Instantly, his mind went to the software he was developing. “Everything okay with the security program? It’s got glitches, but it’s early yet. I’ll work ’em out.”
“Everything’s cool with that. It’s something else. Wasn’t sure if I should tell you or not. Haven’t told anyone in fact because at first I thought I was seeing things.”
His gut tightened. “Sounds ominous. So, shoot.”
“That woman you dated back after college. You know, the one who worked in the coffee shop under Jay? Reece, was it?”
Fuck. Now what? How long had she been skulking around? “What about her?”
Caine was measuring his words. Jax heard it in his pause, saw it in his eyes. “I saw her the other day. I’d swear my left arm on it. Can’t miss that red hair, you know? Just wondered what she’d be doing here in Plum Orchard. I thought...well, you know, with all the shit that went down with Jake...I dunno. I’m just looking out for you.”
All the shit that had gone down with Jake. Yeah. There’d been plenty of that. “Where’d you see her?”
“Right here in the square. I think.” He scrubbed his jaw. “Shit, I could be wrong.”
Jax’s jaw tightened. “You’re not wrong.”
Caine tried to hide his surprise, but it was pointless. Of course he’d be surprised Reece was here. They’d kept in loose touch since their college years. Caine knew what had gone down with Jake and Reece. “Why the hell would she be here after...”
“After she ditched me and got knocked up by Jake?” Damn, hearing himself say that was like a punch in the kidney. It sounded goddamn ugly. “Sorry. That was shitty. Jake was your friend, too.”
Caine shook his head in understanding. “Hold on. You’re saying Jake knocked up Reece? Jake?”
“Jake.”
“Well, it’s not like I was that tight with him, but he was like your brother. I had no idea. Does that mean...”
“Maizy is Jake’s. Jake and Reece’s.”
* * *
“Clifton?”
“Go away.”
“No. I will not go away. I’m your mother whether you like it or not and I will not be spoken to in that tone. Now, sit up on your bed and you give me your full attention. Understand?” Em pushed his door open, crossing the room to perch on the edge of his bed.
He scooted to the other side like she had the plague, and that was just fine. He could be as angry as he liked, but he would hear her. “Why didn’t you tell me about this fight?”
“Because it’s no big deal.”
“It absolutely is a big deal when you come home with an egg the size of the ones Miss Prissy’s prized chicken lays.”
Stony silence.
“I won’t allow anyone to lay their hands on you, Clifton. It’s unacceptable, you hear me? You could have been seriously hurt, and nothing—nothing about that is okay with me. What kind of mother would I be if I let someone hurt you just because you don’t want to be a snitch? I’m going to Principal Crawford this morning, and we’ll see to makin’ sure no one puts another hand on you.”
He pressed himself against the wall and shrugged a shoulder. “I said it’s no big deal, Mom.”
Em tugged on the leg of his jeans. “If it’s not such a big deal, why did you call your daddy and tell him you wanted to come live with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Clifton, I want you to know something, and I want you to really hear me when I tell you, I love you and your brother more than I’ve ever loved anythin’ else. If you’re really unhappy with me, then we’ll talk about where you should live. Maybe we can find a way for you to see your dad more. I don’t ever want you to be unhappy, son. I surely don’t want you beat up. I know what happened with... Your dad is—”
“He wears girls’ clothes.”
Em nodded, her expression grim. “He does, but I’ll defend his right to do so with my last breath. Know why?”
“Why?”
“Because hidin’ who you are inside hurts. Your dad wasn’t happy pretending to be someone he wasn’t. But he pretended because that’s what everyone said he should do. Because that’s what all his friends said he should do—it’s what society says you should do. I don’t want your dad to hurt. But I don’t want you to hurt, either, and if living with your father makes you hurt less, then...” She fought the hitch in her words. She needed to stay strong when she did this. “Then we’ll talk about it. I don’t want to, but I will. We’ll figure something out. Work out some new rules for more visitation.”
