“How come every time we get together, I end up on my back?” Bristol asks through a panted breath.
I shift up on my elbow so I can look at her. Her hair is a mess, her cheeks are flushed, and her smiling lips are swollen from mine. I could never get tired of looking at her like this—gorgeous, sated, looking back at me with something in her eyes that makes my heart feel like it’s going to beat out of my chest. I lean forward and brush a kiss to her lips before leaning my forehead on hers and reaching out to rest a hand on her stomach. When she tries to shift away, I tighten my fingers on her side, forcing her to let me leave my hand there.
What was it like when she was pregnant? Did she have morning sickness? What weird foods did she crave? What did Jagger’s heartbeat sound like? What did it feel like when he kicked against her swollen belly? What did his first cries sound like?
And where the fuck did those thoughts even come from? For a guy who never wanted kids, Jennings, you sure as fuck are thinking too much.
And yet . . . the questions I’ll never have answers to still linger.
“I played him your music all the time,” Bristol murmurs almost as if she can hear my thoughts. “Interviews that you’d given. Songs that you’d sung. I rested the phone on my belly and played them over and over. I wanted him to know your voice.”
Processing all of this has been a mental and emotional overload. To go from zero to one hundred eighty in what feels like two seconds is overwhelming and discombobulating.
To think I’ve been content with not wanting one thing my whole life to now having it and trying to understand why I’m not fighting against it harder.
To look at Bristol and resent her for what she did. Sure, I could look at myself—at Mick putting her off, at having Hawke block her in my phone, at not returning her calls—but rehashing the past doesn’t justify her silence over the past weeks. It doesn’t give her a free pass.
To look at Jagger, I see myself in every fiber of him, and then in the few places I’m not, I see Bristol there.
I offer a slight nod in response and then lie back on the rug and stare at the ceiling. What am I supposed to say, thank you? Because while I am glad she tried to keep me present in his life—I wasn’t in his life in the most important way possible.
“Vince . . . I’m sorry. That’s all I can say to you, and I hope you really hear it. I’m sorry. I did what I thought was right. It never crossed my mind what you said about your mom and Jagger being left to feel the same way about you.” She sounds as conflicted as I feel. “Please know I did call. I did try, but when you blocked me, when your road manager offered me a check to take care of it in whichever way I pleased, I—”
“Christ.” The memory comes back with a vengeance. Even after all these years, the conversation stuck out in my head then and now, again. The joke about Crystal.
Crystal.
Bristol.
He could have easily heard one name when she said the other.
I run a hand through my hair and sigh with a heaviness Bristol will never understand. Talk about making subconscious choices.
I was so far down a rabbit hole trying to convince myself that I didn’t love Bristol, would hearing she was pregnant make any difference? I’d like to think I’m a better man than that, but back then . . . hell, there’s a huge difference from age twenty-three to thirty.
I’d like to think the man I am today is better than that . . . but I guess that remains to be seen.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing. It’s just . . .” It’s just you can’t go back, Vin. You made as many mistakes as she did, just in different ways. If you can forgive yourself, does that mean you should forgive her? “That explains why you were so angry with me at the video shoot. So bitter with me,” I say, dots connecting the more I replay all the time we’ve spent together.
“Yeah.” It’s barely audible. “I was shocked to see you there. It was like part of me wanted to jump into your arms and hold on, while the other needed to keep you at arm’s length, terrified you’d find out about Jagg before I could figure out the right thing to do. A lot of good all that did me, huh?”
“Humph.” But it makes sense of something I couldn’t put my finger on before. Why I felt her pushing so hard against me when her eyes said the exact opposite.
“The no fraternizing with clients thing was real, though . . . as my current state of non-employment shows.”
“I’ll take care of that for you.”
“I don’t want you to take care of anything for me. I’ve caused enough turmoil for now. I can figure out my own life.”
And even though I clearly know she will since she’s done all this on her own thus far, I still want to take care of it for her. In fact, I know that I will.
But thoughts of McMann and her job are easy targets for me to focus on, distractions, instead of what we really need to talk about.
I close my eyes and see him sleeping. The rise and fall of his chest. The hair mussed by the pillow. His skin that smells like lotion.
“I stare at him sometimes. It’s impossible to look away.”
“I still feel that way,” she whispers.
“He’s incredible, Shug. You . . . you’ve done such an amazing job with him.”
She doesn’t say thank you. She doesn’t reach out and grab my hand despite the sex we just had. It’s almost as if that specific contact after everything we’ve been through would be more intimate. Would mean we’re fine with the things we’ve done to each other when neither of us are anywhere near being so. Rather, she just sits in silence beside me, trying to judge where and how I feel, because I’m still trying to figure that out myself.
“Why are you so scared of him?” she finally asks.
She can still read me like a fucking book. And my response is the most honest answer I’ve ever given in my life. “I don’t want to ruin his perfect.”
The admission costs me more than I thought it would. Emotion burns in my throat and tears well in my eyes, as regret rivals resentment inside me.
“Vince. You’re not going to—”
“I ruin everything that matters.”
She presses a kiss to my shoulder and just leaves her lips there as she speaks. “For the record, he’s far from perfect. He’s been on his best behavior while we’ve been here. His perfect falls from grace every once in a while, and we’re left with tantrums and obstinance and a refusal to eat anything that’s the color vegetable as he calls it.”
