Something to Talk About (22 page)

She shook her head, her mouth a grim line. “I never wanted her, Jax. Didn’t Jake tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me anything, remember? We weren’t speaking.”

Her finger shot up in the air. “Right. Because of me. Well, here’s the cold, hard truth. I was going to abort Maizy.”

He clenched his teeth together, clamped so hard, it was a miracle he didn’t crush his jaw. “Don’t. Don’t talk about her that way.”
Or I won’t be responsible for what I do to you.

The cold wind whipped her hair against her creamy cheeks, rather sunken, something he hadn’t noticed when he’d first laid eyes on her today. “It’s the truth, Jax. Jake never would have known if I hadn’t been stupid enough to leave that damn EPT stick in the trash. I would have aborted her before he ever even knew she existed. Just before I dumped him, that is.”

“Stop.”

But Reece wasn’t stopping. She plodded forward, her eyes distant as though she was reliving her conversations with Jake. “He talked me out of it. You know what Jake was like—he could talk anyone into anything. Against my better judgment, I fell for the whole white-picket-fence dream. Turns out, it was his dream. Not mine. I just got his dream confused with mine for a little while.” She gripped the steel railing along the bridge, her pale skin reddened from the harsh wind.

Jax couldn’t move. He wanted to wrap his hands around her creamy throat and choke her right out of her red coat for almost taking Maizy from him by aborting her.

The picture she made, standing against the backdrop of the purple-and-blue-streaked sky, stopped him, though. She was frail. Reece looked frail and vulnerable. “The second I had her, I knew. I knew I didn’t want to be a parent, Jax. Jake knew, too. He just wouldn’t admit it. So I left him a note and I ran away and hid for all these years. I knew Jake was dead, and still, I hid. Because I was afraid, if anyone knew I was alive, they’d make me take her.”

The breath he’d been holding escaped his lungs. “Where? Where the hell did you go?”
How? How could you have gone?
“Jake looked day and night for you before he died, hired private investigators, according to his lawyers. Your father was worried sick. Did he need more grief after your mother?”

“Abroad,” she said flatly, as though Jake’s fears, her parents’ fears, never even occurred to her. As though the word
abroad
cleared it all the fuck up because it had helped her get what she wanted.

“That’s it?” He had to fight not to yell. “Just abroad? Do you have any idea what your parents went through? What Jake went through before he was killed?”

She cocked her head in his direction, her eyes still flat and dull. “How do you know what Jake went through? You two weren’t speaking before he died, Jax.”

Boom. Reece’s jab at the status of his and Jake’s relationship was like a sonic boom in his ears. “Yeah. We damn well weren’t.” And he’d been making it up to him ever since. Taking care of the one last thing he had in his life that kept him close to Jake.

“Thanks to me.”

“Yep.”

Now he wanted to hurt her. For taking pieces of people she had no right to take. Because her whims, her flights of fancy were all that mattered to her. “Did you know just a few weeks after you left your mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s? Do you have any idea how hard that was on your father? You missing, his wife diagnosed with a disease that would eventually eat her brain and a granddaughter with a new father who was half out of his mind with worry about you?”

Jax had seen it all. All the tears, the agonizing mourning Reece’s parents had suffered while they searched for their little girl. “They thought something happened to you, Reece. They spent thousands of dollars looking for you in those first months. They just wouldn’t believe Jake when he told them you just left.”

He’d heard it all after Jake died, and he was as convinced as Jake that Reece wasn’t taken by force or whatever story her parents had concocted in their heads to ease the selfishness that made up Reece.

Reece curled her hands around the bars on the bridge, her cheeks red from the harsh wind. “I didn’t know Mom was so sick until it was too late.”

“That’s what happens when you go
abroad,
Reece. People die. Babies live without their mothers.” Jax wanted to hurt her the way she’d hurt her parents, Maizy—Jake. He wanted to see her suffer the way everyone she’d left in her abroad wake had.

Still, she didn’t bite. No angry words, no defensive reactions, just straight ahead on a path he couldn’t figure. “But Dad says he still sees Maizy. Thank you for that.”

