The Perfect Game (27 page)

Of course, Melissa knew. “Jesus, Cassie, you look like hell. When’s the last time you’ve eaten something other than toast? Or brushed your hair?” 

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” My voice was hollow, void of emotion. 

“You need to eat, okay?” Melissa cocked her head to the side, her expression soft.

“I’m not hungry.” 

“Which is exactly why you need to eat something,” she responded, which made no sense to me at all. 

Jack’s name suddenly appeared on my cell phone. My body started to shake as my gaze swung around to meet Melissa’s. 

“Jack?” she asked, her tone surprised. I nodded. “Don’t answer. Unless you want to. No, you shouldn’t.” Melissa fought with herself as I pressed
D
ecline
, sending his call to voice mail.

He’d stopped leaving voice mail messages around the same time he stopped texting. So I jerked my head back in surprise when the
O
ne new voice mail
notification appeared on my screen. 

I hesitated before pressing Send, tears already filling in my eyes.

His voice mail was short and to the point. “I know you hate me and never want to talk to me again, but I really need to tell you something.” He exhaled before whispering, “Kitten, please. I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important.” Then he hung up.

I still loved him no matter how hard I tried to pretend like I didn’t.

“What did he say?” Melissa asked.

“He asked me to call him. Said he had something he needs to tell me. As if I can take any more of Jack’s news.” I shook my head, the tears no longer hesitating to fall.

“Well, shit. I wonder if Dean knows. Want to call him for the heads-up first?” she suggested.

“That’s actually brilliant, but I don’t think so. I’ll just call him and I’ll be right back.” I gave her a half smile before heading into my bedroom and closing the door behind me.

I scrolled through the missed calls list on my phone and pressed on his name before touching the Send button.

“You called,” he said as he answered.

“You said it was important.”

“I’m really sorry, but I wanted you to hear this from me.” Jack’s voice was so flat it sounded robotic.

I couldn’t take much more of this. My heart was so fractured already. “What is it now, Jack?”

“I asked Chrystle to marry me.” He choked on the words and I almost swallowed my tongue.

“You
what
? You’re kidding, right?” I instinctively looked at the calendar on my wall to make sure it wasn’t April first.

“It’s the right thing to do.”

I let out the biggest, loudest, most sarcastic
ha
!
I could manage. “The right thing to do? How is marrying someone you don’t even know the right thing to do?” My head spun as a dizzy feeling overwhelmed me. 

“I won’t be like my parents.” His voice faltered. “I have to be there for my kid.”

My voice softened when I heard his pain. “Jack, you’ll never be like your parents. But you don’t have to marry some stranger to prove that.” My lungs felt like they stopped functioning, and I forced myself to suck in a breath.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he repeated.

“You already said that.” I started wondering who he was trying to convince. “Jack, no kid should grow up with two parents who don’t love each other, let alone even know each other. This isn’t right!”

“I’m sorry, Cass. I’m sorry I’m such a fuck-up.” He sniffed.

“You’re not a fuck-up, Jack. But please, don’t do this.” I begged for him to see reason. “It’s one thing to have a kid with someone, but it’s another thing to
marry
them.”

“I already asked her,” he admitted reluctantly.

“What? Jack, no,” I said as the tears spilled. Breaking up was hard enough to deal with, but marrying someone else was truly putting the final nail in the coffin of
us
.  “Have you talked to Marc and Ryan?” I asked through my desperation, assuming his agents would have the ability to talk logic into his clearly illogical mind.

“I have.”

“And?” I practically shouted. “What did they say? I’m sure they told you not to do this.”

“They pretty much said exactly that.”

“Jack. If everyone is telling you the same thing,” my breath hitched, “we can’t all be wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter. I refuse to continue the fucked-up cycle my parents started. We’re getting married in two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” I could barely say the words aloud.

“Chrystle doesn’t want to be showing in the wedding pictures.”

I hated her. Right when he made that statement, I felt pure hatred toward this strange girl. How was some random chick getting to marry the one guy I’d loved in my entire life? 

“Kitten?”

“Don’t…call me that,” I said, my breath shaking.

“Cassie.” His voice wavered. “I never meant for this to happen. I never imagined marrying someone who wasn’t you.”

Resentment replaced the sadness coursing
throughout my body. “How is that supposed to make me feel? Huh? You can
’
t say that
to me
! It
’
s not fair, Jack. I can barely get through the day without breaking down.”

“I’m sorry, Cassie, but you’re not the only one hurting here. You’re not the only one who has to try to make it through each day. I lost us too, ya know?”

I felt the breath I
was holding
escape
with a
whoosh
as I struggled for air. “
I don’t know how
to get over you
.”

“I’ll never get over you.” 

“Then don’t do this. Jack, please don’t marry her,” I pleaded, my voice breaking.

“I have to.”

“You don’t have to!” I screamed into the phone and he didn’t respond. 

Melissa barged into my room after hearing my raised voice, her face contorted in confusion and sympathy. I waved her over, not wanting her to leave, so she positioned herself next to me on the bed with her back leaning up against the wall. 

“Do you still love me?” I asked him, squeezing my eyes shut.

“I’ll love you until the day I stop breathing,” he answered, his voice cracking.

“This isn’t how our story was supposed to go, Jack. We weren’t supposed to end like this.”

“You think I don’t know that? Our story wasn’t supposed to end at all.” 

“I guess we’re really over.” I tried to accept the finality of it all.

