by Drea Stein
Lynn looked at the faces of her friends who were watching intently.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Lynn said. And knew that it didn’t, shouldn’t. Jackson couldn’t buy her forgiveness. She could be thankful for his support, but it didn’t make a difference. She wasn’t going to forget that he was in a love with another woman and carry on their relationship.
Tory gave a short laugh. “You are stubborn. I think the man is trying to tell you something.”
“I can’t be bought, Tory. The money’s great, because it’s for a good cause. But Jackson can’t make himself feel better by giving me money. I don’t think he’s a bad person. He doesn’t have to prove that to me.”
It was something else entirely. She knew Jackson could be generous, could be a gentleman. But he couldn’t be hers. And she was just going to have to live with that.
Chapter 50
“I am not going to serve you another one.” Paulie the bartender was implacable, wiping down a glass as he stood behind the bar of the Osprey Arms.
“You do know who I am, don’t you?” Jackson said, trying to focus on Paulie. But there appeared to be more than one of him.
“Yup, you’re the guy my boss told me to cut off,” Paulie said, putting the dry glass down and picking up another one.
“I’ll sleep in an empty room. Please, just give me another drink.”
Paulie just shook his head. Jackson started to get up, figuring he would head to Quent’s and grab a beer there. He would still find an empty room at the hotel to sleep in. He knew well enough that he was in no condition to drive, but still a man had a right to drown his sorrows.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Jake appeared next to him and Jackson tried to push against his friend, but Jake still retained enough of his quarterback bulk to stop him.
“Paulie has cut me off,” Jackson said, glaring at Paulie.
“Chase told me to,” Paulie said in his defense. “Jackson’s been here every night for a week eating French fries and drinking beer, and he’s had enough.”
“What happened? I haven’t seen you in days. I thought you and I were supposed to be starting a business together.” Jake’s voice was annoyed as he plopped Jackson back onto the barstool that he had so recently tried to vacate.
“I’ve been busy,” Jackson said, his own voice sounding thick in his ears.
“Paulie, will you get us coffee and water please?” Jake said, turning his barstool so that it faced Jackson.
“Sure thing,” Paulie nodded, and in a moment there were two cups of steaming black coffee and two pints of water in front of them.
“Pick one and get started,” Jake said.
“What are you trying to do?”
“Sober you up. Find out what the hell is going on, though judging by your condition I’m going to make a wild-ass guess that it’s woman trouble.”
“A whole heap,” Jackson said, hearing the misery in his own voice.
“I thought you and Lynn were happy,” Jake said carefully.
“We were. And then I ruined it.” Jackson decided to start with the coffee. He had a sip, decided that it was mistake on a stomach full of beer and Scotch, and tried the water instead.
“What did you do? Ask her to play doctor? I hear real ones hate it when you do.” Jake’s voice was light, teasing.
Jackson said nothing, too sunk in his own gloom to know what to say. God he was miserable without her. But she wouldn’t talk to him, let alone let him explain. She wouldn’t return his phone calls. He had wanted to go to her fundraiser tonight, but he just couldn’t bring himself to see her, not if he didn’t know that she would want to see him. But he knew she wanted the one thing he couldn’t give.
“What are you muttering about?”
“She thinks I’m still in love with Ashley. Says she won’t compete with a ghost.”
“Don’t know any good woman who would,” Jake said, adding cream to his coffee and taking a sip.
“How can I be in love with a ghost? It doesn’t even make sense,” Jackson said.
“What have you told her?”
“I haven’t told her anything. It’s what everyone else says. That it hit me hard, that I have baggage, that she was the love of my life. What is Lynn supposed to believe?”
“What you tell her,” Jake said simply.
“But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s even worse than that. I’m not still in love with Ashley. I haven’t been, not since…” Jackson faltered. He’d made a promise that he still intended to keep.
“Ok, so if you’re not still in love with Ashley, what’s wrong with Lynn? If you just don’t feel that way about her, let her down easy. It will be messy and it will make Chase and Phoebe’s wedding complicated, but you’ll get through it. Lynn’s passionate but reasonable. She’ll move on eventually.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“After Ashley died, I realized that I’d spent years of my life loving someone who didn’t love me back, who used me to feed her ego, telling me how important I was to her, how she couldn’t live without me. And I bought it hook, line, and sinker. Hell, she was even cheating on me, and I think I knew it, and I made excuses for her. What a sap I was.”
“Ok,” Jake said neutrally, “so you’re not, or haven’t been, in love with Ashley for a long time but…”
“But I told myself I would never make that mistake again. That I wouldn’t ever love anyone again, you know, get so wrapped up in them that I lost myself.”
Jake nodded sagely. “The self-preservation vow. I think we’ve all made it when we’ve gotten burned. But no man is an island, you know. What I don’t get is why you left then, if you weren’t all torn up about Ashley. I mean, when did you realize this?”
“About three months before she died.”
They turned and swiveled at the same time, looking at the speaker. Libby Moran stood there, her blond hair pulled back in a twist, dressed in wool slacks and a blouse, clutching a purse in front of her like it was a shield. Her eyes were sad, but they were no longer accusing.
