Promise of Forever (5 page)

CHAPTE
R SIX

Jackson

At first, her words made no sense to me, like she was speaking a different language that I’d never heard before. But when my brain finally processed what she had said, her words somehow stayed in the dead-silent space between us, mocking me as I tried to figure out if I had somehow misheard her. 

“I’m your sister, Jax—your real half sister.” 

And just like that, like a flip of a switch, the rug was pulled out from under me and my whole world suddenly changed—shifted and turned upside down in a matter of seconds.

This can’t be happening...

When I recovered from the initial shock of her comment, I realized how stupid I was to fall for this joke. This was just her attempt to get back at me for the Pippi Longstocking braids she woke up with at the hospital. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Clo. That’s not funny at all.” I let out a forced laugh. “If you want to get me back for messing with your hair the other day, you should at least say something that’s believable.”

“I wish it was just a joke, Jax…but it’s not. It’s very real.”

It was then that I finally noticed her clearly. She didn’t look like she was joking. She didn’t look like she was enjoying this. She looked miserable. There were dark circles underneath her eyes and her face was sunken in like she hadn’t slept for days. As she looked at me, I saw the pain in her eyes as her lower lip trembled like she was trying to hold back the tears.

“You’re not joking,” I muttered, more to myself than to her. I stumbled back a few steps as my legs suddenly gave out on me.

She shook her head solemnly as a few tears rolled down her face.

“But…but how? How can that even be possible?”

She closed her eyes and whispered, “We share the same father.”

“Wh—what?” I stammered. “But you and my fa—” I didn’t finish my sentence, realizing what I was about to accuse her of.

But she didn’t need me to say the rest. She lowered her head and let out a deep, painful sigh. “I didn’t know then…”

Suddenly it hit me like a brick. Suddenly I realized why she was pushing me away, why she said we wouldn’t work. “And you and me…”

She nodded as drops of tears pummeled to the ground from her face. “We can’t…we can’t be together.”

I shook my head, still unwilling to accept this. “But you still haven’t told me why you think we’re—I mean, this can’t be true. I mean, the two people who would be able to confirm this—your mom and…—they’re both dead.”

Without a word, I watched her walk over to her desk and pull open the top drawer. She dug through some papers and notebooks before pulling out something from the bottom of the drawer.

Fear shot through my body as I watched her approach me, her eyes seemed to be fixed on a spot on my shirt as she avoided my gaze. Her hand was shaking uncontrollably as she handed me a stack of letters and opened envelopes. From the faded yellow hue of the papers and the worn edges and folds, I knew these letters had been around for a long period of time.

I stared at the stack of letters in her outstretched hand in front me for what seemed like an eternity before I finally reached for them. I didn’t want to know what I’d find inside. But this was what Chloe had been hiding from me. She hadn’t wanted me to know, but I forced her to tell me. So there was no going back. I had to face whatever I’d find inside these letters.

As soon as I flipped open one of the letters, my chest tightened when I saw—the damning evidence scrawled across the page. “It’s his handwriting.” The words came out in a low, breathy rush of air. I opened several other letters from the stack, trying to find one that would prove me wrong, trying to find one that would cast some doubt in my mind that these weren’t written by him. But each letter I opened was like the last—they all had the same handwriting I knew well. They were all written by my father.

I turned back to the first letter in the stack.

“Judy’s my mom,” Chloe’s tiny voice cut through my daze.

I flipped through the letters again and confirmed what I didn’t want to believe. All these letters were addressed to a Judy. I leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor.

Then I started to read through them.

Whatever hope that I had clung onto that this was all a big misunderstanding was slipping from my grasp with each additional letter I read. And then I got to the letter that destroyed any shred of hope I had remaining.

Judy,

You are the world to me, my love. You know that, right? Then you should know how happy I was when you told me that you were pregnant with our child. And only you would be so prepared to be a mother that you’ve already decided on what you’d want to name your first born. Chloe and Jeffrey are perfect names!

It makes me sad that you were worried at first about telling me. You should know me by now, and you should know that nothing would make me happier than to start a family with you and grow old with you. Don’t worry about my parents. They will eventually come around and realize how perfect you are for me. Once I have things figured out with them, I want you to marry me! I hope you say yes, my love.

