Page 109 of Once Upon A Small Town Secret
“What do you feel for her?” he asks, bluntly. “Is this some passing thing because my sister grew up pretty?”
“I don’t know what to call it yet,” I answer simply. “I know it’s not nothing. I know I want her safe, and I want her happy, and I want to be worthy of both.”
“And the kid?” he says. “Don’t give me a slogan.”
“I won’t.” I look out at the yard so I don’t look away from him. “I’ll put my time where my mouth is. Money where it needs to be. Hands where they’re useful. I will be there. If I’m bad at parts of it, I’ll get better. If I don’t know how, I’ll learn. If I need help, I’ll ask. If I start to act like my father, shoot me dead. It’s better than abandoning my kid.”
I think about the line I wrote in my head. “More than that, it’s not just obligation. That’smychild she’s carrying. I may not know a damn thing about it yet, but I do know that I love it with everything I have.”
He scrubs a palm down his face. “I hate you a little right now.”
“I know,” I say.
“And I hate that I don’t hate you a lot.”
“I know that too,” I say, softer.
He stares at the top stair. “She said you two were going to tell me together.”
“We were,” I say. “We were trying to figure out how to do it without setting a bomb off.”
He snorts. “You failed.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Spectacularly.”
The corner of his mouth twitches and then goes flat again.
“What now?” I ask quietly.
“That’s it for now,” he says. “I can’t do dinner right now. Or hanging out, or anything else. I can’t even look at you yet.”
“That’s fair,” I say. It hurts, but I understand. “I won’t show up where you are.”
He looks up fast, like he heard coward in that and didn’t like it. “I’m not asking you to hide.”
“I’m saying I won’t push,” I answer. “But if Paige needs me for anything, it overrides that. You’ll have to deal.”
We’re both quiet again, and the quiet is different this time. Not peace. Not even a truce. Just… not the same as it’s been.
He hooks his thumbs in his back pockets, a stance I remember from when he was seventeen and trying to play it cool in front of girls who were too smart to fall for him.
“Mom…” He clears his throat. “Mom is… Mom. She’s crying and baking and collecting patches for a quilt.”
I huff a laugh. “Yeah, I know about that one.”
“Yeah.” He shifts, looks at me sidelong. “She told me to come talk to you.”
I blink. “Gwen did?”
He nods once. “Said—and I quote—‘You can be angry and still be kind.’ Then she gave me a plate to bring to you.”
“You have food?” I hear myself ask, and it comes out brighter than intended because Gwen’s food is a religion, and I am a devout man.
Jason huffs. “Of course I have food. She didn’t give me a choice. Said—” he drops his voice into a passable Gwen, “‘If you’re going over there to glower at him, at least take him dinner so he doesn’t pass out.’”
Against my will, a laugh gets loose. “That sounds right.”
“It’s in the car, but it should still be warm.”
