The Truest Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 4)

“Yeah?”

“You know you’re a good man, right?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I know you’re a good man. Cooper knows. Jess. Your mom and sister and brother and uncle. Everyone who matters knows you’re a very good man.”

Jack flicked me a soft look. “Okay.”

“But do you know that? Do you feel that?”

Understanding crossed his expression. He let go a long exhalation before he replied, “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it these last few months. Despite my past concerns, I know I’m not my father. If I were my father, I wouldn’t have been miserable living the life he wanted for me. I’ve made mistakes. A lot of them. But I know I’m a good guy. I know my intentions.” He cut me another look. “But if you know that … then why don’t you trust me?”

Despite the topic of conversation, I hadn’t been expecting him to ask me that, nor so bluntly. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—I just don’t trust you romantically.”

“See, that makes no sense to me.”

Hearing his frustration, I knew that words were not enough, that if I wanted him to understand my stance between us, I’d have to tell him the truth. Now. I’d have to open the store a little later than usual, but it was time I told Jack everything. “Do you need to get back to work right away or can you make some time to talk?”

“I’ll make time.”

I smiled nervously. “Then when we get to my place, you should come in. I have some things to explain.”

Jack looked taken aback but relieved. “That’d be good, Em.”

Yeah, not really for me. It was not a trip down memory lane that I particularly enjoyed.

We were seated on the sectional. I was curled in the corner while Jack lounged a few seat cushions away, his long legs sprawled, his arms resting along the back of the couch.

A cup of coffee sat on the coffee table, opposite my cup of decaf.

Untouched.

Jack was laser focused on me.

So, I began. To get to the root of our problem, I had to start at the beginning. I told him about my parents, their negligence, about their death, which he already knew a little about. I explained about my complicated feelings for my grandmother. How she gave enough of a shit to teach me some manners, but how she stifled me. How I knew it was partly overprotectiveness and partly her controlling nature.

“I had no friends. The one time I

snuck out to be with a boy, it was part of a cruel joke and my grandmother found out and …” I sighed, looking away from Jack’s concerned expression. “I was sixteen, had never been kissed, had no one to talk to, and I was vulnerable. Enter Tripp Van Der Byl. He was twenty years old. A junior at Columbia. He was the son of the CEO of Paxton Aeronautical.” My gaze returned to Jack’s; his expression was tight, like he knew whatever I was about to tell him wasn’t going to be good. “At first, I just saw him like every boy in our circle. Preppy, arrogant, that clean-cut kind of handsome that made me want to mess up his hair and unbutton his collar.”

Jack grinned.

I smirked, but it fell away as I remembered what it was like to be sixteen and think I was falling in love. “It was summer, and he was home from college. We were always invited to the same stuffy dinners. Knowing how strict my grandmother was with me, he would talk to me whenever her back was turned. As we got to know each other, he didn’t seem like any of the boys I went to school with or had met. He seemed as exasperated by the pretentiousness and suffocation of our privilege as I was. We liked the same books. He made me laugh. He told me he couldn’t believe how much more mature I was than the girls he went to college with. It was innocent at first. But then we started to sneak around. He was my first kiss.” I blushed and looked at the carpet. “He was my first everything.”

“He slept with a sixteen-year-old?” Jack bit out.

Hearing the indignation in his voice, I looked at him. I nodded. “I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. He was only four years older. I looked older, I acted older. And I just … I wanted to be loved, Jack. He told me he loved me.”

“You were sixteen.” He looked angry. “A four-year age gap isn’t a lot at other times in life, but no way when I was twenty years old would I have dreamt of touching a sixteen-year-old, no matter how goddamn smart and beautiful she was.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Well, Tripp did. We had a secret relationship behind our families’ backs for almost a year.”

“Jesus.”

“Then one night, not long after spring break, I lied to my grandmother and told her I had a study session at school I couldn’t get out of. There was a session—she checked. I just didn’t go to it. Tripp came home and took me out that night. He left his cell on the table of this little out-of-the-way restaurant we were at and it went off while he was in the bathroom. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did.”

I remembered that awful, sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw the text from some girl called Freya. “It was an explicit message from another girl that sounded like he was cheating on me. So, I confronted him. We argued, but he convinced me she was a girl he’d met who wouldn’t take no for an answer. That she was harassing him. I was so stupid.” I laughed bitterly at myself. Tripp had been so mad at me for being faithless. He’d been so desperate. He’d pulled the car off to the side of the road and begged me to believe him.