“What kind of cancer did she have?”
Jakes eyes fall to my boobs. “Breast cancer.”
I cover my cleavage with my palm. “Are you seriously staring at my boobs while you talk about you mom’s cancer? Really?” A grin tugs at my lips.
He shrugs. “Those are some impressive boobs, Katie.”
Jake goes to the corner of the room, opens a cabinet, and takes out a few fishing poles. Then he gets a tackle box from the shelf.
“My mom was tough as nails. Kind of like you.” He looks directly into my eyes.
“I’m not feeling very tough lately, Jake.”
“She broke a ping pong paddle over my ass the time she caught me smoking with Fred out behind the storage shed.”
“As she should have,” I quip.
“And she broke several wooden spoons over my butt when I got too mouthy.”
“Sounds like you deserved it.”
“She was tough. And soft, all at the same time.”
“Most moms are.” Or so I’ve heard. I really didn’t have one. Not one with a vagina. I did have two loving parents, though. The absolute best.
“It was nice of your parents to come here.”
I lay a hand on my belly. “They’ve been there for the births of all my children. Well, not actually in the delivery room, but still…”
“Laura and I weren’t going to have anyone in the room with us. We wanted to share it. Just us.” He snorts. “Guess that got all messed up, huh?”
I ignore his jab at his ex-wife. “That’s what Jeff and I did. Well, when he was home. He was deployed when Trixie was born.”
“Who was with you then?” He starts to sort through some tackle.
“Gabby was with me. She was nine and I couldn’t have beaten her out of the room with a big stick.”
He points down toward the area below his waist. “She watched the whole gruesome process?”
“Giving birth isn’t gruesome. It’s wonderful.”
He makes a rude sound in his throat. “I’ve seen it. It was pretty disgusting.”
“You just think that because you didn’t get to experience the moments afterward, when you hold that baby in your arms and promise to protect it and love it and care for it until the day you die. When you count all the fingers and toes while they wipe the blood off, or that second when you wait to hear that first cry. There’s always that moment when your heart stops, when you’re waiting for the validation of life, for the noise. Then it happens and the vise around your heart eases. If you’d experienced that part of it, you’d find it wonderful.”
His voice is quiet. “Yeah, I never got to do that.”
He throws something out of his tackle box and it clanks on the floor. It’s a knife. “Why did you take that out?” I ask him.
“Because you don’t like to kill the fish you catch.”
A grin tugs at the corners of my lips. “You remember that?”
He looks into my eyes. “I told you. I remember everything.”
“I do too.” Suddenly, I can’t swallow past the lump in my throat.
“Are Alex and Trixie with your parents?” he asks.
I nod.
“Let’s go fishing,” he says. He picks up a handful of fishing poles and grabs his tackle box.
“Okay.” I follow him to the golf cart. Suddenly he turns to face me. I take a step back.
“You’re wary of quick movements, and I want to know why.” He stares at me. “Do you think I’d hit you?”
“No.” I wring my hands together. “I know you wouldn’t hit me.”
“I don’t know what he did to you, but I want to kill whoever terrifies you so much.”
So do I.
28
Katie
I was a city kid. I rode my skateboard at an indoor park and danced ballet in an upper loft. I’d never fished before. So when Jake invited me to go fishing with him, I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to go.
“Do I have to touch the worm?”
Jake quirked one brow at me, and I nearly spat my soda in his face.
I shoved his shoulder. “Not that worm.”
He chuckled. “If you want to fish, you have to touch the bait. Now, whatever kind of bait you use is up to you. If you want to use a worm, you have to put it on the hook.”
I looked dubiously at the container full of dirt that had worms slithering around in it.
“Or you could use different bait.” He pointed to another container of what looked like rolled up dough-balls.
“I’ll try that.”
“If you say so.”
Jake steadied the canoe as I stepped into it. Then he set the poles and the tackle box inside.
“I’m surprised your dads let you go out with me again.”
“You mean after we fell asleep and scared the pants off them? They thought we’d tipped the canoe over and drowned.”
Jake winced. “Sorry I got you in trouble.”
I shrugged. “I was there too, Jake. I fell asleep just like you did.”
“It felt really good having you lie there on my chest.” His cheeks turned ruddy and he coughed into his closed fist. “I liked having you close to me,” he said, his voice gravelly.
“I liked being close to you.” I looked at the sun. It was high in the sky. “I didn’t think much of having to clean the bathroom with a toothbrush, though, so let’s avoid that this time, shall we?”
He laughed. “Definitely. Were your parents really mad?”
“Dad was furious. But I heard him talking to Adam later about it. The walls are like paper. I can hear all sorts of things in that cabin.” I rolled my eyes and he laughed again. “But they got over it. Adam reminded him that I’m sixteen and that they knew I’d meet a boy one day who’d steal all my wits. His words, not mine.”
“I stole your wits?”
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
“My parents used to cuddle like that,” Jake said sheepishly. He stopped paddling the canoe and dropped an anchor.
