Forever, Jack (4 page)

Where the heck was Jazz when I needed her? I took a breath and held it.

“Well, he is. He told Colt he was back.” Joey let out a sigh. “Indefinitely.”

My belly flipped over, and I brought my free hand up and covered my eyes. This was a nightmare. I thought I’d be over him. But if this and the way I had gone into total shock on the side of the road earlier was any indication, I was not over him. Not entirely.
Damn it.
Not at all. How was it possible to completely delude oneself for months?

Indefinitely
. What did that mean? And more importantly, he was here, in Butler Cove, right now. I blew out that breath I’d taken upon Joey’s news before I passed out.

“Keri Ann?”

“Yep,” I croaked, trying and failing, for a jovial inflection.

“You have a lot going on. You’ve accomplished so much. You start SCAD this fall. Please don’t let yourself get involved with him again. Please. For me.”

“Sure thing, boss man Joey. I can promise you, I have no intention of doing that.”

There was a long pause on the end of the line. “I guess that’s about as good as I could hope for.” He sighed. “Do you promise?”

“Joey. I can solemnly swear I have no intention of getting involved with, or even having a conversation with him. Does that ease your mind?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“Great,” Joey responded with a tone that said anything but. “I’ll be home in time for the event. Stay out of trouble until then?”

“I’ll try. Love you, big brother.”

“Love you too, kiddo.”

I hung up and stared at my phone then glanced toward my window and the darkness beyond. Jack Eversea was out there. I assumed at Devon’s beach house. So … less than a mile away. I fought the urge to go and bang down his door and scream obscenities in his face.

He was back.

And he had to know he hurt me.

Hurt? I snorted.

I thought of that smile I’d seen in the rear-view mirror. What did that
mean
? He wouldn’t have been smiling like that maliciously, right? I mean who
did
that? He was either back to rub salt in my wound, or he was back thinking I’d be a convenient
lay
over again. How nice he had a break in his filming schedule to come and wreak a little more havoc. I knew my strengths, and I’d have a better chance of coping if he was just here to be a prick than if he actually tried for a repeat performance of his last visit.

I remembered telling him, back before we’d even kissed, that I was out of my depth, that I was not cut out for him. Not cut out for him to go back to his Hollywood life when he was done with me. I wished I fought harder and protected myself better. I couldn’t be sure why he was back, but if it was because of me, then I
would
fight harder. There was no way I would make the same mistake twice.

And what became of Audrey and Jack, or the baby she’d claimed she was carrying? I was guessing that was a fabrication, since there was no news of a pregnancy. And I would know. To my shame I’d trawled the Internet one particularly frigid and rainy day in winter for seven hours straight, not pausing to even pee or eat. Jazz finally staged an intervention by ripping the cord to the wireless router out of the wall, and I kid you not,
cutting
the plug off the end.

All I’d learned was that he was in England, filming some movie about a coal-miner turned artist, and out with a different girl what seemed like every night. In true British paparazzi style, it was a lurid splash-fest of debauchery, with them lapping up his antics. It was so unlike the Jack I thought I knew. It was like he was deliberately having his picture taken with as many slutty looking girls as possible.

In one picture he was in some bar or something, maybe a nightclub, and he had one girl in a short pink dress and platform stripper heels draped at his back, and a girl in front who was holding his head and sticking her tongue in his ear. And he was smiling—that devastating smile of his, dimples and all, right at the camera. He had to know people would see it. That
I
would probably see it.

I’d stared at that picture for a good hour out of the seven, with a rock in my chest, and I couldn’t decide which was worse—wondering if he was doing it to hurt me on purpose, or if it never
occurred
to him it would hurt me to see him like that. By the time Jazz made her dramatic statement of disabling my Internet access, I was barely able to take much more torture anyway.

Pulling myself back to the present, I brushed my teeth and changed into my sleep shorts and tank. I lay wide-awake watching the shadows of swaying branches on my ceiling and listening to the creaking of my two hundred year old house and praying for sleep.

