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.
He tapped Jake’s smiling face with a finger and smiled to himself. “I miss you, brother, but I gotta go now. I have a woman to win, and it isn’t going to be easy, but never give up the fight, right?”
The sound of his phone buzzing on the passenger seat made him drop the picture of Jake on the dash and grab up his phone, hoping it was Em.
He read the single word she’d sent him.
The one word he knew he was going to regret the minute he’d agreed to it.
Done.
Fuck.
Nineteen
Em stared at her phone, ignoring the texts Jax had been sending over for the past two days now. He wanted to talk when she couldn’t speak. There was nothing left to talk about anyway. Continuing with Jax would only bring more misery to him and Maizy.
But heavens, she wanted to. She wanted to burrow against his wide chest and catch her breath against this storm of fury raging in her. Hear his heartbeat beneath her ear.
He’d been angry with her when they’d last parted. It was better she just cut him off, even if seeing his texts, at first funny, then urgent, were breaking bits of her heart off piece by piece.
She’d taken some personal days, telling Dixie she had the flu, sent the boys to Idalee’s, parked her car in the garage, locked up and hidden away.
All the crying and raging she’d been doing over what her mother had said to Clifton Junior and ending it with Jax had lent to her fake cold story when Dixie showed up with chicken soup. From behind a wad of tissues, her eyes red and runny, Em had told her to stay away so she wouldn’t catch it. But that wouldn’t hold water for long.
If Dixie and the girls knew what she was about to do, chaos would surely ensue. She hated scenes, even if they were out of love.
They’d try to talk her out of it. They’d somehow manage to convince her that Emmaline With No Spine could fight Clifton and the big bad meanies of Plum Orchard. Dixie would wave her money around and threaten to sue the pants off someone in her outrageously dramatic way in Em’s defense.
LaDawn would offer to sock the gossips in the mouth and Marybell would growl at Louella a little extra the next time she encountered her.
But would that keep Clifton from trying to take the boys to Atlanta? Would that keep his rich girlfriend from using her money to help him fight fire with fire? Would any of that money keep her son from being teased in school day after day?
She couldn’t risk a custody battle. How could she possibly win when she worked for a phone-sex company? Add in all the grief the boys suffered at school, and it left her too afraid to take a chance she’d lose them forever.