Page 78 of Beneath the Hood

His words, meant to be a balm to my jealousy, don’t do anything to douse the embers. “I get it.”

He chuckles. “I doubt that.” He pulls me up from my chair, his fingers tangling with mine. “I’ll explain it to you though, if you want.”

My teeth sink into my lip and I nod, knowing that if I want to love him fully, I have to love every part of him.

So, I let him lead me into the living room and sit me down on the couch, preparing to hear all about his first love and all the ways she hurt him.

36

Jackson

Imade dinner knowing she wouldn’t eat it. Which sounds like an asshole thing, but now that I know there’san issue, I need to test her boundaries. See where things are so I can figure out the best way to approach her. My original plan was to push her for answers, but something in my gut held me back, a whisper telling me if I confront her too quickly, she’ll take it as an accusation. Lash out instead of listen and build up barriers that I can’t break through.

It’s the same thing I did as a kid when people tried to ask me about my father.

So, instead of my original plan, I follow her lead, allowing her to shift the conversation until it lands onmyissues.

There’s nothing I want to talk about less than my past. But I can tell by the look in Blakely’s eyes and the bite in her tone that if we don’t, it will just be this thing that festers between us, growing until it pushes us so far apart there’s no chance of finding our way back.

If opening up and trusting her is what needs to happen, I’ll do it.

How can I ask it of her if I don’t do it myself?

We sit on the couch, my fingers tracing the outline of hers as I try to figure out where to start. She asked about Lee, but, there’s this tugging in the middle of my body, drawing up earlier times, urging me to start at the beginning. To get it all out now, so she has the whole picture. So there’s nothing left of mine she needs to discover.

“My dad died when I was sixteen.”

Blakely’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline, but she stays quiet.

“Here in California, actually. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t knowwhen.”

“He was sick, right?” she asks.

I nod. “Yeah. Had been for a while. Since I was thirteen.” I swallow around the emotion lodging in my throat. “Multiple Myeloma—cancer of the blood. I couldn’t believe it. Not him. Notmydad. He was a damn Marine, was trained in the toughest of conditions. Had fought in wars, you know? I didn’t—” My voice breaks. “I didn’t understand how someone like him, someone so strong could get so sick.”

A small laugh bubbles out of me, remembering how naïve I was back then.

Blakely smiles, her fingers squeezing mine. “You really worshiped him, huh?”

My free hand reaches up, tangling in the chain of my necklace. “Yeah.” I nod. “He was my hero.”

“I can tell.”

“Anyway, he told me he was gonna fight. And he did. He fought like hell... and he won, just like I knew he would. A year later he was in remission. The relief, Blake—” I whoosh out a breath. “I can’t even tell you what that felt like.”

“I can’t imagine,” she says.

“But six months before I turned sixteen it came back, and this time it was too fast. Too aggressive.”

The base of my throat swells, the pain of remembering what he went through—what we all went through—making my nostrils flare from the burn. “They gave him two options. Go home on hospice and die in peace, or continue to fight and most likely die painfully, bleeding out in a hospital bed.”

Blakely sucks in a breath, her hand covering her chest. “Oh my god, Jackson. That’s awful.”

I nod, running my tongue over my teeth. “I begged him to fight. But I saw the light in him dim with every dialysis treatment, with every time they shoved a chemo pill down his throat and told us none of it was doing a goddamn thing.” My jaw clenches. “And he wastired. So, at some point, you have to choose—quality of life or quantity?” I swallow. “Besides that, I could see the guilt eating him alive every time a new hospital bill showed up in our mailbox.”

“You didn’t have insurance?”

“We did. But the VA is a wreck and cancer is expensive.”

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