Promise Me (20 page)

“Good morning, everyone,” I heard Professor Hall say, and I knew I’d never been more welcoming of him starting the lecture.

Boring material aside, I needed a distraction. Jack’s gaze was making me feel unsettled, and my eyes kept darting to his full lips. I couldn’t stop thinking about things that were completely wrong for me to be thinking. I told myself I was seeing things and that I was crazy, and I just needed to stop. So I turned away from him, settled back in my seat, and prepared to take notes, all the while feeling Jack’s eyes on me as I tried to focus.

After a minute of Professor Hall lecturing and me not hearing a word he was saying, Jack leaned in closer. “Want to grab coffee after class?” he asked, his breath warm against my cheek.

I closed my eyes for a few seconds and forced myself to take a deep, calming breath before I turned to him. His soft hazel eyes were watching me in anticipation, which of course did nothing for the array of emotions I was trying not to feel.

“Sure. Of course,” I choked out, trying my hardest to sound natural.

Jack smiled. “Good. I figure after almost a week of silence, I owe you an explanation or two.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I told him, although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to roll back the clock eight years so I could stop being in the dark about what had happened to him.

At least I knew he was okay and that what happened with his parents didn’t scar him for life. I knew it still got to him. I’d seen it the other night in his stricken expression when I’d called him Johnny. But on the whole, he seemed to be in a really good place.

In fact, most of the time, he seemed great. I knew all those nights I’d spent worrying about him and wondering if he was happy in his new home and praying that he’d just call to check in so I could stop worrying about him all the time were really for naught. From what he’d told me, he had the best life after he left Indiana.

But even knowing that, knowing what I did about his new family, and knowing the handful of things he’d told me about his childhood in Texas, I still wanted to know more. I wanted to know everything about him, and I was so grateful that he wanted to talk.

I gave him a small smile, hoping it didn’t look forced, as I tried to reel in my emotions that had nothing to do with what he was proposing. He just wanted to talk. He wanted to have coffee as friends, and that was exactly what I wanted too. Everything else was just a series of insane notions that I was conjuring in my mind. They weren’t real.

“That sounds great,” I told him.

Jack grinned at me, and I swallowed back the fact that he had a great smile and I wanted to see it aimed at me again and again.

“Well, get your questions ready,” he said playfully. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know – as long as you do the same. I figure this should be reciprocal.”

“So, you’re okay? You don’t need more time?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I’m good.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Because you were worried about me,” he said as he turned back toward the front of the classroom with a coy smile.

“No,” I said, lying through my teeth.

I looked over to see him eyeing me knowingly. “You were worried. You forget that I know you, Kate. You always worried about me.”

“Yeah, I did,” I said sheepishly –
every day when I’d known you and for years after
.

“It’s cool. I like that you worried. I still like it,” he said, winking at me.

Dammit.
Why did he have to say things like that and make them seem all sexual? It made my brain do funny things, and it was completely out of character for me. I wasn’t the type of girl who got crushes or got all silly and stupid over a guy. I’d never been like that, so why all of a sudden did I feel like giggling and flirting with Jack?

As I tried to refocus my attention on the lecture, I told myself again that he wasn’t interested in me. And I wasn’t interested in him. What I was feeling was just a combination of finding out who he was, realizing the truth after all these years, and the giddiness I felt at having my best friend back. Everything else I thought I might have been feeling was an elevated manifestation of the feeling of utter joy I felt when I looked at him, the reality who he really was sinking in again and again. And because of that – because of who he was – we needed to be friends. That was it.

* * *

“How bad did it get for you?” I asked Jack, seeing a reminder come up on my phone that my English Lit class was starting in fifteen minutes.

I was going to skip it, which was something I never did, but there was no way I could break away from this conversation now. Jack and I had been talking for over an hour, and I felt like I was in the middle of a really good book. I couldn’t just walk away. I was too enamored with everything he was telling me about how he’d found out about his parents, how his aunt had come to get him, and that even though he hadn’t even known he’d had an aunt, she’d known all about him. And she’d welcomed him into her home and her family’s life without thinking twice. He’d told me about meeting Gunnar and Logan for the first time, what it was like living with his new family, and he’d just finished telling me about how he’d spent several years in therapy trying to move past the loss of his mom and what his dad had done, which hadn’t been easy.

“I had night terrors for a long time,” Jack told me, pausing to take a sip of his coffee. “I’d wake up in a cold sweat, convinced that my father was in my room trying to kill me, or I’d dream that I was standing in the doorway as he stabbed my mother over and over again, and I couldn’t do anything to stop him. I couldn’t even move, and when I screamed for help, no sound came out. It was horrible.”

“God, Jack, I can’t even imagine,” I said, shaking my head.

He nodded in agreement. “I wouldn’t want you to. It was really bad. A few times my aunt even caught me sleepwalking and trying to open the window in my room, which was not a good thing considering my room at home is on the second floor of the house. I probably would have died if I’d been able to actually climb out of it.”

“Why were you trying to climb out the window?”

Jack hesitated, and then he said, “So I – so I could go see you, actually.”

“Oh, right,” I said, remembering all too well how he used to sneak between our trailers.

He’d go out his window and in mine, that way no one would know he was in my room late at night. It was the first time he’d mentioned anything from our childhood that had to do with me. I’d known we’d get there eventually, but so far we’d avoided the subject.

Jack coming to see me when he was scared was one of the things I remembered most about our friendship. Somehow knowing that he’d subconsciously continued the behavior after he’d left, like it was second nature to him, actually brought me a little bit of comfort. On some level, he hadn’t stopped thinking about me.

