I was finished way before they were, and I clenched my empty container, refraining from begging a bite from each of Tristan’s flavors. As if reading my mind, Jack passed his over. “Try this.” When I shook my head and voiced a polite refusal, his persistence manifested once more. “Red Velvet… Come on. You know you want it…”
Ignoring the teasing lilt of his voice, I curved a smile but was firm. “No. Really I don’t. But thanks for wanting to share.” Here, I shot a look at Tristan before I could stop myself, slightly hurt that my kid resented the sweet bites he had once given with sweet smiles.
“Watching your weight?” Jack joked. Suddenly, the dawning crossed his face, either from my expression or from the clues in our time together. “You are watching your weight!” Incredulous, he shot another look to me, this time down my figure as he pulled to a four-way stop.
“True dat.” Tristan surfaced from his bowl long enough to verbalize through a bite.
Jack lifted one of those dark brows, bouncing a dumbfounded look through the rear-view to the back seat, and I wanted to giggle. This gangster talk, or whatever slang Tristan was quickly picking up from ‘listening to Jack on the phone,’ was as hysterical as it was annoying to hear. The most amusing part was watching Jack learn how fast kids sponged up their environment.
“She weighs every day and writes it down.” Swallowing his bite enough for a whole sentence, my son sold me out, and I indignantly glared.
“No way.” Displaying flat disbelief, Jack assessed me again, particularly my waist and legs, instead of my chest, which was his common eye-candy.
I had to wonder if he thought I would be fat one day. As quickly as the thought came, it angered me that I was especially self-conscious when it came to him.
“Mariss, if anything, you're too skinny. I thought stress had you underweight…”
“Too skinny.” A gurgle of a laugh was on my lips. “That’s such a line.”
“A line? Not one I ever used,” he scoffed, as he swung a left turn.
No doubt because all of his women had been skinny models. I bit back the retort and instead said, “Well, you just did.” Adjusting the dash vent to blow cold air directly on my flushed face, I continued, “There’s not a girl alive who doesn’t know. When a guy says that, he is wanting in your pants.”
“Jack couldn’t fit in your pants.”
Sucking in an aghast breath, I stared ahead, unable to even look at Tristan. Only a few times had I made such a careless lapse. Of course, this latest blunder was after practically accusing Jack of not censoring what he said around Tristan.
“His legs are way too long.”
The observations continued from the rear seat.
I was mute, and I closed my eyes for a blinding moment from Jack’s extreme enjoyment of the situation.
“I can’t believe I said that!” My hushed whisper was directed to Jack once we were home and alone in the kitchen. I dropped our spoons and sticky cardboard bowls into the trash.
Jack only grinned as he lifted out the bag and with a twist, sealed it. As he headed to the outside can with it, he turned, “Do not say another ‘dope’ word to me.” Sporting the brow and smirk combo, he stepped out.
After measuring rice into the steamer, I stretched on the couch, reclining on the opposite arm from where Jack currently sprawled. The sounds of Tristan and Jack racing lulled my into a doze, and eventually we all felt the crash of the sugar rush.
I woke with my legs on Jack’s and carefully extracted myself, then stood staring down at father and son, so alike, especially in sleep. From his recliner, Tristan stirred, and as if by instinct, Jack also shifted.
The red beans and rice turned out ‘so dope,’ according to Tristan, and Jack’s eyes met mine before I voiced a correction. Jack’s earlier advisement, and possibly his first verbal collusion as a parent, was to ignore the new words, concluding that as long as the expression was not being heard around him anymore, Tristan would stop. To call him down on it would only imprint it in his head.
Jack and I were conversing as normal again, and as we laughed over the latest banter with Tristan, we also ignored the bites dropped to Bally. At least our son was no longer in the habit of feeding the dog with his fork.
Across the room, the newscast flickering on the muted tv screen drew my eyes. When I looked back, Jack had found closer entertainment.
“What’s this?” He was inspecting a scrawled up envelope, and his fork stopped midway to his mouth in surprise as he read.
The conversation Olivia had advised me to jot. Reaching across the bar, I plucked it from his hand. With a quick look at Tristan, I mumbled, “Nothing.”
“It’s not ‘nothing.’ Why’d you write that down?”
“Because Olivia told me to.”
Confusion shaded his features, but at this admission, the inclination quickly became suspicion, and saying nothing, he resumed eating.
The reprieve was short.
The second Tristan was tucked into bed with three stories, Jack joined me on the couch. Somehow, I had fallen with the best of them and had become a hardcore addict to the race car game.
“Want to play?” Wheedling the question, I lifted my controller.
As if he hadn’t heard, he resumed the earlier inquisition. “Why did you write that stuff down?”
Giving up, I cast my game piece to the sofa table and considered my words.
“Olivia said I could have taken what you said all wrong. That I would see things more clearly if I wrote them down.”
Relaxing his posture, he bent to rest his arms on his knees and focused on the floor. When he turned his attention to me, his words were quiet.
“And did you?”
