The Jack & Jill Series

by Ann, Jewel E

  “Hey, Ryn. How was your day?” her neighbor, Drew, asked as he walked up the sidewalk from his mailbox.

  “I’ve had better,” she answered on a laugh.

  Her handsome forty-something neighbor leaned against the railing to her porch steps. “Sounds like a story.”

  She teased Gunner’s ear with her toes and smiled. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “If not for religious reasons, why would a guy take a vow of celibacy?”

  Drew chuckled, scratching his head then leaving his salt and pepper hair a bit ruffled. He was Dermot Mulroney’s twin, especially that sexy crooked smile.

  “I thought maybe you were going to ask me why the clover seems to be taking over our lawns this year.”

  “Yeah, that too, but first answer the celibacy question.” She grinned.

  “Okay, well maybe the guy has STDs or he’s afraid of getting them. Maybe he has an unhealthy attachment to sex or …”

  “Or what?”

  A sadness stole Drew’s handsome features. “Maybe he lost a lover.” Cancer stole Drew’s wife a year earlier.

  “Drew, I didn’t mean to—”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t. It’s fine.” He shrugged one shoulder. “But it could be the reason.”

  Ryn nodded. Could Jackson have lost a wife or girlfriend?

  “Have a seat.” She stood and walked to the front door. “I’ll get you a beer.” Her lips twisted to the side as she looked at him. “Maybe two.”

  A few minutes later, she returned with two bottles of beer.

  “Thanks.”

  Gunner waited until she sat down before resuming his spot at her feet.

  “So you have a thing for a guy who’s taken a vow of celibacy?”

  Ryn laughed. “He’s younger than me. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for me to have a thing for him.”

  “So? My wife was almost ten years younger than me.”

  “Really?” Ryn looked at him with wide eyes. “I never knew that. Then again when you moved here she was going through chemo and …”

  “And the fucking poison stole her hair and eventually her life.”

  “Yeah, that.” She frowned.

  After a long pull of his beer, he sighed. “I was thirty-one when we met. She was my student when I taught an intro to business class at a community college.”

  “Sounds scandalous.”

  Drew chuckled. “Her parents were not happy. At our wedding when the minister asked who gives this woman, her dad just grunted.”

  “No!”

  “I’m serious. We were married five years before he stopped scowling at me.”

  “That’s just it. I can’t imagine dating someone significantly younger than me. Not to be sexist, but I think older women dating younger men get more scowls than the other way around. Obviously your in-laws weren’t this way, but most people don’t think much of the older-man-younger-woman relationship these days.”

  “So how young are we talking?” Drew asked.

  Ryn smiled while taking a sip of her iced tea. “I don’t know. Thirty-ish? But I could be off and I don’t think in my direction. With my luck he’s in his mid-twenties and the perfect guy for Maddie.” She waved a dismissive hand. “It doesn’t matter. He’s celibate.” She laughed. “Of course I have been lately too.”

  “When I turned forty my wife swore I had a midlife crisis. I swore forty was too young to be considered ‘midlife.’ We’d been trying to get pregnant but it just never happened. So I told her to quit her job—she was an accountant and hated it anyway—and we traveled the world for two years living like gypsies. We left our naked ass prints on many beaches.” Drew wiggled his brows.

  Ryn laughed.

  “We would have stayed longer, but that’s when they discovered her cancer. We were in France. I berated myself for being so reckless. Had we just stayed home, maybe they would have found it sooner. But she refused to regret any of it. She said my midlife crisis was the best two years of her life. She said she’d never felt so alive and we all deserve to feel that way at least once. After all, why the hell else are we here?”

  Ryn loved that story. But what she loved the most was how many times Drew had told it to her. Each time it felt like the first, and each time he came up with a new moral.

  “So you think I should leave my ass print on the beach.” She said that every time too, but it was never the moral.

  “Exactly.”

  Ryn gasped. “Seriously?”

  Drew smiled and nodded, looking off into the sunset while sipping his beer. “Rob the cradle, have sex on the beach, and fucking embrace your forties. You’re at your prime, Ryn. What do you have to lose at this point?”

  A lot, starting with her dignity and her mind. Maybe he made a valid point. There was just one problem. The cradle she wanted to rob had a warning sign that said “celibate.”

  Chapter Five

  “Your favorite neighbor just pulled in his garage,” Jackson announced as he came in the back door, dripping with sweat.

  Jillian didn’t care, at least that’s what she told herself every morning to muster the strength to get out of bed.

  “No response?” He plopped down in the chair next to hers. “Good. Let’s talk about me then.”

  His mouth held a pleasant smile, one that said he had a secret ready to burst from his lips. He marked time much better than she did, going through the motion of each day like a good soldier. But it had been a while since she’d seen him look happy.

  “Let’s.” She found her own smile. It was his moment.

  “I know I was a little pissed about you telling Ryn that I’d taken a vow of celibacy … which I did not do.”

  “You had sex.”

  “I did not.” His grin held firm. “But I think I should now. I think I’m ready.”

