To Love Jason Thorn

After living through the worst morning of my fucking life, we had finally found Lucy at the hospital with her boyfriend. She looked like a mess herself, and I couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through while waiting for her boyfriend to come out of surgery. I’d learned that Olive had been with her the entire time, which was progress since we couldn’t find her anywhere. She had left with Lucy and spent the entire night at the hospital while I was out of it.

It was a miracle we even managed to get that out of her mouth. She had seen the news coverage and was just as furious as I was, if not more. The only difference was she was ready to attack me and have my balls for her friend, not the bastard who had spiked my drink or taken the photos.

It took some time, but we explained what was going on and she looked like she wanted to believe us. After some begging on my part, she told me that Olive had flown to San Francisco hours ago.

At 10:00 PM, I was on a plane—fuck waiting for a private jet—flying to San Francisco.

***

It was weird being in the neighborhood where you spent a big and very important chunk of your childhood. All the houses looked the same as I remembered; even the damn air smelled like it had back then. The house my mother had decided to take her own life in was still the same, too. Sure, it looked more lived in, and there were flowers that hadn’t been there when I was a teenager, but it was right where it had been, tucked among the memories I wanted to forget.

I hoped the family who was living in it now was a happier and more functional one than ours had been. I hoped the kids who were growing up in the house weren’t witnessing their mother slowly losing the light in her eyes for no good reason. I hoped that they had another house they could spend their time in if things weren’t going that great for them, someone to care about them like Logan and Emily had cared about me.

Right then, standing in front of their house in the middle of the night didn’t feel as scary as I had thought it would feel when I was on the plane. It was more like coming back home, and that was a good feeling for someone who hadn’t had a good home for most of their life, someone who had lost both his parents along the way and for a very long time hadn’t had a real thing to hold on to when things got rough.

Maybe it wasn’t as scary as I had initially thought it would be, but I was still a mess. Apart from feeling like a mess, I also looked like a fucking mess.

After spending ten minutes in front of their house, not knowing how Olive’s parents would react to seeing me, not knowing if Olive would even agree to see me, I sucked it up and knocked on their door.

When Dylan opened the door and his eyes hardened when he saw who was standing on their porch, I was still trying to get over the shock of seeing my best friend after so many fucking years.

Dylan didn’t have that problem.

My lips spread out in a smile, but that was a mistake because his whole body tightened. Instead of being happy to see me again like I’d hoped he would be, he stepped out of the house and quietly closed the door behind him.

“What are you doing here, Jason?”

“Dylan. Shit, man.” I tried to stop my smile from spreading out more, but…hell, he was my best friend, and it had been years since I’d seen him. “Man, it’s really fucking good to see you.”

His expression didn’t change.

“I’ll ask again. What are you doing here? Don’t you think you did enough damage to her already?”

I dropped my smile, but it was too late to brace for the impact his words caused. If he wanted to act like a piece of shit, so be it. So could I.

“I can see that you don’t care to see me. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t come to see you either. I’m here for my wife.”

“Wife?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Cut the crap, Jason. We both know that it’s just a game for the public even though she refuses to admit that. You are using her to look good and she is too stupid to care about it even though she knows it herself.”

“You don’t know anything about us, Dylan.”

“About us? There is no you and her, Jason. Do you know that she is in love with you? Hell, she’s been in love with you for most of her life. Are you going to keep playing this game, knowing it will kill something in her when you finally get bored with it?”

I lowered my head and squeezed my hands into fists.

“I don’t want you to see her, and I want you to turn around—”

“I don’t care what the hell you want, Dylan,” I said in a low voice. He stopped speaking. “I will get through that door even if I have to deck you to do it.”

He lifted an eyebrow and crossed his arms against his chest. “Try it,” he said. “Give me a good reason to fuck up your—”

“I’m in love with your sister, you idiot.” I took a step forward, getting into his face.

His eyes narrowed on me and he took a step forward with clenched fists. “You lying son of a bitch.”

Before he could do anything, the door behind him opened and his father walked out.

“That’s enough, Dylan,” he said in a gravelly voice, shutting the door gently.

I froze. My hands flexed and I swallowed.

In front of me stood the man I had idolized, a man who knew how to take care of his family, a man who didn’t shy away from showing his love to his children, to his wife…even to the neighbor’s kid.

Just like the houses around us, he looked just the same. He had more white hair and the smile lines around his eyes were deeper, but those big shoulders, the stance, and everything else that made him who he was just the same.

Hell, why did he have to come out? I couldn’t deck Logan. I would happily get into a fight with Dylan, but not with his father.

I took a step back and tried to loosen up my muscles.

“I don’t like the reason you are here, but it’s still good to see you, Jason,” Logan said after forcefully moving his son out of the way. There was a small smile playing on his lips. Maybe I still had a shot at getting to Olive. Maybe Logan would believe me.

Feeling like a seventeen-year-old again, I rubbed the back of my neck and looked down at the ground. Surely I wasn’t tearing up…right?

“You have no idea how good it is to see you, too, sir.”

He nodded. “I’m assuming you’re here because you want to see Olive?”

I gave Dylan a hard look and kept my eyes on him as I answered his father’s question.

“Yes, I’m here for Olive.”

“You’re not seeing her,” Dylan said as he took another step toward me.

