by Kendra Mase
“Thanks.”
He peeked up at Katherine, holding her things against her chest still, buckling herself in. “Everything good?”
She nodded, though even she could feel how tight her brow creased. “Just tired. Emilie isn’t feeling well again and is holed up in her room. She told me not to, but I called her friend to come in and check on her at some point today, so I hope she did. It might be the first weekend of an intentional closing for the shop.”
Jack bit his lip as his fingers flexed against the steering wheel. It was only then that Katherine realized that she was looking at his lips.
The almost-kiss, yet again, flared to mind. It was obvious now; Jack just needed a friend to go home with him. That had to be it. Jack was a very touchy-feely guy, after all.
Katherine thought of Pen and Avril and Evie… her.
“You know, we don’t have to go.”
“No,” Katherine responded immediately, snapping herself out of her internal tirade. “We’re going. It’s fine. Emilie has been on and off sick for a few months. You know that. She should be fine, but between you and me, I’m pretty sure she needs to go for a check or something after all those years.”
“All those years?” Jack repeated, pulling out onto the street and heading away from the river.
“I saw pictures of her when she was about fifteen, if not younger, smoking.” She sighed with an exhausted sounding laugh. “Crazy to think of now, huh?”
Coming to a stop at a red light, he glanced at all her bags she began to stuff by her feet. “You bring your laptop and stuff with you?”
“Yeah, I figured we could finish the last bits of what needs to be sent out or verified with Nik later, then we are basically done until closer to the event.” Katherine gave an uneasy smile. She tried to fix it again, but not before he noticed.
“You sure you are okay?”
“Yeah.” She reached back down, searching for her laptop so they could get it all out of the way now. “Why would you ask?”
“You look like you are about to freak out.”
“I am not.” She scoffed. “Going to freak out.”
“Okay, then.”
“I said, I’m not.”
“I said, okay then.”
She flipped open her laptop and waited for the screen to turn on. “You seem worried, though. Are you nervous to go home?”
His head fell to the one side as they continued to drive. “You could say that.”
“They invited you to this anniversary party, didn’t they? They must want to see you.”
“My sister-in-law, Leann, did the inviting, technically. She brought it up a few phone calls ago, and according to her, that is basically an engraved invitation. My family isn’t…” Jack looked for the right word to pop out of the windshield. “Formal.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means, along with not going home in the past eight years, only one person reached out to me after they found out where I was and what I was doing after I left the institute. Only my older brother, who wondered what the fuck I was doing with my life, came and found me once, but no one else. He and his wife call me and I video chat with them and their kids occasionally, like on holidays and stuff. My mom calls me once every few months to ask the same questions when she remembers she has another child. How am I? What have I been up to? Am I happy?”
Jack drifted off at that last question.
Katherine almost asked it herself, but she didn’t.
Was he happy?
Katherine thought about her own family. She had a mother who left and a father who ran out what felt like years ago but was only months. He never called. A lot of the time, growing up, Katherine questioned whether he even thought that she was his daughter, really.
For the first time, she felt like she actually had a family when she moved in with Emilie, and it was strange, from the way Katherine overcompensated to Emilie only giving her well-meaning looks when she cleaned the shop for the third time in a single day.
“She also used to keep me updated on everything else.”
“On the farm life?”
“A lot happens during farming season, thank you very much,” Jack said. “That is why my parents’ anniversary is so far into November. They got married after the last few weeks of harvest. And the end of farming season is basically like solstice, but for farmers.”
“Solstice?” Katherine questioned. “Like in the summer?”
“And winter. Don’t knock it until you try it. Queen always throws a huge solstice bash.” Jack gave a wicked smile.
“What was that for?”
“I’m remembering the first solstice Queen threw.”
“That good?”
“She rented a house out in the middle of nowhere and everyone turned up naked by the time the sun came back up in the middle of some field nearby, so I guess you could say so.”
Katherine had to look away from meeting his eyes but couldn’t help herself from developing a wide grin with him, trying to keep her teeth from showing. “I want to go to the next one.”
“Yeah?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t be so surprised, Ripper.”
He rolled his eyes at the name.
“How many did you say there were of you, again?” Katherine asked, turning the subject back.
“I have three brothers. So, four of us total,” Jack said. “I think my mom tried for a girl after my younger brother, Jace, but she miscarried when I was about seventeen.”
“Wait, what are your brother’s names?”
He paused as his eyes flicked to her as he sucked his cheek.
“You all have J names.”
“Jed, Jeremy, Jack, and Jace.”
Katherine pressed her lips together. “Those are some messed up J names.”
“I didn’t pick them.”
“Jed?”
“Jedidiah.”
“No.” Her eyes widened. That poor child—or not a child, anymore.
“My mother insists that she was sleeping when they came in with the birth certificate.”
“Are their names J’s too?”