His silence sat in her heart like a heavy stone. Em rose to leave, pausing for a moment. She couldn’t bear how conflicted Clifton was. Couldn’t bear this lost, angry boy, a mere ghost of the child he’d been just a few months ago. That was when she knew what she had to do. “Clifton?”
“What?”
“I need you to remember something for me, okay?”
“What?”
“No matter where you live. No matter how near or far you are from me, no matter how angry you are with me, I’ll always be here. There’ll never be a day your mama won’t be here. And I love you. So, so much.”
She padded silently out of his room, heading down the stairs to devise the beginnings of the plan that had kept her up all night. She was going to put her life back on track and focus on what was next. Keeping the boys with her. If that meant rearranging her entire life to do it—then that’s what she’d do.
Part of that began with Jax. Em picked up her cell phone, her throat tight, her eyes stinging with tears, and she texted him.
“Done.”
* * *
Jax sat in his truck on the bridge, waiting for Reece to arrive with his stomach on full tilt, his fingers like ice. He’d been texting Em all day with no luck. She didn’t answer her office phone, and he didn’t want to rouse suspicion by calling Dixie and asking her about it.
But he had to see her. He needed her to know that this was no longer a fun, sexy game for him. This was real. They could be real. Damn the people who’d talk—he’d handle it. Damn everything but him, and Em, and their kids. Together.
Somehow, he had to make her see that it didn’t have to be like it was with her ex. She didn’t have to give up anything for him. She could have whatever color she damn well pleased on the walls, for some towels, wherever. The only thing she had to give him was her heart. Her trust that he wouldn’t discard it...dismiss it.
He just had to do this one thing, and he wanted to do it right.
Checking his phone again, he scowled. Where was she? He lobbed the phone on the passenger seat, running a hand over his jaw when he glanced at the digital clock on his dash.
Where was the one thing he had to take care of? Leave it to Reece to be late. When had she ever cared about inconveniencing anyone? Reece lived by her own rules—her own timetable. She was whimsical and flighty, and he’d known it from the moment he’d fallen in love with her.
Thinking about Reece never failed to bring up Jake. His face, his laughter, his determination to be something. Memories of his dead best friend crowded Jax’s head, shoving their way in after keeping them out for so long, making it throb.
Jake Landry had been his best friend since eighth grade. They’d bonded over Cheez Doodles at lunch on Jake’s first day of school, and it stayed that way right up until Reece.
The Jays—that’s what everyone called them back then. Wherever there was a Jax, there was a Jake, was the joke. He’d loved Jake—considered him a Hawthorne through and through. A brother. That’s what Jake had been. No different than Tag or Gage in his mind.
They’d played football together in high school, chased cheerleaders, drank their first illegal six-pack together. Jake had worked his ass off to get a scholarship to the same college as Jax just so they could keep Team Jay alive.
; He was Jake’s lifeline—his link to healthy, normal relationships when his home life was so shitty. Raised by an alcoholic father, Jake was a welfare check—a six-pack of beer and cable TV for his dad after his mother left when he was just five.
It was a miracle none of it rubbed off on Jake. He attributed that to Jax and his family—pushing him to keep his grades up, inviting him into their tight circle, supporting him the way they’d supported their own sons.
First chance Jake got after he graduated, he got the hell out and never looked back, and Jax helped him, throwing his shoddy duffel bag in the back of the used truck they’d both worked to buy.
After college, they’d begun their own software development company. Jay. He wrote the code; Jake, and all his varied charms, marketed and designed it.
After four years of struggling to pay their rent, their big break came in the way of a top-secret defense contract with the government. After five years, they met Reece, who worked in the coffee shop just below their newly purchased warehouse space for Jay.
Jax fell in love with her, and then Jake slept with her.
