Elizabeth searched the depths of Jack’s brown eyes, looking for a sign that he didn’t mean what he’d said … but all she found there was guilt.
“I made the wrong choice back then,” he said, his voice choked. “I thought it was for a good reason, but I’ve been ashamed of my silence ever since. And after meeting you and falling for you, I—damn it, I was going to tell you. It’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I understand if you don’t. I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. I let you down, then and now. I’m sorry you’ve had such a hard road in life, and it’s my fault as much as it is my dad’s because I could have spoken up.”
She pulled her chair away from Jack and sat back down.
“You made love to me,” she said, betrayed, and what had felt like forever turned out to be a cruel joke. It was only the scars that would last forever.
“I love you,” he said. “That’s my only defense.”
She saw it then in his eyes, love mixed with guilt and agony. And it made her angry because here was the stupid destiny she’d foreseen, and she didn’t want it anymore. Couldn’t trust it.
“I thought you were the one good man in the world.” She knew she was going to cry eventually, but for now, her emotion was a hard, cold knot in her stomach. “I thought maybe I could have faith in love and marriage and men—faith in you, Jack!—but it turns out you were lying to me all along. What an idiot I am. Were you mocking me the whole time?”
Jack’s face fell into lines of devastation. “I tried to resist you,” he whispered. “This is why I stepped back from you. You see now that I really didn’t deserve you.”
“Damned right you don’t,” she said. “I thought it was my family that was the black mark, but it turns out it’s the other way around.”
It gave her no satisfaction to say it.
“I know—believe me,” he said. “I’ve barely spoken to my dad in the years since, and now you know why. Breaking with him wasn’t enough. I see that now, but it was only when I met you that it became real in a concrete way.” His voice choked with emotion. “You were standing alone on that snowy highway with your car in the ditch, and you seemed so damned alone. I’ve thought of that moment so often since. I feel like I put you there. That everything awful you’ve ever experienced is because I stayed silent.”
Elizabeth had a flash of new anger that Jack had thought her weak. “And, what? You were going to be my savior? You were going to help me out, spend time with me, stick up for me, just to clear your own guilty conscience? You forget that I’m a survivor. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done on my own. I don’t want your pity. You might have more money than me, and a better job, and, yeah, a better reputation, but you’re not better than me. At least I’m honest.”
She saw the effect her words had on Jack. He turned his ashen face away from her.
“You are better than me, Elizabeth. You’re resilient as hell, and the more I’ve gotten to know you, the more I see just how strong you are. You even found the strength to remain loyal to your dad, loving him for all these years, even when you thought he stole that money. Even now, you’ve gotten yourself arrested to protect him!”
When he turned back to face her, his rich brown eyes were firm and direct. “I don’t love you out of pity. I love you because of your strength. I know I don’t deserve your love in return.”
But I do love you, she thought. Even now.
“If you’d just said something—” She sighed, feeling almost too weary to go on. “If you’d just spoken up all those years ago. Don’t you see how much has been lost?”
“I see it every day,” Jack said. “I’ve lived it every day, and I know you have, too. And I know it won’t matter to you, but I kept quiet because of my mom.”
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked.
“I told her what my dad had done—what I suspected he’d done—and she asked me to promise not to say anything, not to ask questions about where the money for her treatment had come from.” Elizabeth saw the faraway look in his eyes and knew he was back there, listening to his mom’s plea, the plea that put him forever in an impossible position. The plea that tore apart their family. “She said that she couldn’t bear to die knowing that us kids would lose both parents—her to cancer, him to prison. So, I promised her I would say nothing. It came at a cost, though. I stayed quiet for my mom’s sake, but I couldn’t pretend for my dad’s. We haven’t truly been a family ever since.”
Elizabeth’s heart caved in just a little, but not enough to overcome everything else.
“Don’t talk to me about family. Did you ever once think about mine?”
