Stripped

A/N: Sorry I left y'all with such a short chapter last time - I hope this kind of makes up for it. If all goes according to plan, you should have more updates in the next week or so. For those of you who have been paying attention from the beginning, there's an accidental pun in this chapter - see if you can find it. If not, no biggie - it's probably not nearly as amusing as I seem to think it is. Anyway, you know I don't own John. The others are my creations, in case you were thinking about stealing them and doing a spin-off or something. In which case, just ask me, cause damn, that would be flattering. Anyway - as always - Enjoy!

It wasn't that Jack was an asshole on purpose. A part of him had truly loved Olivia, and he knew that as long as they shared a child, that part would always throb with a dull ache in her absence. He loved Brandon, and spending time with the boy over the last couple of months had reminded him of the life that they should have all been sharing together – the life that he had always wanted for himself, for the first woman he had ever loved, and for their son.

He was married now, with a new baby on the way, and he had come to terms with the fact that he and Olivia would have never worked. But seeing her with someone else still made his jealousy flare slightly. Sure, this John guy seemed cool enough. But he was a performer, much like Olivia, and in Jack's mind, that could never work. Neither of them was stable enough, or grounded enough, to stick around when things got real.

For her part, Olivia found the smiling, easy-going Jack to be unnerving and downright unsettling. He was talking to John like they had been best friends for years, smiling and laughing as they shared memories about the old days of wrestling. It wasn't that she minded her current boyfriend getting along with her former one. Especially since the former one was the father of her child, and would undoubtedly be in her life for the next six or seven years, at least.

But Jack didn't smile – unless it was sarcastic or smug. He didn't laugh – unless it was a sardonic, bitter chuckle. This man, the one being charming, and talking about how proud he was of the boy in the lead of the race, was not the man she had run from years before. And she didn't know if she was glad, or royally pissed off.

Her ringing cell phone drew her attention from the action on the track, and Olivia cast a glance at the ID screen. Turning to John, she smiled. "It's Trish," she whispered.

John only nodded as she kissed his cheek and stood to take the call away from the noisy cheers of the crowd. "So you and Olivia are dating now, huh?" Jack asked when she was out of ear shot.

With another easy nod, John looked at her, and then to Brandon. It wasn't that he minded talking to this guy or anything, but he didn't really do well with strangers. He could act all laid back and semi-interested, but inside, he was just wishing she would come back and save him.

"How long you been together?" Jack asked.

John knew that the truth sounded lame. Well, I fucked her last night, was probably not the right thing to say to the father of her son. Instead, he shrugged, and pretended to consider the question. "About a month," he lied.

With a nod, Jack settled back on his seat and crossed his hands over his stomach. She would be pissed at what he was about to do, but he didn't care. She was always pissed at him anyway. And John seemed to be a nice guy, so he had every right to know what he was in for. If that also happened to result in Olivia staying single for a little while longer, so much the better.

"Ah," Jack nodded knowingly. "So you've got another couple before she bolts," he predicted.

John could feel his shoulders stiffening. He knew that Olivia had little to say about Jack that was remotely good. He had never expected to be sitting here, listening to the man shovel dirt about his girlfriend. "Dude, I don't know everything that happened with you guys," he started

But Jack held up a hand as if to say "relax." He gave an easy nod in Brandon's general direction as another heat of races started. "I'm just gonna give you some unsolicited advice, okay?" When John didn't respond, Jack went on. "Olivia is like a bunny. She's cute as a button, but she's scared as fuck. It doesn't take anything to scare her away – and she never faces her fears. She runs so fast, you won't even notice she's gone, or have any idea why, until it's too late to get her back."

There was a current of bitterness just under his comments, but John decided not to address that issue at the moment. "She's got no reason to be scared of me," he insisted, wishing the guy beside him would just magically disappear.

The laugh that Jack allowed to escape was nothing short of mocking. "Are you kidding? Olivia doesn't need a reason to run, John. In fact, it's more alluring to her if there isn't a reason at all." Without another thought, he launched into the story that he had been dying to tell someone since the day she had left him, the one that would make her hurt as much as he did the day he realized she was gone.

"I bet she's told you all about how she didn't have any choice but to do whatever she could to take care of Brandon, hasn't she? About how she's a stripper because there was no other way to give him the life she never had?" John nodded, which only cause Jack to scoff and shake his head. "Of course she did. Revisionist history, man," he sighed.

