“I don’t know why I’ve come here,” I said.
I turned to walk away, but Jack grabbed my arm. “You’ve always been a bad liar.”
My eyes filled with tears. “It seemed like something I could do. In New York, in my living room, with my husband, it seemed like something I could ask of you. But now, back home, standing here, I know it’s absurd. And it certainly isn’t fair.”
Jack looked at me with those dark, piercing eyes of his, those eyes that held both the weight of adulthood and the light of a child. And, more than knowing that what I was here to ask him was insane, I knew that if he agreed to what I was going to ask, I was in serious jeopardy of falling back in love with him. Standing here now, inches from him, so close that I could feel his breath on my skin, I knew that in a lot of ways, I’d been in love with him the whole time, never really fallen out of love with him. And that’s what makes love such a complicated emotion. Because I knew Carter was the man I was supposed to be with. I knew he was the man I was supposed to grow old with. But that didn’t keep me from still having those same first-love feelings for Jack.
“It doesn’t matter what it is, Ansley. You know already that I’d never tell you no. I can’t. I’ve tried, but I don’t have it in me.”
I bit my lip and shook my head. “Then I won’t make you tell me no. I need to go now.”
He smiled sadly, then turned, walked to the refrigerator, pulled out two more beer bottles, popped both tops, and handed me one, even though I’d had only a couple of sips of the first. He smiled at me, that amused look on his face, and I found myself wondering how I’d ever let him out of my sight, how, even though I was so young, I had been stupid enough to throw it all away, to throw him away.
Jack took a swig of beer and said, “We both know you aren’t going to go. What do you want from me? You know I’ll give it to you.”
I took a sip of my beer, noticing how cold and bitter it was, how it burned as it went down my throat. Standing in Jack’s kitchen was so intense that all my senses seemed heightened. I know I will remember it on my deathbed as a defining moment, the best and the worst of my life. I took another swig of beer for courage and sighed. I shrugged, and I could feel the apology in my shoulders.
“Children,” I said. “I want children.”
He studied me for a long moment, puzzled. “But why would you come to me . . .” He trailed off, and it was as if you could see him putting the pieces together in his mind. “You can have them. He can’t have them.”
I nodded.
His eyes were glued to my face, searching. “You want my sperm or something? Is that why you’re here?”
I couldn’t form sentences to explain what I wanted. So I simply said, “I am a delusional woman. I don’t know why I would have come here.”
He wrinkled his forehead, still studying me. “Wait a second. You’re here because you want to have children with me.” He grinned. “The good old-fashioned way?”
You would think that a man in this position, in Jack’s position, would look baffled and bewildered. But he didn’t. In fact, I couldn’t really describe how he looked. Contemplative, maybe. Pleased, perhaps. But not bewildered. Not at all. It was as if he knew that this very thing was going to happen, only he didn’t know when. And now here we were.
“I’m going to guess he doesn’t know you’re here,” Jack said.
Carter knew I was here, of course, if here meant Peachtree. But he thought I was visiting my grandmother. That was the deal, after all. He wouldn’t ever know for sure. Only I would know.
I bit my lip, remembering too late how sexy Jack thought that was. This couldn’t be an arrangement of attraction. He couldn’t say yes because he wanted to sleep with me. I took a step back, trying to seem professional. “Well, no, not exactly.”
I paused, and as I felt his eyes on my face, it was like my veneer cracked. Everything inside me that had been so oozing and raw for all this time came out and spilled all over him, because, whether I said it or not, he knew it. He knew it all. He always had. And that was the problem.
He laughed that laugh. My very favorite one. The one where his eyebrows rose a little, the one where he was both annoyed and astounded by me. God, I loved that laugh. And I found myself realizing what a mistake all of this was. I didn’t need to carry a child. Carter and I could adopt, and he would have to change his vision of what the day we became parents would look like. It would take a few years, but that would be fine. That would be better. It would be cleaner. No emotions involved.
Jack rubbed his hand down my bare arm, and I could feel a shudder run through me. A cold one, one that said I needed to go, because this was way more than a deal. This was way more than a business transaction. This was a man I had loved, a man I had trusted, maybe more than anyone. There was no way I could do this.
“So what’s my part in all of this?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said, a shake in my voice. “And that’s the hard part. I will have the baby and raise it with Carter, and you have to keep this giant secret for the rest of your life.” I laughed now, too, realizing the layers upon layers of absurdity as I said it. “It’s very fair,” I said, laughing again, feeling myself backing away toward the door, hoping it was the stress that had made me this much of a raving lunatic. “You get nothing. I get everything.”
He nodded and took a sip of his beer, not moving, not reaching out to me, but still, somehow, rendering me motionless with the intensity of his stare. “All I’ve ever wanted,” he said, setting the bottle on the counter, “is to give you everything.”
He pulled me close to him and whispered, the moment before my lips met his, “If this is how I can do that, sign me up.”
As I wrapped my arms around him, his lips feeling so familiar and so very, very right, lightning flashed and thunder boomed across the earth. Panic ran through me like a shot of whiskey as I realized that this was far from a business transaction and far from making a baby. It scared me to think what it meant for my marriage as Jack slid my dress to the floor like he had done all those years ago. It scared me more to realize that I hoped I wouldn’t get pregnant right away.
* * *