Tegan fidgeted with her napkin, watching Jett pace like a caged animal. Sadness billowed inside her. For her, yes, but even more so for his parents, who probably thought they were being supportive with their comments about fate and Tegan being special, only to have their son turn his back on all three of them.
“He works so hard,” his mother said.
“Sometimes I wish the apple had fallen farther from the tree,” his father said solemnly.
Chapter Fourteen
HOURS LATER, JETT lay with Tegan snuggled against him naked and sated in her bed, wondering when his life had gotten so mixed up. From the moment he’d seen Tegan at the gas station, she’d invaded his thoughts, disrupting his ability to focus. But spending the day with his parents and helping the community that had been there for him as a kid had served as a crowbar, prying up the heavy iron lid he’d used to keep memories of his youth locked down tight. Now those memories and the guilt they stirred—for never looking back, for his botched relationship with his father, for taking that fucking phone call at dinner—assaulted him, and he had no idea how to turn them off.
“If you think any harder, smoke will start coming out your ears.” Tegan rose onto her elbow, gazing at him thoughtfully.
He felt himself smiling despite the war raging inside him. She did that to him. He should thank her for putting up with him, for being so much more of a friend to him than he’d ever had before. How did she do it after just a few days? She complicated his feelings, his thoughts, his life, even more than they already were.
“I thought I’d worn you out,” she said. “Want to talk about whatever’s got you staring up at the ceiling?”
How could someone so beautiful and full of life bring on so many conflicting emotions? Flashes of heat and bright lights competed with the darkness inside him. The darkness continued stacking up like bricks, only to be knocked down by something she said or did. He had no idea what to do with it all, and he felt like he was losing his mind.
“Was it because I brought up the baseball cards or said I’d go to the fundraiser with your parents?” she asked sweetly. “I wasn’t trying to upset you or wheedle my way into your life.”
“It wasn’t that. Or maybe that was part of it.” He sat up and raked a hand through his hair, agitation grating beneath his skin like sandpaper. “It was everything.” He threw off the blanket and pushed to his feet. “From the second my father greeted you without an inquisition about what your parents did for a living and all the bullshit he used to care about to the way you disarmed him in the exact same way you disarmed me. Like he and I are the same.” He paced, as powerless to stop his escalating voice as he was the vehemence spewing out like lava. “I don’t recognize that man we were with for most of the day. I don’t fucking trust him. And then seeing you and my mother looking as close as she is to Emery and Susie? What was that all about? You’re not my girl, Tegan, and she treated you like you were. You acted like you were. And the worst part about it is that neither of you did anything wrong. Being nice and warm is who you two are. You look at life through rose-colored glasses, full of hope and faith. And that’s a good thing,” he said angrily. “I wouldn’t wish my cynicism on anyone. But we’re night and day, you and me. My glasses are cracked and dark. I know the shit real life brings, the lies people tell, the way everything you believed and thought you could count on can be torn apart, leaving you swamped in the ugly dredges of reality. And today?” He threw his hands up. “That was a fucking eye opener. All those people who helped me get through life as a kid, who made a difference in my life in the smallest fucking ways—knowing my name when I walked into a store, or giving me a ride home when I fell off my bike and broke my arm. Mitch Myer lit my world on fire, for fuck’s sake. He gave me something to focus on at a time when I wanted nothing more than to fuck something up. He’s the reason I found my niche, because he actually talked to me like I was worth talking to, not like I was the angry little shit I’d become back then.”
He swallowed hard, every word reawakening the anger he’d been consumed by all those years ago. “Mitch, the guy who saved me from myself, has been through hell these last few years. Now he’s floundering, and I’m out there earning more money than I can ever spend, and I had no idea his family was having such a hard time. He might lose his family’s business and have to start all over. What the hell is that? Then there’s the nightmare of the gallery. Desiree is expecting and Andre and Vi are supposed to take off. I know they’re more Dean’s friends than mine, but still. And dinner tonight? What a mind fuck that was, standing on the other side of that damn patio door, watching you with my family. For the first time in my entire life, I wanted to be on the inside looking out instead of the guy who’s always on the outside looking in. I don’t even understand where that came from or what to do with it. And tomorrow I’ll be on a plane going back to my normal life, as if all this shit isn’t taking place in what was once my community. You know the nail salon we passed near my parents’ house? That used to be Bud’s Sports, where I bought cards every weekend with my father. Those were the best days we ever had together. I’ve driven by that corner every time I visited my parents and was so focused on getting in and out as fast as I could, I never even realized it was gone until Dean mentioned it to me. What the hell does that say about me?”
He paused to catch his breath and realized Tegan’s lips were pursed and her brow was knitted. “Shit. You don’t want to hear this.”
“Yes, I do,” she insisted. “I hear what you’re saying, and I want to talk about all of it. I do. But it’s hard to focus when you’re naked and your willy is bouncing around at eye level.”
He looked down, and an incredulous laugh fell out. He felt the knots in his chest loosening. How the hell…? It was all so overwhelming, he dropped to the edge of the bed, lowering his face to his hands to try to get a grip on himself and all that he’d said.