“No.” Jack began to laugh at Katherine’s brightened interest. “Brian and Emily.”
“Like my Emilie?”
“With a Y.”
Katherine tipped her head. She was pretty sure she could remember all those names. Jed, Jeremy, Jace, and Jack.
“In the fall though, sometimes, neighbors would just pop over for tools they were missing as they cleaned up their places for winter, or for a beer. It was basically like Christmas. Once, when I was a kid, we set off fireworks out from the cornstalks that weren’t cut down yet. Dangerous, do not recommend. We almost set the whole field on fire.”
Katherine couldn’t stop smiling, shaking her head. Listening to Jack’s childhood sounded like a pleasant storybook. “Four boys kept things interesting.”
“Oh, definitely.” Jack granted, deep in thought, before he blinked. “What do we still have to go over?”
“Like I said, not much. There is just that list I gave Evie. Do you know if she got to any of it?”
“Most of it when I asked her today.”
Katherine could live with that. She made a note of it next to the document.
“What about the poster designer?” asked Jack.
“I just got the file sent to me this morning. Want to see?”
At his nod, Katherine turned the screen toward him to show the poster. It mimicked the past years but kept with their art deco and gold theme she’d been going with for the decorations. Rosin already appeared in a similar aesthetic, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch.
“A few minor adjustments need to be made, but he said if we had any issues, it wouldn’t be an issue, so…”
“It looks really good. You didn’t do that, did you?”
She was pleased he thought she could. “Oh, no.”
“Who’d you get to do it?”
“I sent out a mass email to the instit
ute’s graphic design department to see if anyone would do it for internship credit.”
“Smart.”
“Yeah, the girl I met at the market that day, Gina, got back to me about it a few days ago. Turns out college students will do anything for internship credit.”
Jack snorted.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Katherine narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”
“I am,” Jack agreed. “Come on, let me have at least one bedtime story to tell you one day.”
Thinking about it, Katherine shook her head. “You’ll have to think of another. Tell me.”
“Kit.”
“It’s a long car ride.” She opened her eyes wide and stared at him.
“Fine,” Jack conceded, though he tried not to sound happy about it. “But you owe me a deeply embarrassing story.”
It couldn’t be that hard for her to think of one. She waved him on.
“So, you know that I was at the institute.”
“Of course.”
“And thus, I too, would do anything for extra credit. Or in this case, some extra cash,” Jack began. Slowly, they made their way out of the city and onto the connecting highway, crammed with other cars trying to escape for the weekend. “My internship was pretty casual. I hung lights and helped out doing random tasks on a set. Some guy, though, gave me his card and told me to call him if I ever needed some odd job work.”
Shutting her laptop, Katherine continued to listen, getting more comfortable without the pressure on her lap.
“When I dropped out, I needed any job. I didn’t care if it was odd or not, but I ended up for a good while setting up lighting equipment on adult film sets.”
“No,” Katherine feigned a gasp. She couldn’t even imagine. “You worked on porn?”
His eyebrows flared, but didn’t deny it. “I was there at the strangest hours helping these people, especially after Marley kicked me to the curb. He has a strict student workers policy, and he wasn’t willing to break it just for me. I was also sneaking in to sleep in the back corner where he never noticed me for a good while. After that I crashed on couches and went to work on any set that needed hands. It wasn’t long, of course, until—”
Immediately, Katherine could see where this was going.
“They noticed you’re beautiful.”
The word seemed to startle Jack out of his story. He stopped and stared at Katherine for a long moment. Long enough that she casually glanced away before looking back at him with a tilt of her head to say, go on.
“We both know what happened next. Or what almost happened. I debated what I was going to do, considering how good the pay was. It was the same day I met Queen,” Jack said. “She got me into DuCain. I’m grateful for it. It is one rock I was glad not to have turned. Meant to be behind the camera.”
Katherine gave him an amused smile when he looked at her again.
“Plus, I’m sure then nosy little seamstresses would’ve found my online stardom, and then I would no longer have this fun story to tell.” Jack shrugged. “I found out too that photography wasn’t the only thing I loved in the city.”
“Performing,” Katherine whispered, understanding part of DuCain’s appeal to Jack now. “You do have one hell of a smile.”
“One hell of a smile?” It might’ve been the first time Katherine noticed him blush.
So she nodded, keeping him that way. It was a good color on him. “Among other things.”
He rolled his eyes at her.
“No, though. Honestly, like I said. It was one of the first things I ever noticed about you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I always knew if you were there at DuCain when I stopped in.” Katherine giggled. How different she was now. “Once, I saw you and Avril across the room, but first, I heard you laugh so loud, not caring who heard you. Whoever looked, you gave this look to right back, this smug grin.”
Katherine gazed off, remembering that moment of him and Avril standing in the shadows, so perfect together. She thought about if she could’ve ever been someone to stand next to them and not look out of place. Could she have been someone to laugh that joyfully?
