It wasn’t a dream.

Jack opened his eyes the next morning, and Elizabeth was there in the darkness, her blonde hair falling across her pure bare shoulders, sleeping with a little smile, looking so damned wonderful he wanted to take her in his arms. To kiss her all over and tell her he’d never let her go.

But no. As long as he didn’t touch her, didn’t wake her, maybe he could find a way to undo the damage he’d done. Maybe if he closed his eyes and opened them again, she wouldn’t be there, and then he wouldn’t have betrayed her even more.

He clenched his eyes closed and kept them shut for as long as he could before opening them again, but when he did, she was still there.

It wasn’t a hyper-realistic fantasy. He’d had sex with Elizabeth. He’d had profound, needful, loving sex with her.

He chastised himself for letting it happen.

He wanted to wake her up and apologize and tell her that he’d been drunk and his inhibitions had been down, and he couldn’t be held accountable for responding the way any man would to a beautiful woman coming into his bed and offering herself to him.

But he knew it wasn’t that. A few drinks might have lowered his inhibitions, but he hadn’t been blind drunk. He’d known what he was doing. It had felt so right at the time, and it still felt right—waking up next to Elizabeth, with her naked in his bed.

This is how it should be, he thought. It should always be the two of us together in this bed.

Yet it was wrong, and it was his fault for being selfish with her. His father’s stupid criminal secret still hung between them, unbeknownst to her, and now it was to the point where if Jack didn’t tell her the truth, he might never be able to.

But to touch her. To brush her tousled hair off her shoulder and make room for his lips there. To kiss her forehead, pull her close. To wake her up with kisses and make love again, until the sun rose and lit the mid-morning sky.

Most of all, he wanted to protect her from anything bad ever happening to her again.

Elizabeth slept like an angel. Just looking at her made Jack’s heart swell with emotion. He could be her angel, in another life. He could be the one who provided for her so she could pursue her career dreams. He could keep a roof over her head, one that never leaked. He could be the one she came home to after a long day, and he’d have a fire going in the fireplace, and a glass of her favorite wine ready for her, and they’d tuck themselves under a cashmere blanket and unwind together after spending the day apart, linking hands and hearts. Coming together, always, for weeks and months and years and decades. Some years there’d be a toddler at their feet. Others, a few teenagers stomping through. And then it would be just them again, before the grandbabies came along.

This is what love is, he thought, watching her, too terrified to touch her. Inexplicably, after being satisfied for more than a decade with short-term dalliances, he looked at Elizabeth and saw forever. Wanted forever. He wanted to do right by her every day for the rest of his life—which was precisely why he couldn’t be in bed with her for one minute longer.

He slid from the bed carefully, making sure not to jolt the mattress and cause her to wake. He walked through the dark bedroom to the bathroom, where he closed the door before turning on the light.

He was supposed to have breakfast with Doc Bauer that morning to make up for having missed it after his rough shift, and while Jack didn’t want to leave, he thought it was for the best. He had thinking to do on how to proceed with Elizabeth, and having her right next to him was far too distracting for him to make clear decisions.

He got dressed and snuck back through the bedroom, but just as he was about to step into his garage and make his escape, he thought of Elizabeth and how she’d wake up to find him gone and wonder where he was. He took a moment to write a note to leave on the counter.

I had an appointment this morning. Would have woken you to kiss you goodbye but wanted you to sleep like the angel you are. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.

Jack.  

He left the note and made it all the way to his truck before he had second thoughts. The note was misleading, not because it wasn’t true but because it implied the affection between them would continue. He worried that it made him seem disingenuous—leaving a note like that when he still carried a secret.

Going back inside, he ripped another sheet of paper from the notepad, and re-wrote: I had an appointment this morning. Didn’t want to wake you. That alone felt too abrupt, so he added, Thanks for last night.

And then he winced because it sounded brusque and awful, but it was the best he could do at the moment. And it was true—he was thankful for last night, in a wonderful-awful kind of way. If it were the only time he got to be with Elizabeth, then the memory of it would have to carry him through the years.

* * *

After breakfast with Doc Bauer, Jack headed to the gym. He kept his gym bag in his truck, and he was diligent about getting workouts in, but that morning it was more about avoiding going home until he knew Elizabeth would be gone to the Pickens’s for her caregiving duties. He also knew the mind-clearing effects of exercise.

After two hours of lifting heavy weights followed by half an hour sweating it out on the treadmill, Jack felt better. The residual headache from the previous night’s whiskey was gone, and so were his doubts about what he had to do.

He remembered his conversation with Tom the night before. About the options available to him.

Go for it with Elizabeth, keep the secret, and live a lie. I can’t live that way.

Forget Elizabeth and move on to someone else. Not even possible. Jack knew he could never forget Elizabeth, not now.

Which left the only thing to do, the only correct thing, which Jack guessed he’d known deep down all along. Tell her.

It would almost certainly mean Elizabeth would dump him, want nothing to do with him or his family, and that thought just about killed him. But at least he would know he’d done the honorable thing and that she had all the information. With that, she could go forward knowing that her father wasn’t a thief. She could move on and live a happier life, and Jack would be the one to give that to her, even though it meant being without her.

He thought of his siblings, too, Josh in particular. This revelation would throw his brother’s life into upheaval. He was clearly so happy with Hayley, and Jack expected that would continue, but once Jack came clean about his father’s crime, Josh’s good relationship with Bruce might be ruined.

There were complications, however. By revealing what he knew to Elizabeth, might it expose his father to possible prosecution? He knew the statute of limitations was passed for the initial crime, but had Bruce done anything while chief of police to further bury the theft, and could that now come back to haunt him? Was there any lingering liability?

Before he told Elizabeth, he had to know the full potential repercussions of what he was about to do, for both himself and his father. Immediately he thought of Theresa Harmon, the Armstrongs’ lawyer—what a bulldog she’d been at the scene of that accident, how she knew the Armstrong case inside and out, what an advocate for Elizabeth she’d been. Anyone who cared about Elizabeth like that was the kind of person Jack could trust.

He showered at the gym, and once he was back inside his truck, sitting in the parking lot with the heater running full blast, he looked up Theresa Harmon’s office and made the call.