At some point I may have dozed off, but the chirp of my phone at three in the morning had me jerking upright and fully awake.

When my phone beeped, I’d been in a semi-conscious state, so I was unsure if it was in my dream.
But seriously, who could sleep at a time like this?
Realizing it was real, I lunged for it in the dark, aiming for the glow of the incoming text.

Jazz: Hey, K! Hope this doesn’t wake u, but had to leave phone on charge, just got back in from amaze-balls beach party. I’ll call u in the am. Hope all ok.

Jazz. Perfect. I quickly typed back.

Me: No, nothing is ok. Can you talk?

I got out of bed and went to sit on my little window seat I’d made from an old bench and lots of pillows and stared at the bright screen on my phone. An incoming call sounded less than ten seconds later.

“Thanks for calling,” I greeted her.

Jazz’s voice was breathy, quiet, and worried. “Word, what’s the matter? Are you ok? Is Joey …?”

“Fine, he’s fine. Sorry to freak you out. I’m fine, I just … Oh, God, Jazz. Jack is back in Butler Cove.” There was no other way to say it.

“Oh my God. Seriously? Did you see him or you heard? Wait, start at the beginning.”

“I saw him.” Looking out the window, I could see the silvery dark silhouettes of the massive trees in my front yard as a sliver of a moon made it through the cloud cover. The rain looked like it was finally over. I sighed and told her the whole story.

When I was done, she chuckled. “Damn, girl. Most of us could only wish to have an exit like that. How freakin’ awesome.”

“It wasn’t awesome, Jazz. It was a nightmare. And he just stood there. Smiling,” I added disdainfully.

She laughed again, with glee and a few cocktails. “Oh, it’s priceless! Just in case he forgot who Keri Ann Butler is, you managed to remind him like a two-by-four to the head. Especially with the wet t-shirt.” She giggled, and there was a muffled thump. Then she whispered away from the phone, “Sorry, go back to sleep.”

“Is that Brandon? Sorry to make you call me in the middle of the night.”

“It’s fine. You know that. I would have called you back earlier if I’d had my phone. Yeah, big choco-eyes over here has been hitting the sauce since the pool this afternoon. He is baked and done. I better catch forty winks myself otherwise I’ll be unplayable tomorrow. You gonna be able to sleep?”

I sighed and looked out the window again. I could swear someone was leaning against the trunk of the live oak by the driveway. I needed sleep, and the darkness and shadows were beginning to seem weird.

“Yeah, I’ll sleep now. I feel better just telling you about it. Like I’ve made it into a manageable event. Not sure what tomorrow will bring, if anything, but I guess I’ll worry about that then.”

“Look, you’ve done enough waiting and wondering,” Jazz admonished. “The last thing you need is knowing he’s around and waiting for him to show up at any moment. This needs to be on
your
terms, not his. You need to go see him, ask him what his deal is, and then get on with your life.”

The thought that I should be the one to seek
him
out surprised me for a moment. But she was absolutely spot on.

I remembered back to the week after Devon showed up on my birthday telling me about Jack, intimating he thought Jack was coming and then the pity on everyone’s faces as the days went by and there was still no sign of him. Not that I’d said anything to anyone, but they assumed. As did I, like the stupid, naïve girl I kept proving to be. I assumed he would at least come back and apologize for the way he left. I shuddered at the memory of that time. I needed to face him and get closure as soon as possible, not sit around with his presence like a ticking-time bomb.

“Right?” Jazz asked.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “Right. So call me back when you wake up, I want to know how it’s going with ‘choco-eyes.’ You’re good right?”

“Yes, Miss Butler, I’m fine. And we’ll be back in time for your art opening at the hotel. Or sooner. Have you found a dress yet?”

“Ugh. No.” I grimaced. I decided to slide the sash window up and let the night air flow in through the screen. It slid up with a screech. “I’m supposed to go have lunch with Colt tomorrow, guess I’ll deal with finding a cocktail dress tomorrow, too.”

