To Love Jason Thorn (38 page)

I contemplated getting on a bus, but I had
enough money to hop on a plane. I was a damn bestselling author now; the least
I could do was buy a plane ticket back home without counting every cent in my
bank account.

So I did just that.

First, I raced to Jason’s house. Being
married to a fucking actor had its perks, like how you didn’t have to carry
your wallet with you when you were going out with said actor. The smallest
clutch could hold your phone and maybe a lipstick, but that’s it, which is why
I had to stop by the house to grab a few personal items, a change of clothes,
and of course, my ID.

I didn’t want to think about it, but it was
hard not to notice that he hadn’t come back home. Where he’d spent the night…I
didn’t want to think about that either.

By 12:30 PM, I was in San Francisco.

At 2:00 PM, I was standing in front of the
door of my childhood home, where this whole mess had started.

I took a deep breath and lifted my arm to
knock on the door.

My dad opened the door, and we spent a few
silent seconds looking at each other, which only caused my lips to tip down and
tears to start flowing freely down my cheeks.

“Baby,” he sighed.

I wiped at my tears angrily. Why was I even
crying?

“I know you are angry at me, but—”

I burst into more tears.

Pathetic, I know.

But then, I was in my dad’s arms and he was
whispering the most beautiful words into my ear.

It was worth being a pathetic little wimp.
There, I was safe.

It felt so good when he was hugging me so
tightly. I could let go of everything and know that he would take care of his
girl like he always did. Who could hurt you when your dad had his big arms
around you? Who would dare break a little girl’s heart? Didn’t every woman feel
like a little girl when their dad gave them a good hug? Didn’t everyone just
want to stay there until the monsters went away?

No?

Well, good for you and your independence
then. Pop some champagne and celebrate. Congrats, you made it into adulthood.
Me, not so much. I would take my dad’s hugs over anything.

“Logan, who is at—Olive? Oh, sweetheart.”

When I heard my mom’s voice and felt her
hand softly brushing my hair, I buried my face harder into my dad’s chest and
let them love their little girl.

After living through the worst morning of
my fucking life, we had finally found Lucy at the hospital with her boyfriend.
She looked like a mess herself, and I couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through
while waiting for her boyfriend to come out of surgery. I’d learned that Olive
had been with her the entire time, which was progress since we couldn’t find
her anywhere. She had left with Lucy and spent the entire night at the hospital
while I was out of it.

It was a miracle we even managed to get
that
out of her mouth. She had seen the news coverage and was just as furious as I
was, if not more. The only difference was she was ready to attack
me
and
have
my
balls for her friend, not the bastard who had spiked my drink or
taken the photos.

It took some time, but we explained what
was going on and she looked like she wanted to believe us. After some begging
on my part, she told me that Olive had flown to San Francisco hours ago.

At 10:00 PM, I was on a plane—fuck waiting
for a private jet—flying to San Francisco.

***

It was weird being in the neighborhood
where you spent a big and very important chunk of your childhood. All the
houses looked the same as I remembered; even the damn air smelled like it had
back then. The house my mother had decided to take her own life in was still
the same, too. Sure, it looked more lived in, and there were flowers that
hadn’t been there when I was a teenager, but it was right where it had been,
tucked among the memories I wanted to forget.

I hoped the family who was living in it now
was a happier and more functional one than ours had been. I hoped the kids who
were growing up in the house weren’t witnessing their mother slowly losing the
light in her eyes for no good reason. I hoped that they had another house they
could spend their time in if things weren’t going that great for them, someone
to care about them like Logan and Emily had cared about me.

Right then, standing in front of their
house in the middle of the night didn’t feel as scary as I had thought it would
feel when I was on the plane. It was more like coming back home, and that was a
good feeling for someone who hadn’t had a good home for most of their life,
someone who had lost both his parents along the way and for a very long time
hadn’t had a real thing to hold on to when things got rough.

Maybe it wasn’t as scary as I had initially
thought it would be, but I was still a mess. Apart from feeling like a mess, I
also
looked
like a fucking mess.

After spending ten minutes in front of
their house, not knowing how Olive’s parents would react to seeing me, not
knowing if Olive would even agree to see me, I sucked it up and knocked on
their door.

