my game.”
Jack turned to see Jenna standing on the curb next to the driver’s side of a car stopped on the wrong side of the street, idling behind a stop sign. He didn’t recognize the vehicle or the driver. He was about to turn away and give her privacy, realizing it was probably a man she’d spent the night with. But then he saw the guy grab her wrist…and Jenna try unsuccessfully to pull away.
“Shit,” he said. She hadn’t ended it, and the piece of shit had laid his hands on her again.
Jack ran across the short expanse of grass to the idling vehicle, ripping the guy’s hand from Jenna’s arm before even saying a word.
Jenna gasped and turned to face him, and Jack fucking lost it when he saw the fresh, purpling bruise on her cheek.
He pushed Jenna out of the way and yanked the car door open, tearing the asshole from his seat. He dragged him around the front of the car, slamming him down on the hood before raising his fist to the man who’d raised his own to Jenna.
“Jack! Don’t!”
Ava’s voice cut straight through to him. He had one hand around the guy’s throat and the other pulled back into a fist poised to beat him bloody. But he turned toward her voice to see all of them crowded in front of the car—Jenna, Luke, and Walker. Then Ava with Owen at her side, the boy staring at him in horror, exactly like his mother had ten years ago.
Ava’s parents seemed to appear out of nowhere, her father bellowing as he stepped in front of his daughter and grandson, as if to shield them from what he was about to do. “This!” he cried. “This is why you’ll never be good enough for my daughter and why you’ll never be the father that boy deserves. You’re just like your old man. And I’ll be damned if I let you do to Ava and Owen what you did to Derek Wilkes…and what your father did to you.”
Jack looked at his fist raised in the air, then at the man beneath his outstretched hand whose lips were turning blue. He let go and stumbled back. “Somebody call the cops,” he said, barely recognizing his own voice.
“I’m on it,” Luke said, pulling his phone from his pocket.
Only then did it register what Ava’s father had done.
He turned toward the gathered crowd and saw Ava with her hand cupped over her mouth and Owen’s disbelieving stare volleying from her to him.
“You’re—my dad?” Owen asked, the hurt in his eyes more devastating than anything Jack could have imagined.
“He didn’t know,” Ava said, taking a step toward her son, but Owen only backed away.
Jack’s eyes were fixed on Owen, whose own were red as tears streamed down his cheeks. The boy was getting dangerously close to the curb.
“Mom?” He was sobbing now. “You”—he hiccupped, trying to catch his breath—“you always knew? This whole time we were at J—at his house, and—and you didn’t tell me?”
Not another step, Jack thought as he watched Owen retreat farther, and the boy stopped as if he could read his mind. Jack straightened and let out a breath as Owen turned his gaze to him.
“Do you…Do you not want me? Is that why you didn’t say anything?”
Ava reached for her son, but he shook his head and took another step back, not realizing he was stepping off the curb.
It all happened in seconds. Owen stumbled several extra steps to keep himself from falling and Jack eyed the car around the corner making a left-hand turn right toward his son.
The driver wasn’t looking.
Ava screamed.
Jack’s only reaction was to run.
Owen was in his arms before he heard the sound of tires screeching, before he smelled the burnt rubber. But it was too late.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Owen sat, quiet and stoic, as the emergency room doctor cleaned and stitched up the gash in his chin. He didn’t speak in the ambulance, either. He simply cried softly. But Ava knew the tears had nothing to do with physical injury.
He walked away from the accident with five stitches. Five stitches when it could have been—
Ava choked back a sob. If it hadn’t been for Jack…
She cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Dr. Bennett, but have you heard anyt
hing else about Jack Everett’s condition?”
The woman finished tying off Owen’s suture and then straightened to face Ava. “I’m sorry, Ms. Ellis. But last I heard, he was still in surgery. And please, call me Dr. Chloe.”
The young doctor pushed her glasses up onto her head and brought her attention back to her patient. “That ought to do it, Owen. And can I just say, you are one of the bravest patients I’ve ever had.”
He pressed his lips into a small smile. “Thanks.”
