by Sara Arden
Betsy wondered what had happened between them and if it had to do with what had happened to India while she was in Afghanistan.
“I’ll get it.” Betsy offered to retrieve the pie.
“No, I think India should go get it,” Lula said. “And since she can’t be trusted with it alone, Caleb should help her.”
Caleb grunted and put down his fork, a solemn expression on his face, and dutifully followed India into the kitchen.
“Okay, so what’s going on with them? This is ridiculous,” Lula said.
As if it was all the tension between India and Caleb and had nothing to do with Jack’s silence or hard manner.
“I don’t know, but we should leave it alone. They’ll work it out,” Betsy advised. She hoped her mother would take the hint. She didn’t want any help with her interactions with Jack. Betsy had screwed things up enough on her own.
“They always do,” Jack added. He seemed more at ease talking when the subject wasn’t himself.
“Hmm. We’ll see.”
India came back a few minutes later carrying the pie. A piece was already missing and she had crumbs on her mouth. Caleb was right behind her.
“India! You cheat,” Betsy teased.
Only India looked a little dumbstruck and Betsy couldn’t be sure, but Caleb might have had crumbs on his mouth, too.
“I need to go,” India blurted.
“I’ll take you home,” Caleb offered.
“No!” India cried. She straightened herself and pulled on a casual mask. “I mean, I’ve got some other errands to run. Thank you for dinner, Miss Lula.”
“Of course, honey. I hope we’ll see you next Sunday.” Lula watched her go and Caleb didn’t even excuse himself; he just followed her out. She looked at Jack and Betsy. “She does know it’s Sunday, right? Glory rolls up the sidewalks at five.”
Betsy got up and began gathering the plates.
“Aren’t you going to have pie?” Lula asked her.
“No, but let me cut Jack a piece.” She didn’t wait for him to agree; she just handed it to him. “Best pie ever.” Betsy smiled at him.
And Jack, he accepted the pie, but he watched her with every bite. There was nothing salacious about his regard, but Betsy still felt naked and vulnerable.
“I’ll do the dishes. You kids let your food settle.” Lula stood.
“Actually, Miss Lula, I need to be going, as well. Thank you for dinner.” He carried his own plate into the kitchen and headed toward the door.
A panic gripped Betsy. She had a sinking feeling that if she let him walk away without saying anything, she’d never see him again.
She intercepted him. “Did you forget that you wanted me to go home with you?”
“I thought you might have come to your senses.” Maybe that was what he thought, but his eyes roved her body, and her breath caught in her throat. His body had other ideas, and so did hers.
“I gave my word, Jack. You better not go back on yours.”
“I’ve kept every promise I ever made to you,” he growled.
That was the source of a lot of his pain. Everything he’d endured just to keep his promise. Just to come back to her. She softened. “I know. You’re the only one who has.”
“Stop it,” he hissed.
“Stop what?” She didn’t know what she was doing that was so wrong.
“Painting me like some hero.”
“Stop acting like you’re not,” she tossed back as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And stop telling me what to do, what to think, or assuming you know what I want.”
“I do know what you want and it’s always been so much more than me.”
“This pity-me song is already old. Sing something else.” She hated that he felt that way. On the one hand, it was a wonderful balm for all of her old hurts that he thought he wasn’t good enough for her. Marcel had only ever thought she wasn’t good enough for him. Jack was twice the man Marcel was.
He took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for something. “Why do you think I was always at your house on the weekends?”
Her heart ached for him, but she couldn’t let that change what she said to him. He needed tough love, and Betsy hoped she was strong enough to do this. “I know why you were at our house. Your father was always drunk.” She reached out to cup his cheek to soften the blow of what she said next. “You’re starting to act just like him.”
Betsy didn’t want to wound him, but she wanted him to know that she saw him. Really saw him, not the painted facsimile the rest of the town saw, but the man underneath. They were so close to the same person. On the face that Jack tried to hide was the one that adopted everyone’s sins as his own.
Rather than get angry, Jack said, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“No. We make our own decisions about who we are. You choose to pick up the bottle, you choose to drink from it and you choose when you put it down.”
“I choose to pick it up,” he repeated. “I choose not to put it down until the screaming in my head stops and the nerve endings of a leg I don’t have stop burning.”
“Okay.” She exhaled heavily. “It’s your time at night and if that’s how you want to spend it, then that’s what we’ll do. Let me tell Mom I’m leaving. I’ll drive. You can get your car tomorrow.”
“Damn it, Betsy.”
“Add to that list to stop trying to scare me off. It’s not going to work.” She leaned in and kissed him again, savoring the freedom she had now to do it as she wished. “You know why? Because you’re still trying to do what you think is best for me, no matter how you feel about it. I will never give up on you and there is nothing you can do that will make me.”
“Is that a challenge?” His eyes narrowed and he was suddenly focused on an escape hatch.