  “I agree. You should, but not with Ryn.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because she works for us.” Jillian drummed her fingers on the table. A tight grin pulled her lips into a firm line.

  “She works for you. Technically, I think you hired her.”

  Jillian shook her head. “She’s probably married with kids. Don’t be a home wrecker … that has never been your thing, so don’t start now.”

  “She’s not married. I asked.”

  “Are you going to marry her?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Because this house has never looked so clean and unless you marry her it will eventually end with her quitting because of you. And … she’ll probably quit working for AJ too, just so she doesn’t have to be in the same neighborhood as you.”

  “You’re full of shit. Look at yourself. You’re a walking disaster. I had to pick up your room before Ryn came just so she could find the floor to vacuum it. You’ve been a slob your entire life. And a certain doctor that I shall not name … he knew it too, and it drove him crazy, and you know I’m right. I know for a fact you thrive in disorder. So either you intended Ryn to be a gift for me or you’re using her to worm your way back onto AJ’s good side. And just to be clear … I’m not sure he has one.”

  She stopped drumming her fingers on the table and rolled her eyes. “Fine, but do me a favor. Choose what it’s going to be and make sure she understands.”

  Jackson shook his head. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  “If it’s just sex, then make sure she knows up front. Otherwise …”

  “Otherwise what?”

  “Marry her.”

  Jackson laughed. “I’ll ask her on Tuesday which she prefers.”

  Jillian didn’t want to laugh. She’d been in the worst mood since she last saw AJ and her depression began to feel like a security blanket—dark but warm.

  Unfortunately, she envisioned Jackson asking Ryn if she’d rather have sex with him or marry him and the image brought a huge smile to her face.

  “That looks good on you.” He smiled back. “Now go.”
>
  She narrowed her eyes. “Go where?’

  “I know you’re dying to go next door.”

  She wasn’t.

  “Lay it on the line. Don’t take any of his crap and call me if you need backup.”

  “You don’t even like him. Why do you care?”

  “True. But I think Jillian needs him.”

  Loving Jackson came easy, even when he acted the part of a paranoid, overprotective ass. Eventually he came around and supported her with only one goal: for her to find happiness. Was AJ her happiness? Could she be happy watching him die? Did he have to die?

  *

  Jillian hadn’t prepared herself for the defeat in AJ’s eyes when he answered the door. She expected grumpiness, and anger, not shoulders curved inward, eyes devoid of life.

  “Can I come in?”

  The hollow man before her nodded once.

  Grabbing two beers, he handed one to her. She shook her head. There was no need for an SOS. He wasn’t dying.

  He wasn’t dying.

  “I need you to live.” Her voice, barely a whisper, squeezed past the lump in her throat.

  AJ leaned against the counter, staring at his feet. “Sorry.”

  She wanted to tell him everything. He would fight for himself—fight for her—if he knew about her past.

  “I know what it feels like to want to give up. I know what it feels like to not feel in control of your body. Living is so much harder than dying.”

  His cynical laugh sliced through the thick air. “You have experience with dying?”

  There existed a headstone with her former name on it. In many ways she was dead. After all, a person couldn’t live without a heart, and hers resided in San Francisco.

  “I do.”

  He laughed again. “But let me guess … you can’t tell me about it.”

  “You know what pisses me off the most? You’ve had one opinion and you’re already planning your funeral. Just because some neurologist or oncologist thinks your tumor is inoperable doesn’t mean another more experienced or more confident doctor would.”

  AJ looked up at her. “So that’s a no answer yet again to your past.”

  “We’re not talking about my past, we’re talking about—”

  “Well I think we should. It’s a moot point talking about my future that no longer exists. I’ve told you about my past. I think all that’s left to talk about is yours.”

  Anger gripped every nerve as she fisted her hands at her side. It was a low blow. He didn’t need to push her away with her own past.

  “I love you.”

  He shook his head. “You’re reciprocating. I didn’t ask you to say it back. I said it because I needed to make peace between us. You’re saying it because you’re scared and pissed.”

  “I think telling someone you love them after you find out you’re ‘dying’ would be classified as an act of fear or anger, so please don’t feed me this line of bullshit that you had some romantic epiphany about us on a whim.”

  “Are you done?” His face turned to stone, eyes cold.

  She stepped closer until they were toe-to-toe. “I’m just getting started.”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “Well. I. Don’t. Care.” She poked his chest with each word. “You have two parents and a son that will be devastated. You don’t enlist in the air force and fight to stay alive to make it home to your family just to turn around and give up. You’re not a fucking coward so stop acting like one.”

  “Six months.” He glared at her.

  “What … what are you talking about?”

  “I saw the oncologist. It’s cancer and he gave me six months to live … with treatment.”

  She stared at his chest. How did his heart feel about that? Hers remained hollow. It had been for many months. Those were crushing words. Luckily, she was safe. No heart. Nothing to crush. But for some reason, his words filled that empty space and formed into something living, beating, and aching so damn bad. How could nothing feel so painfully like something?

  “Now that I have your undivided attention let me tell you the rest.”

