by Serena Bell
But she couldn’t do it.
Instead, she burst into tears.
And then the fun really started. Auburn popped up to get a box of tissues. She was back a second later, parceling out the tissues one by one. Hannah asked, over and over again, “What happened?” Mason sat and resumed eating his dinner—because tears were really not his thing. Trey hung back, looking sympathetic and a little awkward. She sort of wished they could all take their cue from him, but that wasn’t how her family worked, and when Hannah and Auburn sandwiched her into a hug, she was honestly kind of glad it wasn’t. She cried and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore and then she sat down and dug into her chicken noodle soup.
When she hit the bottom of the first bowl, Auburn replaced it with a fresh one and said, “Talk.”
“Well,” Chiara said. “I got the Buyathon job, and I’m going to take it.”
“Oh!” Auburn said, and then, “Congratulations!” Her forced tone and happy-for-you smile made Chiara’s heart hurt more.
Hannah started to cry, and Auburn put her arms around both sisters, drawing them all together into a huddle. Levi told her he was going to miss the shit out of her, and even Mason said, “Things won’t be the same without you.”
And then Hannah asked, “But what about Jax?”
Everyone stopped crying and hugging and congratulating, and stared at Chiara. And she could see from the expression on Auburn’s face, soft and sympathetic, that her sister had already guessed.
“We broke up.”
“Oh, Kee,” Auburn said. “Are you sure that’s what you want? I’d be the last person to tell you not to take your dream job for a man, but I’d also be the first one to tell you that if it’s making you this miserable…”
“It wasn’t me,” Chiara whispered. “He told me to take it. He doesn’t want a serious relationship.”
Mason froze, Auburn and Hannah exchanged stricken glances, and Levi’s hand came down too hard on the table.
“Maybe he’s just upset about Evan,” Hannah said, big-eyed and hopeful.
Chiara felt her whole self lean eagerly towards Hannah’s suggestion. Maybe…maybe…
But then she thought of the flat, cold look in his eyes. His words. This was always how it was going to to end.
“I just feel so stupid,” she whispered. “I mean, what kind of idiot sets herself up like that twice?! He dumped me! He broke my heart. He ghosted me.”
They were all quiet, so quiet you could hear the hum of the big industrial refrigerator in the kitchen, the roar of the ocean outside.
“Dad told him to.”
At the sound of Mason’s voice, Chiara’s blood stopped in her veins. Her heart stalled, too. Everyone turned to look at Mason, and he looked back at all of them, like a deer suddenly caught in headlights. For a moment, Chiara thought he was going to bolt, but he held still.
“What. The. Hell. Are. You. Talking. About?” Auburn demanded.
Mason tugged on his bangs, a sign he was agitated. “Dad paid him not to contact you.”
“He what?”
Auburn had a voice, even if Chiara did not. She felt frozen from the inside out, unable to move or speak. Only her heart soldiered on, sluggish and painful. It could not be true. Mason had to be lying.
Levi recovered first. “Mason, that’s a huge accusation,” he said. “You better not be making it up.”
“Why would I make something like that up?” Mason looked genuinely puzzled.
And Chiara knew, with all the force of a tsunami: Mason wasn’t lying. He simply didn’t. He didn’t have a deceptive bone in his body.
“How do you know?” Auburn whispered. “How do you know he did that?” She looked like she was going to be sick. Chiara totally understood, because she was pretty sure that if she moved or spoke or breathed, she was going to throw up.
Mason looked like he would do anything to walk away from this conversation, but he took a deep breath.
Chiara held hers.
Mason tugged his hair again, closed his eyes, and said, unwillingly, “I heard Dad say it.”
“Dad said that—to you?”
Chiara was grateful that Auburn and Levi could still speak, and voice her own questions, because she sure as hell wasn’t able to get a word out.
Mason shook his head. “No. He said it to Jax. I was standing outside his office. I overheard.”
There was a hand on Chiara’s arm. Auburn’s. Then another; Auburn had come around behind her chair and was holding her. Hugging her. Anchoring her.
“Do you—” Chiara choked out. She felt wild. Untethered. “I have to—”
“Go,” Auburn whispered, and Chiara threw one glance back at her siblings with their identical blue eyes and worried expressions, and then took off, running.
44
Jax wished that drinking himself into oblivion was an option, but his mother’s history had made him cautious on that front. So instead he was flipping channels on Evan’s TV and trying as hard as he could not to think about the look on Chiara’s face when he’d told her to take the Buyathon job.
He’d done the right thing. He knew he had.
Rich would agree with him.
In five years or ten years, Jax, you’ll have built a life for yourself. Figured out how to stand on your own two feet and how to take care of the people in your life. And maybe you and Chiara will get a second chance then.
But it had been ten years, hadn’t it? And he still wasn’t the man that Rich had challenged him to be.
It was the surging sense of helplessness that got to him. That helplessness was familiar. He’d felt it once before, when he’d realized that Stan wasn’t being generous to Evan by playing catch and one-on-one with him. Stan wasn’t being fatherly when he worked with Evan on his homework. And he wasn’t being helpful when he took Evan’s rides off Jax’s hands. He was being a predator.
