A Lover's Secret (12 page)

“Or are you just saying that because you haven’t had me yet?
Because I’m not yet a conquest?”

There was a long pause then. Finally, he said, “You just
have to let me have some secrets, Jess.”

“Why? I told you everything. All my deep, dark secrets. It
was so healing for me, and I think it would be for you, too.”

“All you told
me,
Jess,
was that you left
medical school. Nothing deep and dark about that.”

Her eyes welled with tears, and she blinked them back.
How
dare he trivialize her problems?

“You tell me, Jess.” His voice was tight. “You tell me
something deep and dark, and then we’ll see. Tell me something that’s hard for
you to even say out loud.”

“Okay,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper and
leaning in. “I owe two hundred and sixty seven
thousand
dollars in
medical school loans.”

He whistled through his teeth. “Wow.”

“Yeah, wow. It makes my throat close up to think about it. It
makes me lie awake at night, and it makes me feel I have no options for my
life. I either become a doctor and make my life all about earning money to pay
off my loans, or… I don’t think there is another option. I’m stuck, and it
terrifies me. It makes me want to die.”

“But it’s just money, Jess.”

“Easy for you to say.” Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “If
you
have
money, it’s easy to say money is no big deal. But if you don’t
have money, it colors every choice you make. It makes you feel like you’re
choking. Like you’ll have to live a life doing what you
don’t
want to do
just to get out of its grasp.”

“Alright, Jess.” His eyes flashed. “There’s only one thing
to do then.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to pay that debt for you.”

“No, Jake.” She rolled her eyes. “
It’s two hundred and
sixty seven thousand dollars
.”

“I know.”

“You hardly know me. That’s the last thing you should spend
your money on.”

“Why? The way I see it, paying off your debt would
accomplish two things: it would allow you to sleep at night; it would allow you
to feel free.
And
it would prove to you that you aren’t just one of a
dozen girls. No matter what happens tomorrow, or the next day, Jess, I want you
to know that it was always you. It has always been you. For me.” His eyes were
bright and glossy.

A woman at the next table turned to look at Jake, a warm
expression on her face. How much had she heard?

Jess leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I know you like
to live pretty large, Jake, but you shouldn’t be throwing that kind of money
around.”

He grinned and looked her straight in the eye. “Jess, there
is nothing in this world I would rather spend it on.”

“But you need that money.”

“No I don’t, actually.”

“If you don’t need it now, you’ll need it for your future.
You need to save it.”

He shook his head.

Jess continued. “Listen, I know your book is a hit and all,
but I’m sure I’m not the first person to suggest you bank some of these
royalties for a rainy day. If you play your cards right, invest it in the right
way, you could live in comfort until you’re one hundred years old. But not if
you go handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to every whiny, lost girl
you reconnect with from high school.”

“How many times do I have to say that you are more than
that?”

“Sure. Yes, I know,” Jess said, “But the reality is, you’ll
probably have a family someday. You’ll have kids who will want to go to
college.”

“Doubtful.” He shrugged.

“Oh, you don’t want kids?”

“It’s not whether I want them…”

“Okay, too far in the future.” Jess shook her head. “Sorry.
Just…what about your mom and dad? Do they have everything they need, as they
get older?”

Jake scoffed. “Oh, they…aren’t going to get any of it.” His
contorted briefly into a look of contempt, and he reached across the table to
take Jess’s hand in his.

“Maybe it’s time I did tell you my secret.” He squeezed at
her palm. “Here is what I didn’t want anyone to know… The FBI shows up, on
occasion, to track certain things I do. To track where my money goes, so when I
wire this money to you, for your student loans, you probably should know a few
things. A little background on my family.”

Jess’s throat clutched. “Why is the FBI watching you?”

“To start off with, what have you heard about my parents?
What do you already know?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Well, they moved out of Denver right after we graduated
high school. They moved to Michigan and my dad started work with a big law
firm. He has always practiced real estate law, but this firm dealt with larger
projects and, long-story short, it seems he embezzled a whole lot of money.”

“The first I heard of it was the beginning of my second
semester of college. My parents had told me they would be traveling, so I
couldn’t go home for Christmas that year. And my tuition check was late, and
classes were about to start. That’s when I got a phone call from a detective,
who ended up interrogating me and telling me my parents disappeared with other
people’s escrow funds.

“I don’t know the details because… well, because I don’t
really want to know them, but it seems my dad held money in escrow for all of
these real estate deals, and then, at the right opportunity, he and my mom just
made off with it.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“And you had no idea this was all happening?”  

“Nope. The last I saw them, I was hugging them goodbye
outside my dorm room, just before the first day of college classes. My mom was
crying her head off, but I thought that was perfectly understandable. I thought
she was emotional because her only child was leaving home. I didn’t know she
was saying goodbye to me for life.”

“So what now? You don’t have any idea where they are?”

“No idea. I don’t even know if they are alive or dead.”

“Why wasn’t this in the papers? Like, why isn’t everybody
talking about it?”

“Oh, I think it was. Maybe not in Denver, because we didn’t
live there any longer. We never did call a lot of attention to ourselves. We
stuck to ourselves, and I think that’s why it hurts me so much. I mean, my
parents… we stuck together. My mom and dad were my best friends. They did so
many things with me…took me on trips, to ball games. They were
fun.
And
then they just sort of disappeared, and it was all because of money. That’s
why—well, one of the reasons, I do what I do with money. If my money can help a
person—or a group of people—connect with one another; to have a good time, to
actually live and to experience the love of the people in their lives, then I
can’t think of a better way to spend it.”

“So what happened to you?” Jess asked. “Did you finish
college?”

