His Best Friend's Baby

“He wasn’t known for his honesty.”

Julia’s eyes got sadder and Jesse could feel sympathy churn through his gut. The silence stretched and he watched her profile, the sweet line of her cheek, her nose. The perfect rose of her mouth. He was the only other person in the world who knew what Mitch was really like—and high on painkillers he couldn’t deny her the small bit of comfort she clearly needed.

“He was hard on the people who loved him,” he finally said.

She turned wide eyes on him. “You sound like a man with experience.” She tried to smile, but failed, and that told him so much about what being married to Mitch had cost her.

His hands itched to stroke her narrow shoulders, but not for comfort. Not as further cleanup after Mitch.

Jesse wanted to touch her for himself.

“Everybody in this town loved him, but no one knew him. There was only one guy stupid enough to be his best friend.”

She bit her lip and he wondered if he’d gone too far. If he’d read her wrong and her emotions for her husband were stronger than he thought. Maybe she didn’t know what a bastard Mitch was.

“He was pretty good at keeping the worst of himself hidden. Until it was too late.”

“Remember that when you get tired of all the Mitch stories this town can tell. These people never knew him like we knew him.”

He met her crystal gaze and they were suddenly knit together, not just by that morning in Germany, and not by the terrible, forbidden things he felt for her, but in their knowledge of Mitch Adams.

The Mitch the whole town refused to believe existed.

“I thought I married someone else,” she said. “The way he talked, I thought… Well, I thought he was a different person.”

“I understand,” he said. An expression of gratitude spread over her features.

“It’s been a long time since someone has said that to me.”

The moment stretched taut and then snapped. He looked away with a cough—hot and uncomfortable with how much he still wanted his best friend’s widow.

She laughed nervously and wiped at her eyes. “Look at me,” she said. “I arrive out of the blue to start crying on your porch.”

“Go ahead. Cry away.”

She turned aside and studied the stars while he studied her. Birds called and dogs barked and Jesse lifted himself from the chair and stupidly, foolishly, was about to lower himself onto the steps so he could touch her, smell her. Press his lips to the quick pulse that beat in her neck.

“Do you know Mitch’s parents real well?”

The air went cold, dousing the flames in him.

“Yeah.” He sat down heavily.

“What are they like?”

“They hate me,” he said, getting right to the point. “They’d hate you sitting on this porch with me.”

“Because of the accident?”

The word shattered the serene picture they made like a pane of glass. His intentions, his desire for her, turned to ash. They weren’t two strangers engaged in warm conversation, carefully scoping out the edges of their feelings for each other.

Mitch was between them. Mitch and his death and the accident.

He almost laughed. Accident? People could be so stupid. Didn’t anyone realize there were no such things as accidents?

“Among other things,” he said and shrugged.

She must blame him, at least a little, for Mitch’s death. How could she not? Her husband was dead while Jesse was alive. In his head the math was simple.

“Jesse?” She looked at him warily. The pressure in his chest grew unbearable. “That morning in Germany when you—”

“Don’t.” He groaned and shook his head. The honesty in her eyes and the ache in his chest defeated him so, like a coward, he looked away. “Don’t say anything. I’m sorry. I’m… sorry.”

“Sorry?”

He refused to look at her, willing her to get off his porch. He had been stupid to let her stay. Drugs or no drugs.

The silence built like a wall between them. Brick by brick, until he wasn’t even sure he could see her.

Finally she stood, swiped her hands over her butt and took a step toward the shadows of the lawn.

“Good night, Jesse.” She took another step, all but disappearing in the dark. “I’m so glad you’re here. I never expected a friend—”

“We’re not friends, Julia,” he said, from his side of the wall of silence and lies. “Don’t come back.”

JULIA DIDN’T SLEEP WELL. She was plagued by Jesse’s ravaged face and the sharp-fanged nightmares Mitch’s old room seemed to spark.

She had to put Mitch’s prom picture facedown in the hopes that she’d stop seeing it when she shut her eyes. But it was useless, Mitch’s ghost lived in this room, lived in these quiet moments of doubt that came at night. He mocked her and reminded her of how much she’d fallen out of love with him. Of how badly she’d wished he’d been more like Jesse.

In fact, that night in Germany with Jesse and Mitch, she’d wished he was Jesse.

And to make it all worse, there was nothing she could do to shake loose Jesse’s words. They ran on a loop whether her eyes were closed or not.

I’m sorry.

She’d carried the memory of that morning in Germany with Jesse in her heart for months. She’d lived on it when food tasted like dirt. She’d breathed it through Mitch’s funeral and through all the long nights.

