Forever, Jack (19 page)

Something almost happened last night with one of Suzy’s friends. It didn’t get too far. But it was bad. Picture taking bad. And then after … well, I thought she knew the deal, but she started kissing me and before I knew it we were in the back of a town car. She smelled really good, like strawberries, and she was soft, and damn but I was drunk. Like really. But all of a sudden her hand was in my pants and she was telling me it was ok, that she knew I was in love with someone else and that she was too, and we should just have fun and no one would know … I’d think at that stage I’d be too far gone, but there I was grabbing her hand, squeezing it as I pulled it from me, telling her she couldn’t possibly really be in love with someone if she was doing this with me.

I almost want to laugh at myself writing this. The old Jack wouldn’t have thought twice, I almost couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. It was an out of body experience. That’s when I remembered why I liked her smell so much, Keri Ann’s hair always smelled like that. Strawberries.

I feel like I may have built this all up in my mind. The chance she ever wants to even see me again is so fucking remote. I realize this makes me sound pathetic. But I really don’t give a shit.

I’m hung over, and I lost the copper sea turtle, which really pisses me off.

And I’m giving it up. Getting wasted, I mean. I really don’t want to end up in another situation in the back of a car. I’m also getting a reputation as a drunk. Not good. I don’t want to be lumped in with the Alistairs of the industry. At least I don’t molest the crew. We have about a week left of production then I need to figure out what’s next. How soon I go back. If I do.

Should I?

I can’t change what I do. But I can show her who I am. That I’m more than the Jack Eversea the world thinks they know. I’m also going to use whatever assets I have at my disposal to win her back. Even if I have to fight dirty.

My fingers trembled as I turned the last page. My other hand was pressed to my mouth. I’d just seen real Jack, with all his insecurities and weaknesses. His fragility. It was hard to imagine the man I saw out in the world, in the media, even the one who boldly whispered hot words to me in an effort to seduce me in my truck, was the same person who’d written these words.

I’d spent the last five months thinking I’d been an interesting diversion for him.
He’d
spent the last five months struggling to do the right thing by everyone in his life.
And missing me.

My skin throbbed and my heart pounded out heavy beats. Reactions cascaded over one another in my head.

I started again at the beginning. Each entry was on a separate page. For all I knew there were horror stories written between, but somehow, I didn’t think so.

After reading them through a second time, and having his words still hit every raw nerve I had like I was reading it for the first time, I ran to my room and shoved my feet into my running shoes. Swinging past the bathroom, I wiped my eyes and brushed my teeth, and then took the stairs two at a time, tripping on the last one. “Shit!”

“You okay, love?” called Mrs. Weaton.

“I’m fine,” I called and entered the kitchen.

“Well?” She was doing a crossword puzzle at my kitchen table. She’d put on a set of
readers
and after appraising me a few moments went back to her puzzle.

I pulled up a chair opposite her. “I’m stunned. In a good way.”

“Good.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“Yes, well, I could see he was upset, and,” she peered up at me through her eyeglass rims, “as crazy as it seems, just yesterday before he came by, I had my score book with me that I’d taken to Canasta, and blow me down if a letter didn’t fall out of it while I was standing in my own kitchen. And not just any letter, neither.” She raised her penciled-in brows.

“Not …” I was going the say
The
letter
,
one of grandpa’s letters, the one Nana says changed her mind about marrying him. I glanced over to the campaign desk. I could just see the edge of it in the parlor from where I sat in the kitchen.

Mrs. Weaton scowled. “I know. I know exactly where you keep the letters, where this one was. But I’m telling you it ended up in my scorebook.”

“
The
letter?” My skin chilled. “Really? You’re not messing with me?”

“Honey, I would’ve thought it a coincidence or whatnot, if that boy hadn’t but five minutes later been on my doorstep with pages of a letter asking to make sure you got them.”

“They were pages from his journal.”

“Oh. Well.”

“It was better than a letter. It was his diary from when he was away all this time.” God, it was so much more than some letter or email or text he may have conjured up in a fit of rejection and depression.

