Page 19 of Secret Triplets, Second Chances

LARA

T he thought of going to Jake’s place early is nice, but just not realistic when I have three little employees to try and manage beforehand.

“We’re going to Gran and Gramps’ house tonight?” Aster asks for the third time. He’s wearing a little blue shirt with a dinosaur on it, his backpack firmly on both shoulders.

“Yes, silly,” Daffy says, hip popped, her bag slung over one shoulder. I give her a look, and she sighs, pulling it onto both. I know enough about posture and weight distribution that my kids will always wear both straps.

“That’s what Mommy said,” Chrys supplies matter-of-factly, looking up at me for confirmation.

“Yes,” I say, dropping down in front of them. “Aren’t you excited?”

“Yes,” Aster says, while Chrys says, “No.”

“Oh.” I stop in front of her, hand pausing midway through brushing her hair back over her shoulder. “Why not, honey?”

“I thought we were going to stay here tonight,” Chrys says, and for a second, I think about calling the thing with Jake off, staying home with my babies. But then, she adds, “Plus, Gran is making spinach for dinner.”

That draws a laugh out of me, and I look over at Daffy, who smiles devilishly. After a call to Gran to confirm that she is not, in fact, making only spinach for dinner, Chrys is much happier to go, and I don’t feel so guilty about going to Jake’s.

I arrive ten minutes later than I said I would, and when he opens the door, I’m already apologizing.

“I’m sorry, today has been so busy.” I step inside and start to toe my shoes off. “A?—”

I stop, realizing I was about to drop Aster’s name, my heart thudding in my chest. Jake watches me with a strange look, and I clear my throat, trying again.

“Actually, I can’t wait to see the house,” I lamely correct, and he laughs, swinging his arms out.

“Don’t take your shoes off,” he says, stopping me, “and don’t get your hopes up. I did a lot of demolition today.”

Jake plays the part of real estate agent, charmingly describing the various states of destruction throughout the house. The hole in the bathroom becomes a “charming little nook,” and the missing fixtures are “wide-open opportunities for just the right buyer.”

He stops outside one of the rooms. “And this was my bedroom.”

It’s stupid, but my throat catches at the thought of it — the room Jake slept in when we first met. Maybe if our situation had been different, and he had a different home life, we could have spent time together in it.

He opens the door, and I walk in, not knowing why I expected it to still have posters, a bedspread. Instead, it’s completely vacant, like a dorm room awaiting its next student.

“Tell me,” I say, turning around in the center of the room and trying not to think about young Jake here, lounging on the bed, texting me. “Was teenage Jake a messy guy?”

“I have never been messy,” he assures me. “You’d love living with me, Lara.”

The sentence lands like a stone through water, splashing and sinking straight to the bottom, coming to a stop between the two of us. I know we’re both thinking about how, at one point, that was exactly the plan.

I clear my throat, trying to push past the moment for both of us. “Yeah, well, you’d hate living with me. I’m very messy.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

It’s not true, exactly. It’s the triplets and the confines of our small apartment that make the mess, but the base of the sentiment is true. I can’t imagine Jake would like living with me, or my roommates.

He continues the tour like nothing happened, and I can’t stop thinking about the bed in the corner of that room, where he spent his time while our teenage relationship was blooming.

By the time we get back to the kitchen, I’m actually very charmed by the place. One of the bedrooms has a little nook I could see Chrys reading in when she gets older. Aster would love the bedroom with the window facing the road, so he can watch the bye-byes.

“As you’ll notice,” Jake says, clapping his hands, “the oven is out of commission. But I still plan to make you a meal.”

“Oh, you do?”

I follow him out to the patch of concrete behind the house, and he sets me up in a folding chair, popping the cap off a lemonade and pulling a lemon slice from the cooler, sliding it on the rim.

“Fancy.” I laugh, sitting down when he insists that he doesn’t want my help. “Can’t remember the last time someone made me a fun drink.”

“What?” he jokes. “You don’t go out with your nursing friends? You really have that little free time?”

I nod and take a drink, averting my eyes, feeling the lies pile up inside me like grease, clogging up my insides.

Jake either doesn’t notice or is nice enough not to press, instead busying himself on the grill.

Whatever he’s making smells amazing , and at one point, I see him pouring a container of queso from the Mexican restaurant on the square over the whole thing.

“Bon appétit,” he says, handing the dish to me, and I laugh, taking it, and the fork he hands me next. It’s a mess of meats — chicken, steak, shrimp — with veggies and rice, smothered in queso.

“I didn’t know you spoke French,” I tease, pointing my fork at him when I realize it’s too hot to take a bite right away.

“ Il y a beaucoup de choses que tu ne sais pas sur moi ,” he says, a smile splitting over his face when my eyebrows raise to my hairline. “There are a lot of things you don’t know, Lara.”

“Apparently.” I laugh, shaking my head and clinking my glass with him. Of everything — the new beard, broader chest, sure confidence — why is it that a bit of French has me feeling completely overwhelmed?

Jake speaks French, apparently. As we talk, he assures me that he’s not fluent, that he needed a year of foreign language in college and realized he really liked the challenge. That he might have double-majored if he’d had more time, but he finished after four years so he could head to the NHL.

I tell him about nursing school, about the really mean instructor who tried to fail me and told me I was too soft for nursing. He lost his accreditation a year later when a big scandal came out.

He tells me about Labowski, apparently the worst guy in the NHL, and exactly what happened that day on the ice. I feel better about it, but I don’t tell him that I saw it on the TV before he got a chance to explain it himself.

“But the weird thing,” he says, when we’re sitting in our chairs watching the sun set over the horizon, our plates cleaned and stacked on the cooler between us, “is that I… I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would.

My manager told me it would be a good idea to get out of the city, and I didn’t realize how much it was affecting me until now. ”

“Jake Bradson,” I say, lolling my head to look over at him, “are you telling me you actually like Wildfern Ridge?”

He looks over at me, holds my gaze for a long moment, and I feel that thing between us again, just begging for one of us to acknowledge it.

“Actually,” he says with a shrug, still holding my gaze, “yeah, I am. I guess I could… I could kind of see myself settling down in a place like this someday. Like, the constant go-go-go of the city wasn’t helping me to let go of the anger about everything that happened. My dad, that stuff, you know?”

That stuff.

That stuff includes me — my decision to stay in Wildfern Ridge instead of going with him all those years ago. We’re still looking at each other, holding the stare, and I feel the truth bubbling up in my stomach like I might be sick with it.

Then, Jake does the one thing I can’t skirt around, can’t take a sip to ignore.

He asks me directly, a serious look on his face, “Lara, what happened? Back then? I’m not angry. I just— I think it would help me a lot to know why you decided to stay.”

I close my eyes, feel tears pushing behind my lids. The angel and devil on my shoulders, each arguing their point of view, swapping clothes and pitchforks until I’m not sure what the right thing is anymore.

Then, I open my mouth, and I tell him the truth.