“I guess I used to say your name in my sleep a lot too,” he continued. “Aunt Deena asked me about you one morning after I’d been living with them for a few months, and it caught me off-guard, since I’d never told her about you. In fact, I didn’t really talk about any part of my old life when I first moved to Texas. It was just too hard, you know, remembering my mom and everything I’d left behind. And it was really hard to talk about you. At first I didn’t want to tell her, so I played it off like I didn’t know who she was talking about and why I was saying that name in my sleep, but after a few months, I finally told her the truth.”

“What did you tell her?” I asked, as my heart started hammering against my ribs.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to hear, but a wave of anxiousness crashed over me as I wondered what he’d told his aunt all those years ago. I knew his absence had made the spark of what I’d felt for him when we’d kissed that one time grow stronger, and for a long time after he left I thought I was in love with him. Of course it passed in time, but a part of me wondered if maybe he hadn’t felt the same way.

Jack opened his mouth to speak, but something caught his attention, and he looked up before saying anything. “Hey babe!” he said as a wide smile spread across his face.

We were in the coffee shop near campus, and students had been coming in and out for the past hour. Jack and I had gotten lucky, though, and we’d scored two cushy armchairs in the back corner, so thankfully we were hidden enough that we hadn’t gotten interrupted since we’d sat down. I figured with all the people Jack knew, a private conversation might be hard to come by if we stayed near campus. I guess I’d been wrong – at least until now as I looked up to see Jack’s girlfriend, Alyssa, standing next to his chair.

“Hi,” she said tightly, looking between us. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No, not at all,” he told her. “Lys, you remember Kate – my neighbor.”

Alyssa shot me a cursory glance and said, “I guess. Aren’t you in our economics class?”

“I am. It’s nice to see you again,” I told her, and she gave me a rigid smile.

I could tell in an instant that she felt threatened by my presence. It was silly really, since regardless of how good looking I found her boyfriend to be and how much history we had, I wasn’t going to tread into her territory. It wasn’t my style – unless of course they broke up, and Jack decided he was interested in me. Then I’d consider him fair game.

I watched as she turned back to Jack. “I just came in to grab a latte before my Intro to PR class, and I saw you. Aren’t you supposed to be in BioChem?”

“I’m skipping it,” he told her, which didn’t seem to make her all that happy. “Kate and I had some catching up to do.”

“Catching up?” Alyssa questioned in confusion, glancing over at me for a split-second before she focused her attention back on Jack. “What were you catching up with
her
about?”

Ouch. What did I do?

I watched Jack’s expression falter, and I thought it was because Alyssa had been so harsh about him talking to me, but then I realized it was because he’d slipped up.

“Yeah, just about the test,” he said quickly, apparently to try to divert Alyssa from why he and I were really talking. “We were going through the questions we remembered and how we answered them.”

We were?

Alyssa gave him a funny look, like she didn’t believe him. He wasn’t a very good liar.

“But you never skip class,” she questioned, and when she glanced back over at me, I realized she had no clue who I really was.

Jack hadn’t told her about me – at all. In fact, she seemed surprised to even see us talking, so it was likely she had no idea that we’d gotten close. I doubted she knew that we’d been sitting together in class for the past few weeks, that he’d been frequenting Ray’s so much, or that he and I had studied for the Macro test together. And I’d bet money that she didn’t know anything about our past. I wondered why that was.

But before I could ponder that thought any further, Jack hauled Alyssa onto his lap, surprising us both. Then he leaned up and kissed her sweetly. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you this week,” he said as I watched her relax in his arms and offer him a small smile.

“Yeah?” she questioned, her voice softening.

“Of course,” he said, squeezing her tighter. “I always miss you when I don’t get to see you.”

Her smile expanded just a touch as she seemed to forget about me being a threat. “Yeah, me too. I’ve just been so busy with sorority stuff. This new member retreat is more work than I ever thought it would be, but I think it’s going to be really fun for the girls.”

“Oh, right. That’s this weekend, isn’t it?” Jack questioned.

Alyssa nodded. “Friday night through Sunday afternoon.”

“Bummer. That means I won’t get to see you at all.”

“I know, but I’m sure that’ll make Charlie happy. You can hang out with him.”

Jack laughed. “I’ll probably do that. And I’m planning to spend a few hours at the VA on Sunday morning before I watch the Cowboys game with the guys. Not to mention squeezing in some studying time.”

Alyssa smiled. “See, you’ll have a full weekend. You won’t even miss me.”

“I probably will anyway,” he said sweetly, and any crazy notions I had that he had any sort of feelings for me were washed away in an instant.

It was so obvious that he was completely in love with his girlfriend. Everything he said to me was just empty flirting, and I needed to remember that.

“Aww, you’re sweet. Meanwhile, I’ll be busy leading trust and team building activities, hoping the storytelling bonfire lights, and praying that no one gets so bored out of their mind that they’re begging to go home early.”

“Aww, babe, you know the girls are going to love it. You’re great at this stuff.”

“Yeah?”

Jack nodded.

“I know my sister’s looking forward to it,” I chimed in, figuring it might help ease Alyssa’s mind.

She looked up, narrowing her eyes as she focused on me. “I’m sorry, what?”

With that look, I was fairly sure I’d just made an enemy.

“I said my sister’s looking forward to the retreat. She’s an AKPi pledge,” I said, trying to pretend like her glaring expression wasn’t aimed at me. “Her name’s Sara Pierce.”

“Right. Sara,” Alyssa said coolly. “She’s a sweetheart.”