Jack Who?

CHAPTER 21

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AN INTERNAL ALARM woke her, and she stared into the shadows of the room, enjoying the feel of Jack’s leg twisted with hers and the sound of his breath. A few quiet snores, the ones she remembered from the hospital, intermittently broke up his breathing. Although she had hooked up with over a dozen men since Tristan’s birth, it had been more than five years since anyone but Tristan had been in her bed.

     Tristan was the reason she woke, and her gaze spontaneously drew to the door cracked open to listen for him after she and Jack were done and dozing. Padding to the adjoining bathroom, she took care of that urge, and her eyes blissfully fell to the two foil packets in the trash.

     Stepping into a steamy shower, she began to soap up, and every brush of the loofah caressed skin still tingling from last night. After washing and rinsing her hair, she wrapped in her robe and returned to the bedroom.

     Jack had moved to lay diagonal in the bed, as if searching for her in his sleep—at least that’s what she wanted to imagine—and now rested with his head on her pillow.

     Easing back into the bed, she allowed her fingers what they craved, the slick softness of his hair, the smooth firmness of his skin, a trace of an inked arm, a trail down his chest to his stomach, and reluctantly stopped short of what she really wanted. Pulling in a deep breath of his scent, she contemplated the light of dawn through the slats of the mini blinds. Unable to resist, she pressed her lips to the warmth of his chest, then again...and again...unconsciously drawing closer to her craving and was rewarded when he responded in a very conscious state.

     “Mariss....” That particular utterance of her name was an addiction. “Mariss mmh...”

     “Mmmh,” she hummed the echo against him, around him, and savored the immediate response.

     Minutes later, her cheek was against his chest, and he was mumbling in sated satisfaction about the best way to wake up in the morning.

     With another look at the window, she unwillingly whispered, “You need to get out of here before Tristan gets up.”

     Fully awake, he raised his head, and the shadowy pools of his eyes sought hers. “Okay,” he agreed. Then, “Wait, do you mean leave, leave? Or, is it okay if I move to the couch?”

     Always, he double-checked with her any important decisions about Tristan, and this was reassuring, and endearing. One of his hands stroked through her hair, and her lips turned to the heat of that inked forearm as she answered, “The couch.”

     Despondent, yet entranced, she watched as he returned from the bathroom and picked through the clothing on the floor, dressing. Lastly, he pulled on his tee shirt. Then pouncing on the bed, he hunkered on all fours over her and raised goose bumps with a line of kisses down her chest, then back up to her throat.

     “Mariss?”

     “Mmh?”

     “When are you going to be ready to tell him?”

     Her muscles went rigid as he spoke against her skin, and she pushed at him needing to see his eyes. The room was getting lighter by the minute, but she took the time to study his earnest expression. In the middle of the night, she had woken intertwined with Jack and idly fantasized telling Tristan that Jack was his daddy. But, in that imagining they were also telling their son that they were married, or were about to be married.

     In her fantasy, there was a future with the three of them and no fear of her losing Tristan in this equation to some belated custody hearing.

     “I don’t know...” Fingering the necklace dangling from his neck, she considered and softly replied, “We will figure it out today. Okay?”

     With a last press of a kiss to her hairline, he bounded out of the room, pulling the door back to a crack behind him.

     The sun was now bright, casting horizontal shadows on the wall, and she closed her eyes, yet still couldn’t drift into any sleep stage although they had been up most of the night. She didn’t know what last night had meant in this ‘baby daddy/baby momma affiliation they had going. She only knew she’d wanted an encore with Jack for five years.

     A vibration sounded from the nightstand, and her head twisted toward the source as the face of Jack’s cell lit up. Resolutely, she ignored it, but when it sounded again, only a couple of minutes later, her curiosity won. With a wary look, to the shadowy hall beyond the narrow door slit, she brought up the missed calls finding them both from ‘Randi.’

     At that precise moment, a text came through, and because she was holding the phone, she got a preview. Again, from ‘Randi’ reading ‘Sugar, let me know as soon as you know.’

     Stretching her hand, she was about to return the phone when the next text came through from ‘Mom’ asking ‘Jacks did you tell her? I can’t wait to meet him. Call your mother!’

     Letting the phone drop back to the stand as if it were a dangerous snake, she rolled over. Within seconds of settling comfortably, she heard the clink of Tristan’s crutches. He stopped in the hall bathroom and afterward pushed open her bedroom door.

     “Morning, Momma!”

     Mustering a liveliness that, after viewing the texts, she no longer felt, she return chanted the greeting, and Tristan asked, “Can I feed Bal… ly?...”

     When his words dwindled, she rose to see what his wide eyes beheld and spied Jack’s socks and shoes among her discarded clothing. Falling to her pillow, she brought a reassuring hand to her robe, and in a desperate attention diversion asked, “What do you want for breakfast?”