The bastard was just itching to get his ass kicked.

“Dylan, that’s enough,” Logan cut him off again. “Simmer down.” Turning to me, he said, “Let’s have a talk before you see her, is that okay?”

“Of course,” I agreed as we both sat down on the porch steps. Wisely, Dylan chose to stand next to the door instead of getting in my face. If he thought he even had a chance of stopping me from going in to get Olive, he was in for a surprise.

I would fuck him up without a second thought.

“Olive is not saying much, so you’ll have to be the one to tell me exactly what’s going on here, Jason. I want to hear it in your own words, not some speech your people prepared for you.”

I frowned. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I won’t hide anything from you.”

“That’s not the vibe I got from Olive. I think she was trying to share as little as possible with us.”

I shook my head and rubbed my forehead. “That was before.”

“And now? Did something change?”

“Yes.” I rubbed my forehead some more. “Yes, everything changed.”

“You married Olive so it would look good for you, is that true?”

I flinched. Jesus! An interrogation was not what I needed.

“Yes.” I sighed. “Yes, my publicist thought it would save my career after everything I’d done. When I saw Olive and acted like…and then everyone else saw us together…”

I didn’t finish my sentence.

“I see. And now? What is different now?”

I lifted my head and looked into his eyes. I couldn’t decide if he was angry with me or not, but I answered honestly. “I fell in love with your daughter, sir.” Looking over my shoulder, I gave Dylan a hard look. “That’s what changed.”

“And you think my daughter loves you too?”

Breaking eye contact with Dylan, I faced forward again. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m hoping that the answer is yes.”

“So why is she here? We saw the news. If you are in love with her like you say you are, what happened?”

I told him everything that had happened the night before, except the part where my dick was roaring to get into his daughter’s tight little body in public, of course. That I kept to myself.

The more I talked and explained everything—not just that my drink had been spiked, but everything that had happened between Olive and me—the more Dylan’s stance relaxed and he got closer to us.

After I talked for I don’t even know how long, Logan smiled, patted my shoulder, and rose up from the steps.

“I’ll leave you two friends to catch up. Olive is sleeping, but you can stay here tonight and talk to her in the morning, Jason. I’m sure Emily would love to see you, too.”

Stopping next to Dylan, he added, “She isn’t a kid any more Dylan. She is old enough to make up her own mind about Jason. Don’t interfere.”

When he got inside and closed the door, Dylan took his dad’s spot.

“So you really love her, huh? Have you told her that?” he asked, sounding tired.

I already felt dead on my feet.

“How nice of you to believe me now,” I said a little pointedly as I glared at him. Fuck, I was too damn tired to fight with him if he decided to be a jerk about this. “Give me a break. I just realized it today. I spent my entire day trying to find out where she was hiding.”

“You sound surprised every time you say it, and you keep saying it over and over.”

“If you have a problem with me being in love with her, keep her out of it. I don’t want you to say anything that will upset her,” I grinded out, looking at the house across the street. I wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Kealey still lived there.

“You’re protecting my sister from me?”

“Yes,” I said simply, giving him a hard glare. “You never knew how to keep your mouth shut around her. I won’t let you say something stupid and break her heart. I don’t care if you are her brother or not.”

He cocked an eyebrow and gave me a look I couldn’t even begin to name.

“Huh,” he grunted.

We were silent for several moments.

“What are you doing in San Francisco, anyway?” I asked when the silence became too heavy. I wanted to go in and talk to Olive, but Logan had said she was sleeping. Was she okay? Was she angry? Sad? Disappointed in me?

“My wife’s best friend had a baby. We’re visiting for the weekend.”

That made sense.

More silence.

“Did you feel anything for her when we were kids?” Dylan asked.

I had asked myself the same question over and over again, but I still didn’t have an answer.

“I don’t know,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t think so. I mean she was my Olive, too, you know. I was your friend, but I enjoyed being around her as much as I enjoyed being around your sorry ass.” That made him chuckle, so I relaxed more. “But, no. I wouldn’t call it love. She was too young. Yeah, maybe she had a crush on me, but it was probably because I was the only boy that was around. I don’t think it was anything big.”

“You would think so,” he said as he kicked a small stone with his foot.

“What does that mean?”

He shook his head and rubbed his face. “It was more than just a crush, man. I was constantly warning her away from you without being too obvious about it. Do you remember a girl texting you, just before your…before you had to move?”

I thought about it, but I couldn’t remember anything specific.

“Someone from our class?”

“No. A random girl.”

“How the hell am I supposed to remember that?”

“It was Olive.”

“What?” I turned my head to look at him so fast that I heard something snap. Then I chuckled. “I think I would know if Olive texted me. I had her number.”

Another annoying sigh. “I think she borrowed the phone from her friend or something. My point is, she was trying to talk to you. Even back then, she was taking risks just to be close to you. I have no idea what her plan was with texting you, but—”

“And you know this how, again?”

“I’m trying to tell you, you idiot. You told me you were texting with a girl, then when you were downstairs I went into Olive’s room to check on her and found a phone in her bed. Since it wasn’t her own phone, I poked around, and imagine my surprise when I found your texts.”

“What did you do, Dylan?”

“What do you think I did? I took your phone and texted her.”