Sidelined (24 page)

“Yep. I think it hit her hard on Monday because he went from Dad to, well, not.”

“It hit us all,” I reply, swallowing. “Okay. I’ve gotta go. Call me if you need me, all right?”

“10-4.” He hangs up.

I shake my head. Cop talk to his sister. That’s what happens when he calls me when he’s at work.

My front door slams open. “Are you fucking insane?”

“What?” I stare at Leah. A very angry Leah.

“You’re going on a date with Mitch? Fucked-your-cousin Mitch?”

“It’s not a date,” I protest, throwing my wallet into my purse. “We’re just talking, okay?”

“About what? How he can further try to convince you he messed up oh so badly and wants you back?”

I ignore her, throwing my lip balm and nail file into my purse, too.

“Mace, this is crazy. Just come home with me or something if you’re trying to prove a point.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything.” I say the words calmly, but my lungs are tightening. “Last I checked, I was single, and that means I can do whatever I want.”

“God.” Leah runs her hand through her hair. “Do you know what you’re doing? Like, have you actually thought this through? Jack is going to go fucking mental.”

I stop, my lungs filling with air as I inhale sharply. “Jack doesn’t get a say,” I eventually reply, zipping my purse.

“Of course he does!”

“Does he?” I look at her. “Does he really? Because three days ago, he came barging in here and demanded I tell him what Mitch said. Then, when I did, he spewed a whole bunch of what I now know to be bullshit about how he wants me and will fight him for me. Then, three hours later, my dad flipped and had one of his moments, and Jack walked out. He’s since ignored all my messages.” My voice cracks, but I blink hard and force strength back into it. “So, no, he doesn’t get a say. He doesn’t even get an opinion.”

Leah’s mouth opens and closes a few times.

“Stop smacking your lips together like you’re gasping for air. You aren’t a fish.”

She frowns. “Why would he do that?”

I lift my shoulders for a shrug, but when they fall, they fall really far. “I don’t know,” I say in a small voice. “Seriously, all we do is have sex and fight. It would be really great if the sex outweighed the fighting, but it doesn’t. I don’t think so, anyway. But…why did he have to come back, Lee? Why couldn’t Mitch just stay away?”

She doesn’t answer, and I continue.

“In fact, why couldn’t they both just stay away? Jack and Mitch. I was much happier with Mr. Jack Rabbit. Oh, God, he’s basically named after my vibrator. I can never use it again. I’m never going to have another orgasm again.” I slump onto my sofa with a groan.

“Wow. That was a lot of thoughts in a short space of time.”

“I’m never going to be able to use my vibrator again,” I whine again, resting my head back on the sofa.

Leah stifles a laugh. “I fucking love that, out of everything you just told me, the thing you focus on is the vibrator.”

“Well, duh.” I roll my head so I can look at her. “Mr. Jack Rabbit was the one thing in my life that was supposed to be constant, and if he died on me, I could replace him, no problem. No begging calls, texts, or talks. No emotion fluctuations or arguments. Believe me. Losing my vibrator is far more traumatizing than losing real, live men who piss me off all the time.”

“When you put it like that, there’s no arguing with your logic.”

“Of course there isn’t. Vibrators are logical. Men aren’t. Vibrators can’t talk shit back to you or walk out on you.”

“And this confirms that the last thing you need to be doing is going out with Mitch.”

“What do I need to be doing, oh great life guru?”

“I know. Come with me.”

“I fucking hate you!” I shout after Leah’s reversing car.

I cannot fucking believe she just drove me out to Long Beach and shoved me out of her car outside Jack’s place. Seriously. What fucking nerve.

How am I still friends with her meddling ass?

“M?” Jack pulls up in his driveway. “What are you doing here?”

“Going to get a cab,” I mutter, walking past his car. “Ask Leah,” I reply louder. “Then, when you find out why she just dropped me here and drove off, let me know. Or don’t, because, you know, you’ve apparently dropped off the face of the Earth.”

His car door shuts behind me. “Jesus.”

“Ain’t gonna help you now,” I retort.

Shit. How long is this driveway?

Footsteps quicken behind me. Jack spins in front of me and stops me with his hands on my forearms. “I just needed some time.”

“No. It’s cool. I get it.” I shake his arms off. “My family is pretty crazy. Me and my brother bitch like a couple of teenage girls, his girlfriend is a total man-eater, and my dad isn’t exactly bring-soup-over kind of sick. I get why you left.”

“No, you don’t.”

I step back when he reaches for me and hold my hands up. “Don’t, Jack. Okay? Don’t give me any reasons, because nine times out of ten, reasons are just excuses in disguise.”

He takes a deep breath, and the look in his eyes nearly makes me stop walking. The vulnerable, cloudy look darkening his usually bright gaze
almost
makes me stop. Instead, I turn around.

“My dad had Parkinson’s dementia.”

His words pierce me hard. “Had?”

“He died a few years ago.”

Oh, God. My runaway mouth got me into trouble again.

Slowly, I spin and look at him. “I’m sorry,” I say softly.

“So call it an excuse in disguise if you want, M, but I didn’t leave because your family is kind of insane. I left because seeing your dad so lost that he didn’t even know where he was reminded me of the months before my dad died.”

