Page 28 of Jack Rabbit (Dark Trails #1)

28

ADAIR

I t’s later than I expect when Jack gets back after work, but since he doesn’t say anything about where he was, I don’t ask.

I follow him onto the deck, holding the barbecue tools he told me to grab so he could carry a tray loaded up with sausage and peppers. Outside, I take a deep breath of the chilly air as Jack preps the grill. There’s something I really need to know — something I’ve got to get out before I let my heart tumble any further down this rabbit hole.

“So, um, why were you so resistant to me? Or even like, a regular hookup arrangement? How do I know you’re not going to change your mind now?”

Jack turns around, spatula in hand and a guarded expression on his face.

“I had an ex,” he says with a sigh. I was going to sit down, but instead I lean against the railing by the grill so I can face him as he cooks.

“What was his name?”

“Nathaniel.” Jack looks like he doesn’t even like the word in his mouth. “This was ten years or so ago now. I was probably about the same age as you are now.” He frowns. “Actually, how old are you?”

“Uh, I’ll be twenty-three in another few months.”

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “Twenty-two. You’re younger than you look.”

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-four. I figured there were probably nine, ten years between us. I wasn’t counting on twelve.”

A knot pulls tight in the pit of my stomach. “Is that a problem? I mean, I guess I don’t know what I could actually do about it, but I was just wondering.”

“No. What about you?” He pins me with that dark stare.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m thirty-four, like I just said. Am I too old for you?”

I shake my head hard. “No, nope. It doesn’t bother me. I actually —” What I’m thinking makes me squirm a little. “I guess I kind of like that you have your shit together and all that.”

He kind of rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything.

“So… Nathaniel?” I ask, a little tentatively.

Jack doesn’t look at me before he takes a deep breath. “We were together for about two years. I was young and clueless. I thought for a while he might be the one, even though things were kind of rocky. His folks really weren’t OK with him being into men. He was bi, so I think they thought — or at least wanted to believe — that he was quote-unquote experimenting.”

He gives the mesh basket with the peppers a toss with tongs. “They were loaded, and Nathaniel told me at one point they had plans that predated me by a long shot to marry him off. He had absolutely no interest in the woman, but I guess her parents and his had a lot of mutual business investments.”

I wrinkle my nose. “So almost like an arranged marriage? That’s messed up. I mean, it never works out in books.”

Jack barks out a laugh before he continues. “They grudgingly tolerated me for the most part while we were dating, but all hell broke loose when he told them he thought I might propose. They put a lot of pressure on him to break it off.”

“Was he into… you know?” I ask. Jack looks at me with a puzzled frown. “All the kinky shit,” I clarify.

“Not really. And that’s what blew everything up. Nathaniel was way more vanilla but he tolerated my kinks and he would sub for me sometimes. I figured it was a good compromise. For a long time, I thought he thought so, too.”

I make a face. “It seems sort of sad and shitty to have to be with somebody who quote-unquote tolerates what you’re really into.”

Jack is quiet for a minute, tending to the sausages as they start to sizzle. I start to worry that I said something to offend or piss him off when he speaks again.

“Looking back, I realize that now,” he says slowly. “But at the time, it just — I didn’t have the confidence to believe that there was somebody out there for me, for what I wanted.”

I shoot him a skeptical look. “I have a tough time seeing you as somebody who wasn’t confident about what they liked.”

Jack shakes his head. “I knew what I wanted. I just didn’t believe anybody else would want that. To be honest, Nathaniel might have had something to do with that. Whenever we argued, he would tell me I was perverted and damaged, and lucky to have a partner who would put up with such fucked-up kinks.”

“What a dick!” I exclaim.

Jack laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. “I’ll let you get to know me for a little bit and you can decide for yourself if he was right or not.” He brings his eyes to mine. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I know what I want doesn’t mesh with most people’s ideas or desires in a relationship.”

I don’t know what to say, but it doesn’t matter because Jack continues. “But that wasn’t even close to the worst of it. Nathaniel’s parents invited him — without me — to their summer house. I could tell this was going to be a pressure campaign and begged him not to go, but he went anyway. While he was out there, his sister snooped on his phone. She got a hell of an eyeful.”

“Ohhh, damn,” I breathe.

