He gives me a relieved smile when I appear in the doorway. “She wanted to eat, but I didn’t have anything and I wasn’t sure of the bottle system in the refrigerator. Can the milk in there be heated up?”
“On the stove,” I reach for the baby. “But she prefers it from the tap.”
“The tap?” he asks. Understanding dawns when I move to the side and pull down the collar of my shirt. “Oh-oh, the tap.”
Without turning around, I hold out my hand. “Do you mind passing me one of those blankets?”
He places a soft fabric into my hand and I arrange it over my shoulder so that my breast isn’t fully exposed. Feeling marginally better, I take a seat in the rocker with Anna serving as my shield. It’s easier with her between us.
Jack watches everything avidly from his position against the changing table. His long legs stretch out for what seems like days. I force myself to look away. Why hadn’t he changed into a frog in the last ten months? It would’ve been easier to fight this attraction then.
As if he reads my mind, he says, “You’re beautiful, Kate. You’re so fucking beautiful and sexy right now that it’s hard for me to stay over on this side of the room, but I’m trying to control myself because I don’t think you’re ready for us to make love yet.”
Red heat creeps up the back of my neck as I recall exactly what I was doing in the bedroom before I took my brief nap.
“You’re right,” I say, although it feels like a lie. “I’m not interested in climbing into bed with you. Even if I do buy your amnesia story, it doesn’t erase the fact that you were gone for ten months. And that you’re completely different now that you’re back.”
“How? The suit?” He brushes his hands down his chest, pulling the fabric tight across his defined pectorals and ridged abdomen.
My blood pressure spikes—at his incredulous tone, not because of lust. “Yeah, the suit.” Because his body is as fine as it always was.
One dark eyebrow rises. “What was I doing when we met?”
“Working at the quarry for Leka Moore. I had a flat tire on Highway 11. You pulled over and helped me out.” Then you followed me home, kissed me under the moonlight and told me that I was to delete every number in my contact list that wasn’t yours.
“I see.” He rubs the back of his neck and stares out the window for a long, quiet moment. Only a few cars pass by. Most everyone is at work, but Jack’s seeing something other than the landscape. His past, I suppose.
Anna finishes feeding on one side and I take the opportunity to switch sides. The movement draws his attention back to us.
“I’m a lawyer,” he finally says, breaking the silence. “My brother and I run a plastics company. He wanted to move the business into making military parts. I disagreed. The family voted on it and decided on profit over everything else, so I walked.”
“And ended up working at the quarry?” I ask. It’s my turn to be incredulous.
He lifts his hands up in the air. “I’m guessing it’s a job that requires only manual labor.”
His quick answer for everything leaves me disgruntled. “Why didn’t you tell me before then?”
“I have a feeling that my life with you was too perfect and I didn’t want to ruin that. I’m sure I would’ve told you eventually, once I was sure that you wouldn’t run from me. You know why I’m here in this town?”
“No.” That’s one thing that had been bothering me. Why this place? Why now after all these months of absence?
“Because for the last ten months, ever since I woke up in that hospital bed, something has been wrong with my heart.” He taps his chest. “I’ve undergone EKGs and CTs and MRIs and every other test in the alphabet to figure out why my heart would just stop beating, why my chest would be in so much pain I thought I was going to die. My family forced me to take a leave of absence. I got in my car and ended up here.” He stares at me, daring me to look away.
I thought I was going to die.
The wall around my chest tightens until my own heart stalls. A world without Jack? That seems wrong and unjust. I never wished for him to die—only to come back to me. To live with me. To be my love.
Something was wrong with my heart.
I search his face, looking for the slightest sign of a lie. A facial twitch. A redness. An irregular heartbeat. Sweat. Anything.
But I only see sincerity in those dark pools and seriousness in the set of his jaw. Every particle in my body wants to believe this is a true story. That even if his mind didn’t remember me, his heart did. That his longing for me was so deep and true that his physical body shut down.