She’d talked to her father? Why hadn’t Lorne mentioned it? “I make it a point to bring her to see him twice a year, and she calls him once a week. She loves Pop-Pop Givens, and he spoils her senseless.”

Reece smiled then, that dazzling smile—the one that held the secret to everything. The answer to any man’s ills. Except his. Looking down at her now, he couldn’t even remember what she’d been like before today. Couldn’t remember a single thing he’d been drawn to.

All he could see, all he could hear, was how Maizy had been an afterthought to her. How she’d run away and left everyone to pick up the pieces of her broken life.

“I’m glad my dad knows her. What about Jake’s dad? Has he seen her?”

“Jake’s dad has no interest in anything but a case of beer and his misery. He was happy to walk away and never look back.”
Just like you.

“Just like me, right?” She mirrored his thoughts.

“So let me get something straight here—even after you knew about your mother’s illness, when you knew Jake was dead, and you knew your dad couldn’t help with Maizy because your mother was so ill, you still stayed
abroad?
Not knowing what would happen to her? Jesus Christ, Reece! How the fuck could you be so damn selfish? She was two months old.”

“Because I knew.”

“
Knew?
Knew what?”

“That Jake would take care of everything. I knew he’d make sure his father never got anywhere near her, and I knew he’d take measures to ensure her safety after I left.”

Jax crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. “Well, look at you. Always so sure everyone would handle your shit for you. Do you have any idea what could have happened to Maizy if Jake hadn’t made sure that will was airtight? If there’d been a single screwup in the language, she could have ended up in the foster-care system.”

But Reece didn’t take his angry bait. Instead, she shook her head, the mass of her red curls whipping in the wind. “Nope. I knew Jake. I knew that would never happen because Jake didn’t make mistakes, except for getting involved with me, and I knew, if my parents couldn’t take her, or if anything ever happened to them, he’d leave her to you. You were everything to him, Jax. He loved you like a brother.”

No. No, he wouldn’t allow that to hurt him anymore. He would pull that damn arrow out of his gut and drop it at her feet. “Until I wasn’t like a brother.” Jake had broken that pact, and it still killed him. “Last time I checked, there was some unspoken rule about sleeping with your brother’s girlfriend.”

She put her hand on his arm then, squeezed it before releasing. “Don’t hate Jake. Please don’t hate him. If there’s one thing I wish you wouldn’t do—it’s hate Jake. He was sick over the loss of your friendship. Sat up late at night trying to figure out ways to win you back and still keep me. Forgive yourself for not making up with him before he died. Don’t use Maizy as your way to make everything right with Jake. Because you can’t. You shouldn’t.”

Jax swallowed hard. He’d seen all sorts of red when he’d found out about Reece and Jake sleeping together. He’d walked away, and he’d never looked back.

And when Jake’s team of lawyers had contacted him about Maizy, when he’d seen her for the first time, realized that his former best friend since eighth grade had left in his care the most precious thing he had, Jax swore nothing,
no one
would ever take away his chance to make things right. “How could you not want to meet her?”

The shrug of her slender shoulders made him angrier. It was dismissive. As though this life she’d created with Jake was something she’d picked up at the grocery store on her way home from work. “I don’t know how to explain it, Jax. I don’t want to try to justify it to you. I just know that all through my pregnancy, all while Jake planned and prepared, bought books, signed us up for Lamaze classes, I kept waiting to feel attached. I kept waiting for that magical moment when I’d fall in love with this thing growing in my belly. Waiting to feel something other than ugly and bloated. I wanted to. I tried to. I prayed for it. I wanted to be as excited as Jake. I wanted to want to paint a room for her, buy blankets and strollers and cribs.”

He was offended—offended that this amazing kid she and Jake had created stirred nothing in her. So he kept his mouth shut. For the moment, she didn’t want to see Maizy. He wanted to keep it that way. Never, ever would he allow Maizy to know her mother felt like this about her.

“That pisses you off, doesn’t it? That after everything that happened between you and me and Jake, I couldn’t love Maizy. The least I could do for all the trouble I caused is love my own flesh and blood.”

“You’re goddamn right it pisses me off.”

“That’s good. It should piss you off. You know why it pisses you off?”

