His Best Friend's Baby

Julia Adams.

Close enough to touch. Her short blond hair gleamed in the low light and her skin looked like velvet, cream velvet.

No wonder people get addicted to thesedrugs. He wondered what he could do with this vision, if he could spend the rest of his life high enough to keep seeing this woman.

“Jesse?” She put her hand on his arm and the touch of her cool skin against his overheated flesh slammed him back to reality.

He pulled away, limping backward, his fantasy now a nightmare. “What are you doing here?”

Her brow furrowed. “I’m, ah,” she stuttered and wrapped an oversized brown sweater around her lithe body, as though it would provide protection against him. “Ben and I are visiting Mitch’s parents.”

Ben. Right. The kid. Mitch’s kid. Another life he’d ruined.

“What are you doing here?” His voice grated through his throat—every effort to talk hurt. The doctor had told him he shouldn’t overwork his damaged larynx. He wondered what the good doctor would think if he started screaming. “On my porch.”

Rachel. The house. And now this.

“I was just out for a walk—I—Jesse?” She smiled, clearly trying to get this little reunion back on track. “I can’t believe that you’re here. This is amazing.”

She took a step toward him, her hand out. But if she touched him, he would shatter. He took another staggering step backward.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her head tilted in concern.

“Fine,” he lied quickly, not wanting to see her concern turn to pity. “I’m drunk,” he lied.

“Jesse,” she whispered, her smile hesitant and somehow beseeching. He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to remember what he was trying so hard to forget.

He made the mistake of looking into her endless blue eyes and he saw exactly what he had seen when he met her for the first time.

A million missed opportunities. A thousand unanswered prayers and unspoken wishes.

He’d been kicked in the gut when Mitch opened that door and introduced the woman of Jesse’s dreams as his own wife.

And now fate had brought her here to finish Jesse off.

Just in time, the drugs kicked in with a vengeance, the world wavered and he felt himself sliding along with it, carried on the sudden wave of painlessness.

“Sit down,” she urged, picking up the rocker he’d knocked over.

Defeated by the pain meds and the appearance of every damn ghost he was trying to outrun, he dropped into the old wooden chair like a stone.

“Last I heard you were still in the hospital,” she said, once he was seated.

“I left two weeks ago,” he whispered.

“Are you okay—I mean, all right? Your knee and—”

“I’m fine.”

She smiled and then laughed nervously. The sound lifted him up, made him weightless.

I’m doing better than Mitch, he thought just to remind himself who was the bad guy in this scene.

“Do you mind if I sit? Just for a minute.”

He couldn’t say no. She was the way she’d been in Germany—so hungry for company that she’d sit down with the devil just for some conversation.

He simply nodded, worried that if he opened his mouth, words he barely allowed himself to think would fly out.

When she sat on the step and wrapped the sweater around her legs, resting her chin on her knees, Jesse let himself go. He let go of all the mistakes he had made and the ghosts that were catching up with him. He left the broken and battered shell of his body and allowed himself to be a man on a porch enjoying the evening with the woman of his dreams. He let possibility and hope hover close. The what-ifs he refused to think about settled on his shoulders like snow.

What if she were here to give him a second chance? What if life weren’t as cruel as he had always thought? What if it were possible for him to be forgiven?

“I didn’t know you’d left Germany,” he said, engaging in conversation even though he knew it was a bad idea. He remembered everything she’d said in Germany. All the small hints and gifts of herself she’d made during those brief twenty-four hours. He knew she hated mushrooms, couldn’t sing, loved to run.

He knew she was so lonely she cried most nights.

“There was nothing keeping me there,” she sighed. “I didn’t have many friends and my mom was back and forth between Iraq and D.C., so I decided to come here.”

“Looking for a family?” he asked, the drugs making him loose and careless.

She smiled at him. “Constantly. You want to adopt us?” She joked but it fell flat in the thick air.

No, sweetheart, he thought, reminded of all the things he really wanted to do to her.

Wain stood up from his spot at Jesse’s side with a groan and shuffled over to Julia. He sniffed her, must have decided she was okay and collapsed on the step above her.

She smiled and scratched the old guy’s ears.

“Nice dog,” she said.

“He’s yours if you want him,” Jesse said, though his hand itched with a sudden desire to scratch those old ears.

Wain curled up into a ball and soon started to snore.

“Have you heard anything about Caleb?” Julia asked quietly. “I called the hospital a few times to check on him, but then I got so busy with—”

“Still in the coma.” He was reluctantly touched that she would keep tabs on the survivors of the accident that had killed her husband. Touched, but not surprised. Julia was a good person. Good in a way most people never were. In a way he never dreamed of being.

He’d stopped checking in on Caleb, mostly because he, Jesse Filmore, was a coward. He’d already killed three men in that accident, he didn’t want to know about the death of another one added to his conscience.

“I got your note,” Julia said. She referred to the stupid, morphine-induced lapse of judgment that had resulted in him asking a nurse to write a note to send to Julia. A sympathy card. He couldn’t even remember what he’d said. “It really helped.” She sighed heavily and smiled at him.

He looked away and said nothing. What could he say? I’ve thought of you every day formonths. I wish I’d never met you.

“That night in Germany seems like a million years ago, doesn’t it?” She rested her cheek against her knee and watched him, her blue eyes glowing with things he refused to recognize.

Seems like yesterday, he thought but didn’t say.