An instant fire lit my eyes. “Are you kidding me, Jackson? Don’t you dare try to make me look like I’m the crazy one here – I’m not.”
“Then what are you? Audra being in town has to do with Jake coming back to New York. You know my mom, Lara. She’s pushy. She wants things her way and what she wants right now is to see me and Jake reaching out to our stepsister. That was why Audra was at the party and that was why I made an effort to talk to her. I can’t help the way she acts around me.”
“You don’t think you were encouraging her behavior by letting her drape her body all over you and rub her foot on your leg?” I asked incredulously.
“Look, she’s not right in the head.” Jackson jabbed his finger against his temple. “She’s crazy. And she’s sensitive. One wrong word and she’ll be running in the other direction and doing something drastic. Last time that happened, my mother blamed me, so forgive me if I’m careful with Audra because I don’t feel like reliving that bullshit again,” Jackson snapped, heading back into the apartment. Heated, I followed.
“What kind of relationship did you two have in the past then? Why don’t you tell me about that?” I asked. “What did you even do that made her leave and why did you make it seem like it was about her and Jake when it was clearly about you?”
“Jake never gave her a fucking chance,” Jackson muttered, tossing his cup of coffee into the sink.
As in he never slept with her? I felt my lips itching to bring that up. “I thought you were going to work,” I said instead as I watched Jackson pick up a packed leather duffel and place it by the door.
“I told you last week that I’d be in Boston for two days.”
“I don’t remember that. Who are you seeing?”
Knotting his tie, Jackson smirked at me. “It’s a business trip. Caleb’s going too, so ask him if you still think that I’m going away to play footsies with Audra.”
My lip curled. “I’m glad you can still make jokes when you know I’m upset.” When Jackson rolled his eyes, I felt my control breaking. I wanted to drop the bombshell on him – that I knew what he’d done with his stepsister ten years ago. But instead, I blurted it as a question. “Did you sleep with her or something?”
Jackson froze in the middle of tying his tie. His eyes were suddenly an icy blue and the ends of his lips quivered. An odd noise escaped the bottom of his throat. But just as I thought I was set to hear a confession, Jackson broke into a loud, mocking laugh. It continued for longer than I appreciated before he finally spoke again. “So you are paranoid,” he concluded.
“I am not paranoid, Jackson, I’m just seeing things about you lately that make me really question if I know who the hell you even are!” I seethed.
But Jackson ignored me, laughing bitterly as he went upstairs.
When he came back down fully dressed, he grabbed the duffel at the door and barely looked over his shoulder at me before leaving “I’ll be back Wednesday morning. Hopefully you’ll be acting like yourself again when I get back,” he muttered. “And by the way, I don’t want to come home and hear about you hanging out alone with Sawyer or any of the guys,” he added before leaving.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was probably childish, but I called Sawyer that very afternoon, asking if he wanted to join Sloane and me at the Yankees-Red Sox game. It wasn’t totally unusual – Sawyer and I often went to galas and events together while Jackson was away. Knowing that he could only look and not touch, Jackson never minded. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the fact that one of his friends was so willing to “babysit” me while he was gone.
But apparently, that had changed.
Too bad, I thought as Sloane and I waited for Jake and Sawyer in our ground level seats along the first base line. Jackson had left me so livid my hands shook as I stood alone in the middle of our apartment. But I refused to let him ruin another day of mine while he went off to laugh and drink with new investors. So I called the two most fun people I knew – Sloane and Sawyer.
And because heat was still coursing through my body, I had Sawyer invite Jake.
“Okay, so here’s what I know about baseball,” Sloane announced, already tipsy off half a beer. “There is a ball, a bat, three bases and a bunch of guys wearing too much clothes for me to really evaluate their bodies.”
“Well, you can see a lot of forearm, and I know how you like forearms.”
“Yes, I do!” Sloane clapped excitedly, as if only just remembering this about herself. “I wish Caleb showed his off more often ‘cause the first thing I ever even noticed about him was his – oh my God! You know what they should invent? Suits for men that end at the elbow, so we can see more forearm.”
I snorted at her drunken rambling. “I don’t know about that one, Sloane.”
“Are you telling me you don’t want Jackson to wear a short-sleeved tux at your wedding?” she giggled, feigning shock. But the smile slid off my face as she mentioned my wedding. For some reason, the word “wedding” jolted me. I hadn’t thought about mine in what felt like ages. I’d also blown off a couple appointments to check out venues and had yet to reschedule my meeting with the calligrapher. The wedding didn’t even feel like something real to me anymore. Sloane frowned as she studied me. “Are you not excited for your big day?” she asked. “You can tell me. I’m the girl who’s been engaged to her fiancé for ten months with no wedding plans yet because neither of our families can agree on where to have it.”
I cracked a smile. “Thank you but don’t worry. It’s nothing, I’m just… stressed out. And Jackson’s been acting a little difficult lately so it’s making me a little less excited to spend the rest of my life with him,” I muttered. “But I think I’m just being a brat,” I added hastily, just to relieve Sloane. I could see her brows knitting as she mentally prepared to have a long pep talk with me. But now, she exhaled with a smile.
“No, I get it, babe. I’m a brat too. I don’t want to have this wedding unless it’s exactly like I imagined as a little girl but I also don’t have the energy to plan it myself but I also can’t pick a wedding planner to do it for me till I know if I’m getting married in New York or Kentucky. It’s such an ordeal.”
“Oh, fuck me.”
I sat up straight when I heard Sawyer’s voice behind us.
“You two aren’t going to be talking about your weddings all day, are you?” he asked, a big grin gleaming out from under the bill of his worn-in Yankees cap. “’Cause that’ll kind of kill my buzz every time I hit on you,” he cracked as he took the seat beside Sloane.