Page 59 of The Match

“So, truth or dare?” Would he quit talking like that? In that deep, sexy, husky tone that’s dripping with innuendos?

“No.” I tug on the slow side of the rope. “Just the truth game. It goes like this: one of us asks a question, and the other answers truthfully.”

He nods thoughtfully. “Yeah. So, just basically talking, then? I don’t think you can call it a game if one of us isn’t daring the other to take off their clothes and jump in the pool if we don’t want to answer the question.”

I gasp and give him a big poke in the side again. “You wouldn’t! I thought you were a gentleman.”

He chuckles and grips my legs as he squirms away from my tickling pokes. “No, you said I was a gentleman, but I never confirmed it. I would definitely enjoy daring you to skinny dip.”

“But you did say you wanted to take this whole thing slow.”

“Want? No. Will? Yes.” Why am I let down by that? I want to smack myself with a ruler. Behave, Evie.

Except now Jake is massaging my feet and I am putty in his hands. In fact, I’d really like for those hands to climb higher over my legs. For him to take me up to his room. To forget brakes even exist, because if he’s this good at a foot massage imagine all the possibilities! I think I’m half in love with him already.

“Are you feeling okay? Need a heating pad or anything?”

Never mind. It’s full-on love.

“I’m okay, thanks.” What I really want is to get inside Jake’s head and learn everything I can about him. I think the idea of the truth game freaked him out a little, and that’s why he was sidestepping it with a joke. But guess what? I like to wave at the relationship no-no stop signs as I’m speeding by them. “First question: Why did you get divorced?”

He chokes on a laugh. “Wow. You didn’t waste any time with that one.”

“I like to live on the dangerous side.”

Jake takes in a full breath and lets it out. “Can I just take off my clothes and jump in the pool instead?”

Not picturing that. Not picturing that. Not picturing that. Shoot. I pictured it. And yep. I’m debating letting him do it now. “No. You’ve gotta answer.”

He winces and then settles back against the swing, busying himself while he talks by rubbing his hand up and down my leg. Not distracting at all. “All right, here it is. I didn’t really date in high school. I was more focused on my grades and sports than girls. My mom likes to say it was because I was a really great kid—but actually, it was because I didn’t think any of the girls in my grade were hot.”

I laugh and give him ten points for honesty.

“When I graduated and started college, I met this really vibrant woman. She was”—Jake takes on a distant look that wrenches jealousy from my heart, but I decide to chill—“very pretty and had a sort of larger-than-life attitude. She was so charming and fun, and I fell for her fast and hard. I proposed after only a month of dating, and she said yes. I really thought it was love at first sight, but I’ve since learned that it was more attraction at first sight and I was too inexperienced to understand the difference. We set the wedding date for six months after I proposed, and she was already two months pregnant with Sam on our wedding day.”

“Whoa.” My smile is heavy. “That’s a lot of change to go through in college.”

“Yeah. It was intense. But somehow we made those first few years work. Even had some great moments. We had that newlywed bliss phase where it felt like nothing could stop us. And then I graduated from college, and Natalie, Sam, and I moved to Texas so I could work at a big-box architecture firm. Natalie decided to drop out of school right after she had Sam, so she never finished her business degree. After about five years of marriage, things started to get really rocky. I decided that I wanted to branch out and open my own firm—and also that I missed my family and wanted to be closer to them.

“We came back here to Charleston, and money was really tight for the first two years of getting my firm off the ground. Natalie grew restless, so she started spending more and more time at the gym and with new friends. One of those friends introduced her to an improv club, and that’s when I learned she had apparently wanted to be an actress her whole life and had put aside the dream to have Sam. That was news to me, and before I knew it, we were never seeing each other anymore. Natalie would still spend time with Sam, but not much. She was always gone and doing things with friends—and later I learned that it wasn’t so much a friend as someone she was cheating on me with.

“Before I realized that, though, I felt guilty, thinking that maybe Natalie was so restless because she gave up her dreams to stay home with our daughter while I went after mine, so I started taking over the brunt of the parenting responsibilities.

“Things just got worse, and she became more and more distant. . . . It was like she had mentally made her decision but was still living with us anyway. Finally, two years ago, she told me that she’d met someone else who could give her the life I couldn’t, and she was moving to Hollywood with him to go after her acting career.” Jake finally looks at me. “But it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t give her the life she wants. She’s had three serious relationships since our divorce.” He puts bunny ears around the word serious.

“Jake. I’m so sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. I imagine there’s no words that can fully soothe the ache of someone you loved leaving you. “You and Sam deserve better than that.”

He shrugs. “Sam does, for sure.”

I take his hand in mine. “You do too.”

His hand is tense, his body radiating discomfort. “I’m not so sure, Evie. I wasn’t perfect. Sometimes I wonder if I had hit the brakes early on with her, taken it slow and given her time to become who she wanted to be, maybe things would have been different.” I’m beginning to see why he’s so adamant we don’t rush things. “As much as I hate her for her choices sometimes . . . I understand her need to be happy away from me. To have her own life. But I’ll never understand her choice to exclude Sam from her life too. I mean, she makes money and has a great apartment in California that she’s never once invited Sam to.”

I can’t understand it either. Sam isn’t even my daughter—technically isn’t anything to me besides a sweet little girl I helped match with one of my dogs, as well as the daughter of the man I’m sorta-kinda dating. But already she’s carved out a special corner of my heart. If I have to say goodbye to this family in the future, it’s going to hurt like hell.

“Like you said . . . it’s one thing for Natalie to realize her path needed to move away from you. But there’s no excuse for abandoning her daughter, especially during one of the most difficult times in Sam’s life. And I know you want to beat yourself up a thousand different ways for how you could have been better to Natalie—and maybe you really could have done more to support her early on—”

“Don’t pull your punches.”

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