Page 61 of Finding Jack
The tiredness I’d heard in his voice crept into the tight lines around his eyes. “Haven’t you been following my Twitter posts? You’ve seen the work I do. I don’t do real.”
“I think it’s amazing that you’re a doctor. I’m just trying to understand why this is so hard for you to talk about.”
“Are you?” His voice was even, but all the warmth I’d grown used to hearing in it had leached away. “Or are you trying to solve a mystery to satisfy your own curiosity? Because that’s what if feels like from where I’m sitting. Didn’t I just say something about how much I respect that you set clear boundaries? Why does that only go one way?”
If the earlier comment had felt like a needle, this was a scalpel, slicing through all my layers of justification for prying, right to the heart of things. “Okay. Your life isn’t a joke.” I tugged the stethoscope from my neck. I was ashamed of its bright yellow and redness as it dangled from my hand. “I’m sorry.” And then I didn’t know what else to say, so I said, “I should go now.”
He nodded. “Talk to you later.” And he disconnected as I was reaching for the button to hang up. The FaceTime logo filled the screen, and I shut the laptop. The urge to crawl under my covers and hide washed over me again. Instead, I stood and gathered up all my props from the coffee table and dropped them into the trash can, returning for the pile of magazines and giving them the same treatment.
Then I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head to wallow.
What had I been thinking? People who went to those kinds of lengths to keep their pasts under wraps didn’t want to talk about them for a reason.
Maybe the better question waswhohad I been thinking about?
Me.
I’d been thinking about my need to know. Why had I needed to know?
Because Ranée kept pushing me to find out. This was her fault somehow.
I flung down the covers so I could draw a breath of cool air.
But why had Ranée pushed me? And why had I let her? She couldn’t talk me into anything I didn’t want to do.
The first answer was easy. Ranée had pushed because not only did she know that Jack was a doctor, but because she must have some idea of why he’d quit practicing.
The second answer was harder. I’d let her push me into digging. Because…
I really wanted to know. That’s why.
And if I really wanted to know it was because I cared. Curiosity alone would never have driven me to make such a ridiculous plan to make Jack tell me his secrets. Because this had been a secret. I’d known it when I was digging for it, but somehow I’d decided I was entitled to it.
Jack didn’t owe me his secrets. And the fact that I’d worked so hard to uncover them said more than I wanted it to about how far I’d already fallen. Into this rabbit hole mystery.
And into him.
Chapter 23
I woke up to a gray dawn. I wasn’t sure how long I’d lain there last night trying to figure out how to quit falling so hard for a guy I had no future with, but I didn’t wake up with the answer.
I reached for my phone, but only email alerts from overnight business spam waited for me. No Jack. But I hadn’t expected anything. Not really. I wasn’t sure he would want to hear from me again, much less talk to me.
I pulled on some workout clothes, grabbed my keys, and headed to the gym for the early morning weight training class. I hated the instructor. He was way harder and barked much louder than the evening instructors did, but it felt like exactly what I needed to banish the fog that had followed me out of sleep.
An hour later, I racked my weights and toweled the sweat off my face and chest, and decided I was wrong; the fog was still with me.
I stopped at my favorite café on the way home to see if I could drown the fog with a big enough shot of espresso, or smother it under the weight of the largest possible banana nut muffin. Instead, when I got home, I only felt jittery, overstuffed, sore…and still bad. I wished jumping in the shower would wash off the feeling as easily as it did the sweat, but no. It didn’t.
I collapsed on my bed and opened the notes on my phone, trying to tap out a list that would help.
How to Stop Feeling Bad
Apologize
Make it up to Jack
Accept that I broke this and I can’t fix it and move on