“Come here.” She lowered his hand and pulled him down to his back beside her. “It sounds to me like your mind is a pretty scary place.” She laid half her body over him and folded her arms on his chest, resting her chin on them. “Like all your ghosts came rushing out of the closet at once.”
“You think?” he said sarcastically. “Sorry for laying all that on you. That wasn’t fair.”
“I’m glad you opened up to me before you imploded.” She leaned forward and touched her lips to his. “Friends talk, Jett. This is good.”
It had been so long since he’d had a friend with whom he’d wanted to talk about anything real, he’d forgotten how good it felt to get things out of his system. But it wasn’t fair to her. He tucked her hair behind her ear, telling himself to keep his mouth shut before he did any more damage, but she wasn’t pushing him away or looking at him like he’d lost his mind, and “What am I going to do with you?” slipped out.
“Continue letting me in,” she said. “Let me try to help.”
“Nobody can help, Tegs.”
“Okay, then let me listen and say unhelpful things. You can’t tell me that you don’t feel better getting all of that off your chest.”
He did, but that came with guilt.
“You said your father left for a while when you were young. Is that why you don’t trust him?”
“Tegs, don’t. You don’t want to do this.”
“I do and I am. Out of everything you said, that’s what bothers me the most, because even from the little time I’ve spent with him, I can see that you’re a lot alike. And he seems as weighed down and haunted as you do. If he can’t be trusted, then I really misread him, and I might have to rethink our friendship because trust is the foundation of any type of relationship.”
He felt a fissure tear through his chest. “You can trust me.”
“Can I? How can I know that?”
“Because I don’t make promises I can’t keep. I don’t lie.”
“Is that what he did? Broke a promise? Lied?”
“What do you think?”
“I think
I don’t want to assume, because people are complicated, and we see what we want to see. It isn’t always what’s real.”
“My point exactly.”
She shifted beside him and propped herself up on her elbow. “So you don’t trust him because he left when you were young?”
“It’s more than that. Let me give you a quick recap of life with my father. When I was young, I was enthralled with sports. I started watching games when I was four when I happened upon one on TV. My father wasn’t into sports, but he taught me everything about baseball, football, hockey. My favorite was baseball, and when I was six, he taught me to collect baseball cards, how to catalog them, read the stats, even how to value the condition of the cards. He taught me the difference between the teams and leagues. There was nothing I didn’t know. He’d make up jobs that he’d pay me to do, and then on the weekends he’d take me to buy packs of cards with the money I’d earned. We were tight, and life was good. It was a great childhood. My mother was always waiting for me when I got home from school, my brothers and I raced around like fools all the time, and my father collected cards and played ball with me after work until my arm felt like it might fall off.”
“Sounds storybook perfect.”
“I was lucky. But when I was eight or nine my father started changing. He worked until nine or ten at night; then he’d come home and shut himself in his home office. We rarely saw him, and when we did, he was in a foul mood, just unbearable. I remember lying awake at night waiting for the front door to open just to get ten minutes with him. But he’d shrug me off and disappear into that office. My parents, who had rarely argued, were suddenly fighting all the time.”
“That’s a drastic change. It sounds horrible,” Tegan said empathetically.
“Yeah, well, it gets worse. I was a kid, so I don’t know if it took months or years for things to get so bad. Kids’ perspectives are skewed. But it felt like it happened fast. Then he moved out, and my mother said it was because they weren’t getting along. It didn’t make sense to me that the people who taught us about forgiveness were giving up.”
“Is that when you stopped collecting cards?”
“That’s when I threw the damn things out. His leaving made me feel like everything in my life was a lie. I was a kid. I had no idea how to separate what was real and what wasn’t. In one evening, he negated everything he’d taught me to believe in. It didn’t help that I wasn’t buying his reason for leaving. I didn’t know what had happened that caused the change or that caused him to move out, but I knew that my mother adored him despite their fights. I knew she’d never ask him to leave. So there I was, in my upside-down world, and none of it made sense.”
“That’s so sad. Did you tell them you were confused?”
“I think I told my mother, but I was pissed at both of them, so who knows what I really did. I was angry at my father for leaving and at my mother for letting him. And then my mom went on a few dates, or so we thought. At that point I was sure there was more going on, that maybe he was having an affair or had one and she’d found out. My mind went to some pretty dark places.”
“That must have been difficult for you and your brothers, to see your mother with other men.”
“It was for Dean. I don’t know about Doug. He kept to himself after our father left. But I remember being so angry at my father that I was glad she was doing it. How’s that for spiteful?”
“I don’t hear spite. I hear hurt,” she said, brushing her fingers along his chest. “I can’t imagine seeing either of my parents going on a date with someone else.”
“It turned out that they weren’t really dates, but we didn’t know that until about two and a half years ago, when Dean and Emery got together. My mother told me that my grandmother had sent those men over to make my dad jealous so he’d get his ass back home.”
