CHAPTER NINE
Jake
Present Day…
Jagger skipped along between me and Skye, each hop taking him along the sun-dappled pavement. “On one, two, three!” he cried, grabbing onto my and Skye’s hands.
I cocked an eyebrow and looked at Skye. It was maybe the second time we’d made eye contact since I showed up at her place ten minutes ago, and it fucking hurt. Each time her eyes caught mine, I remembered our conversation from the day before. I remembered her tears.
It seemed that, no matter what I did, I ended up hurting her one way or another.
“Swinging,” Skye explained, dropping her gaze from mine.
“Oh.”
Jagger began counting as we walked. “One… two… three!” He lifted his feet from the pavement, and we swung him high between us. His joyous giggles filled the air. “Again! One, two, three!”
We swung him again and again, until Skye complained that her arm was hurting.
“No, more,” Jagger begged. “Just one more time, Mom. Please!”
She held her arm in an exaggerated way, looking like it was about to fall off her body. “No. And look. We’re here.”
We stopped at the tall black gate to the playground. Jagger tugged the handle himself and ran inside. Skye and I followed at a slower pace.
“Come on, Jake!” Jagger yelled from halfway up a climbing tower. He turned to a little boy next to him. “That’s my dad.”
I hustled over to the play set, grateful to have an excuse to step away from Skye. After the previous day’s fiasco, being around her was doubly hard. Since there was no way for me to make up for the pain I’d inflicted on her, I figured the best thing to do was to just give her some space. Of course, I’d tried that already and failed. This time, I needed to make sure to stick to my guns. I had been a fucking Navy SEAL. I had discipline in spades.
I glanced over at her. Yeah, right.
Jagger jumped to the ground as soon as I reached him. “Let’s swing!”
I followed him to the swing set as Skye walked by us and settled onto a park bench.
“Play, Mom!” Jagger yelled at her.
“You need some guy time,” she called back.
Jagger turned to me with a pleased smile on his face. “Did you hear that, Jake? This is guy time.”
“I did hear. We better make the most of it.”
“Yeah, you better push me!”
He settled into his swing and began pumping his legs. We fell into a quiet rhythm, just two people out of many on the packed playground. After a few minutes, Jagger lost interest in swinging and moved to the jungle gym. I followed him wherever he went, often feeling Skye’s eyes on my back. Whenever I turned to look at her, though, her face was in a book.
“Thirsty,” Jagger gasped, jumping down from some kind of spinning contraption. I led him to the water fountains and held the button as he took long drinks of water.
“Let’s take a rest.”
“No, I wanna keep playing!”
“Just for a minute. If you faint from heatstroke, your mom is going to be super mad at me. I don’t want that.”
Jagger’s nose wrinkled. “Yeah, she can get mad. You don’t want your TV time taken away.”
My lips twitched. “No, sir. I don’t.”
Jagger wrapped his fingers around mine, and I guided him to a nearby bench. Pulling himself up onto the bench, he turned to face me, his short legs dangling. “Where do you live?”
“In an apartment in Manhattan. Do you know where Central Park is?”
His face lit up. “That’s where the tiny sail boats are. I love that place.”
“Yep. I live not far from there.”
“You live at the pond?”
“No, but I can walk to it in just a few minutes. I can take you there soon, if you want.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” He scooted closer to me and laid his head against the side of my chest. “I’m glad you found me.”
My heart swelled so much it felt as if it was about to burst. An emotion like none I’d ever experienced rushed through me. I’d loved friends and I’d loved my parents, even though my memories of them grew fuzzier with each passing year. I’d loved Trey, and I’d loved Skye, even if I was too young and stupid to recognize it when things were good. But I’d never loved someone quite the way I now loved this small child. Just a few days of knowing each other and I was wrapped around this boy’s finger. I knew without a doubt that I would do anything for him.
Carefully, I extricated my arm from where it was pressed against my side and wrapped it around my son’s shoulders. “I’m glad I found you too, Jagger.”
“Are you and my mom going to get married?”
I pressed my lips together and took my time formulating an answer. “No,” I carefully said. “It’s not like that with everyone’s parents.”