I snorted. “I can’t imagine Mr. Jacobson snuggling.”
“They did it all the time. We watched movies at night, and Pop would put his head in my mom’s lap, and she’d rub her fingers through his hair. Or she would just fall asleep on his chest. He’d hold her close, and he looked like he was so peaceful. They fell asleep like that all the time. I’d cover them with a blanket and leave them there.”
“Your parents were really happy, weren’t they?”
“My dad was devastated when she died.” He picked up a fishing pole and held it out to me. “You might want to practice casting a few times with no bait.”
I didn’t take his advice, and I ended up flinging my bait into the trees a few times. Jake laughed and shook his head. Then his bobber suddenly went under and he started to reel furiously.
“You got one?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he grunted and kept reeling. Then he pulled a fish out of the lake. “One to nothing,” he gloated, keeping score. He took a stringer out of his tackle box and ran it through the fish’s gills, then he dropped it gently into the lake, one end tied to a cleat on the boat.
He put a fresh worm on his hook and tossed it out.
We sat in silence. Then his bobber dipped again, while mine was doing nothing. “Why are you catching all the fish?” I complained.
“Because I’m not afraid to touch a worm.”
He collected his fish, baited his hook again, and tossed his line back in the water.
I reeled my hook in. “Fine,” I said. “Give me a worm.”
He held the little bucket out to me and I winced as I gripped one of the slimy little suckers. Black dirt fell from my fingertips as I stuck the hook through the worm the way I’d watch him do it. Then I tossed it out and waited.
Jake’s bobber went crazy again, and he pulled another fish in. “Three to zero,” he said smugly as he strung this one up too.
Finally, my bobber started to dance. “Look, Jake!” I yelled. I jerked hard
on the pole.
“You don’t have to jerk its lips off,” Jake warned. “Just reel it in nice and slow.”
I slowed down, reveling in the weight and activity I could feel from the hook still under the water, and a minute or two later I landed my first fish. “That’s the biggest one yet,” I gloated.
“Good job,” he said and smiled. He took my fish off the hook and strung it up.
Fourteen fish later, Jake looked toward the horizon. “We had better get back. Your parents are going to kill me if I keep you out after dark again.”
I reeled my line in and set my pole in the bottom of the boat. Then I gingerly got up and moved to the middle seat in the canoe, close to Jake. “Do you think we have time to cuddle before we go back?”
He closed one eye and stared at the sun. “Maybe a few minutes.” Then he scooted closer to me and he kissed me. And I swear, kissing Jake as the sun set was the sweetest thing I’d ever experienced in all my sixteen years.
When we got back to the dock, Jake took the string of fish and lifted them from the water. “These will be great for supper.”
What? “Wait!” I cried.
“What is it?” He looked from my frantic face to the fish and back again. “What’s wrong?”
“Can we put them back?” I winced and waited for him to yell at me.
“Why would we do that?” He was thoroughly confused.
“I don’t want to kill them,” I said quietly.
“Then why did we just spend two hours fishing for them?”
“Well, you didn’t tell me you were going to kill them.” I kicked at a shell with the toe of my sandal.
“You’re serious, right?” He lowered the fish back to the water, still holding the string.
I nodded my head furiously. “Totally.”
Jake unstrung them and set them all free. “We just wasted hours.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry.”
He grinned at me and shrugged. “It was worth it.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, right there in view of everyone else who was on the beach.
And that was the day I knew I was head over heels for Jake.
29
Katie
“We’re not taking the canoe?” I ask Jake as we walk to the end of the dock.
He sits down and pulls his shoes off. Then he leans over and pulls my sandals off too. He pats the dock beside him. “Sit,” he says.
“Why aren’t we taking the canoe?” I have to admit it: I kind of wanted to go out in the canoe for old times’ sake.
He points at my belly. “I’m not doing anything that would put you or that in danger. What if we tipped the canoe over and you fell in the cold water? What if you went into labor?” He shakes his head. “We can fish just fine from right here.”
“You’re such a coward,” I taunt. He takes my hand and guides me as I sit down next to him. “I might need a forklift to get me back up.”
“I’ll help you.” He leans over and kisses me on the forehead. Then he cringes. “I’m so sorry. I keep forgetting you’re not mine.” He shakes his head and looks at my belly. “It should be so obvious. I mean, seriously, you have that.” He motions toward my big stomach. “It’s right in front of you, like a basketball. But bigger.” He stares at it.
“It’s okay, Jake. You can kiss my forehead. Or my cheek. You can touch my belly. It’s all right. I promise.”
“It’s not all right,” he complains. “You are not mine. You’re someone else’s. I keep forgetting that.” He quietly tosses his line in the water and stares hard at his bobber.
“I’m not anybody’s, Jake. Not anymore.”
His head jerks up. “What?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain.”
He hands me a fishing pole. “Start at the beginning. How did you meet your husband?”
