Until We Touch (Fool's Gold #15)(40)

“What do you think?” she now asked, her voice anxious.

He motioned for her to turn in a circle.

She did as he requested. The skirt moved with her, swaying like a bell. “You’re beautiful,” he told her honestly. “And the dress is good, too.”

Taryn grinned. “Okay. Let me get into the other one and we’ll decide.”

Isabel helped her down from the platform and together they went into the dressing room.

Jack thought back to Taryn’s first wedding, to him. They’d flown to Las Vegas the Friday after she’d discovered she was pregnant and had been married in the east chapel at the Bellagio hotel. They’d spent the weekend in a suite before flying home early Monday morning.

It hadn’t been love for either of them. He’d been fine with that. Love wasn’t in the cards for him. When you loved someone, they left and Jack had been left enough for three lifetimes. Maybe not in numbers but in how it had all played out. He wasn’t risking that again.

With Taryn, he’d felt safe. They got along. They were friends who had sex. That had been plenty. The thought of a kid had terrified him at first. What if his child was like Lucas? But over the next few weeks, he’d told himself he would get through it, whatever happened.

Then Taryn had lost the baby. She’d started divorce proceedings the next day. Jack had wanted to tell her she didn’t have to. He didn’t mind being married to her, but she was determined. They’d stayed friends and had started Score together.

Looking back, he knew he had the best of all worlds. People he could care about, who cared about him. There weren’t the highs, but there also weren’t any risks.

“I’m feeling guilty,” Larissa said, pulling him back to the present.

“Why?”

“Do you know how expensive these dresses are? Do you know how many people could be helped with that money?”

He took her hand in his and squeezed her fingers. “Taryn will not be moved by that argument.”

“I know. But still.”

He kissed her knuckles. “Pick a cause and we’ll save something.”

She looked at him. “But it’s always with your money. What do I give back?”

“Your heart and that’s enough.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Because she was the most giving person he’d ever known and he liked how she dragged him along. Without wanting to, he remembered the last time he’d offered all he had. He’d been nine.

It had been late. The hospital was as quiet as it could get. Both his parents were asleep and he’d been wandering the pediatric wing alone. He’d caught sight of his brother’s cardiologist and had hurried over to speak to him. Because he’d finally figured out how to fix his brother.

“Dr. Madison.”

The tall, weary man had smiled at him. “Jack. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I found a donor for Lucas. A heart donor. He’s a good match, I’m sure of it.” Jack knew all about transplants and matches. There had been talk of little else in his world for years.

Dr. Madison had shaken his head. “There’s no donor, Jack.”

“Yes, there is. Me.” Jack remembered staring up at the doctor. “We’re identical twins, so I’m the perfect match. Take my heart and make Lucas better.”

Dr. Madison had smiled sadly. “We can’t do that, Jack.”

“But I want you to. Take my heart. Make Lucas better so he can live.”

“It doesn’t work that way, son.”

The doctor had hugged him tight, then taken him back to where his parents slept in cots by Lucas’s hospital bed. No mention had been made of Jack’s offer. In the end, Lucas got a heart from someone else. He’d done well at first, and then he hadn’t.

Larissa leaned against him again. He put his arm around her. She knew that he’d lost a brother when a transplanted organ had failed. Nearly everyone knew that. But no one knew what it was like, day after day. To be the twin who hadn’t gotten sick. To be the one who survived.

Six months after Lucas’s death, his parents had left for a medical mission in Africa. There were children there who needed saving. They told Jack he would be fine on his own. He had his football scholarship and his strong, steady heart.

He remembered the shock that they would abandon him. Because somewhere in his head, he’d assumed that when Lucas was gone, they would still be a family. Only he’d been wrong.

He’d said all the right things—that of course he would be fine. And they’d believed him. At the time he hadn’t known why, but over the years he’d figured it out. They’d believed him because it made their leaving easier. They could tell themselves he was okay and go without having to look back.

He understood what they’d done. And why. He was Lucas’s identical twin. To look at him was to see what they had lost. Years of hoping and suffering and believing had taken their toll. The transplant had only bought a little time. It hadn’t been the lifesaving operation it was supposed to be. Being with Jack had reminded them of everything bad. Leaving had been so much easier than staying.

They’d flown away and they’d never come back. He’d turned eighteen that summer with no family around to celebrate the day. He told himself it was because they knew he was completely capable of being on his own, even as he understood the truth was far less pretty. His parents hadn’t cared enough about him. They’d lost Lucas and had abandoned him.