My Fiancé's Brother (The Guilty Series Book 1) Page 13

  I looked around the kitchen. There was no way I could cook tonight. I flipped through our take-out brochures and then decided on Thai food. I called for food and then wiped down an already exceptionally clean counter. Why did I feel so bereft? I was going to get what I wanted. I wanted a baby. I wanted a family. Together Matt and I would create our own little perfect family. This is what I needed most in this world. So why did my heart feel so heavy?

  Chapter 21

  The loft door slid open. Irene walked in and Jackson followed behind her. Stupid nerves jangled my body the moment I laid eyes on his big frame. He exuded this solid unshakable presence that instantly made me feel nervous and safe at the same time. My eyes slid past his direct gaze and I proceeded to flush hot.

  I forced myself to focus on Irene. “How was your afternoon?”

  “Decadent,” she smiled. “After a walk with Jackson, I went back to the hotel and had a long nap and a swim in the pool.”

  He was watching me. I could feel it.

  “Oh, that sounds lovely,” I smiled trying to shut out his presence. I failed to ignore how tall he was, how his baseball cap was pulled so low on his brow, how green his eyes were. I swear his broad shoulders seemed to get bigger every time I saw him. Why was I noticing him again like this? Was it because of the kiss? I needed to get my mind back in the slow lane with this guy.

  Footsteps pounded down the stairs and then Matt was standing in front of his mom.

  “Sweetheart,” she beamed, opening her arms. Matt bent down and gave her a long hug.

  Matt straightened and Jackson and him eyeballed each other.

  “Want a beer?” Matt said.

  “Sure.”

  Matt went to the fridge and cracked open a couple of cans. “Want to go out on the patio?”

  “Yup.” Jackson took his proffered beer and then the two of them walked outside.

  “Can I get you a glass of wine?” I asked Irene.

  “That would be nice,” she said, sitting at the island.

  I poured her a glass. “I decided to send out for dinner tonight. It should be here in a bit.”

  I looked outside. Jackson and Matt stood facing each other and seemed to be in a serious conversation. Matt look agitated as he talked but Jackson had one hand in his pocket and looked relaxed as he listened.

  “It’s been like that since they knew each other,” Irene said as she glanced over her shoulder. “Matt talks and Jackson listens.”

  “I didn’t realize until recently how integral Jackson has been to your family. Matt never really mentioned him.”

  She looked carefully down at her wine. “Jackson was more my husband’s intention. I would never say this to Jackson’s face, but when he came into our family, it came at quite a price to Matt.”

  That wasn’t exactly what I had expected her to say. “Jackson shared with me a bit of his experiences with Ted and how he came to live with you.”

  “Jackson never talks about Ted.”

  “Well, I don’t want to exaggerate how much he told me, I'm just trying to figure out what happened.”

  She put her hand on my wrist. “No. I have known Jackson since he was a little boy and not once have we been allowed to talk about Ted. Not once.”

  I was pretty sure she was exaggerating. “Can you tell me how Jackson came to be part of your life?”

  “You know that Matt’s dad was a police officer, right?”

  I nodded.

  “We lived in a small town. Ted was the town drunk. Harry was called to deal with Ted on a regular basis for various reasons, most of them not good. Typically they just stuck Ted in a drunk tank. But that left them with a small child on their hands.”

  “Jackson.”

  She nodded. “Night after night, this little kid would sleep in the police waiting room. In the morning, my husband would drive Jackson to school. Harry couldn’t take it. One night, he showed up at our house, with Jackson in tow.”

  “Oh wow.”

  “Jackson was trembling and dirty. I have never seen a more malnourished looking child in my life. You would think he would have been grateful. We were offering him food and a warm bed and yet he just fought us the whole way. He didn’t want to be there. You would think that our home and our generosity would have be preferable to a police station waiting room, but he didn’t want to be with us.”

  “He wanted to be with Ted.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “That he did.”

  I stole a glance at the patio. As if he could sense me Jackson turned his head and looked at me. I dropped my glance.

  “What happened?”

  “Ted kept getting drunk. My husband kept bringing Jackson home. And it was like that every single time. The only thing Jackson asked for was to be brought back to Ted. He never cried. He fought. He fought that separation tooth and nail. At age seven, he had more fight it him than two grown men. Harry and I were just trying to be charitable. Then one night, it was like he realized that even if he stayed over, he would still return to Ted. Harry dropped him off. He just walked passed me, climbed into his bunk bed and was asleep within two minutes.”

  I swallowed my pain. My heart ached for that little boy. The little boy that knew only violence and pain at the hands of the one person he should have been able to trust. And even when he was taken away from all that heartache, he just wanted to go back to it.

  “What happened to Jackson’s real father?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows. His mother was quite trashy and when she died, Ted was the only one left standing. Ted was his legal guardian. Which is kind of a joke considering if he had owned a dog and treated it like he had treated Jackson, he would have been banned from owning a dog for the rest of his life.”