     Deciding he would choose a cereal, Tristan hobbled off, and after taking the time to pull on a pair of jeggings and a long tunic top, she followed. Her bare feet hit the cool tile of the hall floor, and her strides stopped when she saw Tristan propped on his crutches before the couch. Jack was blinking the sleep from his eyes.

     “Did you spend the night?” The toddler quizzed, and since Marissa was behind him, unable to read his face, she tried but failed to read his tone.

     Jack pushed Bally’s snout away from his face and sat up. “I thought if I was here when you first woke up that we could drive through McDonald’s and get some breakfast.”

     “Okay.” Tristan took a couple of steps toward the kitchen, then undeterred, made a second inquiry. “But did you spend the night?”

     Jack’s gaze came over Tristan’s shoulder to meet hers, and she only grinned back. Tristan’s persistence was a direct genetic link from his father, and it was fun to watch paybacks come back around to Jack.

     “Actually, I did,” Jack admitted. “It got really late and I thought you and me could surprise your Mom with some breakfast. Is she still asleep?” With an innocent expression, which would have fooled even her if she had not been staring into his eyes at that very moment, he made the inquiry.

     “No, but we could still surprise her.” Tristan was gleeful at the idea.

     “Okay, buddy! I’ll just go tell her that you and I are going to the store for...for...”

     “For toilet paper!” A slight bounce accompanied Tristan’s exuberant answer.

     “Are we? Are you out?” Jack inquired of the hall bathroom, which he had not been in since the previous afternoon.

     “No. But I can hide it.” Tristan’s matter of fact statement had her staring, yet again, in surprise. Maybe he was more like his father than she would have wanted, she thought, while comparing the toilet paper deception to the cryptic phone messages she had just intercepted.

     Darting into her room before her son discovered her lingering, she stopped before the dresser and brushed her hair into a ponytail. Expectantly, she turned from a happy, glowing reflection when Jack rattled a knock and entered.

     In a loud stage voice he explained, “Tristan and I are going to the store to pick up some toilet paper.”

     Perching on the bed, he pulled his socks and shoes on, shooting her an impish smile and then retrieved his phone.

     With a slight pucker of a frown, he paused long enough to punch in presumably answers to the texts and then clipped the device to his jeans.

     “What do you want from MickyD’s?” The whisper was in the midst of a quick but hungry kiss.

     “I don’t care. Whatever Tristan picks out for me.”

     “You okay?” His fingers drifted down her neck, from the slightly visible whisker burns, to her chest where the slight sweet bruises on sensitive skin was now covered by a stretchy modest shirt.

     Fiddling with the hair bands scattered on the dresser top, she wanted to demand answers to those texts. At the same time, she didn’t want to show her insecurity.

     The best way to solve this custody issue, if there even was one, was to make him marry her. The only way to solve the issues of her heart was to make him fall in love with her.

     “Yeah.” Catching his eyes in the mirror, her reply was neutral. “I was just thinking about some stuff. We need to talk.”

     “Okay. About what?”

     “Just stuff. It can wait.”

     “Okay, if you are sure.” With a lingering sweet hug, he was gone, and a piece of her wondered if he would stew on whatever was waiting. Actually, it would give her time to bring her emotions under control.

 

     ~♫♪♫~


     “So you really want to talk?” Jack closed the distance between them on the couch later that afternoon as soon as Tristan was napping in his room.

     “Not when you put it like that!” She curved a smile into his hair, and when they adjourned to her room, happily put the talk off for a hushed half hour or so.

     Jack inside her was something she had become addicted to after only one time, and now, after a continuous fix, she knew she was in danger of becoming a crazed junkie for his sex.

     They were quiet in the aftermath, and she thought he might be asleep until he spoke. “I need to talk to you too, but you go first.” His fingers gently brushed over the line of her cesarean scar.

     Pulling away from his hand, she twisted, reaching for the glass of iced tea she had brought to the room. After dousing her parched throat, and succumbing to a sugar rush, she blurted, “I need to schedule the paternity test, and I guess I just wondered how long you were staying. Not because you have to be here for it. But, because I don’t want to take up a day while you are here. And it has to be done by– ”

     “Paternity test?” Propping on an elbow, he shoved hair from his eyes.

     “I have to do it since I cashed the check, right?”

     “What?” He seemed genuinely confused and unbothered about something she thought about nineteen times a day, and that irked her.

     Slinging out of bed, she stalked to the dresser, jerked open a drawer and pulled out the fearsome folder. Flinging the long legal sheet into his lap, she kept walking and closed herself in the bathroom.

     When she returned, dressed, he had also pulled on everything but a shirt and shoes. The paper lay abandoned on the bed beside him.

     Softly, his eyes searched hers, “You know this was before...”

     Before he’d seen with his own eyes that Tristan was his? Or before they had fallen back into bed together?

     Crossing to the door, she cracked it to hear easily down the hallway. “Before what?” While pacing the room, she came too close to him, and he reached for her hand.