“No. A challenge implies that it’s something defeatable. In this case, I am the immovable object and the unstoppable force.”
“That would be a paradox.”
“Wouldn’t it just?” She wasn’t going to argue with that. It would be a paradox, but Betsy would let nothing, not even the laws of physics, get in her way.
“Betsy,” her mother called from the dining room.
“One moment, Mama.”
“No, no. Just remember what I said. Country club,” her mother reminded her.
Betsy flushed, remembering exactly what her mother had said about making her a grandma and asking if she wanted her wedding reception at the country club. She’d been telling her that since she was sixteen.
“Go on, then. Good night, Jack.” Her mother said with a purposeful drawl.
“Good night, Miss Lula,” he called back, and then dropped his voice to a whisper. “What’s she talking about country clubs?”
“Nothing. She’s senile,” Betsy hissed.
“I heard that, and I am not,” Lula’s voice echoed through to the foyer.
She opened the door and pushed Jack outside in the hopes that her mother wouldn’t decide confession was good for the soul and come spill everything about their earlier discussion.
“Does she know you’re coming to my place?” Jack asked hesitantly halfway down the stairs.
“It’s not that hard to figure out.”
For a moment, Jack wore a stricken expression.
“She never did ground me for stealing that cordial.” As if that made it okay.
“You said you had it with her permission.” His mouth curved into a sly grin.
“And you said I was horrible liar.” Warmth filled her at the memory. She’d replayed it in her head so many times, but with a much different outcome.
“You are.”
There was something in his voice, something soft, tender. Something he’d been hiding from her.
“Did you ever wonder what would’ve happened if you’d said yes?” The words escaped before she could think better of them and then she blushed. “I mean, beyond the obvious.”
He opened her car door for her. “Beyond the obvious? Did you? Before you made your declaration, did you stop to wonder what would happen if you got pregnant?”
She studied him hard as visions of every possible outcome blared through her mind like a siren. All the talk of babies forced her to imagine what it would be like to have a child with him. “I don’t imagine my life would be much different than it is now.” Only then she’d have a piece of him that belonged wholly to her. A piece that she could keep safe and— God, what was she thinking?
Only what any woman would think when looking at Jack McConnell. Even as damaged as he was, Jack was still what dreams were made of. At least, her dreams.
“That look on your face is terrifying, Betsy,” he whispered.
She started the car without looking at him. “What do you mean?”
“It’s that hero worship again. When I was a kid, I loved that you looked at me like that. I would have done anything to keep that, but now I’m just waiting for you to realize I’m not who you think. When that goes away, I’m never going to have that look again.”
Then it all made sense. Why he pushed her away so hard, why he kept telling her she didn’t want him. He wanted to be the one to decide it for them both so it didn’t hurt him.
The realization only strengthened her resolve.
“Jack—” she turned in her seat to face him “—I don’t expect you to be anyone but who you are. We did have sex, but that doesn’t mean I’m assuming we’re in a relationship. You just got home and you’ve had trauma. I get that. The only thing I expect from you is to stick to the parameters of our deal. Give living a chance before you decide that you’re dead. That’s it. Just a chance. I don’t need you to promise me shining armor, or white horses, or some castle in the clouds.”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he confessed.
“What do you want to do?”
“You keep asking me what I want.”
“Well, yeah. Haven’t you thought about it?”
“No, not really. It’s never been about what I want. It’s been about what I’m supposed to do.”
Betsy knew exactly how he felt. “Your obligations here are only to yourself. That’s something you should think about. Didn’t you ever wonder what you’d be if you weren’t a SEAL?”
“No.”
“You can be anything you want when you grow up.”
“I wanted to be a SEAL.”
“You were, but now that’s passed. It’s time for something new.”
He seemed to be thinking over her words, and she thought it was a good sign that he hadn’t snapped at her. He was angry, and Betsy understood that. She knew he had to mourn the part of himself that was gone—both the physical and the mental.
“See you at the house.” He closed her door and went to his car.
Betsy tried not to focus too hard on the flame of hope that burned in her chest as she drove the short distance across town to his house.
She parked on the street and couldn’t stifle a yawn when they met again on his porch.
“I’ve exhausted you already?”
Betsy tried not to think about the ways she still wanted him to exhaust her when she answered, “I keep early hours. I have to be at the shop by four so I can get things ready for the morning rush at six.”
Most of the shops downtown didn’t open until eight or nine, but Betsy wanted the breakfast crowd. It was where she made the majority of her income, aside from wedding cakes and parties. In fact, it was what kept the business afloat when things got tight.
“Then I guess we should go to bed, if you’re still staying.”
She followed him inside silently. Betsy didn’t trust her voice. She focused on the broad planes of his back, the contours of his biceps and what it felt like to be in his arms. Would he hold her while they slept, or would he—
“There’s a guest room upstairs.”