And he was sorry. Sorry it ever happened.

We’re not friends. Don’t come back.

She flopped over on her back and stared up at the ceiling where the shadows of the maple branches danced and that morning rushed back to her in painful detail….

“All done,” Julia whispered to Ben. She held out her hands as if to prove she wasn’t holding anymore puréed peaches. “All gone.”

Ben mimicked her, shouting her words back to her in his gibberish.

“Sh,” she whispered. “We have to be quiet. Daddy and Jesse are sleeping.”

Jesse Filmore—the much-boasted-about friend of Mitch’s youth—slept in the living room, draped over the too-small couch. And Mitch slept on in the bedroom, smelling slightly of the wine he’d drank last night and the uncomfortable, lousy sex he’d attempted before dawn. He’d come to bed late, full of drunken apologies and tears. There’d been another girl. A reporter or a contractor or something. She’d meant nothing, he swore.

None of them meant anything.

Julia wiped Ben’s face, holding his head still so she could get the cereal from under his chin, and pulled him out of the makeshift high chair she’d rigged on the kitchen counter.

She filled his sippy cup with juice and water and walked behind him as he toddled over to the table she’d set up next to the only window in the apartment that let in the morning light.

She sat in her chair and Ben tried to pull himself up into her lap.

“Up you go,” she whispered, giving him a boost.

He repeated the tone of her voice, if not her exact words.

She had a few toys on the table and he played while she rested her chin on his head and looked out the window to the street of duplicate houses, covered in Christmas lights and snow that made up the family housing on the barracks.

Houses filled with women just like her. Alone. Lonely. Worried half the time. Scared the other half. They filled their time with book groups and sewing circles, coffee klatches and grief-counseling sessions.

She went, dragging Ben and bad pasta salad, wearing the mask of a woman still in love with her husband. She wore that mask until she thought she’d scream.

She rested her head against the window.

“Jesse,” Ben whispered and her heart squeezed tight at the mention of the handsome stranger her husband had brought home last night. It had been a surprise, not just Jesse, but Mitch’s appearance as well. She’d had no notice of their leave. No chance to prepare herself.

Not that she could have.

Not for Jesse Filmore.

He’d walked into her home, he’d shaken her hand, he’d smiled at her, played with her son. He’d even gone so far as to compliment her spaghetti and she knew she’d found the very limit to her foolish heart.

She’d watched him all night from the corner of her eye, from beneath her lashes like some lovesick teenager.

Maybe that’s what I am.

Maybe that’s what this feeling is.

He was a good man—it was the clearest thing she’d ever seen. As real as the sun behind the window. He’d walked into the room and she’d known him. Known him as though she’d been beside him his whole life. Jesse was the kind of man she’d imagined Mitch to be. The kind of man she wanted Mitch to be and it burned her like acid to have him in her house.

“Jesse,” Ben said louder and Julia turned finally to shush him, only to find Jesse standing in the doorway to the kitchen. A bright and dark angel brought into her life to remind her of the mistakes she’d made, of the things she’d never have.

His black eyes were a hot touch on her face.

She opened her mouth, but there was nothing to say. No empty chatter in her head to fill up this moment. She wanted to stay this way with this man’s eyes on her—intense and dark and so knowing she felt naked.

Ben scrambled off her lap and ran past Jesse into the TV room.

“There’s…” Her mouth was sticky, dry. But before she could try to finish her sentence Jesse crossed the kitchen in three steps, stopping only when he was right in front of her. Less than a foot away. She could have reached out to touch the hem of his gray T-shirt.

You’re married, she told herself—a stupid reminder of the vows she’d taken, binding herself to a man who had never meant them.

Jesse crouched in front of her, until his face was level with hers.

She grasped her hands in her lap until her knuckles went white.

“You deserve better,” Jesse whispered, and her lips parted on a broken breath. He reached out and his fingers, the very tips of them, brushed her face in a nearly imperceptible touch. Her cheek and the curve of her jaw. As though she were diamonds and gold to him. Precious.

She shut her eyes and hated herself for wanting him so much.

Jesse stood, jammed his fingers through his short military hair as if he wished he could pull it out.

“I can’t stay here,” he said.

Julia didn’t stop him and when she heard her front door click shut the tattered, threadbare life she’d managed to hold together split at the seams, falling in terrible ruin around her.

Julia closed her eyes wishing the memory away. Wishing it on another person. She’d arrived in New Springs looking for a family, to set down roots…and finding Jesse was like a dream come true. She was so close to all she ever wanted, only to have it ripped away.

