Page 92 of A Better Place

She nods her head, eyes glistening with unshed tears. She reaches over and squeezes my hand in hers, confirming what I already know.

I’m hers.

She’s mine.

And I’ll do everything in my power to protect what’s mine.

It hits me right then. There’s no way I can hold back the information I was told tonight. And as scared as it makes me to say it out loud, afraid that she’s going to run, I know I can’t not tell her. She deserves to know. We’re building a relationship, and we can’t do that if we don’t have trust. We can’t have trust if she finds out that I know her piece of shit ex-husband is here looking for her and don’t tell her. What’s worse? What if he’s coming after Jack? And if my suspicions are correct, it sounds like this information is going to freak them both out.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?” He shifts his focus to me, and I know what I need to tell Carly needs to be done quietly. She needs to be able to tell Jack on her own time. I don’t have any business telling him. At least not yet.

“Can I have a moment with your mom?”

“Uh, sure? I guess? I’m going to head to bed anyway.”

He leans down and kisses Carly on top of the head, murmurs a goodnight, then turns to me and gives me a low wave. As soon as I hear his door shut, Carly looks at me with confusion and a bit of fear in her eyes.

“Carly.” I blow out a breath and pace around in front of her. “Damn. I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“I don’t… Okay, first you need to know I’m not going anywhere. There’s not a chance on this earth that anything I’m going to tell you or you’re about to tell me will change how I feel about you. Yeah?”

“James, you’re scaring me.” Her voice is barely above a whisper.

I move swiftly, sitting down on the couch and pulling her down with me, grabbing her hands in mine. “No, baby, don’t be scared. Please. Not of me.”

“No, I could never be scared of you,” she promises me.

“Okay. You remember our first date?”

She smiles and bites her lip. “You mean the one that happened tonight? Of course.”

I wink and lean over to kiss her quickly before settling back on the couch. I drape my arm over the back of the couch and start playing with her hair, trying to keep us both relaxed. “Remember when Will had to tell me something?”

“Yeah?”

“He needed to tell me Vince has been around.”

My words come out like a rush but they may as well have been said in slow motion, stabbing her in the chest with each syllable. So much information in that one little sentence.

I know her ex-husband’s name.

He’s been looking for them.

“What?” she asks, breathlessly.

“Yeah. Shit. Long story short?”

“Um, I’m not sure. I guess I need to know everything?”

So I went on to tell her… how Vince was looking around for them. That Tate recognized the picture that Vince was carrying around, and that’s why Will thought he recognized her. “Carly, I know whatever Vince was saying about you kidnapping Jack is a bunch of crap. Believe me, I know you. We might still be new, but that much I get.

“He’s here? And why didn’t you tell me right away?” She tries standing up, but I reach out and pull her closer to me. I cradle her face in my hands and look into her eyes.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you or have Will tell you when he was telling me. I know I should have, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell me about him. And honestly? I didn’t want to ruin our date… until I had a chance to talk to Tate. I don’t know if anyone has heard any more out of him or not. And things have been good, yeah? Between us? I guess I was afraid of bringing him into the fold, if maybe he just gave up and left. And I’m hoping that’s exactly what he’s done. I don’t know, beautiful. I was going to wait until I had the chance to talk to get more information, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry if I screwed up. Please don’t hate me. I am trying to protect you. To protect Jack.”

“I get that, I think. I just… James. It’s my life. I need to know something like this. You have to understand, the extent of what he did to me, to us? It was bad. And… I don’t want lies between us. I don’t want anything to stay hidden. I can’t. I had that with him.”

“I promise, beautiful. No lies. I’ll never keep anything from you again. I just… Dammit, Carly. Things with us are perfect. I won’t allow him to screw that up, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re okay?”

She looks between my eyes, no doubt my emotions are displayed right there on my face. “We’re okay. What else? What’s the plan?”

I blow out a breath, grateful that she’s moving forward and ready to take this one. Grateful that she’s not going to run.

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