She stood and reached into the pocket of her white coat and produced a raspberry Tootsie Roll pop. Ava was sure this would get a more Owen-like response, but he simply held out his hand when she offered it to him and then set it on the hospital bed beside him.
She pulled her dark brown ponytail tighter and stuck Owen’s chart under her arm. “I’ll hand this off to the nurse who’ll get started on your release paperwork.”
She offered her hand for Ava to shake, and she did so, albeit absentmindedly. Now that Ava knew Owen was okay, her thoughts traveled elsewhere. “I’ll have someone notify you when Mr. Everett is out of surgery. In the meantime, there’s a coffee machine in the waiting room, or I can have someone show you all to the cafeteria.”
Ava shook her head. “I don’t want to miss any news. But thank you, Dr. Chloe.”
The woman smiled and ducked behind the curtain that was their illusion of privacy.
Owen sat with his legs dangling over the side of the bed, head hanging low as he stared at the knees of his still-white baseball pants. Not a mark on them. The only part of Owen that had hit the asphalt was his chin. The rest of him had been cocooned inside Jack’s solid frame.
Ava took a chance and sat down next to her son, nudging his knee with her own.
“You still not talking to me?” she asked.
He shrugged but didn’t say anything. Still, she took the gesture as permission to continue.
“I met Jack when I was eighteen,” she said softly. “He and his brothers moved to our area after the winter holidays, so they were new to school second semester. I was the one chosen to show Jack where his first-period class was, and you want to know what?”
She held her breath, waiting, hoping, for a response. Anything to show her that he wanted to know their history—the history of how he came to be—because that wanting meant they were one tiny step closer to forgiveness.
The seconds stretched out before them, and Ava felt the tears pricking at her eyes when Owen finally let out a breath and asked softly, “What?”
She laughed nervously. “He was this beautiful, golden-haired boy with eyes as blue as the ocean. And I think I fell for him right on the spot.” She rested her hand on Owen’s cheek and urged him, gently, to make eye contact.
He did.
“His eyes were just like yours,” she continued. “Are just like yours.”
“The same blue?” he asked.
She nodded. “And the same sadness.” She dipped her head to plant a kiss in Owen’s auburn waves. “I know you heard your grandpa say some stuff about Jack’s daddy.”
Owen chewed on his lip. “His dad hurt him?”
She kissed the top of his head. “Yeah, bud. He did. It’s not my place to tell you everything that happened to Jack before I met him. That he’ll have to tell you himself. But all I can say is that I would have done anything to take away his hurt, just like I would do for you right now. And back then, it meant not telling him about you because he had to leave. That was the only way I knew how to protect him—by letting him go.”
“So he never knew about me?”
She shook her head. “I was so young when I had you and so scared that if I told him, he would have stayed. Because that’s the kind of guy your dad is. But I didn’t want to be the one to keep him in a place that caused him so much pain, so I did what I thought was right back then.”
She grabbed a tissue from the box on the counter and wiped at Owen’s eyes.
“Did you love him?” Owen asked.
“So much.”
He leaned his head against her shoulder, and she let out a shuddering breath. She knew they had a long road ahead of them, but her son would forgive her. Eventually, time would help repair what she’d broken.
“Do you—love him now?” he asked, and Ava let out something between laughter and a sob.
“So, so much,” she admitted. “I don’t think I ever stopped.” She wrapped her arm around him and squeezed him close. “We were going to tell you. After the game. We just wanted you to have some normalcy before we turned your world upside down.”
He straightened to look at her. “He—he wants to be my dad?”
Her tears flowed freely now, but she didn’t care. Even though she knew Jack was moving to New York, one thing was certain. “Yes, sweetheart. God, yes. He wants to be your dad.”
“And Luke and Walker? They want to be my uncles?”
She nodded. “And Jenna is dying to let you know she’s your great-aunt.”
The hint of a smile fell from Owen’s face. “That man hurt Jenna. The one Jack almost hit.”
It wasn’t a question. He knew.
Ava skimmed her fingers through her son’s hair. Yesterday, his biggest worry in the world had been keeping his cowboy hat from falling over his eyes at the rodeo. Today he’d learned that people hurt others—some intentionally, and some who thought they were protecting the ones they loved from greater pain.