I still wasn’t totally sure about him and Audrey and the pregnancy, but whatever had happened before, I could tell from his journal that they were definitely over now. And that he’d struck some kind of deal for me.

The thought of sharing my diary, my innermost thoughts and insecurities with anyone, made me shudder. The fact that Jack, a guy who people sold out on a daily basis, whether for a picture, an autograph, or a sordid exclusive, gave me these pages was shocking. The fact he trusted me not to share them, or Mrs. Weaton, for that matter, was …

“What are you waiting for?” Mrs. Weaton asked, tapping her pencil.

“Thank you!” I yelled out over my shoulder as I jogged outside into the bright sunshine and jumped into the truck. To Mrs. Weaton or Nana, I wasn’t sure. Joey’s car was gone, and I was relieved.

I’d moved through a full spectrum of emotions as I read those pages—from happiness, to sadness, to anger—and realized at one point I had dried tears on my cheeks. It was impossible to tell if every page was there, but I had to believe if he was willing to share the part about almost doing something with that girl, that he was telling me everything. Everything he needed to anyway.

He’d come here afraid to face me, afraid I’d reject him, and I’d done just that. He thought I was dating Colt, and yet he still put himself out there for me.

My heart squeezed.

Winding back through what I’d read as I drove, I felt so proud of him getting involved in the writing and directing. Making a name for himself. Showing people he was capable of more. Man, and I was so sad for him when he talked about his father, proud he’d been trying to find out more, and understand more, in what I knew were difficult memories.

I came to a stop at the light on Atlantic and Palmetto and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. The window was still down in my truck from last night, and the cool spring sea breeze helped calm by impatience.
How long could this traffic light possibly be?

And his mother? I wanted to hug her for understanding him so much and getting him to open up the only way she knew how. I laughed through my tears.
A message in a bottle.
That’s exactly what he was. He’d tried to open up to me and
I’d
been the one too afraid.

He’d hurt me. Nothing could be undone, but how I chose to move past it would change the rest of my life. I was still nervous about who he was, and what that meant for me. Especially now that I really understood how much he loved the craft of it. But I wondered if we could find a way to try and have a relationship separate from the
celebrity-ness
. We had to try.

Pulling into the driveway of Devon’s gorgeous beach house, I saw the silver Jeep pulled in under the house. That didn’t mean Jack was here, though. That thought sat menacingly in the back of my mind. What if he’d left?

I jogged up the stairs to the periwinkle blue front door, holding the white painted cottage bannister and knocked, my heart literally pounding in my ears.

Why was blood so hard to move when you were nervous?

After a few moments of thinking my head would explode or I’d get sick, the door opened.

Devon.

I tried not to let my deflating shoulders be too obvious.

“Hi,” I said as he stood there expressionlessly. Very different from the Devon I’d met previously who’d seemed to be on my, or at least “our” side. The side of us getting back together. I’d be pissed off at me, too. I hated to think what they’d talked about after I kicked Jack out of my truck. Now that I really understood how Jack felt …

I shifted my weight. “Uh, is—”

“He’s not here.”

Stones formed in my chest, their weight pressing down on my stomach that was already churning with nerves and regret. I held onto the doorframe.
Please let him not have left.

I must have looked like I was going to pass out.

“Ah, Christ,” Devon said finally, shaking his head. “This is ridiculous. You two are ridiculous. He’s under the house, beating the shit out of something. Just go past the Jeep. Could you do me a favor, though?”

I nodded.

“Give him the benefit of the doubt this time?”

I nodded again, not trusting myself to speak. Relief and a new jolt of nerves flooded my system, making me weak-legged as I turned and went back down the stairs.

Devon closed the door behind me.

I paused to gather myself, having no idea what to say to Jack, and heard the sounds of grunts and thwacks I hadn’t noticed when I’d first arrived. Tilting my head to the sky, I filled my lungs deeply.
Nana, if you’re out there, I hope you knew what you were doing when you brought me Jack Eversea.