My feet move slowly until I’m standing in front of him. “One out of ten times, reasons really are reasons.”

His lips twitch. “Guess so.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, forcing myself to look at him.

“For thinking the worst? Don’t be.” He pushes some hair behind my ear. “Least I could have done was text you.”

“No.” I snatch his hand. “Maybe I should have come to talk to you before I got all crazy and did something really crazy.”

“What did you do?”

“I… uh…” I look down at our hands, focusing on the way my slender fingers fit between his much larger ones. “MighthavecalledMitch,” I mumble.

“Speak up, babe.”

“Might have called Mitch,” I sigh.

And I feel ashamed.

“For what?” Jack’s voice is controlled and calm.

“A drink.”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“Right now, now?”

“Is there any other kind of right now?” I snap my eyes up to his.

“No. Let me guess. Leah intercepted that little move?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Well, I’m here and not there after being shoved from her car, so what do you think?”

“I think you should listen to her more often.” He steps forward. “And that I should, too, because my phone is going crazy buzzing in my ass pocket, and I’m betting that it’s her.”

I drop my purse and dive my hand into his pocket. He laughs as I fish his phone out and glance at the screen. Leah.

“Bite me, bitch,” I say and hang up. I tuck the phone back into Jack’s pocket and smile innocently.

His smile widens to a grin as he looks down at me. “Baby, not gonna lie, I like it when you grope my ass like that.”

What?
“That’s it? You’re going to tell me how you like me touching your butt and not chew mine out over calling Mitch?”

Jack sighs heavily. “I’m pissed, yeah, but that’s just my…”

“Jealous streak?”

“Protective streak,” he corrects, pulling me against him again. “And perhaps a little of a jealous one in there, too.”

“But you’re not going to go all…alpha male…on me?”

“All alpha male on you?” Jack smirks. “If me telling you that your ex can fuck himself isn’t alpha male, then I’m not fucking
you
hard enough, am I, baby?”

“Completely agree,” I reply with a straight face.

Jack jolts as if he weren’t expecting that reaction, and I grin.

He slides his hand around and down to cup my ass and squeezes. “I can rectify that mistake any fucking time you want. Just say the word.”

“What word?”

“The word.”

“What is the word?”

“Jesus, babe. I don’t know. It’s just the word.”

“Well, I can’t say the word if I don’t know what the word is.”

“If you say it one more time, the word will
be
the word.”

I snap my mouth shut. Now that I know the word, I won’t say the word, because as much as I’d love him to whisk me inside and do deliciously dirty things to me on whatever surface he desires, we need to talk.

Crazy.

Oh shit. We’re still outside.

“So we are,” Jack chuckles, and I’m seriously hoping I didn’t say the thoughts from before out loud. “Oh, you did,” Jack laughs again, releasing me and going to his car. He pulls his bag out of the back seat, grabs my purse from the drive, and loops his arm over my shoulders. “Don’t worry, babe. I’m thinking about several surfaces to do deliciously dirty things to you on. Starting with the wall.”

I really gotta think before I speak. Or, rather, think without speaking. Still, it’s a fucking good thing I don’t get embarrassed too easily.

I follow Jack into his house and watch as he puts both my purse and his bag on the dining table.

“That’s how you did it, isn’t it?” I say quietly.

“What’s how I did what?”

“How my dad likes you so quickly.”

“You’re losing me, baby.”

I brush my hair from my face and meet his green eyes. “You just…got him, didn’t you? Because you’d already done it once. You already knew how flighty and temperamental he’d be. It didn’t shock you at all.”

Jack’s lips curve at one side. “I helped him remember a couple of things is all.”

“What?” I walk across the room but stop a foot or so away from him. “How?”

His smile grows. “He showed me the puzzle. Then he remembered out of nowhere exactly what he had to do with it. Finish it, glue it, frame it, wrap it. He grabbed some paper to write it down, but he forgot halfway through. I just prompted him until he could remember himself.”

I swallow hard. Of course. Dad usually hates it when we remind him of stuff because he knows he should remember. But Jack didn’t remind him. He just helped him to figure it out himself.

And in that moment, he won my father’s respect.

“Just when I think you can’t surprise me anymore.” I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him tight.

Jack’s arms circle my body and hold me equally as firmly, so much so that, when I lean back to look at him, it’s like leaning back into a wall of steel. I smile and curve my hand around his neck to his cheek, where I bring his face down to mine and kiss him softly.

And it’s a different kind of kiss. It’s a slow, easy kiss. The kind you feel from the top of your head to the tips of your toes as it tingles through your blood and across your skin. As it coils your muscles and teases your heartbeat into a quick rhythm that reverberates through your veins with each pound.

Jack feels it, too, because his fingers that are sliding into my hair are gentle but firm and his hand at my back twitches.

“You should probably call Mitch,” he whispers into my ear.

“What?” I lean back and stare at him, the haziness of the kiss dissipating with his statement.

“To reschedule your drink.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

Jack’s eyes bore into mine, steely with determination. “Baby, he promised me a fight. He wants to fight for you, he can, but you gotta let him.”

“Maybe I don’t want to.”

“Okay, then you have to let him for me.”

“I’m really, really confused right now.” I flatten my hands against Jack’s chest. “You want me to call Mitch and essentially go on a date?”