     “I remember signing this letter. But after that, I tried to call you to find out when the surgery was. If Tristan was mine,” here he slowed at whatever he saw in her eyes and carefully proceeded, “and I was beginning to have a feeling he was, or else you wouldn’t have called, right? I wanted to be around for this surgery, to make sure he didn’t want for anything. To just be there. Anyhow, like I told you at the hospital, I had the lawyer figure out the details of the surgery, and ever since, I’ve never thought of this,” he rattled the paper, “again.”

     “So?” With that sarcastic rejoinder, she snatched the paper that weighed so hard on her heart and head. The paper that he had ‘never thought of again.’ “That doesn’t change the fact that I have to do it right? That Tristan has to do it.”

     The last part of that sentence was added as a correction when she considered, for the hundredth time, this test that Tristan would not even know was an indignity--a test done on kids whose fathers were reluctant to claim them.

     “No, Mariss, honey.” His dark eyes were as sweet as the endearment. “I will get it straightened out. I will call the first thing in the morning,” he promised of Monday.

     “So...” This time the word was hesitant, and she paused wondering if she dare speak the next thorn in her soul– her real fear within the words of that letter. “So, are you going for custody or not?”

     Standing, he moved to the chair where his shirt had been flung, and she tried not to hunger over the decorated arms and sinewy shoulders that shrugged into stretchy cotton. Not able to sit through this deliberate hesitation, she surged to her feet, and with a tip of her chin glared into his eyes.

     This man had loved her all over. Was he now going to commit the ultimate hate and fight her for the only thing besides him that meant the world to her?

     “Jack?”

     “I’ve missed five years of his life. And they were hard years for him. I wasn’t there for what he was going through. I have a lot of making up to do.”

     His words may as well have been chipped in bricks, because as each one hit, she flinched with pain and sank back to the bed crushed by the weight.

     “You are a great mother.” His words were soft. “And I know my life is probably not the life for him.” Before she could breathe easier, he continued, “I would, of course, change what I’m doing. Stop touring. I was already in the process anyway of some huge changes in the music. That’s what these meetings have been about.”

     Her cell came to life with the ring tone Clayton had set up at lunch one day, a recording of himself in a crazy voice saying, ‘Missy pick me up.’ Jack glared at the device. She ignored the ring tone as if it hadn’t happened and demanded, “What are you saying?”

     Tearing his eyes from her phone, he met her gaze, and she saw sympathy, as well as some type of determination, in their dark depths. “I’m saying I don’t know yet. I guess I’m saying that I do not want six states between me and my son. And I’m still trying to figure out what to do about that.”

     Her breath felt sucked out in a suffocating second, and she sought sanity. Maybe this wasn’t as sinister as it sounded. It was expected that he would want some time– perhaps weekends and holidays. She recalled her own childhood.

     The next level, joint custody, would rip her in two, but if it happened, she was beginning to see how great of a father he would be. As for full custody, she couldn’t even think it without tearing.

     “What then? Holidays?” Studying his stoic face, she pushed out the words seeking clarification. “Joint?”

     Finally, he spoke, but it was the last thing she wanted to hear. “I want more than that. So much time has been wasted. I want it all–”

     “Noo!” The word growled out of her mouth as more than one syllable, and she felt like she was going to puke. “No.”

     She wanted to scream every curse she knew and call him every ugly name. She wanted to cry. She wanted to take Tristan and run. Instead, a plea squeaked from kiss swollen lips. “Don’t do this...”

     “Listen…” Before she could blink, he was across the room kneeling beside her, but the harder she hurt, the harder her heart became.

     How could he have shared a passion so hot, and all along had this agenda simmering on the back burner? There was no way he gave a damn about her, and if he was this cold, there was no way he ever would.

     ‘Did you tell her? I can’t wait to meet him.’ The text flashed into her mind. She supposed she had just been told. And the next text, the beautiful Leanna Miranda Gavin, ‘Sugar, sugar, sugar...’

     Are WE banging as friends? Her thoughts took that ugly turn. Is that all Jack was capable of? What if Leanna Miranda silently had feelings for him too?

     Phase three: ‘Make Jack want me as much as I want him’. Epic fail.

     Putting as much distance as possible between them, she swore, “I will fight you on this. And I may not have money. But don’t forget, I know things.”

     “What do you know?” Getting back to his feet, he seemed slightly crestfallen but also amused as if it were one of their word games. Defiant, dark brows arched. “That I sit at home with my dog most nights? That every chance I get I spend it with my family? A stable family I might add. Parents who are loved by the public and who have been married for more than half their lifetime. A grandmother who hasn’t missed a church service in twenty years. A sister who is the newest sensation of the surfing culture, and an uncle and grandfather who–”

     “You have a rape charge that was never resolved!” Interrupting his accolades, she spat the threat.

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