“I bet there are a lot of women with their eye on the bartender, too,” I teased, though my heartbeat felt heavy. Did Jack have someone already, like Sean did?
He swallowed his cake. “No one lately,” he said, holding my gaze.
I dropped my eyes back to the cake, focusing as I forked up another bite. “What’s your mother like?” I asked.
Jack smiled, his eyes going distant as his thoughts shifted. “She’s great. She was a total pushover when it came to me and my sister, spoiling us rotten. She and my dad used to let us get away with too much. Especially my sister.” His smile faded, and he closed his eyes, swallowing. When he opened them again, he studied the cake. “Mom is different at work, though. She wears power suits and leads meetings, the whole nine yards. She says every day her employees are gambling with someone else’s money, and that’s something to take seriously.”
“She’s in finance?” I asked with a pleasant thump in my chest. “That’s what I do.”
“Yeah?” Jack smiled back. “I think she’d like you. Both of my parents would.”
My fork went limp as I stared back at him, the idea of it almost glittering in my mind.
“If you’re in finance, you must be good with money, like my mom,” he said. He stared down at the mostly demolished cake.
“I do okay,” I said, putting down my fork as my stomach twisted. “A lot better now than when I started out.”
“Yeah, starting out is tough. It took me a while to save up enough to open The Muse.” He looked around the bar fondly.
I reached for my drink, taking a sip to remove the dryness from my mouth. “It might have been a little harder for me.” I looked over at where the musicians were getting ready for their next set, picturing someone else’s face. It wasn’t hard to imagine at all, since I’d seen it that day. “My mother used my social security number to get by before I knew that was a thing. By the time I was interested in getting a credit card, my credit was already shot.”
“That’s—she can go to jail for that, can’t she?” Jack’s eyes had narrowed.
I grimaced. “She was already in jail when I found out. The best way to clean it up was to report it. She got a few more years because I did.”
“I’m sorry, Hailey.” His hand found mine, squeezing. “That must have been hard.”
I shrugged. “The Millers helped me through it, but they were gone by the time she got out. She blamed me. Told me I owed her.” My hand shook under his. “I agreed for a while. Every time she showed up asking for money, I gave it to her. It had been a while since she’d come around. Maybe she was in jail again.” I drew in a breath. “Today was the first time I didn’t give her any money when she showed up. She didn’t take it well.”
“That must have been even harder. Are you okay?” he asked, his thumb running over the back of my hand.
My eyes flooded. Neil hadn’t asked how I was at all. He’d avoided the whole thing and then been mad at how I’d handled it.
“She got really angry,” I admitted in a tight voice. “I had to pretend to call the cops before she would leave.”
“Oh, Hailey. No wonder you looked like you did walking in here tonight.”
“I’m fine,” I said, pulling my hand free to wipe at my eyes, willing the tears away. “I handled it.”
“You’re so strong, standing up to her like that.”
My chin lifted, and I stared at him.
“Really.” He nodded. “This sounds like a big step.”
“I’m still not sure I did the right thing,” I admitted. “If I’d given her the money, it would have been easier. She still knows my social security number. She’s more likely to try something now. Oh, but I’ve got alerts set up and everything. I’ll catch it quickly. And—”
“Hailey.” I liked the way he said my name. It wasn’t hard or angry. It was patient and kind. I swallowed the words that had been racing around my head, the world around me stilling.
“Do you really think you did the wrong thing? Or is that someone else in your head?”
I closed my eyes. I’d been babbling all my explanations to him just like I’d done with Neil. Neil, who’d been angry and scared, who had told me I was creating a future problem to deal with.
“Where was Neil during all this?” Jack asked.
I didn’t want to say. Jack already didn’t like Neil. “He gets uncomfortable when either of my biological parents show up. It doesn’t happen often, but just like when I was a kid, they appear out of nowhere sometimes. It’s not his fault. The Millers couldn’t even really help.”
Jack’s jaw tightened. “Where was he?” he asked again.
