Page 45 of This Time Around (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #3)

J ack woke up sometime around three in the morning.

At first, he couldn’t remember where he was.

The sheets felt softer than his own, and the room smelled like lavender and furniture polish.

He kept his eyes closed while his brain fumbled groggily for a location or the reason he’d woken up in the first place.

Was Paige okay? Did she have a stomachache or need a glass of water or?—

A soft hand skimmed over his chest and Jack opened his eyes, then relaxed under Allie’s touch.

He felt his heartbeat slowing, then speeding up again as he remembered what they’d spent the last couple hours doing, and why he wouldn’t mind doing it again.

Rolling toward her, he kissed her bare shoulder, then her collarbone, then the soft little hollow under her ear.

Allie smiled in her sleep, but kept her face buried in her pillow. “Mwahter mpho?” she mumbled.

“What?”

She rolled her face toward him, but didn’t open her eyes. “Was that your phone buzzing?”

It dawned on Jack that maybe that’s what had woken him up. He spotted the device on the nightstand and stretched over Allie to grab it. His thoughts reeled with worst-case scenarios. Maybe Paige had gotten hurt at the sleepover, or his mom had fallen or?—

His brain skidded to a halt as he read the words on the screen.

He stared at them for a few moments, opening and closing his eyes a few times to clear his vision.

Without a word, he set the phone facedown on the nightstand and lay back down beside Allie.

He pulled her against him so they were face to face in the darkness, then stroked a hand over her hip.

“I just missed a call from my father.”

He spoke the words quietly, almost as though he hadn’t committed to saying them aloud. They dropped like bricks onto the bed between them, cold and unfamiliar in the dim glow of the clock radio.

He watched Allie’s eyes flutter open, and she stared at him for a few beats, studying his face. Jack kept stroking the side of her body, soothing himself with the feel of her skin.

“Your father?” Allie murmured. “I didn’t realize you were in contact with him.”

“I’m not,” Jack said. “I spoke to him once sixteen years ago. Then again ten years ago.”

Her brow furrowed as the timeline seemed to register. She reached up and brushed the hair off his forehead, but she didn’t ask anything. Didn’t push for details about the call just now or the ones in the past. Something about that made him feel safe. Trusted. Loved.

So Jack found himself spilling the details. “You know he left when I was six and I didn’t talk to him after that.”

“Right,” Allie murmured, still touching the side of his face. “I don’t remember him calling a single time when we were together. Not on your birthdays or when you graduated from high school or when we got engaged.”

Jack took a deep breath. “I called him about two weeks after you and I split up. I was floundering and not sure what to do. I thought maybe he’d have some sort of fatherly advice to offer.”

“Did he?”

Jack snorted. “Not especially. Told me to pull my head out of my ass, which was probably sound advice in retrospect.”

“But not what you needed to hear right then.”

“Exactly.” Jack breathed in and out in the silence, taking himself back to the next time he’d called. It was five years later, and he’d been in a much different place.

“I called again to invite him to my wedding,” he said.

“Caroline was pregnant, and I was excited about that. Excited about graduating from college. I just felt like life was coming together for me. I was the first college grad in the family and I was going to be a father. I guess I wanted my own father to know that.”

“That makes sense.” She drew her hand down over his shoulder, her movements slow like she was soothing a cat.

Jack’s hand rested on her hip, and there was something so intimate about talking this way in the darkness, about touching each other with such familiarity.

“So how did that conversation go?” she asked.

Jack breathed in and out again, savoring Allie’s palm gliding over his shoulder. “It took him a second to even recognize my voice,” he said. “Then before I could even tell him anything, he said, ‘Let me guess—you either knocked someone up, you need money, or both.”

“Jesus,” she breathed. “What did you say?”

Jack shook his head, feeling the sting of those words all over again. “I hung up. I never told him anything. Not about the wedding or the graduation or about Paige.”

“You mean he doesn’t know he’s a grandfather?”