He shook his head. “No more college fund. The FBI closed the
bank accounts, which were more or less empty anyway. I dropped out until I
figured out a way to get loans or to pay for it myself. It was a disaster. I
spent some time feeling a lot of… darkness. I was all alone in the world, and I
was rather ashamed to be a Lassiter. I started doing odd jobs. Construction.
Whatever I could find. Then one day, I just woke up and realized that I was
free. I was a pretty low-maintenance guy. My needs were tiny. So I decided to
start traveling. I took some money I’d saved, which really wasn’t much at all,
and I bought a plane ticket to Europe, and I stayed in hostels and hiked all
over the place, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I drank
whisky in Scotland and watched bullfights in Spain. I just worked whenever I
could and I just started trusting, you know. I just started trusting for things
to work out for me, and for awhile, they did.”

For awhile?
Jess opened her mouth to ask a question,
but Jake went on. “After I’d been traveling awhile, my old college roommate
asked me to write about some of my adventures. He had started a lifestyle blog
where he published some fairly random musings about life. He said he was
interested in me writing about why I had decided to live this way, so I just
started writing… Writing about how it felt to live with these sense of freedom.
To live for the day. And, as you know, I wrote about you and how I wish I had
told you how I felt, so many years before. It came straight from the heart.” He
closed his eyes and gave a quick shake of his head before continuing. “So my
old roommate published my little ‘live for fun manifesto,’ completely as is, on
his blog. Long-story-short, the post went viral, and, within six months or so,
I was offered two contracts from different publishers, and I took the one with
the largest advance.”

Jess nodded. “But your book starts off with all kinds of
details about the luxurious lifestyle you were leading, racing cars and meeting
women all over the world… None of those sound like activities for a traveler on
a shoestring budget.”

 “Oh that?” he scoffed. “I didn’t even write that intro, and
it definitely wasn’t part of the original blog post. Truthfully, I guess you
could say the draft that formed the book was an evolution. The seed was the
original manifesto, and then parts were added by my editor, after seeing the
adventures I had while spending my advance. The adventures themselves aren’t
really what the book is about. You
have
read it, right?”

Jess’s face flushed, “Not the whole thing.”

He pulled his lips back and shook his head. “Geez…”

“You whisked me off before I had a chance. And, honestly,
the opening paragraph kind of put me off.” ‘

He laughed. “Okay, I can see why. My editor though the
introduction needed to be a little sexier. So she wrote in a few things, and I
approved them…you know, to help sell books.”

She nodded. “So the part about me. The ‘Girl in the Hallway’
stuff…”

“Definitely part of the original. It’s what prompted the
writing of the entire thing, in part,” His eyes snapped down toward the table
then and he said, low, “I was thinking about you. Wondering where you had ended
up. I asked myself, when I sat down to write, when I had been happy. Truly
happy. And I remembered when we were sitting in that hallway, pretending to
study.”

“You were pretending? Because I was really studying.”

He laughed and met her eyes once again. “I know. It’s just…
talking with you that day, you had a certain quality. An acceptance. A
peacefulness and a kindness. Being with you, I felt like everything was going
to be okay in my life because I was sitting there next to you. It was almost
like, I knew you before I knew you.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. It’s just…it’s true, and I think I
built that original feeling into a fantasy over the years that followed. What’s
crazy is that you are even better in reality than you were in my fantasy.”

Jess rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious.” Jake swallowed. “And so, can you see why I
would want to use my money to help you? To help you feel free. To help you
embrace your life and truly live it.”

She leaned toward him. “But your book, at least the parts I
read, is really all about how happiness comes from experiences. The moment-to-moment
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of life. Not by relationships.”

“Right. I guess you could say that.”

“So where does that leave me? Where does that leave
us?”

The waitress arrived then and slid two heaping plates on the
table.

Jake exhaled. “I guess it leaves us enjoying blue corn
pancakes and sucking the juice out of every moment together.”

Steam rose from the plate and scattered. “I think you know
what I mean, Jake. I think you know what I’m asking.”

“Jess,” He lowered his tone. “You have to understand. My parents
left my life, overnight, and this gave me a very real sense that the more you
think
you can rely on people, the more shocked you’ll be when they disappear. You
only have yourself to rely on. I mean, think about it, for my parents, money
was more important than me. For a while, I couldn’t fathom that they wouldn’t
contact me. That they wouldn’t find a way, somehow, to let me know the truth.”

“And now?”

“Now it’s been nearly eight years, and still no word.” He
chuckled. “And I laugh, imagining them, living hand to mouth in a tiny fishing
village off the coast of Belize or someplace and somehow discovering that I’m
worth millions. And there’s no way I could ever share it with them because, the
instant I tried, they would be discovered. They would go to prison. So…” Jake
laughed wryly. “The moral of the story, Jess, is that the money is mine. I have
no one to share it with. Just you. My friend. My Jess. And now,” He popped his
eyebrows and raised his fork. “You know all of my secrets, and we can eat
pancakes.”

She lifted her fork and sampled a bite despite the sudden
knot in her belly. “Does anyone else know about this?”

“Not really. People ask about my family during press
interviews, but I’ve gotten pretty good at steering the conversation in a new
direction. The odd reporter will dig up something, but it doesn’t usually fit
with the light little feature story they had intended to write about me, so
more often than not, even if I get asked about the situation, the big scandal,
it doesn’t go anywhere.”

They sat in silence for several moments. Jess leaned back
against her chair and took her coffee in her hands. She looked at the window,
at the way the sun shone through and revealed streaks on the glass.

“You know…” His voice was gravely and low. “When I got my
first royalty check, and it was so… fat, the first thing I thought of was you.
I thought, ‘Now, I can come and find Jess.’ I thought maybe I would have a
chance with you if I were rich and successful.”

“Please.”

“No, really. I did.”