Page 43 of The Love Rematch
“I’m serious, honey. She’ll never know if you don’t tell her. And you’ll never know either.”
“Never know what?”
“How she’d respond.”
Well, if his venture into her room the other night was any indication, she’d respond by borrowing her father’s Glock 22. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
His mom doesn’t know all the details. She doesn’t know half of them. If she did, she’d be ashamed. So he gives her the one excuse she might understand. “You do remember it’s my job to get her engaged in five weeks?”
“Please. These showmances never work out.”
“Showmances? Since when do you know the termshowmances?”
“Stop changing the subject.”
“I’m not, Mom. My job is important to me.”
“Jacob.”
He rolls his eyes at her tone.
“What’s really holding you back?”
“Nothing.”
Denial permeates the word. She must hear it. A few moments of silence pass. His mother is waiting for an answer he doesn’t know how to give.
Finally, she relents.
Or so he thinks as she inhales deeply, the sound of rushing air filling his ear. But when she speaks, it’s anything but a surrender.
“You’re not your father, Jacob.”
She’s said this before. She’s said it a hundred times. But no matter how many times he hears it, he never quite believes it. He spent one too many nights listening to his father’s rants, his mother’s cries, theslapof a hard palm against a soft cheek, and one too many mornings being told he was the spitting image of his dear old dad. Everyone in town said it. Everyone saw it. Those words carve deep. It’s a damage not easily undone. Hell, he moved all the way to Los Angeles and changed his name to Jackson in honor of his maternal grandfather, Jack Moore, and he still can’t seem to step out of the man’s shadow.
He doesn’t fault his mom. He knows the toll abuse can take. He understands the charisma his father held. There was a time Jake saw him as a hero, too. And the bastard was the police chief. Anywhere she went, he would have followed.
Same as Jake had to leave, his mother had to stay.
He gets it.
But he doesn’t know how to say any of that without crushing her.
“I’ve got to go, Mom,” he mutters instead, the line thick with tension.
She sighs. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
The silence in his room is suffocating. It rings in his ears, louder and louder, until he finally pulls himself away from the window. The droning doesn’t stop. It follows him through the night, into the morning, and all the way to the cocktail party that evening. The room is full of people. Noise bounces off the walls. Still, the buzz grows until he realizes it’s not from the quiet. It’s from the pressure of everything left unsaid.
Soon, Emily stands at the front of the room. The men are lined up, waiting to be called. Jake stands off to the side behind Fred’s camera. The list of suitors fills his clipboard. He mutters the names to the director so he knows where to aim his lens, whose reactions to capture. Down the line they move, until there’s only one name left.
“Ja—”
Emily stops, clears her throat. Suddenly, Jake imagines himself somewhere else. In his suit. In the line. Waiting like all the other men. Waiting. Waiting. Then—