“Really?” Betsy asked, arching an eyebrow. She’d sooner sleep naked in Haymarket Square than sleep in the guest room.
He closed his eyes and exhaled heavily. “Look, when I made that demand about you spending the night, I was trying to push you away. I had every intention of bringing you here and being a special kind of bastard so you’d see how hopeless this is.”
Rather than be angry, she was curious. She wanted to know what brought about the change in his thinking. “What changed your mind?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Betsy.”
“So don’t. You invited me to sleep over. Let’s have a sleepover. Remember that week you spent at our house when Caleb was at camp and we watched bad horror movies all night? We could watch scary flicks and eat popcorn.”
She was doing her best to link their interactions to good memories of things he could still do. Betsy purposefully avoided mentioning those nights after football games when he’d been the star quarterback. Or the ski trip to Snow Creek.
He sighed. “I can’t sleep without the whiskey.”
“I bet you can.” Betsy used the zipper on her dress as a way to bring contact between them, but she didn’t actually need him to unzip her. She had to dress herself in the morning, after all. So she reached behind her, tugged the zipper down and stepped out of her dress. “If you exhaust yourself.”
She’d expected he might demur, might make another excuse, but she’d found the one thing he wanted, the one thing worth all of the risks.
He reached out and ghosted the back of his knuckles down her arm and she shivered at the light caress. Jack pulled her against his chest and she hooked her arms around his back.
“You feel so good.” She kneaded lightly, enjoying the feel of his muscles bunching beneath her hand, reassuring her that he was real.
He was really home.
This was different between them. In her room, it had been homage to a dream whose time had passed, to say everything with her body that she’d never been able to give voice to. Now, standing in his house, pressing herself against him, this was about the present. This was for the woman she’d become who still wanted the man in front of her.
He lifted her easily and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Betsy feared he’d tell her no. She’d pushed him so hard she was starting to doubt herself. This was the validation she needed that she was on the right track. Nothing was more life-affirming than sex.
Betsy buried her face in his neck; she couldn’t get close enough. The scent of him was intoxicating, something strictly Jack that always made her think of home. She inhaled deeply, clinging to him as she brushed her lips over his neck and the hard razor of his jaw.
“To bed, then?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse.
“Oh yes.”
He carried her with ease, making her feel utterly delicate. Something that was a completely new sensation for her. The fact that she trusted him to carry her, didn’t ask him if he was sure he could lift her or balance their bodies together, seemed to spur his confidence.
Or maybe it was just that he was so hard for her he didn’t have time to battle his insecurities? She didn’t know, but he moved with more surety toward the downstairs library he’d turned into his bedroom.
He bent slowly, his muscles straining as he balanced them and carefully deposited her on the bed.
She noticed that even with the duvet, it had hospital corners. Neat and tight. More hope. He hadn’t given up on daily tasks—the things her mother’s doctors told her to watch for as signs of depression.
Jack wasn’t as far gone as he thought, or as he wanted others to think.
“You’re so strong,” she praised.
“You’re lucky I didn’t drop you.”
You’re not a small woman, Betsy. Marcel had said that to her when she was in his lap. She knew that was not what Jack meant, but it didn’t stop the words from replaying over in her head on a stupid loop.
Jack was right. She needed to take his picture down. Maybe that would silence his voice.
“Bets?”
She realized she’d pulled the pillow in front of her. How stupid was that after her brazen display, stripping for him twice, and he’d already been inside her? She couldn’t hide, but she wanted to.
Betsy suddenly understood that about Jack, too. Why he wanted to hide things from her in the dark, why he didn’t want her to see.
For the millionth time, she realized that she was in way over her head.
“You know that I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know,” she said, unable to look at him.
“Then why are you hiding from me?” He tilted her chin up gently.
Her eyes were heavy, and she didn’t want to meet his eyes, but just as she wouldn’t let him turn away, he wouldn’t grant her that mercy, either.
“You stripped for me in the daylight and now you want to hide in the shadows?”
“You want the light off, so why can’t I hide, too?” She swallowed hard.
“Because you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He tugged the pillow out of her grasp slowly and pushed it to the side. “Art was meant to be displayed and admired, not hidden.”
From anyone else, it would have sounded like a line. Something whispered hurriedly to assuage her fear so he could still get a piece, but not Jack. From him, it was earnest poetry.
“Hasn’t anyone told you how perfect you are?” The incredulity in his voice gave her pause.
“No one is perfect.”
“You are.”
She didn’t know what to say, or what to do. No one had ever told her those things, and for them to come from him...
He leaned down and kissed the inside of her knee, his breath warm and his lips like a brand. “Touching you here—” he kissed her again “—makes you shiver and squirm in the best way.” Jack didn’t stop there but moved higher up her thigh. “And right here is all strength and feminine softness.” He clasped her hips. “Perfect for holding you right where I want you. Dangerous curves I could ride all night.”