The gulp in my throat threatened to choke out my breath. After reading over it while cleaning up in the kitchen, I was no longer certain Jack had spoken of full custody in that horrible argument. Exactly what he was speaking of, I could only guess. And guessing only made me hope. And hopes had a way of being dashed.
“I think I jumped to conclusions.”
“I know you did.”
CHAPTER 27
Practically vaulting the arm of the couch in one of those stage moves, which I recognized from watching videos of Jackal, Jack crossed the room to the kitchen bar. He returned directly back with the envelope in question. Holding the note visible to both of us, he silently read my handwriting:
‘I’ve missed five years of his life. And they were hard years for him.’
‘You are a good mother.’
“Pretty sure right here I said ‘the best.’” Pointing at that particular part, he tipped a smile.
‘I know my life is not the life for him. I would stop touring. Am probably about to do that anyway. Changes in my band. Many meetings.’
‘Don’t want six states between me and Tristan. Don’t know what to do.’
‘So much time wasted. I want it all.’
At last, he spoke again. “The important part is the last part.”
My nerves were so coiled that a loud buzz had begun in my ears like when pregnancy had caused spells of high blood pressure.
“I was trying to tell you that I’ve become greedy with this whole father thing.”
For a few silent seconds, his gaze rested on the paper and then it fell on my face. The eyes I looked into were as dark and sweet as the chocolate I always mentally likened them to, and when he spoke, they glistened.
“I was trying to say I want our son. And his mother too.”
My mind went into motion, processing faster than the processor of the laptop on the desk, which caught my panicked gaze. At last, I was brave enough to return my look to Jack’s eyes as he continued.
“When I met you, when we…”
When Jack paused here, unable to find what he thought were the right words for our fevered liaison in a tour bus bunk, I felt the familiar warmth that even after all of these years, flooded my senses when I let myself go there.
“Mariss, I couldn’t sto
p thinking about you. And the ‘what ifs.’ What if we went out, what if we were meant to be. But my band was taking off like crazy. Then, every time I would be so insane that I was going to come see you or do something about what I was feeling, something would happen that kept me busy, kept me too tired to think. And you would go to the back of my mind where it was easier to deal.”
The paper fell to the table as he stood and paced a few steps.
“Then after a few months, I couldn't shake you out of my head. The tour was over. I had downtime.” In an unconscious action, he picked up a photo of Tristan before returning it to the shelf. “I ended up asking you to come out.” Loosely he referred to LA. “I didn’t even know I was going to ask you. It just came out.”
My mind went back to that night with remembrance of how surprised I had been, and my thoughts whipped around as his words sank in. He had felt as connected as I had from the start.
Jack’s eyes held unwaveringly on my face. “I thought you felt the same way, and a part of me didn’t care if you did. Because if you didn’t, I thought I could talk you into seeing me just because of who I was. Then I could trip you, make you fall for me.”
Hearing this sentence made me wonder if he even realized he spoke in verses of his songs sometimes.
“But you dissed me hard.” A wry grimace played on his lips. “I never got over you. That you wouldn’t come.”
“You know now why I didn’t though…”
Nodding, he continued, and his words came in short sentences. “I’m into my music. But not into the lifestyle. Not anymore. Lately I'm in burnout. I hate the road. And I hate going home. To an empty house.” He looked to me. “And you fall back into my life—complete as a family. And I began thinking ‘what if’ again.”
Already following his random pacing and trying to follow his random words, I watched, transfixed by the emotion feeding the fervor in his words. What if. What if, what? My heart pounded.
He moved a couple of steps closer, then stilled, his eyes still holding mine. “Whatever is going on between you and me, it's happening fast for me. I've never felt like this so fast. Hell, I've never felt like this.”
Dropping to sit on the sofa table, he locked onto my gaze again, and when he seemed to wait, I assured, “It's happening fast for me too.” That was an understatement. It, whatever it was, had happened hard to me too. “So fast, it scares me.”
“Don't be scared.” Lifting his hand, he sifted through the hair that fell over my shoulder, and the pad of his thumb stroked my bottom lip. “Okay?”
The gesture and voice tone was so sweet and reassuring. My throat felt clogged, and I could only nod. My look fell to the swirl of ink on his arm, and he dropped his hand. Both elbows rested on his jeans, and he closed his fingers around mine.
There was something more to come. His gaze was serious, so serious, I was terrified, even though he'd just had me totally trusting in him, in me, in whatever this thing was we were caught up in.
“Mariss?”
‘What?’ is what I meant to say, but my voice only croaked.
“I think I love you.” There was the slightest pause before he rushed on. “I know I love you. And the other day, I was on my knees about to pop the question…”
“What?” This time the word was a clear surprised whisper when he fell silent, and I blinked, needing the assurance that I had not fallen into one of my fantasies. LOVE? And what question? THE question?
Shifting over, he sank to the sofa.
“I was. Remember I knelt beside you? And, I don’t know how it got so screwed up. What did happen in the screw up was I came to my senses. I know it was an impulse thing.”
Before I could fully feel hurt from that last statement, he explained, “I do want to marry you. But I know we need to work out a relationship between us before. We need to stop doing things backward.”
