In Too Fast

by Mara Jacobs

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Stick

  The alarm on my phone went off and I put down the paintbrush. I was painting the second bedroom in my apartment a very neutral light tan. It hadn’t been touched since Lucas had moved out, and I wanted to put a fresh coat on it before Shelly moved in, after the baby was born.

  I enjoyed the mindlessness of it, the not having to think. So much so, I had to set the alarm to make sure I didn’t miss the Stratton interview being aired.

  I cleaned up my brushes and took a quick shower, and just as I was about to settle down on the couch with a beer, my phone buzzed. Jane’s text tone. I debated even looking at it. I figured it was masochistic enough to even watch her on television, but to interact with her during it?

  Curiosity got the best of me, and I reached for the phone, taking a drink of beer as I did.

  Are you home?

  Yes.

  Can I come up?

  Where are you?

  Look out your window.

  I was off the couch in a flash, and when I pulled back the shades there was Jane, across the street, leaning against the Vette, phone in hand, looking like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  No care that just seeing her at Caro’s funeral last week had been torture enough. I certainly didn’t need her in my apartment—a place she’d never before been to. How did she even know where—

  Lucas.

  Stay there. I grabbed my keys and was out the door. Mentally making a note to let Lucas have it the next time I saw him.

  She was at the door of my building when I got downstairs. “I was going to bring some champagne to toast and watch the interview with, but…my normal buyer wasn’t available.”

  “What are you doing here, Jane?”

  She moved past me into the vestibule. It was warm enough now that she didn’t have a coat on, and she was only wearing what looked like a couple of layers of goofy tops instead of three or four. “Is my car going to be safe there?” she asked.

  Typically no, but I owned this block when it came to cars. I walked a couple of steps out onto the stoop and looked around. “Ricky,” I yelled to a neighborhood kid that was on his stoop a couple of doors down from where Jane had parked. “That car is with me. Under my protection. Anything happens to it and I will be very unhappy.”

  “Got it,” the kid said. He’d make sure Yvette was left alone, and I’d slip the kid a twenty when Jane left.

  Never mind that I hoped she never left.

  She was already walking up the steps when I came back into the building. “Third floor,” I called out, and followed her up, trying not to stare at her hips as they swayed underneath her flowy top.

  Once inside, she made herself at home, sitting on the couch, reaching for the remote. “You were going to watch it, weren’t you?”

  I shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  She narrowed those green eyes at me. “Yeah, right.” She turned the TV on and flicked to the right channel. I offered her a beer and she took one, then I sat down on the couch, but not right next to her. She held out her beer bottle, neck pointed at me, to clink. “Here’s to good television.” I tapped the neck of my bottle to hers then took a long swig.

  I was wishing I’d started drinking a lot earlier, because being this close to Jane without being able to touch her was something I really didn’t want to do sober.

  The interview was done well, but then I knew that it would be—I’d been in the room while they’d filmed it. Teller had asked Jane about family and how she felt about her dad and whether Jane thought Joe had integrity. Jane had answered pretty pat answers that she’d worked on with Grayson and Caro. But she didn’t outright lie or anything.

  She was just playing a part. Much like they all were.

  I remembered that day so clearly—how I’d told her she was fierce and held her in my arms even though people were watching. How she’d let herself be vulnerable in front of me, if only for a second. How I was thinking I’d wished I’d told her I loved her on her birthday.

  Now, it was a good thing I hadn’t. It would have been that much harder letting her go.

  During a commercial there was an awkward silence, which I filled by telling her something I hadn’t thought I would get a chance to tell her. “Caro left me three of her father’s cars in her will. Said she wanted me to sell them and use the money for nursing school.”

  “That’s amazing. And not surprising that she would do that. She really thought the world of you.”

  I cleared my throat, a little embarrassed. I had been surprised to get the summons to attend the reading of the will. And then shocked to find out the value of the gift she’d given me.

  “I was kind of surprised that she didn’t leave something to you,” I said. I had half expected to see Jane at the reading. “A piece of jewelry or something.”

  Jane shook her head. Her hair had grown since I’d brought her the Vette, now brushing her shoulders. “I wasn’t. It would have hurt Betsy, I think. I know Caro cared for me, but at the end of the day, she wouldn’t do anything that would hurt her kids.”

  I was going to say something to that, but the interview came back on and we watched the rest of it in silence.

  “You were good,” I said to Jane when the screen returned to Amanda Teller sitting in a chair back in the studio. “I thought—”

  “Shhh, I want to hear this part.” I raised a brow at her for shushing me, but just took another sip of beer and turned my attention back to the television.

  “Shortly after Caroline Stratton’s funeral, I received a call from Jane Winters asking if she could speak to me again. Here now is that conversation.”

  I turned to Jane, dread filling me. “What did you—”

  “Shhh,” she said again, adding in a hand motion this time. Her eyes were glued to the TV.

  Oh shit, after Caro died Jane probably figured fuck it and decided to tell Amanda Teller exactly what she thought of dear old dad. Which was fine—I couldn’t give a shit about Joe Stratton’s political career. And in some ways Jane’s life would be easier if his political ambitions bit the dust here and now. But I knew that to burn a bridge that large would put Jane in a major hot spot with Grayson Spaulding. One dude you did not want to cross.