He pulled away from the crook of my arm and looked up at me. “But all my friends’ parents are married.”
This conversation was getting harder by the minute. I rubbed the back of my neck and forced myself to think faster. “All of them?”
“Uh huh.”
Well, good for them.
“That’s just the kids you know,” I pointed out. “There are actually all kinds of families. Sometimes there’s just a mom or just a dad… or there might be two moms or two dads.”
“Or a mom and a cousin, like with me.”
“Exactly.”
“But now you found us, and you and my mom can get married. My friend Allie said that people have babies when they’re in love, and I know that when you’re in love you get married.”
I fought back simultaneous urges to laugh and cry. If only things were as simple as Jagger thought they were.
“Sometimes it’s that way, yes. But not always.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated… relationships between adults are complicated. You’ll learn more about it as you get older.”
Jagger frowned. “I’m not sure I want to get older. It sounds kinda sucky.”
“Hey.” I touched his shoulder and he looked up at me. “It doesn’t matter what happens between me and your mom. We’re both here for you. We’re going to always take care of you, no matter what. That’s what’s important.”
“Okay. Do you want to play rock-paper-scissors?”
I smiled at the change of subject. “Uh. Sure.”
The way Jagger flipped topics so quickly was still throwing me for a loop. I didn’t have much experience with little kids, and felt like I was stumbling along, just figuring everything out as I went.
“This is how you play,” he instructed, coiling his fingers into a chubby fist. “You say rock, paper, scissors.”
I mimicked his hand gestures. “Rock. Paper. Scissors.”
Just as I put my hand into a flat plane, an explosion filled the air. Energy like lightning shot through me. Without thinking, I threw my arm over Jagger’s shoulders and pushed him onto the ground, covering him with my body.
But it didn’t matter. He was dead. I couldn’t save him. His eyes stared up at me, the pupils already fully blown.
“Jake!” Jagger shrieked. “Jake! You’re hurting me.”
I was back on the playground, my son beneath me, looking up at me with terror on his face. I pushed myself up on my hands and knees, taking my weight off his little body. “Oh God. I’m so sorry, Jag. Are you okay?”
Still looking frightened, Jagger huffed and swiped at the dirt on his shorts. “That’s not how you play!”
Over my right shoulder, a garbage truck rumbled by. Another exploding sound hit the air, this one coming from the truck. The tension in my shoulders fell away. I could still feel my heart pounding like a jackhammer, though, and my hands were shaking.
“Sorry,” I apologized, pulling Jagger to his feet. “That sound scared me.”
He looked at the trash truck and then at me, his nose scrunched. “You’re funny. Now are you paying attention?”
I blew out a long breath. “Yeah, I’m paying attention.”
“Okay, this is how you do it...”
He rambled on, giving me an unnecessarily long explanation of the game. My eyes drifted over his head and toward the direction Skye sat. This time, her face wasn’t in a book though. Her head was up and her eyes locked right on me.
I quickly looked away, my frantic pulse returning. The truck backfiring had freaked me out much more than it would any normal, healthy person. Had Skye seen what happened? Did she suspect that something was going on with me?
Something is going on.
I knew I reacted to loud noises in an unnatural way. How the fuck could I not? Some days it seemed that shit was still ringing in my ears. There were some sounds I’d never been able to escape. I’d just carry them with me for the rest of my life.
I couldn’t touch oil because it felt too much like blood. Even the color of red would take me back to that place.
I needed to be more careful. If Skye suspected something was wrong with me, she might become worried. She might cut back on my time with Jagger. I couldn’t risk that. Especially not after having just found him. Our being torn apart would break both of our hearts.
I just needed to watch it. That was all. I could handle this.
I. Was. A. Fucking. Navy. SEAL.
What the hell was wrong with me that I couldn’t handle a damn playground in the middle of the damn day?
I directed all of my focus to the game with Jagger, doing my best to block everything else out. The traffic. The kids and parents around us. If I was going to conquer my freak-outs, I needed all of the self-control I could muster. I needed to have perfect concentration.
I kept my eyes on Jagger’s face and hands. Rock. Paper. Rock. Scissors. Paper. Just him and me.
And the gaze of the woman who would haunt me till the end of time.