  I tried to phrase my question with tact. “Did anyone think about calling social services?”

  “We lived in a small town. Our options were to report Ted and have Jackson shipped off to some foster home in the city. Harry was scared Jackson would get lost in the system.” She lifted her shoulder. “We had unofficial custody of Jackson more than half the time. My husband checked up on them frequently. And only when it got bad did we question whether we were doing the right thing.”

  I could not wrap my mind around the idea that letting a young child face physical abuse had been an option at all.

  She saw the look in my eyes. “We did what we could. You should know that. Every time Jackson landed in the hospital, we took him to our house. We tried to unofficially adopt Jackson. He had his own dresser, his own toys, his own clothes. He even had a placemat at our table with his name on it. But once his wounds healed, he started asking to go back to Ted. No amount of convincing could get him to relent. Harry would haul Ted into the station and read him the riot act and Ted would promise to behave and the entire cycle would start over. Jackson wanted to go back there. We didn’t make him. He asked.”

  That sounded like a really bad reason to let him go back. I didn’t want to say anything but I questioned the sanity of their judgement on that one.

  Her eyes blinked without emotion. “You don’t know Jackson like I do. He has this fierce loyalty. We tried to get Jackson to talk about Ted and some of the accidents that seemed to happen, but Jackson only protected him. Ted was completely off topic. He has been for all these years. He’s never once let us talk about Ted. Not once.”

  “He didn’t want Ted to be alone.” I murmured to myself. My eyes strayed to Jackson, who was laughing at something Matt had just said. He looked so relaxed leaning back against the railing, a beer casually slung in his hands. His plain navy t-shirt stretching perfectly over his hard chest.

  “So that’s why I find it hard to believe that Jackson would talk about Ted with you,” Irene said, watching my face.

  Had Jackson really talked about Ted with me or had I been so nosy and disrespectful of his boundaries that he felt forced to share things with me?

  “Where is Ted now?”

  “Ted fell down in the drunk tank and hit his head.
He died six days before Jackson’s 16th birthday.”

  I watched as Matt talked grandly, gesturing big. He had Jackson’s full attention. Jackson rewarded him with another laugh, making me marvel at how beautiful his smile made him. “When they hang out they seem to get along. Did they get along as children?”

  “They got along, but like I said before, I think the situation was very hard on Matt. My husband and I fought about that. I saw changes in Matt. I knew he felt threatened and that broke my heart. But Harry insisted that Matt needed to learn that love wasn’t exclusive. But growing up in this unconventional situation took it’s toll on Matt.”

  My eyes widened in disbelief. She had been worried about Matt? What about Jackson who was orphaned and frequently hospitalized by the violent drunk? What about the people who’s job it was to protect children like Jackson? Why had they looked the other way? I felt my stomach tighten in anger.

  “Is this where this animosity started?”

  She shook her head. “It started at Harry’s funeral. The casket had just been lowered into the ground and one minute we were all standing there in prayer. The next minute, Matt was on top of Jackson. They were rolling around and throwing punches.”

  My lips parted in shock.

  She shook her head. “It took five men to break up that fight. One man to restrain Matt. It took the other four men to hold Jackson back. I thought Jackson was going to kill Matt. It was so horrible. And embarrassing. Jackson took off. Neither Matt nor I heard from him for two years after that.”

  “What was the fight about?”

  “Neither one of them will tell me.”

  We sat there in silence, lost in our own thoughts. She began again. “Matt has expressed that he wants to mend this rift. I only hope that Jackson is man enough to let that happen.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “From what I have seen, it looks like Jackson wants to mend the rift too.”

  She sighed. “We will see.”

  ***

  The meal was the Irene-and-Matt show. They were like two old lovers catching up. I stopped counting the number of times she reached out and touched his arm. She laughed at all his inside jokes and they had a lot of them. Matt held center stage and she was slaved to being his faithful audience. Jackson and I sat silently listening. Matt and Irene had eyes for only each other. They hung onto each other’s words. They talked about things only they knew. I had been at enough private schools to know when I was being deliberately excluded from a conversation. I looked at Jackson who listened with a benign look on his face. He didn’t try to participate but he didn’t seem exactly annoyed either. A dark thought crossed my mind. Had it been like this when he was a child?

  I sighed and pushed my noodles around my plate. I was still trying to wrap myself around how extremely weird the last 24 hours had been.

  Matt had cheated on me. I was still waiting for the shock and the horror to crash over me and send me into another spiralling mess. Some chick had put her mouth around him and that probably wasn’t the worst of it. It was alarming that I felt nothing over this fact. Shouldn’t I be feeling some measure of fear or pain? Shouldn’t that bother me more than it did? I was actually more anxious over my lack of reaction than anything.

  Could this all be just because his actions alleviated my own guilty conscious? Or was the shoe going to fall off in a few days and I would lose it? Only time would tell. Truth be told I was hung over and reeling from everything that had happened. I just needed to focus on the plan. We were going to get married and everything was going to work out.