Don’t come back here.

It’s because you expect other people to make you happy. Mitch’s voice revealed her worst fears about herself, the bitter truth she’d always suspected but never wanted to admit. You expect other people to do everything for you. You’re useless. You’re worse than useless.

The pain burrowed into her chest and made a home in the soft tissue surrounding her heart. She’d thought she was tougher than this, that Mitch’s lies and infidelity had turned her cold and hard. But she was wrong. That pain was nothing compared to what she felt right now.

Jesse’s rejection ruined her.

Such a fool. Such a sucker.

She rolled to her side and punched her pillow, trying to get comfortable. The wonderful mattress that had cradled her last night now seemed too soft. Lumpy in places. Hard in others.

You’re impossible to please. You want too much.

Ben sighed, murmured something in his sleep and rolled toward her, curving himself into her body, into that little space against her chest that had been made for him.

She had to get her act together. She had to make a life for her son. She couldn’t expect other people to help her with this anymore.

“No more,” she whispered.

What are you gonna do? Mitch’s voice asked and she could practically see his sneer, the snide superiority in his eyes that had made her feel two inches tall for most of her married life. Live off my folks? Sleep with my best friend? You heard him, he’s sorry for that morning. It was a mistake—

“No more!” she said, louder this time to shut up the voices in her head. To convince herself that she meant it.

Things were going to change.

She was going to get a job. Tomorrow. And she’d only stay with the Adamses as long as was absolutely necessary, until she’d paid off the last of Mitch’s debts and could save some money for a place of her own.

And she’d stay away from Jesse—just as he’d asked. She’d remove her heart, set it someplace else where she couldn’t feel its pain.

JESSE DIDN’T SLEEP. He was no fool, he knew the nightmares waited on the other side of consciousness. And frankly, tonight he had no taste for fire and the crash and Mitch’s knowing eyes.

He sat on the porch for a good long time, his eyes open and the image of Julia—sitting so close…right there…within arm’s reach—burned into his retinas.

He leaned his head against the old rocker he’d made in high-school shop class and imagined standing up on two good legs, walking down the street, jumping the ditch, crossing the yards. He imagined circling the Adams’ house and climbing the rainspout up to the roof of the kitchen. From there he could walk up to Mitch’s second-floor bedroom window. It was easy. He’d done it a thousand times.

It would be so simple to open that window, to ease into that dark hushed room, warm and alive with the scent of Julia, sleeping on that old bed. There’d be moonlight and silence and—

Jesse stood and the rocking chair slid backward, crashing into the house.

This has got to stop.

The world swam from the drugs and he gave himself a moment to get his knee under him before he stalked into the dark house.

He had been right to tell her to stay away. She had to or he wouldn’t survive. He was moving on with his life, putting the accident and Mitch and this town behind him.

So he grabbed another bottle of water and headed out the rusty aluminum back door that had not been changed in all of Rachel’s meddling renovations.

He’d been here two days and one night and so far all he’d been able to get done was write a list of all the things that needed to get done. The roof, the back porch, the kitchen floor—the list was a long one. And he was more tired than he’d thought. His long stay at the hospital had worn him down. The weakness was aggravating, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Slowly, each day he felt a little better, a little more as though he could get the work done.

The only reason he’d needed the painkillers tonight was because he’d spent most of the day on the roof, climbing up and down the ladder.

His knee was getting stronger and the work helped. He thought of it like conditioning for San Diego and the construction he and Chris were going to do. Preparation for his real life.

The night was cool, the sky clear and deep, and the air seemed damp. Everything seemed damp after the Middle East, where the desert turned everything into grit. Human beef jerky is what Dave Mancino used to say.

That’s all I am, walking beef jerky.

Jesse smiled—Dave had been a funny kid. Cocky as all get-out, but funny. Five months after the accident and Jesse was just now getting to the point that he could remember anything about those boys other than their deaths.

A million times a day he wished he’d backed Mitch instead of listening to his gut.

The one time in my life I decide not to do things Mitch’s way and the guy dies.

Jesse didn’t know whether to laugh or put a bullet in his head.

He stepped onto the long grass and left footprints in the dewy lawn as he crossed the backyard to the garage nestled back amongst some pines and more weeds. The door had once been red but now was the faded gray of weathered wood. The whole structure leaned slightly to the left and Jesse figured gravity would soon take care of the rest.