Just then another movement caught my eye. There was definitely someone standing under … my stomach dropped, right as my heart lurched up into my mouth. Jack stepped out into the moonlight.

“Uh, Jazz. I gotta go, talk to you tomorrow.” I let my hand with the phone slip away from my ear, hopefully hitting “end” with my thumb, and stared out the window down to the lone figure. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, his face tilted up at me.

I sat uncertainly for a few minutes, my pulse skittering, and tried to get a handle on this new development. The soft night breeze wafted in over my bare arms, bringing with it the scent of newly-flowered jasmine.

He wasn’t wearing his ball cap, and the breeze ruffled his darker, longer hair.

It seemed laughable now, that I would have waited until tomorrow morning. I cocked my head. “You realize this qualifies as seriously creepy.”

I thought I saw his mouth lift slightly on one side.

“I couldn’t sleep and thought walking would help. And well, I ended up here.” Jack shrugged, his hands still wedged in his jeans. His soft, deep voice that I knew so well, that the world knew so well, was a smooth melody over the jagged rasping of the cicadas. “I didn’t know you’d be awake.”

You just showed back up in my life, how could I be sleeping?
I bit down, holding my teeth together to keep from inviting him in. “Why couldn’t you sleep?” I asked eventually.

“Why couldn’t you?” he returned.

My skin got warm. “I
was
sleeping.”
Barely
. I imagined I saw his eyes narrow. “But Jazz texted and woke me,” I added. Not technically a lie.

Jack nodded, pursing his lips and rocked back on his heels. I could see more details now that my eyes were accustomed to the night and the clouds continued clearing the sky. He was wearing dark jeans and a snug dark t-shirt. His eyes hadn’t left me. I reached up and smoothed my hair, tucking an errant strand back in the direction of my messy braid, wondering what on earth I looked like after tossing and turning for the last few hours.

“Stop.”

I paused.

“You’re beautiful.”

Wasn’t that just great? My blood pressure rose. I clamped my jaw tight again. My upbringing dictated I thank him, but a wave of anger, no … make that pure and utter pissed-off-ness, almost choked me. “You can’t even see me,” I snorted. “Nice try. What do you want anyway?”

“I don’t need to see you to know you’re beautiful.”

Well, didn’t that knock an oyster out of its shell? What was he playing at? “Seriously, what do you want, Jack? You need someone to buy your groceries or something?” My acidic tone left no doubt about how I felt.

His shoulders moved almost imperceptibly, and I had the thought he’d either let out a long sigh or he was at a loss as to what to say, and was about to give up and turn around. “Can I come in?” he asked so quietly, I almost didn’t hear him. “I’d like to talk to you.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him to get lost. But these days I didn’t run from uncomfortable situations quite so much. I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be sleeping anymore tonight, thinking about the coming conversation I needed to have with him. We may as well get it over with. I shrugged, as nonchalantly as possible, and sighed. “Sure.” I stood and slid the window shut, hoping he couldn’t see the tremor in my hands from where he was.

I pulled on a lightweight cardigan, and swapped my sleep shorts for some khaki cargo ones that were draped over the chair in my room. I pit-stopped in the bathroom and pulled my hair out of its braid, letting it drape over one shoulder. Then I glared at myself with disgust and hastily scraped it back into an ugly, messy bun. What was wrong with me? I stomped downstairs and went to the entry hall. Taking a deep calming breath and flicking the hall light on, I opened the front door.

Jack was leaning against a pillar at the top of the porch stairs watching me. His arms were folded across his chest, one booted denim-clad ankle crossed over the other, and he made no move to come in. Light spilled out from behind me, casting a warm glow. Dammit, why did he have to be so attractive? I caught his green eyes for a second, which felt like about all I could stand, and then I stepped back to the side looking anywhere but back at him. I waved my arm in a single sweeping gesture into the house and tried to sound bored. “Come on then.”