But Jax had said yes to it all—to all the games and the offers—because he wanted the time for himself.
Because he wanted the time alone with Chiara.
Jax had let Evan down, and then he’d lost Chiara anyway, because there had never been room in his life to juggle all those pieces. He’d never had any right to think he could take care of her the way she deserved, without taking that care away from someone else in his life who mattered.
The sound of pounding on Evan’s apartment door broke through the haze of bad TV and his own dark thoughts. He got up and went to peer through the peephole. When he saw who it was, his heart started throwing itself against the walls of his chest.
He cautiously opened the door to let Chiara push past him and into the apartment.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“My dad. Paid. You. To. Break. Up. With. Me.”
He had a split second to pretend he had no idea what she was talking about. And it seemed so far-fetched that she could have found out … but at the same time, if she knew, then he wasn’t the only one, which was a painful kind of relief. She knew, and it wasn’t because he’d told her. He hadn’t betrayed Rich or himself—or Chiara.
“How did you find out?” he asked quietly.
“You answer me first! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
“If I had told you he’d given me money to leave you alone, he would have known. You wouldn’t have been able to look him in the eye—and you know it.”
That shut her up.
“How did you find out?” he asked. He felt both weary and alert.
“Mason overheard your conversation with my dad.”
He closed his eyes. Of course. Mason had been there. It had just never occurred to Jax that Mason would have stayed and listened. Because Mason was so quiet, you could almost forget about him.
He opened his eyes to find her staring at him. He could see the anger, but there was something else too. A stillness. Curiosity.
“Tell me what h
appened,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
He was floating through the day after their lovemaking in the haze of his feelings for Chiara. He wanted to be with her again, right that second. He wanted to run his fingers through her thick hair and touch her soft breasts and kiss her full mouth. He wanted to bury himself in her and to know everything that was in her head.
And then Evan had asked him, all innocence, “Jax?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
“Why do men have hair on their penises?”
It had taken a long time to get the whole story out of him. And a lot of tears. Stan had done a good job of convincing Evan that if anyone ever knew “their” secret, he’d be in really, really big trouble.
Jax assured and reassured Evan that he was not in trouble. Doing his best not to create more shame than Evan was already feeling, he had explained to Evan that no one could or should make him do what Stan had been making him do. Then he gently, gently extracted from Evan permission to talk to Rich.
If he’d thought their mother would have been remotely useful, he would have talked to her, but he wasn’t hopeful on that front.
And then, even though he wanted to drive to Stan’s house and kill him with his bare hands, he went to his shift at Cape House. He was forty-two minutes late, and when he showed up—Evan in tow, because there was no fucking way he was leaving his brother with their mother, who was already a couple of drinks in—Mason said, “My dad wants to see you in his office.”
Jax set up Evan in the lobby, with his DS gaming console, while Mason watched. Then Mason shadowed Jax all the way to his father’s office. He disappeared when Jax went in—or so Jax had thought.
Rich looked him over with sharp eyes. “What’s going on?”
Even though he had Evan’s permission to tell Rich, it still felt like a betrayal to tell the story. He kept seeing Evan’s face, so puzzled and fearful. So ashamed.
But he had no choice but to tell. He needed help, and Jax knew that if there was anyone in the world who could help him, it was Rich.
So he told him everything.
Rich listened quietly, giving away the intensity of his emotion only with flinches and winces and a clenching of teeth that looked like it must hurt.
“That bastard,” he said. “Jesus. Evan.” He closed his eyes, tight. Then opened them and assured him, “You did the right thing, coming to me with this. Thank you for trusting me.”
Tears filled Jax’s eyes. It was going to be okay. Rich was going to make it okay.
This. This was what it felt like to have a father.
“You aren’t going to try to confront him,” Rich said. It wasn’t a question.
“God. I want to.”
“No,” Rich said definitely. “That ends badly. That ends with you getting the cops called on you. That ends with Stan looking like a victim. We have to call the cops.”
Jax was already shaking his head.
He could see that Rich was a little puzzled. Of course, because as sympathetic and understanding as Rich was, he hadn’t walked a mile in Jax’s shoes. He hadn’t thought through it all.
“They’ll take Evan away.”
“Of course they won’t.”
“They will,” Jax said. “Mom’s never lasted more than two days sober. They’ll put her in rehab and they’ll take Evan away.”
Rich took a deep breath. “I don’t think that’ll happen.”
Much later, Jax understood that what Rich meant was that it shouldn’t happen. By then he also understood how many people couldn’t count on the system to protect them.
“Can you promise me? Absolutely promise me? That it won’t?”
He spotted the very moment that Rich knew he couldn’t promise. He shook his head. Then he rested it in his hands for a long time, and Jax felt the beginnings of despair bloom in his stomach. The smartest and best man he knew had no idea what to do next.
But then Rich sat up. Nodded. “I know how to fix this.”
