Page 21 of Truly Forever

Oh my. Jacob’s rising color makes the mother in me squirm.

“Don’t drag Reagan into this!” His cheeks pinch. His eyes flare.

“I won’t if I don’t have to. So, was she with you the whole time?”

“Pretty much.” He looks down for a second. Up again, squarely. “Yeah. She was with me the whole time.”

The pair of them make my kitchen feel like an interrogation room.

John leans forward. “You’re lying.”

“Am not.”

“Sure you are. Where did your girlfriend go?”

“Nowhere.”

“Son—”

“I am not your son!”

“Fine.Kid.Where did she go,kid? Or did you go somewhere with her?”

Jacob shoots up. “She didn’t go anywhere, and she didn’t do anything. I told you to leave her out of this!”

“Jacob, sit down. Please,” I beg.

He glares at me. “No. This jerk is treating me like a criminal, and I told him to leave Reagan out of it!”

“Jacob—”

“I’m outta here!” His thigh bumps the old table, sloshing water from a glass. He shoves through the swinging door, his footfalls rattling the hollow, second-story floorboards until the slamming door vibrates the walls.

Silence echoes, as does a devastating reality. Tears well up. I am such a fool. “Go ahead. Say it.” I can’t even look.

“Say what?”

“That you were right and I was wrong.” I am a naïve, delusional mother. “Jacobislying.”

John’s silence lasts long, practically challenging me. When I surrender, raising my eyes, his gaze roams my face, his surprisingly absent judgment and gloat. He folds his hands on his stomach. “Yep. He’s lying alright.” He palms his jaw, bristling late-in-the-day whiskers. “The only question is…about what?”

My heart flies into my throat. “What do you mean?”

Leaning back, he makes himself at home. “It’s clear he would lie to protect his girlfriend.”

“Reagan? Oh, I don’t know. Lie for her about something that could send him to jail? They haven’t been together long at all. They’re not serious.”

John’s eyes, a mesmerizing mocha, narrow. “Did you just sit here and watch the same show I did? He’d sell his soul for that girl.”

“Not if it meant going to jail. He’s smarter than that.”

“Young love, mom. It’s a powerful thing.”

Jacob? Sacrifice his name, reputation, and maybe even his freedom for a high school girl he barely knows? I shake my head. “No. I don’t see it. Besides, Reagan is a sweet girl. I can’t imagine her mixed up in anything like this.”

“But you can your son?”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

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