Always Yours,

John

It was the final nail in the coffin. The smoking gun. I read it again, then again, and then a third time, each time hoping I’d find another explanation that didn’t involve my father being Chloe’s father.

But I didn’t find it.

I looked over at Chloe for the first time since I started reading the letters. She was silent, her eyes wet with sadness.

“I didn’t want you to find out,” she finally said, her voice barely audible.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want you to be in this kind of pain.”

“So you were going to shoulder the pain for both of us?” I frowned at her and shook my head. “Silly girl,” I whispered.

I leaned my head back and pounded my head against the wall. I was defeated and enraged that there was nothing I could do to change things. My hands slumped to my sides, causing the stack of letters to slide off my grasp and into the empty space between us.

“But you’re right, Clo.” I closed my eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “I can’t deal with this reality.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Jackson

“Keep ’em comin’, Joe,” I said, waving the bartender over to refill my empty shot glass.

“Are you sure, man?” He came over with the bottle of Jim Beam bourbon whiskey. “I just opened this fifth tonight when I opened the bar, and you’re the only person who’s been drinking it.

I looked at the near half-empty bottle of bourbon in his hands and snorted. “It still looks pretty fucking full to me.” I lifted my empty shot glass up at him and motioned for him to pour me another shot.

“If you say so,” he said with a shrug and filled my glass to the brim.

I threw back the shot, barely tasting it by this point as it went down as smooth as water.

“Hey, baby,” came a woman’s voice from behind me.

For a split second, I wondered if it was Chloe. I turned around and frowned.  It wasn’t her.
Wishful thinking
, I thought.

The blonde who had spoken slid into the stool next to me and flashed me a smile. “You look like you’re in need of some company. Wanna buy me a drink?” 

My eyes gave her a once-over. She was wearing a tiny red minidress that left very little to the imagination.

“You like what you see?” She bit her bottom lip and leaned into me, letting her full breasts spill over her low-cut top, in perfect line with my vision.

Ignoring her question, I turned back to my empty shot glass and motioned to the bartender for another round.

“I’ll have a mojito,” the blonde whispered into my ear. Then I felt her wet tongue lick up against my jaw line before she started to nibble my earlobe. At the same time, her hand moved down my side and over my crotch.

My groin tighten in response—aroused and in need of its release. But before the blonde could begin to rub against my growing erection and stimulate it further, I grabbed her hand and pushed her away.

“Nooot interested,” I said flatly as I pushed my glass toward Joe as he approached with the bottle of Jim Beam.

“What about my drink?” the blonde pouted, somehow ignoring my brush-off.

I finally turned to her. “What about it?”

“Well aren’t you going to order it for me?” She flashed me another smile and flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“Nah.” I turned back to my drink and threw it back.

“Why not?” she asked, unwilling to accept my lack of interest.

“Because you’re more than capable of ordering and buying your own drink.”

“What the fuck is your problem?” She glared at me. “I felt how hard your cock got when I touched it just now. Don’t act like you don’t want a piece of
this
.” She waved her hand down in front of her body. 

By this point, the countless shots of bourbon were catching up to me and I was losing my patience.

“Don’t flatter yourself. My cock gets hard when I’m drunk. It would get hard even for Joe over there, and I
definitely
don’t want to fuck him. So why don’t you go whore yourself out to someone who actually wants your STDs and leave me the fuck alone.”

Just then, a splash of water hit the side of my face. “Asshole!” the blonde lashed out before storming off.

I knew I was a bit too harsh on the girl, but she was coming on way too strong and didn’t seem to get my subtle hints. And tonight, of all nights, was just the wrong night to test my patience. I wiped my face with the back of my hand and motioned for the bartender again. He filled my glass without waiting for me to ask.

I wasted no time and gulped down the liquid. “Leeet me tell ya somethin’,” I began to slur as I slammed the empty glass on the counter. “Life’s really
fucked
up.”

The bartender raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. Instead he humored me and stuck around to listen.

