His expression shuttered. “No.” His voice flattened to something clinical. “I don’t have a father.”
“Oh.”
The syllable hung between them, insufficient and clumsy. She could feel him receding, retreating into the fortified interior he had spent decades constructing, and the distance that opened between them in that small, awful pause felt wider than the weeks that had separated them.
“I… Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
He studied her face with those perceptive silver eyes, reading the questions she was holding back the way he read everything about her, with an accuracy that left her nowhere to hide.
Without a word, he took her hand and led her from the bathroom to the bed, where he sat on the edge and pulled her down beside him.
“Ask.” His knee pressed against hers. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded, ruthless determination rolling off him in waves. “I don’t want any secrets between us.”
She hesitated, sorting through the tangle of things she wanted to understand, discarding the questions that felt too invasive for an afternoon this gentle.
“Did you have a mother?”
The pain that flashed through his eyes was sharp and immediate, a flinch he couldn’t mask quickly enough.
“I did. She died twelve years ago.”
“Oh, Jack.” Thinking of her own grief, she caught his hand. “I’m so sorry?—”
“Don’t be.” His tone carried no bitterness or self-pity. “She was a terrible mother.” His judgement was flat, the calcified surface of a wound that had scarred over long ago.
Protectiveness immediately overtook her sympathy. She didn’t ask why she was a terrible mother, because the way he said it told her everything.
Whatever his mother had done or failed to do, the verdict had been rendered years ago by a boy who needed a protector and clearly didn’t have one.
“How did she die?”
“Drugs.” He turned his palm in hers and gripped, his fingers closing around hers with a pressure that spoke louder than words. “She was an addict.”
“Well, I’m sorry she wasn’t there for you.”
His thumb moved across her knuckles in absent strokes. “Can I show you something? Do you have somewhere you need to be?”
The question carried more vulnerability than he probably intended, a flicker of the boy who had learned early on that people left when he needed them most.
“I’m exactly where I want to be.” She squeezed his hand. “What do you want to show me?”
“I just have to get my keys.”
Jack moved to the dresser and rummaged through a crystal dish on top, slipping his wallet into his pocket, followed by a tiny fob. When he picked up his gold ring, he paused.
The engraved initials caught the sun, glinting like the blade of a knife.
Daisy watched from the edge of the bed as his jaw tightened. She could see the war in the stillness of his hand, how his thumb traced the familiar groove of the letters like a tongue returns to a broken tooth.
That ring didn’t just live on his finger, it shackled him to a brutal past.
Her chest tightened the longer he looked at it.
Then, slowly, he set it back in the dish with a quiet click that resonated like a glacial shift.