Rich reached out to a general contractor friend in Bakersfield. Called in a few favors, found Jax and his brother and mom an apartment. Found Jax a really damn good job, apprenticing with the friend. Jax heard him on the phone. “He’s a good kid. Hard worker, good with his hands. Loyal. Lots of integrity.”
Not enough loyalty or integrity to have taken care of his brother, though. Jax’s stomach was knotted so tight he couldn’t imagine ever wanting to eat again. But even through his anger at himself, Rich’s words felt good. Rich thought he was a good kid, a hard worker. Thought he was good with his hands. Loyal. Had lots of integrity. The words warmed him up and slowly unknotted him. So did what Rich did next. He came around the desk and hugged Jax, which he’d never done before. “This isn’t your fault,” he said. “None of this is your fault. And we’re going to get Evan help. Counseling. I’m going to make sure he’s okay.”
A surge of relief swept Jax. A terrible thing had happened to Evan, but Rich was going to help, and with counseling, Evan would be able to move on from this.
Rich’s warmth made it feel possible to imagine going to Bakersfield. To imagine life going on. Evan would be safe. He’d get help. Jax would have a steady job. Meanwhile, Chiara would go to Stanford and they could still be together. Jax could get his brother and mother settled and then maybe move to be nearer to Chiara.
He said those things out loud. He wasn’t really looking at Rich when he said them. He was deep inside his own head, thinking about how this wasn’t the end of things, it was the beginning, and how Rich was more like a father to him than any of the other men who’d lived in his house, including the one who’d actually fathered him.
He was thinking that, and picturing the future with Chiara, when Rich said, softly, “Jax.”
Jax looked up, and Rich was looking at him with a peculiar expression on his face. Later, Jax knew it for what it was.
Guilt.
He offered Jax enough money to pay first, last, and security on the apartment and to get him and his mom and Evan through the first month until he’d have a paycheck at his new job.
It was too much, but there was no way Jax could turn it down, so he swallowed his pride. “I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s a gift,” Rich said. “And I want to pay for counseling for Evan. Once you know how much that’s going to be, you can let me know and I’ll send you checks as needed.”
Jax’s mouth fell open, his whole body flooded with gratitude. “You can’t do that—”
“I need something in return.”
“Of course. Anything.”
Rich took a deep breath. Blew it out again. “I need you not to contact Chiara again.”
At first Jax couldn’t actually believe he’d said that. Yes, he’d suspected that Rich had mixed feelings about Jax dating his daughter. But Rich cared about him.
Didn’t he?
A terrible, dark feeling was settling in the pit of Jax’s stomach. And as he watched Rich scrabble together some random papers on the desk, he recognized the feeling. Anger. “What are you talking about?”
“Jax,” Rich said gently. So gently. “I wouldn’t be a good father to her if I let her get tangled up in a situation like this one.”
“She won’t be tangled up in anything. We’re leaving the situation behind.”
“You’re leaving Stan behind. But that’s not the situation I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fact that you’re effectively the sole caretaker of an eight-year-old boy and a forty-something woman. I’m talking about the fact that you’re not in the position to take care of anyone else.” Rich took a deep breath. Now the expression on his face was something else.
Apology.
“I know you love her. I can see it all over your face. And I know you don’t want to hold her back. And sometimes, when you love someone, you have to get out of their way. So you don’t drag them down.” Rich took a breath. “Chiara’s going to go to college and she’ll meet amazing people. And she’ll do amazing things. She’ll have the opportunity
to become anyone she wants to be. But I know her, too. She loves hard, and she’ll try to hold back part of herself so she can stay the person you’re in love with now.
“I don’t want that for her, and I don’t think you do, either.”
It wasn’t out of love that Rich was trying to help Jax and Evan. It was to get him the hell out of Tierney Bay. Out of Chiara’s life.
All the warmth that had settled in his chest turned into a big block of ice. Shame. He’d always thought of shame as hot, but this was cold.
“You don’t think I’m good enough for her.”
He waited for Rich to protest. Even just a little. A bluster of explanations that didn’t come.
“Jax,” Rich said.
He hated the way Rich said his name. Fucking hated it.
45
“No,” she said.
She was going to be sick. Literally.
“Where’s the bathroom—”
He pointed and she ran. Pushed the door open and knelt in front of the toilet and hung there until the nausea edged back a notch.
When she came back outside, he was standing in the hallway outside the bathroom.
“Are you o—”
He stopped, obviously because any idiot could see that she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t sure if she was ever going to be okay again.
Like when she’d lost her parents.
Like when she’d lost Jax, the first time.
“Did you—did you think about telling me?”
“I did. Once you’d accepted Stanford and were there, once Evan was doing well in counseling, I thought maybe I’d tell you. But then—”
His voice broke.
“But then my dad died,” she said, filling in for him. “And of course you couldn’t tell me. You didn’t want that to be the last thing I knew about him.”
He shook his head.
He’d held onto this secret all these years. Ten years, and he’d never told her the one thing that would make it all make sense. And she didn’t know whether to punch him or kiss him for it.