Surprise shone in her eyes. “Grandma Rose to the rescue. Did it work?”
“I don’t know if it was the dates that brought him home or not. But if I had known then what I know now about why he left, things might have been different when he came back. But that still wouldn’t change the past two decades.”
“What do you mean?”
“When she told me the truth about the dates, she also told me why he really left when we were kids. He was in practice with my grandfather, who was mean as a snake to everyone including my grandmother. But he was a real charmer to his clients. He was a leader in his field, prominent and well respected, like my father. According to my mother, my father spent years trying not to become the type of man his father was, but he was under a tremendous amount of pressure with the growing practice and my grandfather’s demands, and it finally broke him. That’s why he changed, and in the end, that’s why he left us. He was afraid if he didn’t get himself and his work under control, he’d lose our family for good. While he was gone, he focused on becoming a better man. He was working, but he managed to see a therapist several times a week and to see us probably more than he did in those months before he left. I was too mad to appreciate any of it, and when he moved back home, my faith in him was broken. It took about a year before I even started to trust him again.”
Pain rose in her eyes. “That’s a long time for a young boy. Did your brothers forgive him right away?”
“They were much more forgiving than I was. Maybe not fully, but they weren’t asses about it.”
“Do you always hold grudges?”
It would be much easier for her to simply tell him that none of this was his fault, but instead, she poked the bear. He knew she was fishing to see if she should waste her time with him or not, and he also knew she was strong enough to walk away if he wasn’t the type of person she respected or wanted in her life. Maybe that’s why he felt comfortable enough to continue being honest with her, and said, “I haven’t been in a situation where I cared enough about anyone to allow their actions to affect me.”
“That sounds lonely.”
The sadness in her eyes caused an ache inside him, and he realized how cold he’d sounded. But he didn’t want to lie to the one person who made him want to understand himself better. “I’m too busy to be lonely.”
“With women?” Women came out just above a whisper.
“No.” He touched her cheek, wanting to soothe the worry in her eyes. “I’m not a man whore. I’m busy with work, babe. This—you, right now—this is the closest I’ve been to anyone. Ever. I’ve said more to you about that whole situation than I have to my brothers. Even more than I’ve said to my grandmother, and I tell her just about all my gripes.”
“Thank you for trusting me. But can I ask you something else?”
“Does it matter if I say no?” he teased.
“Ah, you’re learning. Your dad was really great today, and if you started to trust him again when you were a kid, then things must have gotten better, right? So, are you still holding that grudge?”
“I’m sure it seems that way, but no. He was great for a few years after he moved back home, and things eventually got better between us. But then the pressure of the job got to him again, and he became even worse than he had been before he left. But this time he stuck around, and when I was a teenager, I wasn’t afraid to stand up to him. We went head-to-head, yelling matches, accusations. I hated the way he acted better than everyone, the way he treated my mother. God only knows how she loved him through it. That’s why I joined every sports team and worked all the time, to avoid him and all that our house represented. I put all of my energy into those things and focused on getting out of the house. When I went away to college, my sole focus was to become smart enough to take the business world by storm, so I would never need anything from him again. I worked my ass off as a grunt to a group of investors throughout college, learned a lot, and basically cut all ties with my father. Not that he noticed. When my grandfather died, which was around the time Dean was going away to school, I started investing my inheritance and got lucky. It was a good thing I didn’t lose my ass, because my father
took over the medical practice and became an even more self-righteous prick than ever.”
Tegan winced.
“Sorry, babe, but it’s true. You can ask anyone. Even my mother. You wanted to know why I don’t trust him? It’s because the man you met today isn’t the person I’ve known since I was a teenager. You’ve heard how long his new attitude lasted after he moved back in. Having been through that, how can I trust who he’ll be tomorrow? Or next year?”
“I don’t understand how anyone can be that much of a Jekyll and Hyde.”
“I think it’s part of who he is. Bad genetics maybe.”
“I’d ask what that says about you, but good people come from bad parents all the time. And it sounds like he started out as a great dad and then he got overwhelmed, which actually says a lot about him, to overcome that kind of upbringing. What snapped him out of that horrible place this last time?”
“Believe it or not, Emery chewed him out for the way he treated people.”
“Emery did? Holy cow. She has guts.”
“She’s a spitfire. She ripped him a new one. I was there. I heard it all, and I have no idea how she got him to listen, because I’ve told him how much of an arrogant ass he was many times over the years, and it had no impact.”
She tapped his chest and said, “Because you’re too close to him.”
“We’re not close. We’re trying, but we’re still miles apart. You saw me when we got to the house today. There’s so much water under the bridge, we’re drowning in it. Just being on the Cape stresses me out.”
“I didn’t mean close as in your relationship. I meant you’re two peas in a pod. Too alike.” Her lips curved up, and she said, “When I first saw you at the gas station, I thought you were an arrogant ass, too.”
He swept her beneath him, earning a giggle that felt like balm to his agitation. “You thought I was hot. I could tell by the way you gawked at me.”
Bayside Fantasies (Bayside Summers Book 6) Page 19