Page 86 of Family Bonds- Jarrett & Andi

“I thought she might be the one for me and when Luke died I just focused on you. She was jealous.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” she said, pushing back.

“I’m trying to come clean with you as best as I can.”

Which was going a long way with her. “Why was she jealous? She didn’t thinkthere was something goingon with us, did she? Romantically?”

“You don’t have to sound so appalled,” Jack said. “I’m only nine years older than you.”

She smiled. “And like an uncle,” she said. “Or a cousin.”

“I told Sarah that. She didn’t believe me. I think the whole lifestyle got to her. She wasn’t strong enough for it. It hasn’t been worth even trying again. I’ve seen and done too much to put anyone through it.”

“Don’t play the martyr. You could have relationships. You could retire. You could go to another division of law enforcement for a steadier life. You like the thrill of your job.”

“It’s all I’ve got,” Jack said.

“Just like my father,” she said. “I’d heard it enough in my life. Or early on from my mother.”

“I didn’t know your mother, and your father never talked about her,” Jack said.

“Not much to say. I think my mother liked the thrill of it too and she ended up pregnant. My father always wanted to do the right thing and they got married. But my mother wanted what she did and it wasn’t a family or being married to a guy that didn’t pay attention to her. She left.”

It was hard for Andi to understand that and she often wondered if she was to blame.

But her father spent a lot of her life telling her it wasn’t her fault and that it all fell on his shoulders.

Luke Huntington dedicated years trying to make it up to his only daughter. She was glad they had as close of a relationship as they’d had. She just wished she’d known what was going on in her father’s life. That she could have maybe talked him out of doing what he had.

“It happens,” Jack said. “Why I’m still single. I can pick up and move when I want.”

“There is no reason for you to transfer to Boston,” she said.

“There is. I’m going to look into it. I see what is going on with you and Jarrett. He’d do anything for you. See, that’s the thing. I never felt that way toward Sarah. Toward any woman and that is on me.”

“I guess my father must not have either,” she said.

“Don’t be sad. Don’t think about it. Be happy you found someone you feel that way towards and he does for you too. I can see it. Trust me.”

“Are you defending him?” she asked. This was a turnabout in her eyes.

“I’m just saying that he means well. He’ll watch out for you. It doesn’t mean I still can’t be around, but he and his brother have a good handle on things. They know what they need to know.”

“And you aren’t going to share that with me, are you?”

“Do you want to know?” Jack asked. “Sometimes I think you like to be in the dark. That it’s easier.”

She didn’t need that pointed out. It was true and she had to live with the guilt too.

“If you don’t think I need to know, then I guess not. But I do want to know, do you think my father purposely got you sick that night so that you wouldn’t be around?”

“I have no facts on that,” Jack said.

“I don’t want facts. I want your opinion.”

She could see he didn’t want to answer. “I do think it but have no proof. We both knew your father in different contexts.”

“But he was still stubborn,” she said, sniffling. “There was no talking him out of things if he was set on them.”

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