The Truest Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 4)

“A few weeks … fuck, I don’t even know where to start.” Jack dragged a hand down his face. “I don’t know where to start, Coop.”

There was a moment of silence an

d then something seemed to dawn on Cooper’s face. “Are you here … are you here to tell me why?”

He swallowed hard. “Yes. I’m not looking for anything from you. I … just … I’m in the position to tell you the truth now, and you deserve the truth.”

A muscle ticked in Cooper’s jaw but he didn’t respond.

Jack took that as permission to continue. “I’ll start at the beginning … Dana.”

His best friend’s expression hardened.

“She’d been coming on to me for a while. Then one day she called me up and said she needed to talk about you. That she was worried. So, I came over and she gave me all this shit about how you were blaming her for not getting pregnant.”

Cooper let out a huff of aggravation.

“I knew that shit wasn’t true. You know I never liked her.”

“And yet you fucked her.”

Jack looked away, the memories of the past dancing across his eyes. “She grabbed my crotch. Tried to initiate sex. I got the hell out of there. I was on my way to tell you when Ian called. He said that Rebecca had killed a man who’d tried to rape her. And Stu helped her bury the body. She was only seventeen.”

Cooper’s features slackened with shock. “What the fuck?”

“You know she isn’t his, Coop.”

He was one of the few people in town who knew Rebecca wasn’t Ian Devlin’s daughter.

“He didn’t give a flying fuck about her. But he knew I did. So he sent her away to school in England and blackmailed me into giving up my entire life and falling in line.”

“Blackmailed you how?”

“He said he’d give Rebecca up to the police and plant evidence that it was me, not Stu, who helped her bury the body.”

“Jesus Fucking Christ.” Cooper stumbled to his couch, slumping down on it, his head in his hands. “Fuck, Jack. Fuck!” He glared up at him, outrage written all over his face. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

Seeing and hearing the rage in Coop’s voice, Jack’s throat closed with emotion.

Emery was right.

His defection had wrecked Coop as much as it had wrecked him.

“I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t have this secret hanging over your life. Do you know what it was like for me, driving around this town, wondering where that fucking body was, wondering when the anvil would come crashing down to ruin Becs, me, my mom. And if you knew … you’d be complicit, Cooper, and it would take you down with us. I couldn’t have that.”

“So, what did you do?” Realization dawned on Cooper. “Huh? Say it.”

“You kept asking me what was wrong. You kept pushing.” Jack found himself getting agitated as he remembered. “You knew it was fucked up that I’d sold my company, started working for a man I hated. You wouldn’t let it go. I knew you wouldn’t stop. The only way to keep you safe was to push you out of my life. And Dana … I hated that you had no clue what a disloyal, conniving bitch she really was.”

“So you showed me.”

Jack flinched at the underlying rage in his ex-friend’s voice. “I did what I thought was best for you.”

“That’s why I never saw you with her again. That’s why you warned Jess about my license. Nailed Stu for hitting Bailey. Then what the hell was Vanessa, huh?”

He swallowed hard. “I had to keep tabs on her. When I realized she would go through with the sale … I convinced her to go with Tremaine’s offer instead.”

Cooper’s head jerked in surprise. He stood, pointing a finger. “That stays between us. Bailey thinks her sister did the right thing in the end.”