  “Jane, I understand you were at Caroline’s funeral?” Amanda Teller asked Jane on screen. They were in a studio, and I wondered if Jane had gone to New York to do this.

  “Yes, I was. It was, of course, very sad. But it was also a lovely celebration of her life. A chance for her friends and family to come together and share their stories and memories. Caro would have liked it.”

  Okay, so far so good. She wasn’t saying “my dad’s a douche” right out of the gate.

  “And then you called me. Why is that Jane—what do you want to say that you couldn’t while Joe and Caroline were beside you?”

  Beside me Jane fidgeted, while Jane on the screen sat up straight, put her shoulders back and said, “We talked a lot about family and integrity that day. And at the time, they seemed like different topics to me. But now, after the funeral, they seem so intertwined.”

  Teller leaned forward, hungry for whatever scoop Jane was about to hand her. “How so?”

  “Well, like in my father’s case. Did he act with integrity back when he met my mother and I was born? No. And that cost him the love of his life in Caroline. Has he since tried to make it right and act in everyone’s best interest? I think so. We all make mistakes. We all wish we could have a do-over.”

  “But don’t you think integrity is at the very fiber of a person? That if you didn’t have it then, you don’t have it later?”

  Jane pretended to mull that over, but I was willing to bet she knew exactly what she was going to say. “Not necessarily. In my father’s case, I think it was losing Caroline that made him reassess his life and priorities, and from that came a new sense of responsibility, and integrity.” Teller nodded, and was about to ask something else when Jane continued,
“Like with my boyfriend, he’s only twenty-one, but he has the strongest sense of integrity I know. Maybe not in some areas, but with the people he cares about, he would do whatever it took to help them out, even to the detriment of our relationship. He drives me mad sometimes, but I love him very much, and it’s admirable, so I stand by him. And that’s kind of like how my father…”

  The interview went on for another minute or two, then went back to Teller alone in the studio signing off. I didn’t catch what Jane said at the end, some kind of tying it all back to her father, but my brain stopped working when she said that she loved her boyfriend and stood by him. The screen went dark, and I turned to see the remote in Jane’s hand, and her eyes on me.

  Based on her expression—both apprehensive and curious—the shield was definitely down.

  I knew how she felt—I had no defenses against what she’d said about loving me. My shield had been shattered. Had been shattered by Jane from day one. What she said wouldn’t be a big deal to anyone else watching it. But to me? To me, she’d just given me the world.

  “You added absolutely nothing to that interview in the eyes of everybody but me,” I said cautiously. I didn’t want the shield being thrown back up.

  “I know.”

  “Why did she even run it?”

  She placed the remote on the coffee table and took a sip from her beer. “She thought I was going to dish dirt. When it was over, she didn’t want to run it, but I promised her first interview rights for the next three years if she aired it.”

  “You’re kidding? And she said yes?”

  Jane shrugged. “Nobody knows if Joe will win or not, but she probably figures if I’m in the limelight, then, knowing me, I’ll probably have some meltdown here or there, and she gets first crack at me. It was a risk she was willing to take.”

  “You will not have a meltdown. At least not so that anyone would see.” I could see her flying off the handle when we were alone, ranting about something her father said, or Grayson did, but she would hold it together for—

  And then it hit me. I was already seeing the future for us. Us. Together.

  Jane

  He didn’t say anything more, and I sat very, very still. Like any sudden movement might scare him away. Slowly, carefully, I moved to the middle cushion of the couch, next to him.

  “So, besides how I got her to run it, what did you think of the add-on piece?”

  He put his beer bottle on the table and turned to me. “Nothing’s really changed, you know.”

  “I have. I’ve changed.” He quirked a brow at me. “Well, not really changed, but I realized what’s important.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Screw slow and careful. I slid onto his lap and wrapped my arms around his neck. “This,” I said in a whisper. Just before I kissed him. Of course he tasted like peppermint. And beer. And…Stick.

  He kissed me back, his arms encircling me, pulling me closer. It would never be too close. Never close enough.

  “Jane…I…” He was breathing heavily when he broke away.

  “I love you,” I said, trying to forestall any explanation about him and me being together being wrong while he was raising a child with someone else.

  “I…I love you too,” he said. Confirming my reason for being here. Let the rest of the bullshit go.

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said, kissing him again, edging myself more fully onto his lap, already feeling him grow hard beneath me. “Who knows? We might break up next month. Next week, knowing the two of us.” He gave a small laugh at that. “But we are not going to break up over this. Not over you stepping up and being a father to your kid.”

  “We’re not?” he said, a bit of amusement, and what sounded like hope.

  “No. We’re not.” A bit of my bravado left me as I asked the sixty-four-million-dollar question. “Unless things with Shelly have changed…for you?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, are you…together? Or want to be?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing has changed with Shelly and me. We have not…reinstituted our…hookups.”

  I let out a of breath of relief.

  “It’s been only you, Jane. Since the start.”