  ***

  When the meal was done, Irene announced that she needed a ride back to her hotel.

  “I can take you,” Jackson said.

  “No,” Matt jumped in. “I'll take her.”

  The competitive nature of Matt embarrassed me. Had I never noticed before how he could act like a jealous, petulant child?

  After they left. Jackson and I cleaned up the kitchen in silence.

  “I’m going out for a bit,” he said.

  I looked at him. “Sure. Have a good night.”

  ***

  I jarred awake to the sound of the downstairs door opening. I rolled over and looked at my alarm clock. 2:48 AM. I listened intently and heard footsteps come up the stairs.

  I opened my bedroom door just in time to see Matt walking up the stairs.

  “What are you still doing up?” he asked, a weird expression on his face.

  I rubbed my face and yawned. “I just woke up. Are you just getting home now?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “That must have been quite the talk with your mom.”

  “Yeah, time got away from us.”

  I smiled at him. “That’s nice, babe. I'm glad you two had some time to catch up.”

  “Well, I better get some sleep. I have a long day tomorrow.”

  “Love you,” I said.

  Chapter 22

  The next morning, as I finished my breakfast, Jackson came in from one of his epic runs.

  “Hi,” I said. My eyes traveled over his huge legs and that messy hair that was wet with sweat. He looked absolutely delicious. I blushed and averted my eyes.

  “Irene wants to go home today. She asked if I would drive her back so she doesn’t have to take the train.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “Did you want to come for a drive?” he asked, his voice sounded casual.

  “Uh,” I paused, knowing that I really should say no. “Sure.”

  “Just going to shower, than we can go.”

  ***

  Irene seemed bright and chipper when we picked her up from the hotel considering how late her and Matt had talked. Jackson followed close behind, carry her suitcase like it weighed no more than a cup of coffee. He made everything look easy.

  “You and Matt must have had a good talk last night,” I said to her, as we walked to the truck.

  She smiled. “Well, we chatted a bit on the way back to the hotel, but he said he had a big day today so he didn’t want to come up.”

  I stopped so short that Jackson ran into me from behind. It was kind of like being run over by a wall of muscle. Instead of knocking me over with his size, his arm simply snaked around my waist and he lifted me up for two steps, carrying me with his momentum. I shuddered as the hard length of his body pressed against my back.

  “Sorry about that,” his lips pressed against my ear, all rough and low. His voice sounded amused.

  I felt a ripple of something crazy shoot up my spine. “My fault.”

  He held me a fraction longer than necessary and then released me like nothing had happened. The entire experience left me breathless. I climbed in the backseat of Jackson’s truck. Embarrassed how my body reacted to Jackson’s touch, I hunched in my seat, and worked to calm my heart.

  ***

  Irene was chatting up a storm with Jackson.

  Last night Matt had told me he had talked late into the night with his mom, but she just confirmed he had only dropped her off. Where had he gone? Was it weird that I had no real emotion about that? I mean, should that not bother me just a bit more than it did? I felt decidedly indifferent about the entire thing.

  Had Matt gone and spent time with the same woman? Another thought that left me completely indifferent. I mentally chewed on my life, uncertain about how to proceed. What if he had needed to just drive around and listen to music? He never had alone time. He was either at work or with me. I needed to stop jumping to so many conclusions and just trust him. We had both promised that we wanted to make this work. Now I just needed to trust him and believe that he wanted a fresh start with me.

  My ears perked up as I heard Irene start to grill Jackson.

  “So how many years have you been in the military?”

  “I have been in the navy just over ten years.”

  “You told Harry that you just wanted to join for a couple years.”

  Jackson didn’t respond.

  “Harry always dreamed
that you would follow in his footsteps and become a police officer.”

  “I like being a solider.”

  She sighed. “Well, at some point you're going to have to get real about your career.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, what about marriage? Does your job really lend itself to settling down?”

  Silence.

  “Are you dating anyone?”

  The question dangled between them. I refrained from leaning forward to hear his response.

  “Not at the moment.” His voice sounded terse.

  “Now don’t be like that,” Irene lightly scolded. “You have to settle down at some point.”

  Jackson rubbed the back of his neck.

  “What about kids. Don’t you want a family?”

  “Not going to happen.”

  He might as well have turned around and stuck a 9 inch blade into my chest, his words cut so deep. Jackson wasn’t my boyfriend. I was engaged to his pseudo-brother. It shouldn’t make any difference if Jackson didn’t want to get married or have kids, but for some reason it felt like a death blow to my heart. A hollowness carved out into my chest but I couldn’t face the reason why.

  “You just need to find yourself a nice girl.”

  Jackson’s eyes glanced at me in the review mirror.

  The conversation moved on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had just heard. Jackson didn’t want a wife and he didn’t want babies. Jackson and I were on two different paths and we wanted very different things. This crush of mine was getting out of control and if I wasn’t careful, it would destroy everything I had worked to build with Matt. I needed to get my act together here and stop thinking about him in any capacity other than as a friend.