a brush off, make the inevitable excuse. She believed what we’d done had been a mistake, and that cut deep, deeper than it should.
What the hell was I doing, anyway?
I pulled out my ear buds blaring Wu-Tang’s “C.R.E.A.M.”, another one of Rose’s rap suggestions, and threw my mallet down with a curse.
“Jack?”
I jerked my head up, hearing Rose’s voice, but saw Dallas instead. It hadn’t struck me how alike they sounded.
“Hi,” I said, unable to mask my temperament.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” I replied with a smile as I noticed Annabelle take a step toward me. “I’m dirty, baby girl.”
“So is she,” Dallas encouraged as she led her daughter my way. All my anger and worry dispersed as Annabelle took an unsure step without her mother’s help and landed in my waiting arms. I didn’t have much experience with kids until I met Dallas’s children, and yet somehow, it felt natural as Anna looked up at me with a one-toothed smile. She was the most beautiful little girl I’d ever seen. My chest squeezed as she began to talk to me brokenly.
“It’s unreal, she’s been through four sitters and came close to hating her grandparents, and with you, it’s just so natural,” Dallas said, amazed.
“Maybe she’s just opening up a bit?” I said, bouncing her in my lap.
“Sometimes a girl just needs the right guy to get her to do it.” I froze with Annabelle in my lap, knowing our conversation had moved into dangerous territory.
Dallas sensed my hesitation and reached for Anna. I kissed her cheek and breathed in her scent before I let her go. Anna protested and held her arms back out for me as I started to put my tools back into my box. I had finished the details of the lobby. I only had a few more projects left before I ran out of excuses to stay.
“I’m leaving soon.”
Dallas simply nodded as she held her daughter close. “She’s just... Rose is... Jack, if you’ll be patient—”
“I don’t think that’s the problem,” I said wearily. Unable to keep my thoughts to myself, I asked the question that had been weighing on my mind since the minute I met her.
“What’s she afraid of?”
Dallas looked down at me with a mix of both sympathy and warning. “You.”
I walked out onto the porch, my morning coffee in hand, still in the yoga pants and Austin t-shirt I’d tossed on before I’d turned in the night before. My hair was disgustingly piled on top of my head, and I gave zero shits as I scanned the land in front of me. I’d hidden at my mother’s for the past two days, terrified to face Jack.
He’d texted me twice each morning to tell me I was beautiful and called once, to which I hadn’t responded. His text hadn’t come this morning, which stung in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I hated myself for my behavior, but even more so, I hated the reaction I had to what we’d shared. There never would be a better man to take that Band-Aid away. Though this one hadn’t been painless, at least not in the aftermath, the guilt... the guilt was too much to bear. I sipped my coffee, disgusted with myself.
Dallas had told me when I confessed to her that I’d been intimate with Jack that I’d created this hurdle in my own mind, and that only I could jump over it. I knew she was right. I knew somehow I’d martyred my future romantic life in the ridiculous notion that I could keep Grant close by keeping a man’s affections and attention at bay.
But the other half of me, the one that truly wanted to live again, knew the stupidity of it. I was in an all-out internal struggle to break free. Suddenly aware I wasn’t alone, I looked to see Jack watching me closely from the foot of the porch. The only thing that startled me was just how breathtaking he was to look at.
“Hi,” I offered pathetically.
He took the steps two at a time and was in front of me, clear irritation and confusion covering his face. He hadn’t shaved in the days since I’d last seen him and it was irresistibly sexy. I held my coffee out to him, but he shook his head.
“I could make you a cup,” I offered, pointing my mug toward my open bedroom door.
Ignoring my offer, he reached out, and I flinched as he pulled the clip from my hair so it fell around my shoulders