“If I had the power to take it all back, I would. I’d give anything to undo this.” 

I broke down. I bawled uncontrollably into the phone, my misfortune spilling out in teardrop form. 

“Please don’t cry, Kitten.” His voice shook.

“Don’t call me that any more. You don’t get to call me that any more.” I could barely speak for sobbing. 

“You’re right. I should probably go.”

“Good…bye, Jack,” I moaned before pressing End, not waiting to hear another word. I dropped my head into my hands, my tears soaking the comforter.

“What was that? What’s happening, Cassie?” 

“He’s getting married.” I could barely choke the words out.

“He’s doing
what
?” she shouted, her face angry. “Why?!!”

“He says it’s the right thing to do.”

“I’m calling Dean.” Melissa shot up from my bed.

“What? No! Why?”

“Because someone has to talk some sense into that idiot and it can’t be you!” She stomped out of my room.

My world went black and the next thing I knew, Dean was sitting at the foot of my bed, clearly uncomfortable with the way I carried on. Even with my face buried in my pillow, my muffled wails were loud enough to wake the dead. He tried to comfort me by patting my calves, and I turned my head to look at him before swatting his hands away. 

“Say something, Dean,” Melissa insisted, jabbing at his shoulder.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“Make her feel better. Tell her you talked to Jack. Something!” Her voice sounded so frantic.

I jerked my head up at the mention of his name. “You talked to Jack?” I choked out, my chest heaving.

“Yeah.” He frowned.

“And?” 

“He’s completely irrational. I can’t talk any sense into him at all,” he admitted, his voice frustrated.

“What about his agents? I mean, what good are they if let him go through with this?”

“They tried, trust me. I guess I should be thankful they got him to agree to a pre-nup,” he said and lifted one shoulder.

“They did? That’s good.” I sniffed.

“They tried to get him to wait. They told him to get confirmation that the baby was his, but you know Jack,” he said with a huff.

I nodded with understanding before allowing my head to fall back into my pillow. 

“I’m sorry, sis. I tried to tell him this was wrong. I tried to talk him out of it, but he won’t listen. He’s so stubborn and he’s convinced himself that what he’s doing is right.” He tugged at his brown hair, his eyes closing.

“Gran even tried to talk to him,” he whispered, his eyes still tight.

“What? What’d she say?”

“She told him that it doesn’t take becoming someone’s husband to become a good dad. She told him that one has nothing to do with the other. That being a dad was a choice. That anyone could father a child, but a real man
chooses
to be a dad. She told him that being a husband was something that should be reserved for the person you truly want to call your wife.”

“Gran’s good.” I couldn’t hold back a slight smile, awed at Gran’s wisdom.

“What’d he say to that?” Melissa chimed in.

“He wouldn’t listen to her, either.” Dean’s head shook and my smile faded. “He told her that his child wouldn’t grow up in a broken home. That sometimes you have to be unselfish and compromise even if it’s not what you want because it’s not about you anymore.” 

“There’s no getting through to him. How are they doing?” I asked, referring to Gran and Gramps.

“They’re both really sad. They’re worried for him. And they’re worried about you.” The skin around his eyes pulled tight with his stress. 

I nodded, no words necessary. 

“He loves you, Cassie. He doesn’t give a shit about this girl, he’s just so
fucked
messed
up from our parents that he can’t see reason.”

“I feel like you wouldn’t do this though, and you both grew up in the same house.” Melissa folded her arms across her stomach.

“Yeah, but he was older so he remembers things that I don’t. He was the one who had to hold it together while our mom fell apart. He remembers the day our dad didn’t come home. Honestly, he really lost it when Mom left. He was never the same after that and he’s been fighting his demons ever since.”

Dean shrugged, picking at the fabric of his shorts. “I never thought he’d let anyone in. We would fight like crazy about it until I realized there was no changing him. I don’t think it’s that he didn’t want someone to love him—he just didn’t want to risk loving them back.”

He paused, exhaling through his nose. “Then you showed up and everything changed. You changed him.”

“He changed me too.” 

“I’ll say,” Melissa added, her arms dropping to her side. “She never let anyone in either. I knew the night she saw Jack that something was different.” Her blue eyes pierced into mine. “I could literally see it. Watching the two of you interact, it was like watching fireworks light up the night sky. You
two
burn brighter when you’re together.”

“Even fireworks burn out,” I said, my voice solemn.  

SEVENTEEN

The next few days were hell as the local newspapers and websites focused on the
“Upcoming Nuptials of Our Very Own Jack Carter!” and “Hometown Hero Marrying Southern Sweetie!”
I couldn’t escape the news. No matter what I did or where I went, his one night of screwing up was always right there,
screaming
in my face. 

I stopped checking e-mails the day an anonymous person sent me a link that led to a picture of myself underneath a caption that read, “The girl Jack left behind. Why he’s marrying someone else.” 

And I closed my Facebook account the moment after I logged in to see over a hundred and fifty messages from my so-called “friends,” asking me if everything they were reading online was true or not. 

If I didn’t rely on my cell phone to communicate with my job and my parents, I would have shut it off as well. The texts alone were a nightmare. Each time one beeped, my heart jumped. Part of me wanted the messages to be from Jack, wanting to know how much he hurt, how sorry he was, and how he wished it had never happened. But the other part of me could barely stomach it. His words were like knives in a heart already overflowing with stab wounds.