The garage had never housed a car. Inexplicably, his dad had once come home from the bar driving a golf cart and it had stayed in the garage for a week until the cops had come looking for it.

They’d all laughed over that.

What had always been housed in the garage—and Jesse was half hoping had been sold or lost or stolen over the years—were Granddad’s old woodworking tools. The planers and awls and chisels fit Jesse’s hand as though they had been born there. He had spent a lot of years in this garage with the tools, pretending that the world outside the sweet smell of fresh oak didn’t exist.

He could do with a little of that pretending right now.

The heavy door slid back on the nearly rusted rollers and the odor of sour, rotting wood poured out. He reached for the light switch, and was surprised when it flickered on, illuminating the cracked cement floor.

Along the back wall was the workbench he’d made himself a million years ago and on the wall above it, still as neatly arranged as he’d left them, were the tools.

When he was younger they’d offered him, if not a way out of his family and his home, a way to survive.

Jesse took a deep breath and stepped into the musty familiarity of the garage looking for something, anything, that could be saved.

CHAPTER FIVE

“YOU’RE A KILLER,” David Mancino’s father said. “We trusted our boy with you and you brought him home in a body bag.”

“But look.” Jesse tried to show Mr. Mancio what he’d brought in exchange for Dave. He held out his bloody palms and tried to give Mr. Mancio the still-beating heart.

“What the hell is wrong with you, boy?” Mr. Mancio smacked Jesse’s hands away and the heart fell to the ground. “We heard you were crazy!”

It’s ruined, Jesse thought, watching the heart pump blood into the dirt. No one is going to want that now.

“Wait, wait. I brought more, just a second.” Jesse waved over the thin blond woman with the haunted blue eyes he’d never been able to forget and she, in turn, led Wain and a man in a black hostage mask. “See, you can have the dog, and the—”

Jesse woke to the sound of a key sliding into the lock on his back door. The dream vanished and he traveled from sleep to battle ready in seconds—another little gift from the United States Army. He could kill a man in a hundred ways and he hadn’t fallen fully asleep in over six years.

The pain meds he’d popped last night made his brain feel thick and stupid, but the well-honed instinct in him was still razor sharp.

He crept from the couch, barefoot and in his blue jeans, toward the back door, where he had heard the distinct sound of a lock sliding open.

Wainwright snored on his pillow.

Some guard dog you turned out to be.

He fully expected Rachel to be busting in, and he relished letting her know in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t welcome. Her days of coming and going in this house were over.

But he yanked open the door only to find Mac Edwards, his arms filled with grocery bags. Jesse rocked back on his heels.

“Help a guy out, would you?” Mac asked over the perforated edge of one of the bags. The look in his light blue eyes went through Jesse like a knife. It was the look his men used to give him—respect and a general gladness to see him.

“I don’t—” Jesse started, but Mac stepped in and pushed the bags into Jesse’s chest. Instinctively, Jesse caught Mac’s burden and Mac used the opportunity to barge in.

“Nice one,” Jesse growled, his throat rusty.

“Old trick I learned from a nine-year-old,” Mac said over his shoulder. He walked past Jesse, through the small mudroom and into the kitchen.

The nine-year-old Mac referred to was him. Jesse had used the trick to dog Rachel and Mac’s every step.

Jesse shut the door with his foot and followed his old friend to dump the groceries onto the counter. He yanked opened the refrigerator door and began shoving the bags’ contents into the nearly empty fridge.

“Just as we suspected, you’re living on road trip food.” Mac reached around Jesse to hold up a turkey sandwich Jesse had gotten from the gas station out by the highway. “Not fit for human consumption.”

“Works fine by me,” Jesse said. He’d been avoiding the grocery store and all of the good citizens of New Springs.

“Good to see you, man.” Mac pulled Jesse into a hug before he could say two words. “It’s really good to see you.” Mac thumped him on the back, which hurt but, for some reason, Jesse didn’t say anything. He stood motionless, like a scared animal in the hard grip of Mac’s arms. Emotion leaped in him.

I missed you, he thought.

“It’s good to see you, too,” he finally managed to say. He squeezed Mac tight across the shoulders and then pushed away.

They both laughed awkwardly and Mac held Jesse out at arm’s length. It had been three years since they’d seen each other at his mother’s funeral and Jesse had kept his distance that day.

The moment stretched and Jesse took in the changes time had made in his old friend. Mac was big, thick across the chest and through the arms. His work in the sun had turned his skin brown and given him wrinkles and creases at the corners of his mouth and eyes. But his smile was still quick and his eyes sharper than ever.

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