Without a word, John stood, running his hands over the denim shorts on his legs. Afraid that if he stayed there, he would punch Jack in the nose, he thought it best to go after Olivia, to stand quietly by while she talked to Trish. Or to find a bathroom. Or to sign some autographs. Anything to get away from whatever this guy was about to tell him.

"She could have been anything," Jack said, a touch of admiration and awe in his voice. "She's a freakin' genius. Dropped out of school two months shy of graduating valedictorian of her class. She was sixteen."

Though he wanted to ignore anything this yahoo told him about Olivia, his words had a power over John and he found himself sinking back to his seat, seemingly against his own will. With an incredulous look, he turned to Jack. "Why would she do that?"

Jack shrugged. "Don't ask me, man. I don't know. She bolted before I got a chance to ask her. Jumped on a bus and I didn't see her again for almost four years."

Though he didn't want to believe it, the wheels in John's head were turning. If he was honest, he barely knew Olivia. But he liked to think that, if Jack was telling the truth, she must have had a reason for it. "Is that so?" he asked, mostly because Jack was waiting for something, and his mind was reeling.

With a nod, Jack folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back on the bleachers, resting his neck against the seat behind him. "She had offers on the table from Michigan, Northwestern, Columbia, and Stanford. Scholarships and grants would have made it a free ride, pretty much anywhere she wanted to go. Could have been anything she wanted to be," he explained. "She spent her whole life dedicated to the one thing she knew would be her ticket out of the D – her brain. Her looks were on point, but she knew that it took too much dumb luck to be successful on those alone. So she worked her ass off – skipped two grades in high school, and was ready to graduate with honors and leave that town behind forever."

Something clicked in John's brain. "And you." Jack nodded. "But you wanted her to get an abortion – you gave her money to take care of it," he stated, as Olivia had confided it to him.

There was another sardonic chuckle from Jack. "Why would I want that? After all the trouble I went to in making sure she got pregnant? I switched out her birth control, poked holes in my condoms – I knew a baby was the only thing that was gonna keep her ass with me."

John's eyes grew wider, a tiny tinge of crimson crawling up his neck and into his cheeks. "You selfish son of a bitch," he growled.

And Jack couldn't argue. It was selfish. Everything he had done back then was selfish, but he had truly believed that they could be the family neither of them had growing up. "I asked her to marry me, she said no. I offered her money to stay – begged her not to take my son away – but she wouldn't hear it. Had no trouble takin' the cash, though. She was gone the next day, without a good bye or anything."

Maybe it was the beginning stages of puppy love, or maybe it was still the euphoria from the bathroom a few hours earlier, but John couldn't see how this story made anyone but Jack look like an asshole. If he was trying to turn John against his new lady love, he was failing miserably. "Dude, look," he said finally, bored and more than a little irritated. "I don't know why she ran from you or whatever, but I know that Olivia is an amazing woman who has sacrificed a lot to make sure her son has a good life. If you're jealous of her new fame or whatever," he started

Sitting upright, Jack held out a hand and shook his head vehemently. "I have no interest in that shit at all. I mean, I like to watch it on television. But jealous? Not a chance in hell. Olivia's the one that gets off on selling her body. She's the slut, not me," he insisted, not even realizing that the words had slipped until they were past his lips.

John clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, his voice hissing from low in his throat. "You wanna say that again?"

Jack backed up a little, but had no time to respond as a soft voice cleared over his shoulder. Tilting his head back, he looked into Olivia's hurt eyes. He had always assumed that ruining her first love since him would cause some sort of elation, or victory. Instead, he found a guilty ache in his chest.

With a shrug, she looked at John. "He doesn't have to say it again," she whispered. "You heard it the first time, and it's true. Everything he said is true," she cast her eyes to the bike trail, where the riders were gathering their gear and heading out to the jubilant, or consoling, hugs from parents and friends. "Brandon's ready whenever you are."

With that, she turned and left John to stare in disbelief. Everything Jack had told him happened eleven years ago, so what did it matter now? And if it didn't matter, why did he feel like he didn't know the woman he was falling for at all? And why did it feel like someone had opened Pandora's box, changing everything? All he did know in that moment was that he needed answers to questions he hadn't even processed yet. And he needed them soon.