He shrugged as Allie skimmed the back of her hand over the side of his face.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I never told him, anyway.” He swallowed hard and stopped stroking her hip.

He let his hand rest there, palm cupping the smooth roundness.

“The thing is, he wasn’t totally wrong. I had knocked someone up.

And deep down, I was kind of hoping he’d offer to loan me money.

Maybe for a down payment or to help with the wedding or something. ”

“That’s not so far-fetched,” Allie said. “After a decade of not paying child support, it’s the least he could have done for you.”

He sighed. “Even so, I guess he was right about me after all.”

“Jack, no.” Her hand drifted up to his jaw again, and he leaned into her touch the same way he found himself leaning into her words.

“Look at everything you’ve done for yourself, without the tiniest bit of help from him.

You have a good education, an amazing career, an awesome kid.

And that last one is all you. You managed to become a great dad without any dad of your own as a role model. ”

He closed his eyes, letting her words and her touch calm him. He suddenly felt more tired than he’d been in weeks, maybe months. He felt himself starting to drift off to sleep.

Allie’s voice pulled him back. “Did he leave a voicemail?”

Jack opened his eyes, disoriented again. He reached over and picked up the phone again, then squinted at the screen. “Yep,” he said. “One new voicemail.”

He could see her face in the glow from his phone screen, and he watched her throat move as she swallowed. “Do you want to know what it says?”

Jack stared at the screen. His thumb hovered over the options. Play. Call back. Delete.

He stared at them, watching as his vision blurred and the choices jumbled together. Play. Call back. Delete.

“No,” he said.

Then he pressed his thumb to the screen, making his choice with a single touch.

Delete.

The words vanished from the screen, and Jack set the phone back down on the nightstand, then pulled Allie against him.

The next time Jack woke up, light seeped through his eyelids despite the faded brocade drapes Allie had drawn the night before. With his eyes still closed, he reached out for her, craving the feel of her skin and the warmth of her body on a lazy Saturday morning.

But his palm found only the empty sheet.

He opened his eyes and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was just after seven, which seemed odd. Allie had never been a morning person, preferring to snooze until ten or eleven in their cozy little college apartment.

He looked over at the door to the bathroom and saw it wide open.

While Allie might have changed a lot over the years, there was no way she’d ever be a woman who’d pee with the door open.

He glanced around the room, taking inventory.

Her phone was on the nightstand, right next to his.

He thought about the deleted voicemail from his father and felt a cold tingle in the center of his chest.

He rolled over, putting his back to the phone and looking around for more traces of warmth.

He couldn’t remember what Allie had been wearing the night before, but spotted the clothes he’d worn folded neatly on a chair beside the bed.

He remembered Allie pulling the shirt off his shoulders, yanking at the buttons like his sleeves were on fire. The thought made him smile.

Feeling warmer now, he rolled over again and grabbed his phone, intending to send an “I love you” text to Paige or maybe scroll social media while he waited for Allie to return.

Instead, he found himself staring at a text message from his father.

Please call. I’ve been a shitty dad, but I have something to tell you.

Jack stared at the words, breathing in and out while he waited to see how they’d register with him. He felt— nothing . Absolutely nothing. Not anger, not sadness, not nostalgia. Just a total absence of any feeling whatsoever.

He started to delete the message, then stopped. Maybe he’d want to reply later. Something terse and unsentimental, or maybe a dismissive note saying he was much too busy for phone calls.

Pushing thoughts of his father from his mind, Jack sat up and ran his fingers through his hair.

Maybe Allie got hungry and decided to make breakfast, or maybe she was watching YouTube videos about caulking bathtubs or polishing doorknobs.

It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that she was refinishing the dining room table right now.

He got up and pulled his jeans on, not bothering with shoes or a shirt. It felt warm in the house, and as far as he knew, the two of them had the place to themselves until evening.

“Allie?”

His voice bounced off the parlor walls as he moved into the kitchen. No sign of her there, though he noticed she’d cleaned up after their midnight razor clam binge. Two of the cats swished through his ankles, but nobody yowled for their breakfast. Allie must have fed them already.