When Dylan opened the door and his eyes
hardened when he saw who was standing on their porch, I was still trying to get
over the shock of seeing my best friend after so many fucking years.

Dylan didn’t have that problem.

My lips spread out in a smile, but that was
a mistake because his whole body tightened. Instead of being happy to see me
again like I’d hoped he would be, he stepped out of the house and quietly
closed the door behind him.

“What are you doing here, Jason?”

“Dylan. Shit, man.” I tried to stop my
smile from spreading out more, but…hell, he was my best friend, and it had been
years since I’d seen him. “Man, it’s really fucking good to see you.”

His expression didn’t change.

“I’ll ask again. What are you doing here?
Don’t you think you did enough damage to her already?”

I dropped my smile, but it was too late to
brace for the impact his words caused. If he wanted to act like a piece of
shit, so be it. So could I.

“I can see that you don’t care to see me. I
guess it’s a good thing I didn’t come to see you either. I’m here for my wife.”

“Wife?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Cut the
crap, Jason. We both know that it’s just a game for the public even though she
refuses to admit that. You are using her to look good and she is too stupid to
care about it even though she knows it herself.”

“You don’t know anything about us, Dylan.”

“About
us?
There is no
you and
her
, Jason. Do you know that she is in love with you? Hell, she’s been in
love with you for most of her life. Are you going to keep playing this game,
knowing it will kill something in her when you finally get bored with it?”

I lowered my head and squeezed my hands
into fists.

“I don’t want you to see her, and I want
you to turn around—”

“I don’t care what the hell you want,
Dylan,” I said in a low voice. He stopped speaking. “I will get through that
door even if I have to deck you to do it.”

He lifted an eyebrow and crossed his arms
against his chest. “Try it,” he said. “Give me a good reason to fuck up your—”

“I’m in love with your sister, you idiot.”
I took a step forward, getting into his face.

His eyes narrowed on me and he took a step
forward with clenched fists. “You lying son of a bitch.”

Before he could do anything, the door
behind him opened and his father walked out.

“That’s enough, Dylan,” he said in a
gravelly voice, shutting the door gently.

I froze. My hands flexed and I swallowed.

In front of me stood the man I had
idolized, a man who knew how to take care of his family, a man who didn’t shy
away from showing his love to his children, to his wife…even to the neighbor’s
kid.

Just like the houses around us, he looked
just the same. He had more white hair and the smile lines around his eyes were
deeper, but those big shoulders, the stance, and everything else that made him
who he was just the same.

Hell, why did he have to come out? I
couldn’t deck Logan. I would happily get into a fight with Dylan, but not with
his father.

I took a step back and tried to loosen up
my muscles.

“I don’t like the reason you are here, but
it’s still good to see you, Jason,” Logan said after forcefully moving his son
out of the way. There was a small smile playing on his lips. Maybe I still had
a shot at getting to Olive. Maybe Logan would believe me.

Feeling like a seventeen-year-old again, I
rubbed the back of my neck and looked down at the ground. Surely I wasn’t
tearing up…right?

“You have no idea how good it is to see
you, too, sir.”

He nodded. “I’m assuming you’re here
because you want to see Olive?”

I gave Dylan a hard look and kept my eyes
on him as I answered his father’s question.

“Yes, I’m here for Olive.”

“You’re not seeing her,” Dylan said as he
took another step toward me.

The bastard was just itching to get his ass
kicked.

“Dylan, that’s enough,” Logan cut him off
again. “Simmer down.” Turning to me, he said, “Let’s have a talk before you see
her, is that okay?”

“Of course,” I agreed as we both sat down
on the porch steps. Wisely, Dylan chose to stand next to the door instead of
getting in my face. If he thought he even had a chance of stopping me from
going in to get Olive, he was in for a surprise.

I would fuck him up without a second
thought.

“Olive is not saying much, so you’ll have
to be the one to tell me exactly what’s going on here, Jason. I want to hear it
in your own words, not some speech your people prepared for you.”

I frowned. “I’ll tell you anything you want
to know. I won’t hide anything from you.”

“That’s not the vibe I got from Olive. I
think she was trying to share as little as possible with us.”

I shook my head and rubbed my forehead.
“That was before.”

“And now? Did something change?”

