Page 17 of Secret Triplets, Second Chances

LARA

I f I were Zachery, I might make a joke about Jake taking me out on the boat so he could drown me and dump the body. But I’m not Zachery, and even all these years later, I still feel completely at ease with Jake.

“Got enough sunscreen?” I ask, eyeing Jake’s arms, which look like they’re already turning pink.

“I think I do,” he says, setting down the oars and grinning at me, “but I’m getting the feeling you want me to wear more, so I’ll apply extra.”

I smile at him and squirt even more into his palms, watching as he applies to make sure he doesn’t miss any spots.

“Must come with the territory, huh?”

Startling, I meet Jake’s eyes, fear twisting through my chest — what territory? Being a mom? Has he heard something about the triplets?

As though he can tell I’m confused, he clarifies, “Being a nurse. Wanting people to wear enough sunscreen.”

I nod, trying to breathe through the panic that was starting to build in my throat. My reaction tells me that this entire thing is wrong — that if I didn’t reach out to tell him about the triplets in all these years, I can’t let him find out now.

Although … maybe it’s been long enough now. He’s in the NHL. I’ve proven that I can do it myself, or, at least, without Jake’s help. If I tell him now, he might not feel obligated to stay and be a part of their lives.

But something else tells me that’s not true, that I know Jake well enough to know he wouldn’t go back to the NHL. Really, nothing has changed. He’s still the same person he was all those years ago.

Well, except for the fighting he’s been doing recently.

“Lara?”

“Oh, yeah.” I laugh, waving my hand through the air and nodding. “Skin cancer is no joke.”

But the fixation on sunscreen doesn’t come from being a nurse, it comes from years of applying the stuff to three little bodies, of missing a spot once and watching as Daffy had to pay the price for my mistake; from reading countless studies about skin cancer and heat stroke, and being extra careful with my babies during the summer.

“I bet,” he says, taking up the oars again.

When he said we would be going out on the boat, my stomach flipped. I’d driven myself out to the lake to meet him, heart pounding with adrenaline.

Now that I’m an adult, with a place in the community and a car attached to my name, it’s a lot harder to stay low-key. I parked far from Jake’s truck — the same one he had as a teenager — and prayed that nobody would drive past and assume we were here together.

Luckily, it’s a bit chillier today, and there aren’t that many other people out on the lake.

For a while after I gave birth, there were Wildfern residents who speculated over who the father might be.

Among the names I heard, Jake’s never came up.

We were so far out of each other’s social circles that nobody had ever considered the fact that the valedictorian and hockey team captain might have known each other like that.

Hilariously, many people still insist the kids actually belong to Zachery, despite the fact that they look nothing like him.

My parents have never asked.

“Do you come out here a lot?” Jake asks when the silence has lasted for long enough that I managed to forget he was here. That’s something that never happens to me with other people — feeling so comfortable that it’s almost like I’m by myself.

“Oh.” I shake my head. “No—not really. I hate rowing for myself.”

“Huh, you haven’t found anyone else to row for you?”

“Well, Zachery is horribly terrified of water, and if my parents come out here, they’re going to end up either making out or arguing about protecting public spaces.”

Jake laughs, shaking his head, and I remember that he’s never really met my parents. I kept them far enough apart that he only knows about them through these little tidbits.

“While I’m here, I’ll bring you out as much as you want.”

“I’d love that. But I don’t have a lot of free time these days.”

The moment the words are out of my mouth, I realize it’s another misstep, another thing that might lead Jake to the truth. I feel like a double agent, continuously forgetting my secret identity. Non-mom.

“Because of school and work?” he asks, tilting his head, and the gesture is so familiar from high school that I have the urge to kiss him.

I push the feeling away and nod, adding, “And clinicals. Time that I work for free in exchange for knowledge.”

“That sounds like being a college athlete.” He laughs.

“Hey, I happen to remember you having a couple of sponsorships,” I say, and I realize as soon as the words are out of my mouth that it’s an admission that I’ve been paying attention to him all these years.

