“It was coming for a long time, Belle. He’d been pushing for it for years. It was what he wanted and, finally, I gave it to him.”
“You didn’t want to,” she made a guess and his hand twisted again, his fingers lacing with hers, he moved their hands to rest on his hard thigh.
“No, I didn’t want to,” he agreed.
“I don’t know if Joy is okay with it. Gram won’t let us talk to her about it,” Belle informed him.
“She’s not okay with it but she’s lived with it all our lives. She’ll cope,” Jack replied.
Belle turned her head to look at him and he lifted his chin from where he’d been resting it on her shoulder so he could meet her eyes.
“He’s been that way all your life?”
Jack nodded and said, “Not that bad but he’s always been competitive. When Dad got sick, it changed, degenerated, got compulsive and became all constant.” He stopped and there was something so sad, so resigned in the tone of his voice that Belle had the urge to comfort him. To touch her lips to his or turn in his arms and give him a fierce hug.
Or both.
She did not do either, of course.
Instead she whispered, “I’m sorry. You said you didn’t want to talk about it.” She looked away and stated firmly, “We’ll stop talking about it.”
“We have to talk about something else,” he told her and the way he said that made her brace. And her bracing made her realise she’d relaxed into his arms and had been resting her weight into his like it was the most natural thing in the world.
This made her brace even more.
“Maybe we can just watch the sea?” she suggested, terrified that he was going to bring something up she didn’t want to talk about. Like agreeing a visitation schedule after the baby was born. Like discussing child support payments. Like a number things that didn’t go along with sitting in his arms and watching the sea.
“No, this needs to be said.”
She held her breath a moment then sighed.
“Okay,” she relented and his hand gave hers a squeeze.
“We need to talk about what happened in the stables.”
She didn’t know which time they were in the stables that he wanted to talk about. The first time, which was marvellous and she didn’t want to talk about it. Or the second time which was terrible yet, also, in the end, marvellous, and she didn’t want to talk about that either.
Nevertheless, talking about either time was better than child support or visitation schedules.
“What about it?” Belle asked.
“I need to apologise.”
Her head twisted around as his turned and she looked into his eyes.
“Apologise?” she asked, confused.
“For carrying you down the ladder.” She felt her lips part in surprise as he kept speaking. “I was angry at you for avoiding me. I had residual anger at you for keeping the pregnancy from me. And I had a number of things on my mind, many of them needing my attention. This made me impatient. But none of that excused what I did.”
“Jack –” she whispered but he interrupted her and now his voice was fierce.
“I frightened you. The look on your face, I’ll never f**king forget it.”
“Jack –” she tried to cut in again and failed.
His hand in hers moved to wrap around her body, taking hers with it and he gave her a squeeze before he stated, his voice low and rumbly, “It won’t ever happen again.”
“Jack –” she said yet again and yet again he kept talking.