“Yes.” I rubbed my forehead some more.
“Yes, everything changed.”

“You married Olive so it would look good
for you, is that true?”

I flinched.
Jesus!
An interrogation
was not what I needed.

“Yes.” I sighed. “Yes, my publicist thought
it would save my career after everything I’d done. When I saw Olive and acted
like…and then everyone else saw us together…”

I didn’t finish my sentence.

“I see. And now? What is different now?”

I lifted my head and looked into his eyes.
I couldn’t decide if he was angry with me or not, but I answered honestly. “I
fell in love with your daughter, sir.” Looking over my shoulder, I gave Dylan a
hard look. “That’s what changed.”

“And you think my daughter loves you too?”

Breaking eye contact with Dylan, I faced
forward again. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m hoping that the answer is
yes.”

“So why is she here? We saw the news. If
you are in love with her like you say you are, what happened?”

I told him everything that had happened the
night before, except the part where my dick was roaring to get into his
daughter’s tight little body in public, of course. That I kept to myself.

The more I talked and explained
everything—not just that my drink had been spiked, but everything that had
happened between Olive and me—the more Dylan’s stance relaxed and he got closer
to us.

After I talked for I don’t even know how
long, Logan smiled, patted my shoulder, and rose up from the steps.

“I’ll leave you two friends to catch up.
Olive is sleeping, but you can stay here tonight and talk to her in the
morning, Jason. I’m sure Emily would love to see you, too.”

Stopping next to Dylan, he added, “She
isn’t a kid any more Dylan. She is old enough to make up her own mind about
Jason. Don’t interfere.”

When he got inside and closed the door,
Dylan took his dad’s spot.

“So you really love her, huh? Have you told
her that?” he asked, sounding tired.

I already felt dead on my feet.

“How nice of you to believe me now,” I said
a little pointedly as I glared at him. Fuck, I was too damn tired to fight with
him if he decided to be a jerk about this. “Give me a break. I just realized it
today. I spent my entire day trying to find out where she was hiding.”

“You sound surprised every time you say it,
and you keep saying it over and over.”

“If you have a problem with me being in
love with her, keep her out of it. I don’t want you to say anything that will
upset her,” I grinded out, looking at the house across the street. I wondered
if Mr. and Mrs. Kealey still lived there.

“You’re protecting
my
sister from me?”

“Yes,” I said simply, giving him a hard
glare. “You never knew how to keep your mouth shut around her. I won’t let you
say something stupid and break her heart. I don’t care if you are her brother
or not.”

He cocked an eyebrow and gave me a look I
couldn’t even begin to name.

“Huh,” he grunted.

We were silent for several moments.

“What are you doing in San Francisco,
anyway?” I asked when the silence became too heavy. I wanted to go in and talk
to Olive, but Logan had said she was sleeping. Was she okay? Was she angry?
Sad? Disappointed in me?

“
My
wife’s best friend had a baby.
We’re visiting for the weekend.”

That made sense.

More silence.

“Did you feel anything for her when we were
kids?” Dylan asked.

I had asked myself the same question over
and over again, but I still didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know,” I said with a sigh. “I
don’t think so. I mean she was my Olive, too, you know. I was your friend, but
I enjoyed being around her as much as I enjoyed being around your sorry ass.”
That made him chuckle, so I relaxed more. “But, no. I wouldn’t call it love.
She was too young. Yeah, maybe she had a crush on me, but it was probably
because I was the only boy that was around. I don’t think it was anything big.”

“You would think so,” he said as he kicked
a small stone with his foot.

“What does that mean?”

He shook his head and rubbed his face. “It
was more than just a crush, man. I was constantly warning her away from you
without being too obvious about it. Do you remember a girl texting you, just
before your…before you had to move?”

I thought about it, but I couldn’t remember
anything specific.

“Someone from our class?”

“No. A random girl.”

“How the hell am I supposed to remember
that?”

“It was Olive.”

“What?” I turned my head to look at him so
fast that I heard something snap. Then I chuckled. “I think I would know if
Olive texted me. I had her number.”

Another annoying sigh. “I think she
borrowed the phone from her friend or something. My point is, she was trying to
talk to you. Even back then, she was taking risks just to be close to you. I
have no idea what her plan was with texting you, but—”