I filled the space between my fingers with my hair. Tugging, pulling, and inflicting pain on myself wouldn’t be enough to distract me.
First, I needed to find out the truth. I needed all the facts.
As I picked up my phone, I let the bourbon talk for me. When Jackson answered, in my best fake voice, I spoke into the speaker. “Son, I have the rest of your money. Want to swing by my office soon?”
I didn’t have the money on hand. I hadn’t planned on it until the very last minute—which was two days from now. But I needed to confront him. I needed him to feel so fucking blindsided that he’d feel exactly how I was right now.
I wanted him scared. So scared that it felt like his heart was beating in his stomach. Terrified, just like I was, that he would loseeverything.
“I’m at work but I can swing by after. Mind if I drop by your place instead?”
I couldn’t give away the fact that I was on to him. But I couldn’t have him at my place. Avery would be there.
“Meet me at the bar next door. I’ll buy.”
“Sounds good. I’ll text you when I get off.”
“See you then.”
After we both hung up, I poured another drink. There was no way in hell I could go home and confront Avery with the way I was feeling. She would have a million questions that even I didn’t know the answers to. Unfortunately, I would have to wait here until Jackson texted me to let me know he was headed to the bar.
Jackson: On my way.
Me: I’ll save you a seat.
What Jackson didn’t know was that I had already been at the bar for a while now. I left the office, wanting to be the first one here. I wanted to watch him walk in. Read his demeanor.
It didn’t matter if I was at the office or at the bar, I’d be drinking, working up the courage to confront my son about everything I had been thinking about since I got off the phone with my lawyers.
Jackson and Jax—the names were too eerily similar.
Avery was paying off her ex for blackmail, and I was paying my son for his gambling debts.
Which one was it? Was the joke on both of us?
Avery moved here from California a few years ago with her ex.
Jackson was from California.
I mean, fuck, they’d both moved here around the same time.
The nagging feeling continued to run through me the more and more I thought about it. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Avery and I were dealing with the same person. But why? What was Jackson’s motive behind all of this?
Was his name even Jackson?
As fucked as it was, I understood a young boy making a poor decision and hanging his girlfriend out to dry. I wasn’t a perfectboyfriend to the women I dated in the past. Then again, I never would have stooped so low, no matter what the reason was.
But what could have driven him to fuck me over and take my money? He had no idea me and Avery were together. He’d never even divulged that kind of information to me. When he came into my life, he was single—still was. I always assumed he was just a young kid playing the field.
Maybe in some crazy turn of events, he knew that Avery and I were together.
My mind stirred, rolling over every interaction we had over the last month. And then it hit me.
The day he came to my office.
The moment I told him I was seeing someone, his demeanor shifted. He took a phone call and almost immediately left my office with some bullshit excuse.
Fuck. It had to be the bourbon going straight to my head. I was being paranoid.
