JC paused a moment, and I saw a crack in the armor he wore. “No.”
The room was reverent, quiet except for the occasional sniffle as JC continued to recount the details of his fiancée’s final moments. The awkward way her body lay on the floor. The awful sound as she tried to draw in breath around the bullet lodged in her lung. The blood that gushed over his hands, soaking his clothes even after she went still and lifeless.
I could picture it—the image JC created was devastating and horrible. It was a scene I thought I might never be able to get out of my head, and I hadn’t even actually seen it.
“And then what did you do?”
JC lifted his head, and I swear, he looked directly at me. “I stopped living.”
Chapter Five
The court broke for a recess after that, and I bolted. I didn’t like to think of myself as someone who ran from hard things—and I wasn’t running, exactly. Well, I was literally, but not because I was avoiding something that I needed to face. It was more like I didn’t belong. There wasn’t a place for me in this part of JC’s world where he loved a woman so much that he’d felt like he’d died when she did. I was a third wheel. An extra puzzle piece.
And if he had stopped living with her, then what was he doing when he was with me?
It forced me to confront the fear that always lingered just at the edge of every one of my JC fantasies—what he and I had, what I’d clung to for the past twelve months, maybe it hadn’t ever really been anything at all.
But he’d looked at me. He must have known I was there, and yet he hadn’t looked at me until he’d said the hardest thing for me to hear. He had to be trying to tell me something, and what I heard was, She was my life, Gwen. Not you.
So when the court let out, I hurried down the corridor, avoiding the elevator and the main stairway and the bathrooms, and headed for the farthest exit. I had to get back into my world where I had a firm place and a defined role. A lonely place, maybe, but far less lonely than this one where I didn’t belong at all.
My hand was on the door to the stairs when someone called my name. A familiar voice, but not JC’s. I turned back. “Matt?”
“Gwen. I thought that was you.”
Matt had been my manager at the club I worked at before The Sky Launch. I hadn’t bothered to look around the courtroom, but he must have been there, which made sense. Matt had been friends with JC, despite the age difference.
No. Not friends, I realized as Matt gave me a hug. Matt’s last name was Jackson. Why hadn’t I put it together before now?
“She was your daughter,” I said, when he pulled away. “JC was going to be your son-in-law.” Odd pieces from the past slipped together, taking shape into a bigger picture. The allowances Matt made for JC at the club. The radio news story Matt had been so wrapped up in about an arrest made in an old murder. A conversation I’d overheard where Matt told JC he “just couldn’t be around that week”—that week had been the anniversary of Corinne’s death.
Matt nodded. “I’ve known the boy for quite some time now. He sacrificed a lot to bring my baby’s murderer to justice, and I owe him for that. I’d prefer to think of him like a son.”
A son.
Another piece of JC that I knew nothing about. I remembered when I first met him and I’d sarcastically asked him if the initials stood for Jesus Christ. They might as well have, I thought now. I knew as much about that enigmatic man as I knew about this one.
“I didn’t realize your relationship,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as cold as I felt. Then, because I didn’t want to be discussing JC at all, I changed the subject. “I had no idea that you’d had a daughter. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
Matt smiled weakly. “It’s not necessarily something that comes up in day-to-day conversation.”
“I guess not.” God, I didn’t know what to say to him. There weren’t scripts for these situations. “I just…I just wish I would have known.”
He put a hand on my upper arm. “I appreciate that. I’ve always had a soft spot for you, Gwen. I wish there were things I would have known too.”
I felt the color drain from my face. The events of the morning had me so wrapped up that I’d forgotten for a moment the embarrassing circumstances that had caused me to leave my old club. “My father. Yes. I should have told you.”
My father had gone into prison a child abuser and had come out ten years later a heroin addict. It wasn’t long after his release before he’d gone looking for someone to fund his addiction. He’d found me one morning when I was alone at the Eighty-Eighth Floor. He’d hit me and threatened me. Said he’d return the next day and expected me to have money for him.