Mrs. Moran’s eyes were wide and so bright that for a moment Jackson thought she was going to cry, but then she blinked rapidly and the moment was over.
“Jackson, I am so sorry.”
“No, Mrs. Moran. You don’t have to do this,” Jackson said desperately.
“Lindsay told me everything, and then Bill spoke to the police captain. God, Jackson why did you do it?”
“I…”
Libby looked at Jake. “Did you know?”
Jake held up his hands in bewilderment and Jackson sagged against the barstool.
“Look, Mrs. Moran, you don’t have to apologize.”
She closed her eyes, blinked back what he thought were tears and then took a deep breath. “Lindsay told me everything. About the breakup, Ashley wanting to leave, Tucker Wolff, and how you told the police you’d been driving. But why?”
Jackson closed his eyes, memories of that night flooding back. Why had he done it? If he’d known how the Morans would blame him, how everyone would look and point and whisper, would he have the courage to do it again?
“I didn’t want you to think of Ashley that way. I wanted you to remember her, well, the way she was.”
Libby’s head sank down and her eyes closed briefly. “Thank you. I don’t know what to think. I mean, I knew something was different, was up with Ashley; but I wouldn’t have thought all that. And I blamed you, all these years.”
“It’s ok,” Jackson said. “Mrs. Moran, you don’t have to do this.”
“No, I do. I never would have let you do it if I knew what it would cost you. Why did you let me blame you?”
Mrs. Moran didn’t wait for an answer but rushed on. “I know Ashley broke up with you months before she died. And that she was running off with Tucker Wolff. That’s why he was in the car with her, not you, right?”
Jackson could
n’t say anything, just nodded.
“Lindsay told me how Ashley broke off the engagement and of her plans to go away with Tucker Wolff. But still, that night, you were there for her like you’d always been, covering for her, saving her from her mistakes, doing the right thing. I know she was drinking that night, driving wild with Tucker. And if people had known that you two weren’t together or that Tucker was involved, they would have talked.”
Jackson didn’t know if he could say anything, could only feel the pounding in his chest, feel the relief rising in him. He had kept the secret for so long, kept silent about him and Ashley because he wanted to protect the Morans, because they were good people and had been like second parents to him. It had been a simple decision and had felt right at the time, to help a grieving family. But then they had turned on him. Hell, it had felt like the whole town had turned on him and they were all serving up the sentimental bullshit about how wonderful Ashley had been. It had been too much. He’d had to get out. He’d been wounded, and then he had gotten angry. Angry at them, angry at Ashley, angry at himself for letting himself love her.
Mrs. Moran reached out and took Jackson’s hand in her both of hers. “So again, I want to say thank you. It did make it easier to blame someone else, not her. And you owe us nothing, Jackson. You deserve to come home, to find some happiness. You will find no judgment from us and if I hear even a whisper of it from anyone else, I will give them my two cents, even if it’s from afar.”
“Not everyone needs to know; it doesn’t matter,” Jackson said, but already he wanted to find a way to unburden himself.
Mrs. Moran smiled sadly and looked at Jake. “It does. You gave Ashley everything, more I think than she deserved. Ashley was driving the car, she had been drinking. I am trying to get around to accepting that, and I will. But I do know that you deserve to have a full and rich life, without her memory holding you back, here or wherever you go.”
Jackson sagged. Loving Ashley had been a rollercoaster of highs and lows, and there had been that edge to it of neediness, as if Ashley had only been happy if she knew you were worrying about her. It had taken him a while to realize that it wasn’t love. It had been selfishness.
There was a pause, and before the silence could become awkward, Libby Moran took a step back, clutched her bag, and smiled brightly. “I have to be going. Bill and Lindsay are waiting for me. We’re just about wrapped up here in town, so I am not sure when we’ll see each other again.”
She nodded and slipped out as Jackson sat there stunned, not sure what this meant. For five years of his life he’d been keeping a secret and now he’d just been told that it was no longer important. That it was time to move on. But what did that mean? Did it even matter?
Jake, who had risen from his stool as Mrs. Moran left, sat back down and fixed Jackson with a stare.
“And what, my friend, was that about?”
Jackson looked up. The bar was comfortably crowded but they were tucked back along the far corner of the bar, private enough. Mrs. Moran had said she trusted him to know who could be told.
“Sit back and order another cup of coffee. This is going to take a while.”
#
Jake took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, watching Jackson finish his story. It made sense and it explained a whole hell of a lot of things. He’d known something had been wrong with Jackson back then. Just as he had noticed that the ever-present Ashley was no longer so ever present. Still, to think she’d been running around with Tucker Wolff, behind Jackson’s back. After the accident, Tucker had quietly slipped out of town too, joined the Navy. Jake had never given much thought to that. Now it all made sense.
“So you let the Morans think you were with Ashley when she crashed? And that everything was hunky-dory between the two of you?”
“I thought it would make it easier for them to grieve. I never thought they would blame me the way they did. And to tell them would have been to destroy the memory of their daughter.”
