Page 64 of Middle Ground
“You’re ridiculous.”
He takes a step closer. “It’s alright, Ellison. Because I can’t keep my eyes off you either.”
My traitorous gaze blazes a downward trail once again, getting caught on that scar. It’s most likely from surgery of some sort, but it’s faded, like maybe it happened when he was a kid.
“Ask me.”
Jackson’s words pull my attention back to his face. “What?”
“Ask me about the scar, Meyer,” he says. “Ask me because you’re curious. Ask me because you care to know something about me.”
He didn’t put any particular emphasis on the wordcare, but it rings in my ears anyway. He’s daring me to show my hand—to reveal that I do, begrudgingly, care in some way—anddamn him, I want to.
I swallow. “The scar,” I say, my voice unsteady. “How did you get it, Jackson?”
“Surgery when I was a baby.” He runs his fingers along the scar at his front. “Coarctation of the aorta. That’s the name of the congenital heart defect I had.”
“And now?”
He huffs a laugh, running a hand through his hair. “That night you called me a workaholic,” he says, “you were right. I, uh— Well, I’ve been known to throw myself into work, evenif it means fucking up my blood pressure. Which is already too high, thanks to the whole shoddy heart thing.”
“Why?”
Forget showing my hand. It seems I’ve just surrendered the whole deck to him.
“I don’t know.” Slowly, he shakes his head. “That’s a lie. I do know. It’s— Well, now that I’m trying to say it out loud, it sounds so fucking stupid. I spent time at the hospital and in doctors’ offices when I was a kid, checking on my heart. I missed a lot of school. Overall, I feel like I wasted a lot of time, so in a roundabout way, I was trying to make up for it.”
“Jackson…”
He shakes his head. “That doesn’t really make sense, I know. And on top of all that, I think I was trying to prove to everyone that I was okay. Especially after Cherie’s death. But I ended up making a fool of myself in the process.”
I cock my head. “What do you mean?”
“Just after Cherie passed, there was a proposal I was supposed to present to my colleagues. I had been working on it for months. I wasn’t sleeping much, was running on caffeine. Within a few minutes of my presentation starting, I knew something was wrong. I shouldn’t have, but I tried to push through. I woke up in the hospital later that evening. Turns out, I had collapsed on the conference room floor from the stress I had put on my body.”
I wrap my arms around my middle to stop myself from reaching for him. “Are you okay now?” I ask.
He smiles a little. “Getting there.” Then he runs a hand through his hair again, mussing it up. “I didn’t want to comehere. To Fraisier Creek. When I found out about the inn, I thought of every way I could extricate myself. I didn’t have time for this place.”
A strange feeling washes over me. The knowledge that Jackson almost didn’t come here is a little hard to swallow.
“What changed your mind?” I decide I need to know. Somehow, it feels important.
“Cherie left me a letter,” he explains. “She asked me to give the inn six months. After my health issues, I was put on medical leave. Because I’m chronically under-slept and over-caffeinated, my doctor gave me six months.” His lips quirk upwards. “Seemed kind of serendipitous at that point, so I figured I didn’t have anything to lose.”
“Isn’t that cheating? You’re still working.”
He grins. “Thanks to your micromanaging, any work I’ve done for the inn is hardly detrimental to my health. Probably is to yours, though.”
“I don’t micromanage!”
“Really?” He arches a brow as he steps closer. “Is that why your fingers are fidgeting with the need to text Pippa and Trystan for updates?”
“Hey,” I say, poking a finger into his chest. He’s still advancing, and my breath hitches. “You don’t have room to lecture me, Mr. High Blood Pressure.”
“When I initially read my grandmother’s letter, I didn’t understand why she would send me here,” he continues. “After I arrived, I decided the reason was because Cherie wanted me to help her beloved inn thrive.”
“And what do you think now?”
