Page 16 of Needing You

Kate stood then. “I’ll… get us some drinks.”

Jackson and I watched her hustle into the kitchen just around the corner. I appreciated the effort to give us space and hoped it didn’t make Jackson uncomfortable.

We watched each other for a moment, each unsure, and yet I sensed the same determination in him as I felt. I was the adult here, so I dove in, hoping I wouldn’t set off whatever ticked away behind his dark eyes.

Fuck.Those were my eyes, and Eric’s. Those were Walker eyes, no doubt.

“So. Your mom said you like football. How’s that going?”

He slumped back in his seat. “Pretty good. I made varsity. I’m big for fifteen, but I need to add muscle.”

I nodded. “You’ll get there. In another year or two, it’ll start to catch up and you’ll fill out.”

His eyes skated over me—my black T-shirt and worn-in jeans. New kicks because I loved a nice pair of sneakers and could admit I’d always been prissy about my collection.

“Is that what happened to you? Did you play ball?”

I made a weird chuckle-snort sound. “I was kind of an asshole in high school, so no. I got in too many fights to stay on the team.”

His eyes widened. “You fought people?”

I nodded, not exactly ashamed, but suddenly wishing this wasn’t my legacy. “Yeah. I had a chip on my shoulder, and even though I had every advantage in life, I was a little fuckwad about— Shit, I mean, I was little butthead about it.”

Jackson cracked a smile for the first time and snickered. “You can swear around me. I’m in high school, not kindergarten.”

Point taken, but the arrow hit, too. I’d missed kindergarten. And though I couldn’t have imagined caring about missing something like that until yesterday, I felt it now. It was like discovering I was a father made me exponentially more emotional, andfuckif my throat hadn’t tightened.

I cleared it. “You’re right. Sorry. I was a little fuckwad. I got in one too many fights, got cut from the team. Eric was on the team and didnotget kicked off like his errant older brother.”

Jackson’s eyes gleamed, hungry for more. “You’re the oldest?”

“Technically, yes. Eric and I are twins, but I beat him by six minutes.”

He smiled at that, apparently appreciating that distinction. “That’s cool.”

I nodded. “It is.”

“How old were you when your dad died?”

I jolted, but of course he knew my dad was gone. Everyone seemed to know that, but Kate had probably told him, too. “Twenty. And like a little tw—it, I ran away. Eric stayed and held the family together, and I ran off to New York.”

He blinked, steady brown eyes on me. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a dad because I’m just finding you, but I can’t imagine losing my mom. I’m sorry.”

Aw, fuck. There it came again, that crush of grief and longing and something impossibly like familiarity. “Thank you. He was a really good man. A great dad. And he would’ve been an awesome grandpa.”

This diverted his attention, giving me a moment as his eyes flicked around the room, then landed back on me. “So, um, why did you come back here?”

Bless this kid, he was letting us get away from how goddam brutalized it felt to think about my dad not meeting my kid, a kid I’d just met. I would go home and sob in the shower or some shit, but right now, I needed to keep it together. I wasn’t afraid to show emotion like that, but it wasn’t a great way to relate to this kid who was staying so calm.

Was this where we’d get to the explosive part? God, if he was my kid, it had to be coming, but he wasn’t showing a lick of temper yet.

No way to know unless we kept moving, so I took the topic change and ran with it. “Long story short?”

He nodded.

“I wanted to be here. I left after my dad passed away, and I haven’t really been back. And as much as I love New York, it can be… lonely.” Hard and delightfully bright. Soul-deadening and life-giving at the same time.

“I went once, but I was like five and don’t remember the trip.” He clasped his hands, then pushed them out to crack them, and damn if it wasn’t like watching myself doing the same thing.

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