“I didn’t understand love back then,” Jack said. “I’d never loved someone the way my dad loved my mom. I couldn’t see how desperation could make you cross a line you’d never normally cross. I didn’t understand that kind of love until I met you.”
Before Elizabeth could respond, there was a knock on the door. Through the narrow glass window, she saw it was Theresa Harmon, her lawyer.
Her lifeline.
Her first phone call when trouble came her way.
She’d been so stupid as to hope Jack might take on that role in her life. That Jack might be the one she called first when trouble came her way.
Jack stood when Theresa entered.
“Hi, Elizabeth,” Theresa said. “Are you okay?”
Elizabeth nodded, grateful as always for Theresa’s steadiness. Her competent tone conveyed the sense that everything would turn out all right. That this was just one more thing to be gotten through in Elizabeth’s ongoing troubled life.
Theresa looked from Elizabeth to Jack. “Shouldn’t you be at the hospital with your father?”
“No,” Jack said. “I’m exactly where I should be.”
“You two know each other?” Elizabeth asked. “Oh, right, from the accident scene.”
“Jack, do you want to tell her?” Theresa asked.
“Tell me what?” Elizabeth asked, fresh dread coming over her.
“I called Theresa last week right after we—” He stopped, but Elizabeth knew what he meant. After they made love for the first time, otherwise known as after he screwed her over yet again. “When you were down in Oregon picking up your dad. I told her everything, and I had every intention of telling you, too. I was just waiting to see you in person, to tell you face-to-face. I felt I owed you that–-and so much more.”
Elizabeth looked at Theresa. “Is that true?”
Theresa nodded.
Elizabeth began to pace, trying to calm her mind and collect her thoughts. She turned to Jack. “Why did you feel the need to see a lawyer? Why would you come clean to a lawyer before coming clean to me? You’re still protecting yourself! You’re still putting yourself in front of me or my father’s innocence. Whatever we had, Jack—it’s over.”
Hearing those words from Elizabeth was a physical stab of pain in Jack’s heart. He’d known from the beginning, of course, that their relationship would end when she discovered the truth about the Barnes family. Still, it just about killed him.
“I understand you’d never want to be with me now,” Jack finally said. “But I’m trying to deal with this as an adult this time around, not the immature nineteen-year-old I was back then. I have property, a business, a life. I’ll admit I don’t want to go to jail if I can avoid it.”
“You deserve jail,” Elizabeth snapped. Then she shook her head. “Not that it would make any of this better.” She turned to Theresa Harmon. “I don’t like the fact that you’re representing both me and him. It doesn’t seem right. I think you need to choose who you’re going to represent.”
“I choose you,” Theresa said. “I’ve already referred Jack to an associate of mine. I choose you, Elizabeth. Don’t ever think twice about that.” She turned to Jack. “You should go. Elizabeth and I have work to do getting this assault charge dropped.”
Jack nodded. He looked at Elizabeth, despe
rately wanting one last moment with her. He wanted to take her hands and press them to his heart so she could feel it beat for her. He wanted to caress her cheek, run his fingers through her silken hair. He already missed her. Why hadn’t he lingered a moment in this room with her, before he told her the truth about everything? Why hadn’t he memorized the feel of her hands in his?
“I was nineteen,” he said. “I made a deathbed promise to my mom. I gave up a relationship with my brothers and sisters so they could go on thinking my dad was a great guy. I gave things up. I lost my childhood, too. And I’m not making excuses. I just want you to understand. I need you to understand me, Elizabeth.”
“I do understand.” She turned her back to him. “And I want you to leave.”
28
Jack sat in the empty chapel of the Golden Falls Medical Center. He stared at his hands and waited for them to stop shaking. Waited for his whole body to stop shaking before he went to see his father, aging and shamed and battered by the man he’d wronged so long ago. He needed to deal with the situation, just as soon as he had control of himself. As soon as he could be what both Josh and Bruce needed him to be.
