“Mom told me she’d tell me who my dad was when I became an adult. I guess what she really meant by that was once I graduated college. It took years of trying to pull information out of her, and I resented Mom for it most days. For whatever reason, she fucked me out of having you in my life. And because of that, she wasn’t very present herself. She had to work a lot. For some reason, she decided to make her life harder by leaving you out.”
“Sounds like you may need to have a conversation with your mother.”
With everything said on my behalf being true, there wasn’t really any other way to get answers. He was going to need those answers from his mom.
“Yeah, a lot of conversations need to happen, apparently,” he huffed under his breath.
After a few minutes of watching Jackson’s walls come down, I had a sneaking suspicion that he never had a gambling problem. Instead, he was an entirely different type of trouble.
“What did you need all the money for, Jackson? The real reason, please.” I rubbed my thumbs into my temples.
“Gambling debts.” He doubled down as his eyes veered to the left, and his knee bounced up and down.
“You’re still going to stick to that story?” I challenged him.
After moments of silence and Jackson’s head cowered down, avoiding eye contact, a pair of brown eyes that matched my own finally lifted.
“I wanted the life I should have had, okay?” Finally giving up, he slapped his hands along his thighs.
Before I settled on what I wanted to say, my mind stirred, wondering why he felt entitled to a certain type of life.
“And what kind of life is that?” I bit my tongue.
“The kind where I don’t have to ever wish for anything. I could have it if I wanted it.” Jackson ran his hands down his face, muffling a groan. “When I moved here, I was surrounded by people living a lavish lifestyle. Every single person’s personality revolved around money. Then, I got the courage to meet you. I was so afraid to tell anyone because what if you didn’t even exist? What if my mom got it wrong this entire time? Then I found out that just like everyone else I’d been hanging around since I moved here, you were also made of money.” His voice was laced with heavy distaste.
“So, you wanted to live a life different than the one you grew up in?” I treaded lightly, digging a little deeper.
“Something like that, I guess. I grew up with a struggling single mother when, apparently, I could have been a son to a millionaire. I wanted to reinvent myself. At first, we moved out here and everything was great, until it wasn’t.”
“Jax … why didn’t you feel like you could tell me? I mean … fuck, we told each other everything back then,” Avery chimed in, unable to continue staying silent.
“I didn’t even know if he would accept me.” Jackson shrugged. “And how fucking embarrassing would that of been?”
“So, what then? You decided to do it all in secret and started to reinvent yourself into … a con artist?”
I could sense that Avery’s comment didn’t sit well with Jackson. His body language was becoming more irritable, and the vulnerability had been replaced with agitation.
“Will you guys stop calling me that? I’m not a fucking con artist!” He stood up with a scowl on his face.
“Hey, hey, I got this, okay?” I whispered over my shoulder.
I knew they had a lot they needed to talk about as well, but he seemed to have more anger attached to her right now.
“Jackson, please sit back down. We were making progress, and I’d like to continue. Calmly.” I kept my tone even. “I think Avery just wants to know what went wrong. Why you chose to do to her what you did.”
There was the elephant in the room that I was worried to bring up. I needed to figure out the best way to mention to Jackson that I knew everything there was to know. That he was also collecting money from Avery. Her hard-earned money and even money of my own. That he took a video and put it on the internet as blackmail.
I knew it all—at least, I hoped I did. I don’t think I’d be able to handle it if another bomb was dropped on me.
“Why I what? Cheated?” He rolled his eyes.
“Jackson, give it a rest. I know everything that you did. Now that it’s out in the open that you didn’t have a gambling problem, and it was all for different reasons, I need to know why you got Avery involved. You could have asked me for every penny, and I would have worked something out. But you asked me for money while also collecting from her. Was there anyone else you were taking money from?”
Jackson leaned back on the couch, covering his face with his hands. He stayed silent for a beat before finally answering,
“No. Just you two. But you might not want to hear my reason, Dad.” His eyes shifted to Avery.
“At this point, I’m pretty sure I’ve been made aware of everything. So, try me.”