“You have no idea. And, I’ll be honest with you, without any context, those pictures looked pretty fucking bad. Welts, bruises, handprints.”

He sighs. “It was a clusterfuck. Apparently they threatened access to his trust fund and to withhold his inheritance. He told them that I was abusive and was pushing him to get married so I could get his money.”

“Oh my God.” My hand comes to my mouth in shock. “What did you do?”

“What could I do? Those pictures were scary as hell. If you didn’t know they were part of consensual, negotiated kink scenes, you’d think the worst of me.”

“He never told his family the truth?”

Jack shakes his head. “Not only that, but his sister — who was good friends with my sister at the time; probably still is — went and told my family Nathaniel’s version of everything. It didn’t help out that I’d had a poorly-timed blowup with my brother-in-law not long before that. So my sister was predisposed to believe Nathaniel’s side of the story and completely cut me out of her life. My old man’s been gone for years and my sister was always tighter with my mom than I was, so she took her side in the whole shitshow.”

Jack keeps his eyes down on the grill. “Nathaniel’s folks hired a lawyer and threatened legal action unless I got out of his life completely. So I moved out of the apartment we were renting, even though I’d paid the security deposit, and left behind everything except for my personal stuff. But even that wasn’t enough for them. They filed a complaint with my agency, which did an internal investigation. This job is all I’ve wanted to do since I was eight years old. And I was scared shitless I was going to lose it. I was eventually exonerated, but you know how gossip gets around. A lot of my coworkers, even the ones I considered good friends, just avoided me after that.

“So I got a transfer to the other side of the state and spent the next decade being grateful I at least had my career. Last year, a transfer opportunity back in this area came up.” Jack stops talking long enough to huff out a bitter laugh. “I looked online and discovered that Nathaniel married the woman his parents had chosen for him and moved away, so I figured it was safe. But after that experience, I told myself there was no way in hell I’d ever open up to anyone again.”

My eyes and mouth are both wide. “Holy shit. But also… ever?”

I’m debating if I should say the rest of what’s in my head when my mouth makes the decision for me. “That seems like a long time to blame yourself for something that wasn’t your fault.”

Jack just sighs. He looks upset. I should change the subject. “So, how did you know you wanted to be a ranger at eight?”

He perks up and I breathe an inward sigh of relief. “My dad traveled a lot for work when I was a kid, so my mom’s brother was a big part of my life growing up. He was really into hiking, camping, foraging — all that stuff. When I first found out you could have an actual job overseeing wilderness, my mind was blown. I knew immediately that was what I wanted to do.”

“What happened during that thing with your ex? He didn’t believe the lies, did he?”

Jack shakes his head. He rotates the sausages once more, keeping his eyes trained on the grill. “He died before then. I like to think he would’ve had my back, but…” he trails off and shrugs. “I would’ve liked to think my mom and sister would, too.”

“He knew you better than the rest of them, right? I’m sure he knew you weren’t capable of what they were accusing you of,” I say.

“I like to think so,” he says again, his voice low.

“It was my granddad, for me” I say. “My mom was always so busy working, he would take me into the woods and we’d hike or camp. I just fell in love with it.” I look over at Jack as I sit down in one of his Adirondack chairs. “Maybe we have more in common than you thought we did.”

He makes a sort of hmm sound but doesn’t say anything. Time to change the subject again. God, I suck at this game. I twist around to study the carving on the middle panel of the back. “Cool heron,” I say.

“Thank you,” Jack says.

I look at him in surprise. “You did this?”

“Made the chair, too.” He indicates an outbuilding at the far edge of the yard. “That’s my workshop. These will probably be done in a few, by the way,” he says, pointing with the tongs to the grill.

“Wow.” I look at the intricately carved bird again, noticing the fine details of the feathers and the fish caught in its beak. “It’s gorgeous.” My heart does a little skip when I glance up to see Jack’s cheeks flush a deep pink.

I examine the design more carefully. “I like how you incorporated the whorls of the wood into the design so it looks like water ripples.”

Still standing at the grill, Jack is studying me with a contemplative look. I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“What?” I ask.

“So you’re artistically inclined.”

I sigh. “Not really. I like to fool around with graphics sometimes, but I don’t know enough to be really good at it.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Jack says with a frown. Now he points the tongs at me. “And that means you weren’t exactly telling me the truth earlier.”