He seemed to remember she was going out into the cold, dark night without him. “Let me get dressed and I’ll walk you to your car.”
But Em just smiled and dismissed him like she made all her lovers in the afternoon angry. “No need. I’m fine. The car’s not that far, and I have to be up early to take the boys to meet their father anyway. It’s Clifton’s weekend. See you Monday. Thanks for a great night. Sweet dreams, Jax.” Then she was yanking open the door and moving as fast as her incredibly high heels would allow her.
When she finally made it to the car, she turned the heat on full blast and sat, staring at the guesthouse, watching the flicker of candles from the small arched window, and wondered what had set Jax off.
Reece. Where was Reece? Was she dead like Em had first assumed? Jax’s glance at that picture didn’t scream a lingering affection—for either of the people in the photo. So where was Maizy’s mother if she wasn’t dead?
Why did Jax look like he’d sooner cut off her head than keep a picture of her, and why would he keep a picture of Maizy’s mother from his daughter?
What had happened to his best friend Jake?
Why was whatever happened a sore subject?
Stop now, Em. Go home. Take a hot bath. Go to bed.
Or look them up on Google...
*
Jax threw the picture of him and Reece and Jake in the pile of glass and damned himself for overreacting to Em’s innocent question. The look on her face when he’d shut her down was like a kidney punch.
But how could he explain the sordid mess that was Reece and Jake? How could he explain the guilt Jake’s name drove through the core of him? How did he explain the kind of sorrow the subject of the two of them dredged up?
He pulled his shirt over his head and grabbed the bottle of wine, slugging some back before digging out a broom and sweeping the chunks of glass along with the picture into a pile.
He didn’t hide Reece from Maizy. He just didn’t talk about her a lot. That time would come, if Maizy kept being as intuitive as she was, but it wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to.
A conversation he was forced to have because of Reece. Because she was an irresponsible, fucked-up mess. She’d interfered enough in his life; now she wasn’t even here and she was still pushing her way into a place he’d come to think of as sacred. The place where he felt more alive than he had in a very long time.
Here, in this shitty, crumbling guesthouse. With Em.
And now he’d hurt Em because of the meddling bitch.
Nope. You hurt Em all alone, pal. Reece didn’t have anything to do with this. You could have just told her all about Reece.
That was against the rules.
And very convenient.
Jax fingered the frame and tried for the millionth time to understand where it had all gone so wrong.
But he was tired of dissecting what happened. He was tired of living in the past. He was tired of keeping secrets. He was tired of worrying his world would explode at any second and there’d be no way for him to prevent it.
*
Em dropped the limp French fry on her tray, taking in the face of the man she once thought she’d spend the rest of her life with.
He was so little like the man she thought she knew. He was so little like Jax....
With trembling fingers, she forced her bad parting with Jax out of her mind and focused on this task. Finding out what Clifton wanted.
Clifton sat across from her at the restaurant they’d chosen as a drop-off/pickup point for the boys. The halfway point between the beginning of their separate lives. A greasy burger joint the boys loved and Em tolerated for the sake of amicability.
“I’m thinking of filing for full custody of the boys, Em.” He wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, crumpling it up and dropping it on the table much the way he’d discarded their marriage.
A prickly shot of anger whispered along her spine as his handsome face stared back at hers. How dare he sit there cool and collected like he’d just told her he was takin’ the boys fishin’? “You can barely manage regular visitation with them. How do you expect to have full-time custody, Clifton? It’s plenty more involved than just a meeting place and twenty dollars for some hamburgers and a milk shake.”
He’d changed so much in the year since their divorce. Gone were the days of red-checked flannel, Wrangler jeans and a John Deere cap. Now he wore boldly colored shirts with collars that tipped upward under his salon-styled hair and square glasses that enhanced his cheekbones and made his eyes a brighter blue.
Those eyes were hard as they looked at her from across the table. Icy and hard. “I’d see them more often if I didn’t live in Atlanta. It’s a long ride from there to Plum Orchard.”
She tightened her grip on her purse, trying to keep her voice low. “Is the ride ever too long when your children are involved? And it was your choice to move to Atlanta, Clifton. You could have stayed in the PO and been divorced just as easily.”