Page 37 of Could Have Been Us
“No, no we don’t,” he says and gets to his feet. “I haven’t seen that little girl since the day I put her in their arms. I’ve lived and wondered and fucking acted as though this never happened. I did it because I knew we were doing what we had to.”
“And now? Now she needs us!” I remind him. “She needs someone because she lost her mother and her father is falling apart.”
Jack’s gaze turns to me. “And you’re going to, what? Sweep in and be the mother she needs? Do you hear yourself, Stella? She doesn’t know you.”
I fight back the tears and hold on to my anger. “No, but we aren’t those people. The ones who let others suffer because we’re afraid.”
“Afraid,” he says through a laugh. “I’m past afraid. I’m fucking terrified. Do you understand what we’ve done? Truly. How all of this unravels? Do you get that not only did I sleep with Grayson’s sister on her eighteenth fucking birthday but I also knocked her up?”
“I was there for it all, in case you forgot. I remember how all of it was.”
I remember the way he looked at me that night. Like I wasn’t a little girl, but a woman. I remember how he stood there, watching me as I walked to him, placed my hand on his chest, and asked him to kiss me.
There isn’t a single moment of that night that I don’t remember. The two of us at the inn, escaping the party that I didn’t want to be at.
But Jack was there, and I would go anywhere he was.
The feel of his hands on my skin as he pushed the straps of my dress down to kiss me is something I’ll never forget.
“What are you doing out here?” Jack asked, and I gasped, clutching my hand to my throat.
“Jack, you scared me.”
He smiled. “It’s your birthday party, and you’re hiding?”
I looked back out at the tree line, feeling sad and alone. “It’s quiet out here, and I don’t really want to be at a party with my parents’ friends.”
I asked for a night with friends. One where we could dance, laugh, and enjoy the fact that Oliver and I turned eighteen. My mother had other ideas and threw me something akin to a coming-out party or whatever she called it.
Instead of my friends, it was all high-society people who had big money and wore far too much perfume.
Oliver was off with my brothers, doing God knows what in the woods as some sort of Parkerson boys birthday tradition. I hated them for leaving me behind.
“Mind if I join you?”
I swallowed deeply and used all the tricks I had acquired to appear indifferent. “If you want.”
Jack sat on the bench next to me and handed me his wine glass. “Want some?”
“Look at you, corrupting your best friend’s little sister.”
“I have a feeling that ship sailed.”
I laughed and took a sip.
My lips just touched where Jack’s had been.
I might die.
Relax, Stella, keep it together, you’re an adult now and starting college soon. Play it cool.
“So, how is college?” I asked.
“Good. Ready to start my master’s program.”
I nodded. “Yeah, Gray told us he’s staying in Charlotte.”
As though he didn’t know that . . .