  Her head inched side to side. Through a haze of shock her eyes remained fixed to his chest. He had something to live for. You don’t stop fighting if there’s something worth fighting for. She had Jackson, they kept each other alive. One … just one person was enough. How could AJ not see that?

  “Sometimes I get blurred vision, but it’s been easy to relate it to my headaches because they’re so frequent. I don’t remember some things, but I’m getting older so I just figured it was age.”

  The day of his accident he’d forgotten their dinner date. The night he took her for a ride on her Harley he acted confused when she reminded him about his parents and Brooke’s family coming for Cage’s game. Fucking twenty-twenty hindsight.

  He continued. “It’s all going to get worse. I’m taking medication for my headaches and seizures, but it’s not a cure. If I do nothing I could go blind in less than two months. If I agree to radiation and try to squeeze out six months, I could experience worse headaches, nausea, vomiting, extreme fatigue, hearing loss, difficulty with speech and memory, and more seizures. If I become the exception and make it past the six months, then they tack on stroke-like symptoms and poor brain function. The fatigue and medications could lead to erectile dysfunction. No sex.”

  He lifted her chin with his finger, but she would not give him her tears.

  “Sound like fun to you?”

  The strong woman who came in the door vanished, leaving a ghost biting her quivering lip, hating herself for being so weak.

  Her pain softened his rigid scowl of determination.

  “I. Love. You.” His words ripped through the imposter of a heart in her chest. “I’ll do this for you, but you have to know it’s going to feel like the most painful kind of love ever. You need to get that. I would never blame you for turning and walking away. It’s your choice. Are you in?”

  AJ didn’t realize Jillian … Jessica … had already experienced the most painful kind of love—letting go. Holding on was so much easier than letting go. It’s the reason she held on to Jessica and held on to her memories of Luke.

  “I’m in,” she whispered.

  The pain in his eyes intensified. He cradled her face in his hands, shaking his head. “You’re so stubborn.”

  Contumacious.

  The man who’d made claim to her empty chest, kissed her hard but she would not blink. The next day she’d pull it together, make some calls, and find a doctor that showed some optimism. That night, however, she surrendered her emotions and then her body.

  *

  “Jillian?” AJ whispered as he held her in his arms.

  She fought sleep, wanting to stay with him. The fragility of their time together kept her frozen in place. “Hmm?” She kissed his arm wrapped around her, holding her naked body against his.

  “I need you to promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t let me hurt you, physically or emotionally, and don’t…” he drew in a long breath “…don’t let me suffer. Let me die with some sort of dignity.”

  “AJ—” She choked on her words, damning the nagging tears.

  “Promise me.”

  “How will I know?” she whispered.

  “You’ll just … know.” He kissed the back of her head. “I trust you.”

  She closed her eyes, begging the tears to hold off as she held her breath and nodded once. Her body shook from the pounding in her chest, an earthquake of pain. Pain that was just too much.

  A while later she felt his body relax around hers, so she slipped out of bed, dressed, and went home.

  Jackson sat perched on a chair in front of his computer. He looked up.

  “Downstairs,” she whispered.

  He stared at her for a moment. Then he nodded.

  After changing her clothes, she wrapped her hands and waited for Jackson. He gave her a sad smile as he reac
hed the bottom of the stairs. He started to wrap his hands.

  “I’ll fight back, I promise, but I need you to make me feel a different type of pain.”

  They both slipped in their mouth guards.

  He nodded. Before she could meet his eyes, he swung his leg around, knocking her to the floor. Tears flooded her eyes, but not from being knocked down.

  “Get up,” he growled, his voice devoid of sympathy. Jackson knew what she needed, sometimes more than she did.

  “Get the fuck up!”

  She crawled to her feet, tears streaming down her face. He hit her again before she had a chance to react. Blood pooled along her lip.

  “You feel that?” he asked. His voice grew louder with each word.

  “Yes,” she gritted, brushing away her tears with her arms as her tongue licked the blood.

  “Then show me.”

  Her ragged breaths came quicker as anger seized her body and she attacked her brother, holding back nothing. She fought her past, beating the shit out of everything that took Luke away from her. She fought the asshole who had been messaging her, making her feel scared and weak, and then she fought the fucking cancer. She fought it through tears and blood. Jillian fought until she collapsed in Jackson’s arms. The tears ran dry and the pain numbed. One feeling remained: acceptance.

  Chapter Six

  Once again, Jackson witnessed his sister hitting rock bottom and crawling through her blood, sweat, and tears to surface again. After AJ saw the marks on her face the following day, he paid Jackson a visit—with his fist. Jillian broke up the fight before blood stained the carpet. With a scowl and a nod, both men declared a truce, although a silent one, and contingent on the other keeping his hands off her. A promise neither could really guarantee, because they were all a bit unpredictable.

  Jillian jumped all in and went to AJ’s appointments, including getting second and third opinions. Jackson, content that his sister stood on her own feet again, counted down the days until Tuesday—the best day of the week.

  “Hey.” Ryn smiled as he let her inside.