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“Hey, man,” Jason answered after two rings. “What’s up? Lonely already?”
I cut right to the chase. “Can you come over? I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”
“Oh, sure, yeah,” Jason replied, his tone taking on a tinge of concern. “I’ll be right there.”
“Thanks.” I hung up and finished up my drink in two swallows. I got up and went to pour myself another, as well as one for Jason, then went out to go wait for him in the living room. Thankfully, Jason was prompt, and it took him less than twenty minutes to arrive. I went to let him in when he rang the doorbell.
“Thanks for coming,” I said, letting Jason inside.
“No problem.” Jason nodded, his brow furrowed. “You said it was important.”
“Yeah, it is. This way.”
I led Jason into the living room and handed him the drink I’d prepared. We sat in a matching pair of cushioned chairs arranged in front of a large fireplace that dominated the far wall of the room.
“So, what’s up?” Jason asked after several moments of tense silence.
I took another long drink before I said, “I need you to tell me more about Sam and her kid. Henry, was it?”
Jason frowned in confusion but nodded. “Yeah, Henry. What do you want to know about him?”
“Has Samantha ever said who his father is?”
Jason blinked, clearly caught off guard by the question. “No. She says it was just some guy she hooked up with. The jerk took off afterward, and she doesn’t like to talk about him.”
I released a long breath and hesitated before asking, “Do you have any idea who he might be?”
“No, not a clue,” Jason replied, furrowing his brow as though in suspicion. “I would love to know who the bastard is, though. I’d make him pay for leaving Sam like that. Worthless piece of shit.”
I flinched, but what did I expect? Of course he would be furious. If I were in his shoes, I’d be out for blood as well. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, poking at this, but I had to know more. I couldn’t believe Sam actually hooked up with someone else after me. Maybe that was just me being selfish, but if her kid was mine, I needed to know. I had a right to know.
“Why are you so interested in Henry?” Jason asked, narrowing his eyes. “You haven’t asked about Sam once in the past seven years, and now, you’re drilling me about her son? Gotta say, man, I’m not loving this.”
I swallowed, anxiety bubbling in my stomach. There was a part of me that thought I should act dumb and shrug it off. Excuse my questions as mere curiosity.
But deep down, I knew I needed to be honest with him. I’d already betrayed him enough, and he didn’t even know it. He was going to hate me, I knew he would, but he’d be more than justified in his anger. I deserved nothing less. If I came clean and told him what I did, there might be a chance for him to forgive me someday. There was absolutely no possibility of that happening if I lied to him now, however.
“Jason, there’s something I need to tell you,” I began in a low tone. “Something I’ve been keeping from you for a while now.”
His whole body went rigid, and tension thickened the air in an instant. His jaw clenched, and I could see that he was barely holding onto his self-control as he stared at me.
“What did you do?” he demanded to know in a soft, dangerous voice. “Tell me.”
I finished my drink and set the glass down before hesitantly saying, “The night of Sam’s eighteenth birthday…at her party…she and I went off into the woods together. She told me she wanted a kiss for her birthday. It was only supposed to be a kiss, nothing more, but…but it was more, Jason. Much, much more.”
Jason didn’t say anything for several moments. He just stared at me in silence, and I couldn’t quite figure out what he was thinking, though I had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t anything good. He was probably trying to figure how he wanted to display my body after he finished beating me to death.
Finally, he growled, “You slept with my sister?”
I blew out a breath and nodded. “Yeah. I did.”
He lunged at me before I realized he’d moved. One moment, he was sitting in his chair, and the next, his fist was slamming into my cheek so hard that I went tumbling out of my seat to the floor.
“You bastard!” he bellowed. “I’ll kill you for this!”
I managed to jump to my feet before he tackled me, and I threw up my hands as if I were warding off a wild animal.
“Take it easy!” I snapped, my jaw singing with pain. “Let’s talk about this like adults, all right? We don’t need to fight.”
