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“Jack, that wasn’t you. I know who you are!”
“Do you?” I shouted. “Is that what you want around your kid? A man that got fucked up and so lost in his head that he hurt you and didn’t even realize it? What if it’s him next time? What if?—”
I cut myself off, unable to say the words. For everything I hoped for, this wasn’t part of it. I had become something I couldn’t recognize.I did this to myself with my choice to take a job that I never should have. This twisted version I became was no longer a man worthy of a woman like her. She deserved someone who could always put her first, who wouldn’t ruin something good for a fucking job.
“Johnny,” I croaked out. “I need you to get me out of here.”
“Yeah,” he answered quietly, not trying to change my mind.
“Jack.” I could hear the crack in her voice, the way she was trying to hide the tears from me. But it was too late. My chance with her was over before it ever started, and I only had myself to blame.
35
SKYLAR
“Are we there yet?”
I smiled in the rearview mirror at Parker. He’d been asking that for the past two days. He never was very patient when it came to road trips. I found that out on the way to my parents’ house in Florida.
After we left the safe house in Oklahoma, we stopped briefly in Kansas. But after only a week, I was ready to leave. All it took were a few simple words for me to make up my mind that it was time to leave.
“They caught him.”
Rico was in prison. The inside man working to bring down Baz, the same one who gave us the information that saved Parker’s life, testified at Rico’s trial. He was in prison for life now, and since his father was dead, there was no one with enough influence to get him out.
That’s when I decided to head to Florida. Parker and I needed the break, some time to be reminded of the people in our lives who loved us. It was just the thing we both needed to move past the trauma we’d suffered. And it worked, until it was time to get back to reality. There was one person I just couldn’t move on from, and my life would never truly settle until I had the answers I needed.
“Almost, bud,” I grinned. “See that building?”
I pointed out the window, knowing he wouldn’t actually see it. You could point to something right in front of a four-year-old’s eyes, and he would still be blind to it.
“I don’t see it, Mama.”
I turned down the driveway, my anxiety spiking the closer we got. I hadn’t spoken to Jack since he walked out on me that morning at the safe house. The look on his face, the hatred he felt toward himself was something I would never get out of my head. I hated what it did to him, and I hated him a little for walking away without talking to me. I’d been through many ranges of emotions over the past two months, each of them worse than the last. It was my mother who finally shoved me out the door and told me if I wanted answers, I had to talk to Jack.
Now that I was here, I was second-guessing that decision.
I parked in front of the OPS building, doing my best not to chicken out and turn around. “Okay, we’re here!”
“Yes! Are we gonna see Rae? I want to tell her about the alligator and the lizards!”
“I’m sure she wants to hear all about them,” I laughed, thinking of poor Rae and all the details that would accompany those stories. I unbuckled and spent way longer than necessary getting him out of his car seat. He was perfectly capable of doing it on his own, but it was a habit, one that I couldn’t shake after he was taken from me.
“Rae!” he shouted, running from me the second he saw her exit the building. I turned, shielding the sun from my eyes as I faced whoever was standing with her. To my disappointment, she was the only one there.
I put a smile on my face and marched forward, determined not to show how desperately I missed Jack. I shouldn’t feel this way. I hadn’t known him long enough to truly develop a bond with him. That’s what I told myself when I was feeling overly attached.
“Hey!” she grinned at me. “I wasn’t sure you were really coming back!”
“Well, it seemed right.”
She nodded knowingly at me. “He’s not here.”
“Who?” I asked, feigning confusion.
“You know who.”
I was thankful she hadn’t said his name. It wasn’t just me that was missing Jack. Almost every night, Parker asked when we would see him again. Jack was his hero, the man who saved him from the bad men.