Backward had brought me Tristan, and I would never regret that. But I knew what he meant. I had been ready to dive into marriage with just one kiss outside Tristan’s hospital room– to scheme and do whatever I needed to do to accomplish it, and that had been irrational and wrong.
“I’ve done the same thing with the ‘what ifs.’” The confession spilled out, and now I was the one staring at the floor as I thought over my words. “For so many years. Felt fated to you somehow. Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep at night, I would imagine us as a family. I felt like I knew you before you even came to the hospital that day.”
Having confessed my fantasies, I went on to divulge my humiliation. “And then, that day on the phone when you disconnected our call, I didn’t know that guy. You were not who I thought you were. After that, I guess, in the back of my head, I was always afraid that guy would show himself again.”
My gaze searchingly sought his, and before I could speak again, he did.
“I don’t know why I say the shit I do sometimes. I don’t know that guy either. Unfortunately, I have to live with his screw ups.” Playing in my hair, he met my gaze head on, and his words were soft. “I don’t want you to be one of those things I screwed up.”
“I’m not. I’m one of those things I screwed up.”
“You’re not. You’re not, Mariss.”
My heart pounded as always when his head closed the space to mine. The kiss was tender and sweet, and before it could fuse into fire, he pulled slightly back but maintained contact with his fingertips massaging the back of my neck.
“I had this plan, kind of. But tell me what you think, okay?”
Warily, my shields went up against this plan since he had used almost the same words in the exercise room concerning Tristan’s custody.
“I need to be in LA for another six months at least. At max, a year. But I don’t want to be away from you guys anymore. The week I left the hospital seemed like a year. Can you and Tristan move to LA? And then after that, we can move back somewhere closer to here if you want.”
A surge of emotions and questions shocked through me. “Are you still asking me to marry you?” The query was bold, but I was tired of the confusion.
He had trust issues. I had avoidance issues. Issues I wanted to be done with.
“I’m asking if you want to get married one day. Because I know I want to marry you. But we need to build a relationship. And, your proposal should be spectacular. So this is not it.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed at the absurdity. But the solemn, loving look in those dark eyes, as well as the devout expression, made his non-proposal work.
“Are you laughing because you’re happy? Or because I’m a stupid jackas―”
“Jack! Don’t ruin this by cursing. I’ll always look back on this as my real proposal.”
“Not after you experience the real proposal.” The promise was accompanied by that lift of his dark brows and the smirky expression I knew so well and loved– the look I always wanted to kiss off his face.
And I did…
… “So?”
My back was on the sofa, and he came up from that epic kiss long enough to toss that one syllable word and punctuate it with another touch of his lips to mine.
“So what?”
It wasn’t coy. I had no idea what he was going on about. While waiting for my answer, he propped on his forearms and unwittingly pulled one of Tristan’s shirts from inside the sofa. Throwing it aside, he placed his lips just beneath my ear.
“Are you guys coming back with me to LA Friday?”
“Friday?”
Pushing up enough to stare into my face again, he searched my eyes, and I pushed his hair from my eyes.
“I have this thing I have to go to. Album drop party. But if you can’t go, I can take the ‘lingerina’— “
The wrestling match ended with him finding the second of Tristan’s shirts in the couch and playfully using it as a chokehold.
“Okay. Yes. I’m there.” Making a production of coughing out the answer, I grabbed the shirt when he released it from my neck and slapped at him with it. “Thought
these things took background checks. Can you get a background check in a day?”
“I could if I really wanted. But, I don’t have to. It’s already done.”
“You snooped me?”
This felt like more of a violation than internet stalking on a gossip site. A background check involved credit and finances. Still, I should have expected it would happen after calling up out of nowhere claiming to be the mother of his son. I learned different with his next words.
“I had my lawyer put it in motion the other day and put a rush on it. So you could start going to stuff with me.”
Right there and then, my heart exploded with love, and I pulled him down, expressing it in one passionate kiss. Even while we had been fighting, not speaking, he had seen the problem as temporary. He had still seen a future with me.
I could never get enough of just kissing him; could never imagine a day even years down the road, when I would not want my lips to his, the tease of our tongues.
But I didn’t mind when his attention strayed lower.
My fingers clenched in his hair as he divided that attention equally, unequally, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was each swirl of his tongue or tug of his teeth felt more fiery than the previous.
My shirt bunched beneath my arms, my bra hung unclipped, and my jeans vee’d open, but I stopped the hook of his hands at the denim waistband.
“We’re parents not hook ups…”
It didn’t make sense. I was trying to say Tristan was stealthier than usual these days because he didn’t lean on his crutches as much. However, I was incapable of a sensible sentence with him doing that… Proving with a finger that clothes were no barrier…
Lifting his head enough for me to see the smirk I loved, he reworded, “We’re parents hooking up.” With that, I was pulled to my feet, and when my strides were not fast enough, I was scooped into his arms and carried to the bedroom.
CHAPTER 28
Jack
Chicken gumbo. THIS was my new favorite food. My first taste of the dish had been on a night that was as rotten in my memories as it was epic.