He moved from room to room, scoping out the whole first floor before heading upstairs to poke around the second floor.

“Allie?”

Still no response, but he felt a gust of cool air as he emerged onto the third floor. He glanced up to see the attic door open and the ladder propped open beneath it.

He made his way to it, keeping his steps quiet as he climbed. It felt chillier up here, and he already regretted not pulling on his shirt or socks. He suppressed a shiver as he boosted himself through the opening and looked around.

Allie sat leaning against the trunk, and Jack felt a flicker of annoyance. Two weeks, and the trunk full of cash was still just sitting there. She had her back to it, and it seemed symbolic somehow. Like she hoped it might vanish altogether if she pretended it wasn’t there.

She looked up then, and her green eyes went wide. Then she smiled. “Jack. You startled me. Everything okay?”

Something about her smile seemed off, but maybe it was just early.

He clambered the rest of the way into the attic and padded across the beams to sit beside her.

She wore a beige cashmere cardigan that looked like something her mother might’ve owned, and Jack brushed the fabric aside to plant a kiss on her bare shoulder.

“You’re up early,” he murmured as he slid the cashmere back in place.

“A woodpecker woke me up right at dawn,” she said. “Figured I’d come up here and get some work done.”

He looked down to see an old cigar box in her lap. “Are those the love letters?” he asked. “The ones your dad told you about?”

“Actually, no. They belonged to my grandmother. I was kind of hoping I’d find something referencing the money.”

“Any luck?”

She shook her head. “No, but I did stumble over some interesting stuff. Apparently she worked as a go-go dancer before she met my grandpa.”

Jack laughed. “No kidding?”

“Nope. I’m not even sure my parents knew about it. Also, she may or may not have had an affair with Ernest Hemingway sometime in the late forties. I’m still reading to figure it out.”

Jack let his gaze stray to the trunk, and he felt his smile starting to fade. “I guess you’ve got a lot of secrets buried up here in this attic.”

He stared at the trunk for a few more seconds, hoping she’d get the message. Hoping she’d acknowledge the need to do the right thing, the legal thing. She had to know that was her only option, didn’t she?

But Allie wasn’t looking at him. She was looking down at the box in her lap, a pair of lines creasing the fair skin between her brows.

“Allie?”

“Yeah?” She looked up, and Jack watched the mask fall into place. Her expression was completely bland, so devoid of emotion she seemed almost serene. She looked so convincing, he almost believed she was just fine.

But Jack knew better.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked.

He reached up to tuck a few strands of hair behind her ear. She was beautiful like this with no makeup and her cheeks flushed from the cold air. He expected her to blow off his question, or to tell him she was just tired.

Instead, she took a deep breath and glanced at him again. “You remember what you were saying last night? About honesty and trust and open communication?”

Jack nodded as a slither of ice crept down his arms. “Yes.”

“I want that, too.” Her gaze dropped to her lap again. “Moving forward. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us. Anything else kept hidden in the attic.”

Jack glanced at the trunk again, but something told him that’s not what she meant. Seeming to read his mind, Allie shot a glance over her shoulder.

“It’s not about the money, Jack. I’ll deal with that later.” She paused, probably waiting for him to chide her for the undefined later. Jack held his tongue, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“So what is it?” he finally asked.

She looked up, and something in those dark green eyes made his heart stop cold. She held his gaze for a moment, and it seemed as though neither of them was breathing.

“There’s something else I need to tell you.” Her voice was barely audible, less audible than the sound of her swallowing. “Something that happened sixteen years ago.”

The ice floes in Jack’s veins turned sluggish, and he felt like he’d stopped breathing altogether.

He knew in his soul that whatever came out of her mouth next would be bad.

A game-changer. He’d had the same feeling that day she’d walked into the living room and stared down at him sitting on their old futon.

She’d leveled him with a look that chilled him to the bone, even now, all these years later.

As he looked into those dark green eyes now, he had the distinct sensation of sinking.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”