Stole her right out from under his nose, and when Jax found out—he never spoke to Jake again. He’d never forget the second he realized Reece and Jake had betrayed him. Sitting across from them at the pub they frequented, offering up their bullshit, cliché excuses about how them falling into bed with one another had “just happened.”
He’d never forget how he couldn’t catch his breath. He’d never forget how in five minutes, everything he’d loved, his company, Jake, Reece, was all just gone. Done. Over.
He’d never forget how losing Jake was like losing a limb. There was the phantom pain of it—Jake, so much a part of his life, suddenly gone, but still there every time he did something they used to do. Yet, it was only Jake’s memory there, and that hurt like hell. There was the physical pain of it—every time he saw Jake pick Reece up from his office window. Every time he ran into him at the gym. Every time, it felt like his guts were being ripped from his stomach.
When Jax cut him off, refused to speak to him, wouldn’t take calls from him, shunned him like he’d never existed, Jake finally offered to sell his shares in Jay to Jax, and they cut all ties.
He’d run off to live happily ever after with Reece, and the next time Jax saw him was in his coffin.
He’d fed off his anger for a long time after that, letting it rule every decision he made, holding on to it, always with the skewed thought, somewhere far in the back of his mind, that someday, he’d have Jake back in his life again. Maybe it would just be to tell him to go the fuck to hell, maybe it would be when he and Reece broke up, but Jake would always be “around.”
Until he wasn’t. Until he damn well got himself killed in a car accident, and there was no Jake. There was no Jake to persecute. To slaughter him with his words, to rage at how soul crushing his betrayal had been, to get it all out. There was no physical Jake to yell his anger at. There was just a shell of Jake, pale and still in a suit he’d never have worn, in a coffin Jax wanted to haul him out of and hold him close until he breathed again.
Until Jax could tell him that no matter how much he’d hurt him with Reece—Jake was still his brother.
And now, he was about to meet with the woman who’d helped take everything he’d loved away—only to throw it all away.
I helped her, Jax. She didn’t do it alone.
A knock on his window startled him. Reece gazed into his truck, just as beautiful as she’d always been. He turned the ignition off and popped open the door, tucking his chin into the collar of his jacket and nodding in her direction. “Reece.”
Her hair flew around her in familiar shocks of red. Hair she claimed she hated, but he’d once loved. “So we finally meet.”
Though he regretted like hell not speaking to Jake, lived with the guilt of that every day, he’d never regret cutting Reece out of his life. “What’s your game here, Reece? You’ve been hanging around here for a month, not returning my calls, yanking my chain, showing up at Maizy’s school. Cut to the chase.”
If she was offended by his harsh tone, she didn’t react. Reece was clearly on a mission and when that happened, she was unshakable. “I was sorry to hear about Harper. There’s been so much death in the past few years, hasn’t there? So many important people in our lives gone.”
Jax’s lips went flat. Harper had been the only one who’d liked Reece when he’d dated her. He didn’t want to remember that. She didn’t deserve that. “Look, let’s cut to the chase. Why are you here and what the hell do you want?”
She let her eyes fall to the ground, but it wasn’t that coy, innocent gaze she’d always used when she wanted something. It was almost haunted. “I just had to see her. She’s perfect. So perfect.”
Alarm bells began their distant ringing. She wanted Maizy. Goddamn it, it wasn’t bad enough she’d taken Jake, but she wanted Maizy after all this time? Never gonna happen.
He checked himself. Forced himself to remain calm. “So what is it? Do you want to meet her, Reece? Talk to her, get to know her?”
Reece paused for a long moment, staring off into the distance, and he wasn’t sure if he saw regret or relief when she answered. “I know this will make you hate me even more than you already do, but no. I don’t want to get to know her. She’s better off not knowing me.”