“Because you’re heartless and Maizy is amazing?”

“No. Because you’re her
father,
Jax. You love her because, aside from biology, Jake
was
your brother. In your mind, she’s as much your flesh and blood as Jake was. Only someone who loves Maizy as much as you do would hate me for not loving her the way you do. That’s why I’m here. To tell you she’s all yours. That I wouldn’t dream of taking her from you, and I’ve signed papers to that effect—because you can give her the kind of love I’ll never be capable of. I don’t want to lay any claims to her. I don’t want visitation or weekends or anything. I just want you to stop worrying I’ll crop up someday and try to take her from you. Because I won’t.”

He should walk away right now, let her go while she was handing off her kid like a football pass, but he had to know. “Why? Why
now,
Reece?”

“Because my life fell apart, Jax. It didn’t fall apart when it should have. It didn’t fall apart when society dictates it should have fallen apart, but when it fell, it fell hard. And there was no one there to
fix
it but me. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m fixing it. I’m fixing all the things I should’ve fixed a long time ago, and I’m letting go of the guilt for not feeling guilty about leaving Maizy with Jake. For instinctively knowing I never wanted children, and letting Jake and his brand of charm talk me into it anyway.”

“Is this some kind of weird redemption?” He’d seen a lot of that lately—in all forms.

Reece rolled her shoulders. “Just an admission. I’m admitting the truth I ran away from six years ago. I would have been a crappy mother, Jax. Maizy deserved so much more. At least I wasn’t too selfish to recognize that—even if Jake wouldn’t. Isn’t it better to admit to it than to have let her suffer my inadequacies?”

“So when Maizy asks about you, and she has, what do I say?”

Reece’s eyes met his, but this time they weren’t dull and lifeless. They held a raw honesty he couldn’t say he’d ever seen from her. “Tell her I left to make room for the woman who was better at this than I’ll ever be. Tell her sometimes, when the parent picking happens, every now and then, the stork makes a huge mistake. Tell her I left so the right mother, the one who knows all of the important lessons it takes to be a good person, could step in and teach her.”

Emmaline.

Jax didn’t have to say her name. Reece already knew. “She’s so good with Maizy, Jax. With her boys, too. I hope you’ll let them get to know one another. I hope you won’t let what happened with me and Jake keep you from loving someone who’ll love you back just as hard.”

That caught him off guard. “You’ve seen them together?”

She finally smiled again—easier this time. “I’m not so heartless I didn’t want the best for her, Jax. Of course I’ve seen Maizy with her. I know all about Emmaline Amos. I did some poking around before I made the decision to come here and see you. I watched her after I did. I think your friend Caine saw me. Either way, she’s amazing, and patient, and beautiful, and so in love with you, she’s up to her stinkin’ eyeballs in it.”

His jaw got so tight from his clenching, it began to ache. “She claims she isn’t.”

Reece grinned. “She lies.”

They stood for a little while, the sounds of the park beneath the bridge filtering between them. The wind blowing, the sun setting. Jax absorbing, Reece letting go.

“I have to go now, Jax.”

Letting Reece go, letting her leave without looking back, was like letting the last piece of Jake go. The last person who’d been with Jake before he died was shrugging off her old life, walking away from it and taking Jake with her. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Why don’t we say what Jake always said?”

He closed his eyes, hearing the phrase Jake always used on the whistle of the wind. “Say good night, Gracie.”

Reece’s laughter was soft, echoing along the bridge. “G’night.”

When Jax opened his eyes again, Reece was a small dot on the horizon, bleeding into the vivid colors of the purple-and-blue night.

An engine started, a door slammed and she was gone.

Jax climbed back in the truck and shuddered a sigh, letting his head fall to the steering wheel in relief. He sat like that for a little while—catching his breath, grateful. Grateful that the tie that once bound him to Jake with guilt and anger was no longer cutting off his circulation. That he could think about Jake and remember the good times.

Pulling his wallet out, Jax dug deep into it to find a smaller version of the picture Em had found. In a fit of anger, he’d torn the half with Reece in it off, but he’d kept this tucked away, pulling it out only from time to time, staring at it and trying to figure out how everything had gone so damn sideways.