I raised my index finger and waved it in front of me. “You think you finally got it figured out. You think you—you have it all. And when you’re just about to be happy with the girl you’ve wanted for the last twenty-three years, life just shits all over it. Life’s a fuuuckin’ shitter—a Goddamn shitter.”

As the room started to sway around me, I groaned and dropped my head down against the bar to steady myself. “Shit—shitting evvverywhere,” I muttered into the              cool, wooden surface.

Then I lifted my head back up suddenly and looked at the bartender. “Does life shit on you, too, Jack?”

“It’s Joe,” he corrected as he wiped down some of the bourbon that had spilled on the counter.

“Ohh…really?” I shot a doubtful look. Then I bursted into laughter. “That’s right. You’re Joe.
I’m
Jack.” I hit my chest a few times with the palm of my hand to let him know who Jack was. “That’s what a lot of people at work call me. Jjjjack.” Then I huffed out a heavy sigh. “And then there’s one person who calls me Jax. She’s the only one that calls me that, and she…” I quickly shook my head in a knee-jerk motion, trying to shake her out of my head. I  lifted my glass up again. “Hit me with another one!”

“Buddy, I think you’ve had enough.”

“Come on, man. Just one more.”

Joe sighed and shook his head in pity. “Okay, but after this one, I’m cutting you off and calling you a cab to take you home. I think you’ve had more than enough for tonight.”

I grunted. “Fine. After this one, I’ll hit the road, Jack, and I won’t-cha come back. No more, no more, no more, nooo morrre.” I threw my head back and laughed.

He just stared at me and continued to shake his head. 

“Get it?” I looked at him expectantly, “Like that Ray Charles song—oh except…that’s riiiight, your name’s not Jack.” I drained the glass Joe just refilled. “Daaaamn, I keep forgetting.” I laid my head back down on the counter and hummed the Ray Charles song to myself.

“Alright, Jack,” came Joe’s voice a few minutes later. “Your cab’s on its way. You need help getting in the cab?”

I threw two hundred-dollar bills on the counter and waved his offer off with my hand. “No thanks, man. I’m really not that drunk,” I said just as I got up from the barstool and stumbled over an empty chair nearby. “I had a lot of fun tonight.”

“Drink some water when you get in, Jack. You’ll thank me for it in the morning.”

***

When the cab dropped me off in front of my house fifteen minutes later, I wasn’t ready to go to bed. I needed to see her. I needed to talk to her.

So I stumbled over to her house and pulled out my phone to call her.

She didn’t pick up.

I went over to the side of the house and looked up into her bedroom window. The lights were off.

I dialed her number again. “Pick up, Clo,” I muttered.

Finally, after five or six rings, I heard a click.

“Hello?” came Chloe’s half-asleep voice from the other end. “Jax?”

“Heyyy, Clo. What you doing? You busy?” I watched as her window seemed to sway back and forth in front of me.

I heard her moan. “Jax, it’s almost two in the morning. What’s going on? Why are you calling?”

“I’m downstairs and wanted to see you, that’s all. Can you come down and see me?”

“Are you drunk? You sound drunk.” I heard the hesitation in her voice.

“Psstt. Nnnoo. Course not.” I let out a sigh. “Silly question. Silly girl.”

“Jax, I know you’re drunk. You need to go home and sleep it off.”

“Come on, Clo. Just for a minute. I wanna tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“Can you come downstairs?”

“Can this wait until the morning?”

“Pleeeease?”

She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. I’ll be right down.”

“Cool. I’ll be here waiting.”

I rushed to the front of the house and waited anxiously for her to come out. A minute later, I heard the sound of the locks on the front door right before she opened it and walked outside.

I smiled the moment I saw her. She looked sexy under the moonlight wearing nothing but grey French terry shorts and a plain white t-shirt. As she walked closer to me, my eyes caught the sight of her hard nipples poking against the thin fabric of her shirt and I felt my erection swell against my jeans.

As if she noticed where my eyes were looking, she folded her arms together as she approached me closer.

“Are you okay, Jax? It’s a chilly out. What is so important that you woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me?”

She avoided my gaze and I could tell she was still trying to distance herself from me.

