“When we were kids,” she tells me. “He was always worried about me, doing his best to look after me. But I think part of that was because of how alone he felt after our parents died. He was really close to our dad, you know? They were practically best friends. I was so young when they passed, but Jack…” She shakes her head. “I know he seems like the world’s biggest goofball half the time, but I think a lot of that is a front for how lonely he is.”
I turn my face to stare down at the bench where Jack is still watching the game intently, thinking about the story he told me about his dad and the aquarium. About his time at the orphanage. All the little things he’s shared with me over the last few weeks.
And knowing all that…the idea that Jack might be lonely underneath all his bravado doesn’t seem so far-fetched at all.
It’s possible that we’re more alike than I thought.
“Maybe you’re right,” I manage quietly, my voice almost lost to the crowd around us.
Lila peeks over at me from the side, and I don’t miss the question in her eyes, one I know I can’t answer. At least not yet. So I change the subject.
“So tell me what’s happening now.”
She laughs. “One of these days, you’re going tohaveto learn the rules of this game.”
“Maybe someday,” I say with a wince.
“Okay, okay,” she concedes. She points down to the ice. “So Jankowski is setting up for a hat trick—that’s three goals in one game. It would be his second of the season if he gets it. He just has to—”
The sound of her voice becomes a low buzz in my ears as my attention once again falls on Jack down on the bench, and even from here I can see the way he rubs at his arm, clearly in pain but trying so desperately to appear as if he isn’t. It hurts my heart, seeing him deal with it alone like he is. There is a large part of me that wants to push him like his sister and Ian—to try to convince him to give the rest of the season up in favor of seeking treatment—but I know what it’s like to be told what to do. To be pushed into something that isn’t what you would choose for yourself.
I know, because of that, I won’t ever be able to really ask that of him. Suggest, maybe, but never ask. Not when I would have given anything to be able to make my own choices when it came to my father’s misdeeds.
I suppose all I can do is support him, try to help him in whatever way I can.
I almost laugh at the thought. A few weeks ago, I could barely stand to be in the same room as Jack, and in such a short time, now…now I can’t seem to get him off my mind. In fact, lately, it seems that most of my days begin and end with thoughts of Jack Baker.
And no one is more surprised by that fact than me.
Twenty-Four
Jack
“I seem to remember there beingmention of dinner and a movie,” Abby huffs behind me, eyeing the wooded expanse beyond us.
I grin back at her as I continue to pull my backpack of supplies from the trunk. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
It’s an unusually warm day for this time of year, and for that I’m grateful, since I went out on a limb while planning Abby’s and my first date. I know it’s something I can’t see her doing for herself, but once I got the idea in my head, I couldn’t shake it. Besides, I think the fresh air will do her some good. She’s always cooped up in the apartment huddled over her books.
“I’m just saying,” she grumbles. “Pretty sure no one thinks they’ll need hiking boots when someone asks them out on a date.”
I peer back at her slight sulking, smiling at her lower lip, which is protruding as her arms cross over her chest. She looks stunning, even in something as simple as her fleece-lined leggings and her mauve sweater that makes her blond hair seembrighter—all the way down to the aforementioned clunky hiking boots I bought for her before I talked her into coming out to Blue Hills.
“We’ve got seven thousand acres to explore,” I tell her. “It’ll be fun.”
“Until we get lost,” she murmurs.
I sling my backpack over my shoulders, leaning in to press a kiss to her cheek. “I won’t let you get lost, lover.”
“I thought we agreed we weren’t using that term?”
“I don’t remember agreeing to anything of the sort.”
She rolls her eyes. “This is a lot of woods for me to hide your body in.”
“But you love my body,” I say with a faux gasp. “What will you do without it?”
She ignores me, taking a wary glance at the opening trail ahead of us. I can tell this isn’t something she would normally choose to do, and for that reason alone I worry that maybe I should have tried to find something else for us to do—but something about this feels right.