He stares at me for a second, like he’s realizing it, too, then he says, “Yeah, I did. That’s a new thing, though. Didn’t used to be like that.”

“I’m glad they changed it.”

“Me, too.”

Silence falls between us again, and we drift along the water quietly, both seemingly lost in thought.

There’s a voice in the back of my head (which sounds a lot like my mother) demanding I tell him about the kids.

For the first time in my life, I understand the metaphor of having an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other.

One argues that he’s not going to care, that it won’t change anything except getting the truth on the table. The other argues that if I’ve lied for this long, there’s no point in telling him now.

Except it’s much, much harder to keep the lie up to his face.

“I read your dad’s book,” Jake says, and it makes me laugh.

“His book about the evolution of surgery?”

Jake laughs and shakes his head, running his hand through his hair. I track the movement, swallowing as I remember what the sight of it used to do to me back then.

He’s kept all the charming boyishness but added something else. Something a lot more alluring to me now that I’m twenty-three.

“Nah,” he says, “the one about his hand.”

Oh. Jake’s read my dad’s book . The famous memoir about his time as a heart surgeon before an injury took him out of commission. Arguably, the thing that my parents are best-known for.

It was a global sensation when I was a kid.

Jake and I had talked about it as teenagers, about how my parents’ love story was out there for everyone to read.

While deeply logical, my dad also managed to romanticize his days as a heart surgeon, drawing on all the metaphors you’d imagine while keeping them from being overly cliche.

It’s been years since I picked it up, but I know there are parts I could recite by heart.

“What did you think?”

“I think it’s inspiring,” Jake says and shrugs, glancing up at the sky, which is mottled with clouds, “that he could lose something that seemed to mean so much to him, and move on like that without completely shutting down.”

“Well, he still does research. And he runs the free clinic.”

“Yeah, but—” Jake stops, pauses to think for a second, rubbing his hand over his beard.

I force myself not to think about how badly I want to reach out and touch him there, feel every place where he has changed in my absence.

“I guess I felt like I understood what he was saying about surgery. That’s how I’ve always felt about hockey — that rush.

The feeling that you’re fulfilling your purpose.

It was pretty cool that he managed a trauma like that without losing himself. ”

I bite my tongue to keep from saying something about how smart he is, remembering how self-deprecating he used to be in high school. How he’d talk about hockey being his only thing, despite the fact that he’s actually really insightful.

As we float along the lake, we talk like we used to.

About life, about Wildfern Ridge. Jake tells me about Los Angeles.

I tell him about the drama at Fern Days last year.

He tells me about the time he met the president.

I tell him about wanting to find a new place eventually, about outgrowing my little apartment.

He gives me a strange look at that, as though he’s wondering how one person can need more space than an apartment, but he doesn’t say anything.

“You’re in the one over the café?” he asks, and I gulp, nodding, thinking about the meaning that apartment holds for us. It’s not like I can lie to him. If he’s in Wildfern Ridge, he might see my car around town.

If he’s around, he’s going to find out about the triplets eventually.

“I’m renovating my dad’s place,” Jake offers, and I go still, glancing over at him. Throughout the night, he’s carefully avoided talking about his dad.

Back when we were kids, he never liked to talk about him, either. When he did, I could tell things were worse than he ever said.

“Really?” I ask, laughing. “You always talked about construction stuff, but I never got to see it.”

“You want to?”

Something hangs between us, and I recognize it from before. That tension, that promise of something to come. I swallow, knowing I should ignore it. Knowing that the last time I reached out and touched it, everything went really, really wrong.

I know I can’t keep the triplets a secret for much longer, and I have no idea how Jake is going to feel when he finds out.

But I can’t turn down more time with him. And I can’t turn down the chance to see his house — the place he grew up in. It feels like that place might hold pieces of him I’ve never been able to see before.

“Yeah,” I finally say, nodding and wrapping my arms around my knees, leaning in toward him. “Yeah, I would.”