He would tell Josh the truth. He was done carrying the burden of his dad’s shameful secret, done trying to protect anyone other than Elizabeth, whom he’d protect any way he could until his dying day if only she’d let him.
But she wouldn’t. The look of betrayal on her face was something Jack would never forget. He knew her angry words would haunt him for the rest of his life.
After leaving the jail, he’d read a text from Josh saying their dad had been admitted for observation in case he had a concussion. Beyond that, he had a broken nose and was in a lot of pain, although less so since the painkillers kicked in.
His dad. In the hospital again, twice in just a few months. It had been difficult to see him the first time when he’d been stricken with pneumonia, and it would be even harder this time.
Behind him, he heard the chapel door open and didn’t turn around from his front-bench spot, wanting to avoid human contact. As he sank his face into his hands, he couldn’t remember ever feeling so alone.
“Jack? You all right?”
It was Doc Bauer, who placed a reassuring hand on Jack’s shoulder as he asked the question. His appearance immediately brought Jack out of his wallowing reverie.
“Doc! Thank you for coming!” He stood and gave his older friend a fierce hug. “How’d you know where to find me?” Jack had called him on his way to the hospital and left a message updating him with what had happened.
“I figured you’d be heading to the hospital,” he said. “I peeked into your father’s room and was told you hadn’t arrived yet, so I wandered this way. Tried to put myself in your shoes, and, well, here I am.”
“Will you sit?”
They shared a chapel bench, turned sideways so they could talk.
“How are you holding up?” Doc Bauer asked. “I know this can’t be fun.”
“Part of me always figured something like this would have to happen,” Jack said. “Things had to come to a head somehow, you know? Karma and fate and all that. We had it coming.” He sighed. “I didn’t know I’d have to lose the only woman I’ve ever loved, but I guess that’s part of it all, too. Part of what I had coming.”
“You’re speaking of Elizabeth?”
Jack nodded. “I fell hard for her. I tried not to. Remember how we talked that day at the clinic? I had no intention of pursuing things with Elizabeth, but I just couldn’t stay away. I’ve never felt like this before. Never. And it’s awful, and I hate it, because I can’t control it, and I can’t stop—I can’t stop loving her, even though she’s made it clear she wants nothing to do with me. I don’t know what to do, Doc.”
“Oh, my friend.” Doc Bauer’s eyes crinkled in sympathy. “You’ve got it bad.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Love’s a funny thing,” Doc Bauer said. “And it has the most beautiful way of working itself out. You’ll see. Have a little faith.”
But at the moment, Jack couldn’t see a way to have faith. “She’ll never forgive me. After what I put her through?”
“I don’t know Elizabeth, but I know what it’s like to have a rotten childhood. I know what it’s like to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop, never to trust that anything good can last,” said Doc Bauer. “And that’s what happened here, as it always has in her life. People she let herself love have betrayed her time and again, and so she’s dealing with that disappointment, and she’s probably furious with herself for allowing herself to hope or expect things might have been different this time around.”
“I’m sure you’ve hit the nail on the head,” Jack said.
“But there can be forgiveness. There can be moving on.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Well, what other secrets are you keeping from her?”
“None! This one was bad enough.”
“Would you ever cheat on her?”
“No!”
Jack was horrified by the very thought of it. As if he could ever even look at another woman the way he looked at Elizabeth. She was everything. Her touch. Her kiss. Her heart. She was all he’d ever want.
“So what other shoes can drop for her?” Doc Bauer asked. “What other ways might you hurt her deliberately?”
Jack wracked his brain. “I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. But this wasn’t deliberate, either.”
“And yet it was,” Doc Bauer said kindly. “In a way. In a very roundabout way. You made a deliberate choice at some point long ago, which is causing this moment to play out just like it is. You didn’t know Elizabeth at the time you made your choice, true. You didn’t have any personal animosity toward her or anyone in her family. But you made a deliberate decision nonetheless that, to her, feels a hell of a lot like betrayal.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “That’s exactly correct.”