“But Tucker Wolff?”
“I guess Ashley still had a thing for him, and when she came home from college, there he was, here—ready to fill her with promises to go off and see the world and take her with him. Turns out Ashley never quite bought into the whole living our life out here. Tucker Wolff was just her way out.”
Jake almost winced but didn’t. He thought it was a pretty fair assessment of Ashley’s character, but it would do no good to say that now. He did, however, decide to ask the question that had been on his mind for five years. “So do you think if Ash had lived…that you would have gotten back together? That it was a temporary case of cold feet?”
Jackson took a sip of coffee and then said evenly, “No. Ashley and I wanted very different things. She thought living here was confining. She wanted to travel, to have adventures. She liked the thrill of the chase. That isn’t me. Yes, I left; but because I felt I had to, not because I wanted to. Ashley wouldn’t have been happy living here. And as it turns out, I wasn’t happy not living here.”
“So what are you going to do about her?”
“About Lynn?” Jackson ran a hand through his hair.
“Yeah, her. How do you feel about her? Do you love her?” It was a simple question and it deserved a simple answer.
“Yes, I love her. I told her that I couldn’t be anything more than a…”
“Friends with benefits,” Jake finished for him.
“Something like that. And now…”
“And now you two are in love. I don’t understand what the problem is. It’s not rocket science. You two are crazy about each other, you want to spend time with each other, you love each other.”
“The last time I loved someone I lost myself. In more ways than one. You said it yourself, remember. She consumed me.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of? It’s not that you still love someone else, is it? You’re afraid you’ll love Lynn too much, that she’ll use you the way Ashley did?”
Jackson looked at his friend, not surprised that he had guessed the truth.
“So that’s it. You’re not all caught up in Ashley, you’re just too afraid to love again. Well let me ask you, do you feel that way with Lynn?”
“No,” Jackson said quietly, and realized that the water and the coffee were beginning to have their effect. “It feels different. Steady, constant. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s exciting too but I don’t feel like I’m dancing on the edge of a flame. I don’t know if that’s love or companionship. I’ve only experienced moods and passions so fierce they engulf you or well, not that this makes me a standup guy, but you know, just simple physical attraction. This is something different. But it doesn’t matter because…” he muttered.
How could he go back and tell Lynn about Ashley? She had said she didn’t want to compete with a dead woman. Well she had, but not the way she thought. Would she think that his lying to her was worse than the truth, that he didn’t think he could ever love that way again? Would she think it meant he wasn’t capable of it?
“I think it does. And it should. Look, like Mrs. Moran said, you did your duty. You stood by them when they needed it most. They moved forward, moved on. If, God forbid, the situation had been reversed, I don’t think Ashley would be down here swearing off men.”
“I am not swearing off women…It’s just with Lynn, it’s…”
“Different,” Jake said. “Face it. With Lynn you’re a better man. Happier, chiller, you know, all around less broody and all that. Why? I don’t know. Maybe she smiles and you see rainbows and unicorns. Or maybe she tells really funny jokes. Or really dirty ones. Or she can cook, or maybe she just gets you. I don’t know how, but whatever it is it works. And maybe you’ve lived so long working on not caring that you’re afraid of what it feels like. But this time, it might just be the real deal.”
“When did this become the Tao of Jake?”
Jake shrugged. “Look, man. It’s one thing to want to run around and sample all the fish in the sea when you’re seventeen
. But add in a few years and you realize that there’s more to life than sitting in a dark bar listening to crap music and drinking beer with other guys. If you feel something for Lynn, something real, well then you should go for it. Tell her the truth and let her decide. You owe her that much.”
“Yeah,” Jackson said.
Jake picked up his glass of water. Listening was thirsty work. “The truth will set you free, man. It will set you free.”
Chapter 51
The truth did set him free. He told Chase the next morning, making him take a walk out along the docks so that he could move around. Somehow it seemed easier to talk about if he didn’t have to sit in a chair and feel like he had been called into the principal’s office.
Chase said nothing at first, and then, “Wow. That is some heavy baggage you’ve been carrying around.”
Jackson looked up as a gull circled the sky. He found himself glancing up toward the Osprey Arms annex and what would be Lynn’s apartment. The blinds were closed, he couldn’t see anything. But it didn’t matter, she was sure to be at work. After all, that is what he had done—lose himself in work when he didn’t want to deal.
“It feels good to be free. I mean, I don’t intend to shout it to the whole world, but I know when I left that I let you down too, left you with the family business to run. Not that, as it turned out, you needed me.”
Chase smiled, an eyebrow quirked up. “I’m just glad to have you back. It’s been fun, but it will be more fun with you around. You’re staying right?”
Jackson smiled and shook his head. “I never want to leave again.”
“Good,” Chase said, and leaned over the railing so he could peer into the depths of the water lapping at the dock below. “Now we just have to fix your love life.”
“What?” Jackson sputtered. Really, he was glad to be honest with his brother but this was pushing it.
“Don’t try to deny it.” Chase waggled a finger at Jackson. “You’re crazy about her. And miserable without her.”