“No.” I shook my head back and forth. “If you really want to meet Charley, I’m not going to tell
you that you can’t meet your daughter—but you better not break that little girl’s heart. I swear to god, Jackson…”
“I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere.” He held up his hands. “Please—I love you, sunshine. I never stopped…”
“Don’t say that.” I shook my head back and forth as the panic began to shift to seething anger. “It’s not fair!”
“I fucked up,” he exhaled sharply, and his hands fell to his side. “I know that now…”
“Where are you staying? Let me take some time to think about this, and I’ll call you.” I didn’t know what else to do—but I sure as hell wasn’t going to wake my daughter up to meet the father that wasn’t there for the first four years of her life.
“I…” He swallowed hard. “I don’t know yet. I was kind of hoping I could stay with you—I’ll sleep on the couch—tonight…”
“You are not staying with me!” I narrowed my eyes and did my best to keep the angry tears from coming. “There are plenty of hotels in Carson Cove. Pick one!”
I walked past Jackson and stomped up the steps of my apartment building. I was afraid he would follow me—but he didn’t. He walked away, and I let out a sigh of relief once I was in the elevator. My head was a complete mess. I felt like I needed to be the one that was pounding hard liquor at Chateau Prime.
I got kissed by the hottest guy I had ever met—and it was so fucking wrong—then my ex appeared on my doorstep saying the things I needed to hear when I saw a plus sign on that pregnancy test. Everything was caving in around me—and somehow, I had to figure out how I was going to explain Jackson’s sudden appearance to my little girl. She wasn’t old enough to ask the right questions about her father, so I was normally able to deflect them. She wasn’t going to understand if he left again—and I didn’t know if I could trust the man that had replaced the boy who abandoned me.
I’m not your sunshine anymore, Jackson—but Charley is mine. If you hurt her like you hurt me, then you’re going to wish you never came to Carson Cove…
Chapter Eight
Jon
The next day
I was going off the rails. As if the nonsense with the Carnation Club wasn’t bad enough, Mary called to tell me that the one weekend I was supposed to see the girls before they were out of school wasn’t going to work. I got to talk to them on the phone, but they both seemed distracted like they couldn’t wait for the conversation to be over. I felt like I had failed as a father—I already knew I had failed as a husband—and I decided to add failing as a boss to the list when I kissed Melanie. I couldn’t even pretend that I was still drunk enough not to know what I was doing—I just gave in to temptation when I saw one light in the midst of so much darkness. It should have regretted it—but I didn’t.
Bryant’s here… finally.
I tried to call Bryant after I found the second clue, but he didn’t answer. He returned my call the next day, but when I found out he was busy with Taylor, I decided not to ruin whatever wedding preparations they were working on with bad news. It wasn’t something I wanted to share with him over the phone anyway. I finally had to insist that he come see me—and once I told him it was about the Carnation Club, he agreed to swing by my house when he had a chance. That gave me time to wallow in my misery for most of the day—there wasn’t much else to do on a Sunday. I sure as hell wasn’t going to drink after losing control the night before.
“Hey man, what’s going on? It sounded rather urgent…” Bryant walked into my house as soon as I opened the door.
“It is.” I shoved the latest clue in his hand. “I found the second clue.”
“What the fuck?” Bryant’s mouth fell open when he read it. “My damn wedding?”
“Yeah.” I yanked the door open. “If you look right here you can see the faint outline of a damn carnation—someone painted it on my front door. It took me several hours to scrub most of it off.”
“Fucking hell.” Bryant crushed the paper in his hand. “Whoever this is—if they try to ruin my wedding…”
“We may need to rethink our initial assumption,” I sighed. “This is starting to sound exactly like something Alexis Devereaux would do.”
“Yeah.” Bryant nodded. “I don’t get it though. Why involve you? I know Alexis hates me—and going after Taylor makes sense since she was the one who put Alexis in prison—but you had nothing to do with it…”
“I don’t know, man.” I walked into the living room and sat down. “She obviously knows we’re friends.”
“Right… Okay, thank you for letting me know about this.” Bryan shoved the paper into his pocket. “I’ll call Craven Security—I think it would be a good idea to have a few guys at the wedding, just to be safe.”
“You’re probably right,” I exhaled sharply. “I can only imagine what kind of chaos Alexis could be planning—if that really is her intention.”
Bryant left, and I had nothing but misery to keep me company again. I felt like I needed to reach out to Melanie. I didn’t regret the kiss, but the situation was complicated. There were so many reasons why we would never be able to take it further than that. I was a fucking mess. A relationship was the last thing I needed anyway. I didn’t have the same feelings for my ex-wife that I once did, but the end of our marriage had broken me. I didn’t lose my company, but I would have if Bryant hadn’t stepped in to buy it. I had essentially lost my kids—I had no idea how to repair things with them when they would barely even talk to me on the phone.
It was easy to believe that things would just get better in time—that it was normal teenage angst—but I always chose work over my family…
There was more to it than that. I saw the fractures in my marriage—we talked about having another baby, but I don’t think our hearts were ever in it. We were looking for a band-aid when we needed sutures to close the wound—even then, it would have left a scar. How do you keep fighting when the other person is pulling away? Somewhere in there, I lost touch with what really mattered. I let my relationship with my kids falter because things were falling apart with their mother. It was no wonder that they chose her when the judge asked who they wanted to live with—they were willing to leave the life they knew in Carson Cove to be with her—and they didn’t even want to visit me.