“Well, here’s the thing,” Doc Bauer said. “The way you feel for Elizabeth—being drawn to her and unable to control your feelings—you’re describing true love. I know because I’ve experienced it myself, with my wife. Whatever your most profound feelings are for her, you have to trust that she has those same feelings, too. True love is a raging fire that can’t be contained. It’s bigger and wilder than any human’s ability to quench it. So you’re stuck with the love you have for her, and the good news is, she’s stuck with the love she has for you, too. She can’t get away from it if she tries—so eventually, she’ll stop trying.”
“You think?”
Doc Bauer shrugged. “You may have a lot of proving to do that you will never, ever hurt her again, but her heart knows your heart. In time she’ll be able to forgive you.”
Jack whistled, almost feeling bad for Elizabeth, who he knew had no desire to forgive him. “Damn, love can sometimes suck, huh? It can cause you to do things you’d never, ever planned to do.” He thought then of his father, who’d become a thief to try to save his mother from cancer, and he understood completely why he’d done it.
“Love is in charge, not us,” Doc Bauer said. “Once we realize that, it gets easier. Have faith in love, because love has faith in you, or it wouldn’t have let you meet her in the first place.”
29
Feeling somewhat bolstered by his conversation with Doc Bauer, at least in regards to Elizabeth, Jack made his way to his dad’s hospital room. Doc Bauer had offered to accompany him, but Jack felt it was best to have the difficult upcoming conversation with just immediate family.
He paused in the doorway. Bruce was asleep and alone and looking so very vulnerable. It hadn’t been too many months earlier that he’d been hospitalized for pneumonia, but Jack cringed upon seeing his father’s battered face. Being assaulted was different than being sick. It was a pain of a different type, as was the realization that his dad, who’d victimized the Armstrong family for years, had today been victimized by them. Deservedly so, perhaps, but he was a victim of violence just
the same.
He entered the room and went to his father’s side, taking hold of his hand. Bruce had delayed his reckoning by nearly two decades, but it was an unpaid bill that was now due. Plus interest.
“It’s all coming full circle, Dad,” he said quietly. “The day you’ve spent your life trying to avoid is here, and I’m sorry you got hurt. I’m also sorry I didn’t force you to be the man I knew you could be all those years ago. But I promise that no matter what happens this time, I’ll stick with you. I’m flawed, and you’re flawed, and I love you anyway.”
Like Elizabeth had done for Nate, he’d do for his father. Elizabeth was the best example of loving loyalty he’d ever known. She’d never made excuses for Nate, but she’d never abandoned him, either. She’d never made him feel like she didn’t care if he lived or died, as Jack had toward his father. Until Bruce’s recent illness, Jack hadn’t known that he did, in fact, care quite a bit about whether his dad lived or died. Jack had realized that without being conscious of it, he’d always expected there would one day be a reconciliation.
Now was the time.
“Hey, brother,” he heard from the doorway.
Jack turned to see a grim-faced Josh try to smile in greeting, and his heart went out to him. The guy was about to lose his idol. Hayley stood behind him.
“Hey, Josh.” He stood up and went to his brother and gripped him in a tight embrace. He felt Josh stiffen from the unexpectedness of it before he returned the hug.
Josh took a step back. “What happened? Dad wouldn’t tell us anything.”
Jack glanced at his sleeping father. “We should probably go somewhere to talk. The waiting area’s just down the hall, right? Hayley, would you mind staying with my dad while Josh and I go talk?”
“Of course,” she said, and added, “Elizabeth didn’t honestly do this, did she? I know her pretty well, and I just can’t see it.”
“No,” Jack said shortly. “She didn’t do it.”
“Let me guess,” Josh said. “Nate got drunk and beat up his only friend, and Elizabeth’s taking the heat to keep her dad out of jail, probably at Nate’s insistence. Am I right?”
From The Ashes (Golden Falls Fire Book 3) Page 20