“Oh, that’s easy to explain.” I let out a breath. “I met Jeff at basic, right after I joined the military.”
“Love at first sight, right?” His green eyes don’t meet mine.
I rock my head back and forth like I’m thinking about it. But I don’t need to think hard. “Pretty much. Then we got pregnant right away. With Gabby.”
He just sits staring silently ahead.
“We haven’t seen one another in eighteen years, Jake. You can’t fault me for falling in love with my husband.”
He nods. “I know. I just wonder what might have happened between us if we’d never stopped writing to one another. If we hadn’t let that fizzle out, where would we be now?”
“There’s no way to know that.” I set my pole on the dock next to me and squeeze my hands together. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t take it back. I loved him. The way I felt for my husband eclipsed what we had at sixteen. That was puppy love compared to what it feels like making a family with someone.”
He grunts.
“You loved Laura, right?”
He finally meets my eyes. “What I feel for you right now eclipses what I ever felt for her.”
My belly drops down toward my toes. “You don’t mean that.”
“It’s stupid, I know.”
I lay a hand on his knee, which is jumping in place. “It’s not stupid. It’s just not real, either.”
“It’s real,” he says.
“Okay…” I say slowly.
“Let’s fish,” Jake says. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
“I’m going to beat the pants off you, Jake,” I tease.
He grins. “You want my pants off, Katie, you just let me know. You don’t have to outfish me for that.”
I can’t hold back my grin. “You suck.”
Jake bumps my shoulder gently with his. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says.
“Me too.”
30
Katie
A note stuck to the door lets me know that Dad and Adam have taken the little kids to the store to get baby supplies and food.
Katie,
You have no diapers, no baby clothes, and almost no food. We’re going to buy out the store. Back later.
Adam
PS. We took two good-looking kids with us. And a dog.
Jake waves at me from his perch on the golf cart. “Everything okay?”
I hold up the note. “My parents took the two little kids to the store. They’ll be back soon. I think I might take a nap.” I yawn into my fist. I am tired and my back is killing me.
“Sleep well,” he calls, and then he drives away.
I let myself into the cabin. I haven’t locked the door since we got here. But the moment I step inside, I freeze.
The afghan that’s usually flung haphazardly across the back of the couch is now folded neatly. And the games are all stacked on the table, all with their names facing out, in alphabetical order. The dishes that were in the sink have been washed and put away. And I bet that if I look in the bathroom, all the towels are folded in thirds on the shelf.
My heart gallops in my chest. I turn to run back out the door, but a big body steps out from behind the door, slamming it before I can get out.
“Hi, Katie,” he says.
I take two steps back. “Cole, what are you doing here?”
“Is that how you greet the father of your child, Katie?” he asks. He steps toward me and I force myself to hold my ground, even though I really want to throw up. “It’s nice to see you looking so healthy and relaxed.”
“How did you f-find me?” My voice betrays me with a slight warble, so I clear my throat.
“I followed your dads,” he says. He shrugs. “It was pretty easy.” He takes my chin in his palm and tries to force me to meet his eyes. I look everywhere but at him, until he squeezes my chin so hard it hurts. “I can’t believe you thought you could go without leaving me a forwarding address.”
“I just needed some time–”
“Time’s up,” he says, clapping his hands in my face. “It’s time to go home. I already packed your things.”
A pain clenches across my belly. “What about the kids?”
“I packed their things too.”
I close my eyes tightly.
“What’s the matter, Katie?” he taunts. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
I step back and he lets me go. I feel like a mouse caught in a maze. No matter where or how I turn, he’ll catch me. I’m certain of that.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I turn toward the kitchen on wobbly legs.
He sits down on the couch and puts his feet on the coffee table, then cups the back of his neck with his palms. He knows I’m trapped. “Who was that man?”
“What man?” I pretend to look in the fridge for something to drink.
“The one who just brought you home,” he clarifies. He’s being friendly. Too friendly.
“Oh, that’s Jake. His dad owns the cabin. He was working on the roof next door.”
“What were you doing with him?”
“He gave me a ride up from the shore. That’s all.”
“Should you be taking long walks in your condition?” He lets his eyes fall on my belly. “That’s my baby in there. I hope you’re taking care of him.”
I try to laugh it off, but vomit crawls up my throat. I swallow fiercely. “The baby is doing great. Only two more weeks. Are you excited?”
“To hold my son?” he asks. “Of course I’m excited.”
A knock sounds on the door of the cabin. My heart jumps into my chest.
Cole takes his feet down off the coffee table. “Who is that?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to get it?” I know I need permission to answer the door.
A knock sounds again, this time more insistent.
“I don’t think they’re going to go away,” I warn.
He nods. “Answer it.”
I walk to the door and open it all the way. I can run from here. I can run like hell. “Oh, hi Jake,” I say, trying to be cheery.
Cole fills up the space behind me, and lays a hand on my hip. The other he puts on my shoulder, where he squeezes so hard tears form in my eyes.