“You want the truth?”

There was a moment of hesitation before she answered. “I’m not sure.”

“I miss you, Clo,” I blurted out. “I can’t stop thinking about you, and it’s killing me.”

She glanced up at me, and for a brief moment, I saw the anguish on her face. But as quickly as it’d appeared, it was gone. “It’s been less than twelve hours since we last saw each other,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’s not enough time to miss a person.”

“Don’t be like that. You know what I mean.” I took a step toward her.

“No, I don’t.” She took a step back.

“I just can’t do it, Clo. You’re right. It’s been less than twelve hours, and I already miss you.”

“Jax…I think we need some time apart. Maybe…maybe after some time to move past this, we can start spending time together again—as friends, as siblings.”

I shook my head, unwilling to ever accept that as a reality. A wave of raw, pent-up emotion, fueled by my intoxication, started to bubble up to the surface.

“I just got you back, Clo,” I said in insurgence.

She fell silent and just looked over at me.

              “Life is hard as it is, Clo. But it’s harder without you there by my side. I have secretly loved you since you were seven and I was eight. I never told you how I felt because I thought you didn’t feel the same way, because I didn’t want to lose you. But then, when we were in college, when we stopped talking, I thought I lost you then. That was when I started to regret not ever telling you how I felt about you before it became too late. And then after nine years apart, I was given a second chance. I finally had you back in my life, and we had a chance to be together. But just three days ago, when I saw you flying off that bridge in your car, I thought that this time, I had lost you forever. And do you know what?” I paused, feeling the rush of alcoholic adrenaline coursing through my veins, urging me on. “Both times I thought I’d lost you, life felt darker, dimmer, and incomplete because you weren’t in my life.”

Under the streams of moonlight, she blinked quickly, and I thought I saw a glisten of moisture on her cheek.

Feeling emboldened by liquid courage, I continued in a state of near-madness. “But now that you’re okay—now that I just got you back again…I—I just can’t—no! I
won’t
allow myself to lose you again, Clo! I’ll do anything to have you in my life.”

Before I knew what I was doing—being driven by a drunken frenzy—I grabbed her and pulled her urgently into my arms.

She cried out in surprise.

“I just can’t lose you again, Clo.” I held her tightly in my embrace, unwilling to let her go. I buried my face into her hair and drew in a deep breath, intoxicating myself with her scent. As I pressed her against my chest, I felt the hardness of her nipples rub up against my stomach, fueling a need in the pit of my stomach.

“Jax, stop this!” She finally managed to break away and she took several steps back. Her eyes were filled with tears as she shook her head. “You’re drunk, Jax. You’re belligerent right now. You know we can’t do this.”

My chest tightened with pain. “But—but I don’t want to live a life without you.”

She bowed her head and wiped the tears from her face. “You have to,” she said in a whisper. “I have to…
We
have to.”

“No we don’t!” I disagreed. “No one knows about this, and no one has to! Does it really matter who we are? What if we never found out? I love you, Clo. I think about you more than anyone should for a sibling. How can the way I feel be wrong if it makes me happy—if it makes you happy? How can loving the one person that means everything in my life—the one person I’ve loved since I was eight years old be wrong? You tell me that!” I pointed my finger at her, demanding that she give me a reason I could accept. I knew she couldn’t. I knew she loved me too.

“We would know, Jax. We would know the truth.”

Suddenly, driven by a second wave of drunken impulse, I dove at her, grabbed her face with my hands and kissed her passionately with complete abandon. I needed her to feel how much I loved her, cared for her, and needed her.

Numbed by raw desire, I didn’t register her resistance against my grasp. Instead I parted her lips with my tongue and explored her deeply, pressing my mouth savagely against hers. I grabbed the small of her back with one hand and pulled her body tighter against mine—against my ever-growing erection inside my jeans. I let out a primal groan when her body rubbed against my hardness.

“No! We can’t!” she screamed out.

Suddenly, I stumbled backwards. It took me a second to realize that she had pushed me away. I looked over at her, expecting her to be mad at me. But it wasn’t anger I saw on her face. It was pain.