She stood there with her package still in hand and waited until Nik finally walked by and paused at the newcomer with a confused look on her face.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Katherine admitted.
“About what?”
“I would’ve found the videos.”
Jack barked a loud laugh that filled the Jeep.
Time moved slowly as they drove.
Katherine forced her eyes to remain open. She squinted at the pothole-ridden road they made their way off the highway onto. A billboard asked her to text a blurry number to get closer to God.
She took her glasses off her face before rubbing her eyes. She set the frames in the cup holder as she leaned back against the headrest.
Jack looked forward, one hand on the steering wheel, the other casually itching the thin layer of stubble that appeared along his jaw.
Katherine reached toward the static-filled radio, music cutting in and out.
“You look tired,” Jack said softly.
“A little.”
“You can close your eyes if you want. I’ll wake you when we get close.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Sleep, Kit.”
“Promise you’ll wake me?”
“Promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The day Jack stepped off the bus in Ashton, he thought he had never been so in love with a place before. He hadn’t been to many places, granted, but still. There was something about Ashton that was just like his mother had said, the city where she spent only a year at community college before coming home. The air thrummed through you.
Oddly, Jack felt a similar sensation inside of himself as he pulled off the highway. He remembered the windy dirt roads like they were his first true love. Glancing over, his one arm stretched over the wheel, Kit lounged in an awkward position in the seat next to him. The streaks of occasional light flew over her cheeks before disappearing behind them both.
He hadn’t been home in eight years. Now he was here. With her.
Reaching over, his hand gently slid over her exposed leg. She had to be cold. Usually, she at least wore her stockings beneath even though he doubted they did anything for warmth’s sake.
“Kit. Kit,” he said softly with a thumb on her knee. He pulled back at her sharp intake of breath. “We are almost there.”
Openmouthed, Kit yawned before she sat up. “Where are we?”
As if on cue, Jack slowed the Jeep to see the fence in front of him, and written on it in stone, Carver Farms.
“The middle of nowhere,” Jack said anyway. Tires jumped over the dirt and rocks he could see in his headlights. The Jeep coasted into the corner of the driveway where the darkened farmhouse came into view. Turning the key to shut off the engine, Jack let out a long, practiced breath with it. “Well, we’re here.”
Still, suddenly he was frozen, unable to move from right here in the front seat.
Kit reached over the center console and undid his seat belt for him.
“Thanks.”
It was almost midnight, and it looked like almost all the lights were off inside the house he’d once called his home and had snuck into at least a few dozen times before.
“You worried?” Jack asked as he stared at it in front of him.
“Yes.”
He pried his eyes away from the structure to her. “You’re supposed to say no to make me feel better. You know, for the moral support you spoke of coming with me for?”
“I’ve decided you probably should’ve brought someone else then. In case you haven’t noticed, Jack, I have pretty terrible social anxiety, among the rest of my anxiety-inducing quirks, like the fact I am basically your lingerie designing sex maiden in a small town. I came from a small town—maybe not this small, but smaller and all in all, it didn’t t
urn out the best as you also might’ve noticed.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Sex maiden?”
She shrugged. “I’m not feeling the most creative. I’m hungry and also terrified of what is going to happen when they look at me.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll probably not even notice you’re here once they see the prodigal son return.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He didn’t know. It wasn’t helping him much as he pushed open the car door and strode around the front end.
A cat appeared out of the corner of his eye. Kit had to nearly jump over it so as not to trip. She watched as it trotted off to another side of the wide driveway.
“I’m at your childhood home.”
It sure looked that way.
“I’m here. At your house. With your family. With you,” Kit repeated as they made it to the front door. “Do they even know I’m coming?”
“I’m not even sure they think I am coming anymore, Kit.” He gave a tug on the locked door to prove his point. They never locked up.
“You’re joking.”
He was not. He doubted his wonderful sister-in-law, Leann, though he would come with enough conviction to bring it up.
Taking another deep breath, Jack glanced at Katherine. With only that look, her hand shot out to grab his that had been dangling at his side. Jack looked down at it, how easily her fingers fit between his.
She gently squeezed.
“Too late to turn back, huh?”
“Probably.”
He knocked.
“Hi, Mom.”
Emily Carver was a petite woman, light hair streaked with even lighter strands of gray. Her eyes were transfixed and wide as she looked at Jack, frozen for a long moment in shock before she said anything. She lifted a hand as if pointing to something. “I heard the door and I thought—I thought it was Jace coming back.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Jack murmured beside Katherine. She watched him carefully as a slightly shaken breath escaped him.
“I—we weren’t sure if you were coming.”
Releasing Katherine’s hand that his had been slowly constricting around, Jack took the few steps past the house threshold and wrapped his arms around his mom in a hug. “Happy almost anniversary.”