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“You’re stupid and stubborn. I’ll just talk to you later. Call Gran soon, or else I’m going to tell her myself,” I threatened before hanging up. It was an empty threat and he knew it, but it still felt good to say.
I sat motionless on my bed, processing everything Jack had said about Cassie. The fact that he’d been texting her blew my mind. For a moment I considered reaching out to Melissa, but wasn’t sure what the hell to say. How could anything I did or said make a bit of difference? This was all new territory for me, and all I knew was how awful all of us felt because of it.
Frustrated, I tossed my phone on my bedside table and hoped like hell that Jack would call Gran and Gramps soon. I needed to be able to talk to someone else about this. Someone who wouldn’t want to cut off Jack’s balls and hang them from a rearview mirror; someone who would be more concerned with the decisions he was making for his future than for what he’d done to Cassie.
It was a brutal truth, but it was true all the same. When it came down to who I cared about more, my ball was in my brother’s court.
• • •
When I saw Cassie at school the next day, I noticed that she seemed to be stuck in Heartbreak Central; her hair was a mess and her eyes were swollen and red. She didn’t look better than the last time I’d seen her. In fact, she might actually have looked worse.
Worry for her prompted me to fire off a quick text to my brother.
Dean: You’re not still texting her, are you?
Jack: No. You told me not to. Why?
Dean: No reason. She just looks really sad, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t because of anything you were saying or doing.
Jack: She looks sad?
Dean: She always looks sad.
Jack: Fuck. Don’t tell me any more. I can’t take it. My heart literally can’t take hearing that. It hurts so fucking bad. I hate what I’ve done.
I stared at his words for a moment. I had nothing to say in return that hadn’t already been said, so I didn’t say anything. As long as Gran and Gramps didn’t know about Jack, I felt like I was walking on eggshells, waiting for the big explosion that was bound to happen.
• • •
Sitting at the computer at the sports agency the next afternoon, I was looking up clips about local ball players around the state when my cell phone vibrated. Normally I would ignore any calls I got while at work, but it was Jack.
“Can I answer my phone if it’s Jack?” I asked Marc, who was busy going over some legal contracts.
“Of course. Tell that dickhead we said hello,” he said with a laugh.
“I’m at work. What’s up?” I said when I picked up.
“Ah. At Marc and Ryan’s?”
“Yeah. Everything okay?”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve asked Chrystle to marry me.”
“You what?” I shouted as I shoved my chair out from under me and stood up. Marc looked up and squinted at me in confusion as I mouthed Get over here! to him, my eyes wide. “You are not marrying this girl!” I held the phone away from my ear a little so Marc could hear the conversation when he rushed to my side. “You don’t even know if the damn baby is yours, Jack!”
“I know, but she said after it’s born we can get a DNA test. She has no issues or problems with that. Hell, she keeps encouraging it. Tell me why she’d act like that if she didn’t think the baby was mine?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I don’t know. I have no idea,” I said. And I didn’t.
“It’s the right thing to do. You understand that, right? We came from a broken family, and then we had no family. I don’t want my kid to grow up in a broken home. I want him to have everything we never did. I want him to have a mom and a dad who live together and are there for him.”
Sick of hearing Jack’s rationalizations, I shoved the phone at Marc and told him to talk some sense into his client.
“Hey, Jack, it’s Marc. What’s going on? I thought you had that hot little girlfriend here in town?” Marc’s tone was light, but it was about to be anything but as Jack talked his ear off, filling him in.
I watched as Marc’s expression shifted. First, his jaw dropped as he listened, and then he clenched his teeth as he paced the office with the phone to his ear.
A sick feeling of relief came over me then, which was totally selfish. Finally, I wasn’t alone in this mess with Jack, and had someone else who could share the burden of worry.