Fuck. He had to hope she wasn’t going to play the martyr here. That wasn’t gonna fly. Jake wouldn’t want this, buddy. Do the right thing. He made you promise in his will you’d let Maizy see her. Damn it. “Look, aside from everything’s that’s happened between us, she’s your daughter. Yours and Jake’s. Jake loved you, Reece. He loved Maizy. He wanted her to know you. He said as much in his will. I had to promise I’d let you see her before I was granted custody of her.”
She shook her head, her mouth a grim line. “I never wanted her, Jax. Didn’t Jake tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything, remember? We weren’t speaking.”
Her finger shot up in the air. “Right. Because of me. Well, here’s the cold, hard truth. I was going to abort Maizy.”
He clenched his teeth together, clamped so hard, it was a miracle he didn’t crush his jaw. “Don’t. Don’t talk about her that way.” Or I won’t be responsible for what I do to you.
The cold wind whipped her hair against her creamy cheeks, rather sunken, something he hadn’t noticed when he’d first laid eyes on her today. “It’s the truth, Jax. Jake never would have known if I hadn’t been stupid enough to leave that damn EPT stick in the trash. I would have aborted her before he ever even knew she existed. Just before I dumped him, that is.”
“Stop.”
But Reece wasn’t stopping. She plodded forward, her eyes distant as though she was reliving her conversations with Jake. “He talked me out of it. You know what Jake was like—he could talk anyone into anything. Against my better judgment, I fell for the whole white-picket-fence dream. Turns out, it was his dream. Not mine. I just got his dream confused with mine for a little while.” She gripped the steel railing along the bridge, her pale skin reddened from the harsh wind.
Jax couldn’t move. He wanted to wrap his hands around her creamy throat and choke her right out of her red coat for almost taking Maizy from him by aborting her.
The picture she made, standing against the backdrop of the purple-and-blue-streaked sky, stopped him, though. She was frail. Reece looked frail and vulnerable. “The second I had her, I knew. I knew I didn’t want to be a parent, Jax. Jake knew, too. He just wouldn’t admit it. So I left him a note and I ran away and hid for all these years. I knew Jake was dead, and still, I hid. Because I was afraid, if anyone knew I was alive, they’d make me take her.”
The breath he’d been holding escaped his lungs. “Where? Where the hell did you go?” How? How could you have gone? “Jake looked day and night
for you before he died, hired private investigators, according to his lawyers. Your father was worried sick. Did he need more grief after your mother?”
“Abroad,” she said flatly, as though Jake’s fears, her parents’ fears, never even occurred to her. As though the word abroad cleared it all the fuck up because it had helped her get what she wanted.
“That’s it?” He had to fight not to yell. “Just abroad? Do you have any idea what your parents went through? What Jake went through before he was killed?”
She cocked her head in his direction, her eyes still flat and dull. “How do you know what Jake went through? You two weren’t speaking before he died, Jax.”
Boom. Reece’s jab at the status of his and Jake’s relationship was like a sonic boom in his ears. “Yeah. We damn well weren’t.” And he’d been making it up to him ever since. Taking care of the one last thing he had in his life that kept him close to Jake.
“Thanks to me.”
“Yep.”
Now he wanted to hurt her. For taking pieces of people she had no right to take. Because her whims, her flights of fancy were all that mattered to her. “Did you know just a few weeks after you left your mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s? Do you have any idea how hard that was on your father? You missing, his wife diagnosed with a disease that would eventually eat her brain and a granddaughter with a new father who was half out of his mind with worry about you?”
Jax had seen it all. All the tears, the agonizing mourning Reece’s parents had suffered while they searched for their little girl. “They thought something happened to you, Reece. They spent thousands of dollars looking for you in those first months. They just wouldn’t believe Jake when he told them you just left.”
He’d heard it all after Jake died, and he was as convinced as Jake that Reece wasn’t taken by force or whatever story her parents had concocted in their heads to ease the selfishness that made up Reece.
Reece curled her hands around the bars on the bridge, her cheeks red from the harsh wind. “I didn’t know Mom was so sick until it was too late.”
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