“Yeah. He did. But she filed a report with the police after the accident. That man won’t hurt Jenna anymore.”
Ava remembered the look in Jack’s eyes when she’d screamed for him to stop—as he listened to her dad confirm everything Jack feared—that he was a replica of his own father. She’d never be able to erase that moment for him.
The curtain slid open and a nurse walked into their small space with a clipboard. “Just a few signatures for you, Ms. Ellis, and some post-op instructions, and you two are free to go!”
Dr. Chloe popped her head in as well. “Wanted to let you know that Mr. Everett is out of surgery and in recovery. The information desk should have a room number for you within the next hour.” She grinned. “It was a clean break where he’d broken the leg before, and the surgery was a success. He’ll be up and about in no time.”
Ava released a shaky exhale, and, without even thinking, sprang from the bed to hug Dr. Chloe. “Thank you!” she said. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Her grateful smile fell when she let go of the doctor and saw her parents striding toward her from the nurses’ station.
“They said Owen was being released, and damn it, I want to see my grandson.” Her father was storming toward them now, but Ava stepped in front of Dr. Chloe to cut them off.
“Mom…Dad…I asked you to wait in the waiting room. There isn’t room back here for all of us.”
Her father made like he was about to take a step forward, but Ava shook her head.
“Do you…have this under control, Ms. Ellis?” Dr. Chloe asked.
“Yes,” she said and dipped her head back around the curtain. “Back in a sec, bud, okay?” she asked Owen.
He nodded and opened up his Tootsie Pop. She smiled. He’d be okay. She and Owen would be okay.
Ava led her parents back in the direction they’d come from until all of them were in the waiting area and out of earshot of Owen’s room.
“Ava.” Her mom spoke first. “We’re so sorry everything happened like this. We just want to make sure Owen is okay.”
“He will be,” she said. “He’s got more than a cut on his chin that needs healing, but he’ll get there. What about Jack? I don’t see you storming through the surgical wing making sure he’s okay.”
Her father’s face paled, and he collapsed into a chair. “He could have killed that man. I saw it in his eyes.”
“A man that was hurting his aunt…like Derek was hurting me. Just because I walked away from that party with only a few bruises shouldn’t have meant that Derek was exonerated in y
our eyes.”
Her father’s shoulders sagged.
“You were so horrible to him, Dad,” Ava said. “You made him believe in his worst fear when he proved today that he’s a better father than most, and he’s only known his son exists for two weeks.”
Her voice grew stronger with each word she spoke, with what she should have said to defend Jack not only ten years ago but when he’d shown up on the day his father was laid to rest.
“You knew what happened to him back then. But did you know he took every beating so his brothers didn’t have to? Some kids grow up to be just like their parents. Sometimes that’s good, and sometimes not. Deputy Wilkes was a good man as far as I knew, but his son assaulted me. If Jack hadn’t shown up when he did…Yes, things got out of hand, but try to remember what might have happened if he came looking for me five minutes later.”
Bradford Ellis, a man who’d always seemed such a hulking presence, crumpled as his face fell into his hands. It was Ava’s mother who spoke.
“He was afraid he’d turn out like his father if he ever had kids. And then today—he saved his son’s life,” she said.
Ava nodded and her mother pulled her close.
“I couldn’t tell him about Owen,” Ava said, her face buried in her mother’s neck. “I couldn’t tell him when the only thing he knew about fatherhood was that his own dad had almost killed him, and he swore he’d never put a child of his own in that same position.”
She pulled away from her mother so she could speak to both her parents. “Jack made a mistake ten years ago, but today he is the only one who is blameless in this mess. And if you need some sort of proof that he is nothing like his father, I think the fact he didn’t lay a hand on that guy and put his own life in front of Owen’s should be evidence enough.” She sniffled and straightened her shoulders. “He has a new life waiting for him in New York,” she added. “Across the damned country. I gave him the choice I should have given him ten years ago—to decide what part he wants to play in Owen’s life. And mine. And you, Dad, setting up the buyer for their vineyard and then everything you said? He’ll be on his way out of here—and probably out of both our lives—the minute he gets released.”