  We made out some more. I wanted to get naked, but he seemed in no hurry, and I was totally enjoying the kissing, so I didn’t rush it.

  After a while, he pulled away again. “So you’re sure? You’re going to be able to deal with this if Shelly’s baby is mine?” I nodded. “You are something, that’s for sure. Not many girls would do that.”

  I thought for a minute, and then I conjured up the words Grayson Spaulding said to me at Betsy’s wedding. “I have found it serves me well to see situations as they truly are, not as I would wish them to be.”

  He shook his head and took my face in his hands. “Who are you, Jane Winters?” he said, not for the first time. But unlike the other times, there was love in his voice, not exasperation. Okay, there was a little exasperation too, but mostly love.

  “That’s easy, Patrick Dooley.” His eyes widened at my newfound knowledge, but I continued, “I’m your girlfriend.”

  Epilogue

  Jane

  Meet me at the hospital?

  A text from Stick. I was just getting out of class, checking my phone.

  Are you okay? I texted back, while walking quicker, my heart starting to beat quicker. If something was really wrong with Stick he would have called an ambulance, right? Not waited for me to get out of class and then text.

  Yes. Just want you to see the world’s cutest baby.

  Oh, so Shelly had had her baby. I knew it would be any day now. My pace slowed down; I was no longer in such a hurry. I would love to get out of this, say I was busy and for him to go to the hospital without me. But Stick knew my schedule. I couldn’t even claim to be heading to class. And I had told him I’d be supportive of him having a baby.

  It had been three weeks since the night the interview aired, the night I went after Stick and told him I was going to be there for him—whether he wanted it or not.

  Three weeks of figuring out how to circumnavigate this new world of ours, which would include me going on the road for my father this summer and Stick dealing with fatherhood, and starting school in the fall.

  And three weeks of being loved by Patrick Dooley. That alone was worth all the other crap.

  He had taken the money Caro left him—from the sales of the cars—and put a deposit on a second apartment in the same building as he lived. Even the same floor. That was where Shelly and the baby would come home to, not his second bedroom.

  I knew it was mainly for my benefit, and felt bad about the money spent, but was happy about the choice he made. Lucas had even moved back into Stick’s apartment now that Lucas’s mother was doing well enough on her own. It helped with the rent, gave Lucas some space (though he still helped out a lot with his little brother), gave Shelly some privacy, but would allow Stick easy access to be able to help out with feedings and such.

  The rest of the money he would use to go to school, looking at getting in somewhere within driving distance. He wouldn’t let me use my negotiated chit with Grayson.

  It just made me love him more.

  I’d met Shelly Hopkins a few times over the past three weeks, and she seemed cool with me being with Stick. Even said another pair of hands for diaper duty would be great. Yeah, right. I mean, I loved Stick and everything, but there was no way I was going to do diapers.

  Yes, it was all very civilized.

  So why did I not want to go and see Stick’s baby?

  Would they name him Dooley? God, I didn’t even ask if it was a boy or girl.

  Hopefully I would fall in love with this kid right away and it would all work out.

  “Hey, Jane. Got a minute?” Billy Montrose’s voice pulled me out of my baby-induced haze. He was standing in the hallway of the building of my last class, in front of what I knew from my Montrose-hunting days was his office.

 
; “Sure,” I said, and made my way across the hall and into the office, him holding the door open for me.

  It was a small room with just a desk, a bookshelf and an old leather couch, the kind that looked like you’d sink down when you sat in it, so that your knees would be at chin level. There were books all over the place, even some stacked on the floor beside the desk and couch. Stacks of papers were on his desk.

  “The ‘Who I am Right Now’ papers?” I asked, pointing to a stack. It was the paper we’d had to write for our final for his class. The paper that had prompted him to give me the “Find Her” talk.

  “What? Oh, yeah. Not as entertaining as last semester’s batch, I’m afraid.” He motioned to the couch, and I moved to sit down. His leather jacket was on the arm, and I moved it out of the way. Something dropped from underneath it and pooled at my feet. I bent over and picked up a beautiful, brightly colored scarf. A very unique scarf that I’d seen only one place before.

  I held it to my nose. Yep, even smelled of her perfume. I handed it to Montrose, not saying a word, only raising a brow at him.

  “It’s, um…”

  “Complicated? I’m sure it is,” I said. He stood in front of me, looking down at the scarf in his hands like it held the secrets to the universe. Maybe, for him, it did.

  Who was I to judge? I was on my way to meet my ex-car-thief boyfriend to see his baby with another woman. “Don’t worry about it,” I said to Montrose. “I won’t mention that I was here…to anyone.”

  He nodded, still looking at the scarf. After a couple of seconds he gently placed the scarf on his desk, watching it, like it might slide off and away from him. Finally his attention turned back to me.

  Funny, last semester I would have loved to have been given private attention in Montrose’s office. Now, I just wanted to hear what he had to say and get out of there. And get to Stick.

  “I saw the interview you did with the Strattons,” he said. “And I was sorry I couldn’t make it to Caroline’s funeral.”

  That’s right—he was college friends with Betsy. “It was a nice service,” I said.