I should know that. I should know what he likes and doesn’t like. How he gets cranky when he’s tired. How he pitches a fit when you tell him no.
But would I have wanted to if I’d had the decision before he was born to know that? Is it easier because I can’t refute it since he’s in living color in front of me?
My thoughts keep fucking with me. Keep playing devil’s advocate against me. Keep rioting against accepting what I feel so easily.
“I know, Vince. I can hear you thinking. I robbed you of knowing any and all of that. Of experiencing it firsthand. There is nothing I can say other than I’m sorry.”
When she reaches out to place her hand over mine, my whole body tenses. She can feel it. I know she can feel it. But she doesn’t move it. She doesn’t walk away like I’ve done to her. She leaves it there almost as proof that no matter how much I feel like running, she’s staying still.
“Shug?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m struggling with how I feel about . . . everything.”
“I understand.”
“No. I don’t think you do.”
“Then tell me. Talk to me.” She shifts so she can see my face. “Do the one thing you’ve never done before—explain it to me.”
Explain it to me. Sounds so damn simple to say, but it’s something I’ve never explained to anyone. How do I even fucking start?
“Do you know what it’s like to live a lifetime telling yourself you can’t have something? Then when you unexpectedly have it at your fingertips—when you touch it, when you experience it, when you realize you were completely wrong—you struggle with refuting every reason you’ve ever used to convince yourself otherwise?”
Our tear-blurred eyes meet each other’s, and when she nods, a tear slips down her cheek. “I do,” she whispers. “I’ve felt that way almost every day since you left my window that night.”
You started this decade of hurt, Vin. It’s up to you to finish it, one way or another.
I clear my throat. “I had my reasons.” Reasons that feel so meaningless now.
“I know you did.”
“I’ve tried to let you go more times than I can count, Bristol. I’ve tried desperately. The first time I walked away because I had no choice. The second time, the night we made Jagger, I realized that cutting you out of my life was the only way I could survive. I couldn’t bear the thought of tarnishing your perfect with my shit. I couldn’t give you anything. I could only give you love but never keep you.”
Those words.
“I think maybe I was doing the same, in my own way, on my end.” She shakes her head ever so slightly. “Like you told me, I’m impossible to love.”
“No, that’s not true. I said those words, but that’s more because of me, about me, than you. I’m impossible to love. I think . . . I need time. This is all too much. Too fast. I’m trying to figure out how to move forward without dragging all those reasons with me.” I draw in a deep breath. “To make amends with my demons, and there are a lot of fucking demons.”
“There is no pressure on our end. He doesn’t know that you’re his dad. I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything from you. You’re under no obligation to be in our lives.” She clears her throat and sets her jaw. “When things calm down, Jagger and I can leave, go back to our lives. I’ll find a new job. I’ll get into law school. We’ll move on, and you can do the same. We can put out a press release about your dad being wrong. Say we did a paternity test that agrees and call it a day.”
Good in theory, but that would never fly. The paparazzi are ruthless. It only takes one of them to dig up a picture of me as a kid and compare it to Jagger’s school picture they’re no doubt paying some classmate’s parent for right now and they’d know we were lying.
Her words press on a deep wound, though. They hurt in a way I never thought words could—and that’s saying a shit ton considering Deegan Jennings is my father.
“How can you say that? Do you really think that’s who I am? That that’s the type of man I am?”
“No, but I also know you have a life that has nothing to do with this. With me. With him. You have a career that you want to go back to. A public who adores you.” She shrugs but can’t meet my eyes. “I heard you on the phone earlier. The single is releasing next week, and I’m sure you’re itching to go promote it. To get on a stage in front of people. To travel without strings. I don’t . . . I won’t fault you for choosing those things over this. Just because I chose this for you, doesn’t mean you have to do the same. I won’t think less of you for it.”
But I would.
“Bristol—”
She reaches out and puts her hand to my lips and shushes me. “Don’t make decisions now. We’ve unpacked a lot of shit and still have more to go . . . but it’s a start, and that’s further than we’ve ever gotten before.” She rises, her beautiful body tempting me as she stands over me. “Don’t give me that look.” She smiles for the first time all night. “We’ve never had a problem with the physical. But we’ve used it to ignore everything else. This time we can’t.”
She’s right, but it still doesn’t stop me from staring and wanting.
“I know,” I murmur.
“The ball is in your court. I won’t push. I won’t question. I’ll stay out of the way so you can spend time with Jagg. We’ll go from there, if and when you want to.” She grabs her clothes then stops at the door. We stare at each other for a few seconds. You’d have to be blind not to see the love in her eyes. The same love I pretended not to see in the past. The same love I’ve always felt for her. “Good night, Vince.”
I lie there on the rug, staring at the ceiling till the early morning hours, replaying the conversation in my head.
We’ll go from there, if and when you want to.
Has there ever really been a choice when it comes to her?
Never.
It’s always been her, even when I didn’t want it to be.
Even more so now when I hold our son and see the best of us in him.
Now I need to convince myself I’m worthy of it. Now I need to try my damnedest to be the man they deserve me to be . . .
