“We have things to discuss, don’t you think?” He drops his forearm, landing his arm down on the spare pillow next to mine before sitting up.
“Oh, you want to talk?” I turn, facing him, and slide my legs up the mattress, crossing them Indian style. “How about the next time you decide to fuck someone, you wear a condom. You think you could manage that?” A sharp pain slices across my forehead, reminding me of what my stupid, idiotic, meddling best friend felt he had to do, and I wince.
“Are you okay?” There is concern in his voice and I hate that I like it, and that pisses me off. “For real, babe, are you okay after what that fuckwad did?”
So, he knows Malachi knocked me out. Just how long has he been here?
Jamie scoots closer, his warm hand wrapping around my elbow like a blanket. A blanket I don’t want touching me. I mean, I do, if I’m honest with myself, and I like to think I am, but it’s a touch I can’t handle, so I snatch it from his grip and toss the covers off, jumping from my bed as fast as I can move.
I need distance from him. It’s too much. Him being here is too much, just like I knew it would be.
He can’t be here. He has to leave.
I close my eyes, putting my palm against my forehead and pressing inward hoping it will alleviate the pain. It won’t, and I don’t have time for this crock of shit.
Fucking Malachi. I’m going to beat his ass.
It’s not the first time he’s done this, and I doubt it’ll be the last. I’d be mad at Jess too, but she already believes I work too hard, so of course she helped him when he asked. Hell, she could have been the one that planted the seed to begin with when I refused to take a vacation last month. She gets tired of me saying year after year that I don’t need one. I’ll vacation when I die. There are too many sick fucks in this world that need to be put behind bars for me to get some R and R.
“What’s wrong?” He’s standing only a few feet away when I open my eyes. He’s barefoot, and well, I guess I should have expected that since he was in my bed when I woke up.
“You’re here. That is what’s wrong,” I deadpan.
“You’re in pain,” he states the obvious and I roll my eyes. “Do you need to go to the hospital? What the hell did he do to you? What did he give you?” he fires at me, taking a step closer, ignoring that the whole reason I jumped out of bed was to flee from him.
“No.” I shake my head. “I’ll be fine. I just need water. The stuff he gave me dehydrates me and that’s what causes the headache.” His concern is unnerving. And not because it’s unlike him. It’s exactly like the boy I once knew. Problem is, he isn’t that boy anymore. He’s changed a lot. He’s jaded. He’s a lot more of an ass now than he once was, and he was definitely an ass back then—at times anyway. Now there’s more of an edge to him. He’s less approachable. “Can you please leave?”
“I’m not leaving until you tell me about him.”
“You have a son. There. You know about him. Now. Leave.” I take a step back, closer toward the door. He’s blocking my path to the bathroom, but it’s not like I plan on going there to hide. This is my house, not his, and I’m not some weak bitch. I won’t hide. I won’t cower, but if he doesn’t watch it, I will, and I know I can, kick his ass. And if that’s what I have to do to get him out of my house . . . well, I don’t have a problem doing just that.
Jamie isn’t small by any means. He’s not Mal or Josh’s size, but not many men are. He’s six-one and he works out. He, Cole, and Trey all do. Seth is the only one that isn’t much of a gym rat. Jamie lifts weights. He’s fit and trim with a good bit of muscle under his clothes. I know this from watching from afar for all of these years. Halfway through all of his shows he always ends up stripping out of his shirt. He gets hot on stage. Not that I’m complaining about that.
I, on the other hand, have trained with the best. I’m in tip-top shape. I can and have taken down men twice my size.
He takes a step toward me. “I’m not leaving,” he says, shaking his beautiful head.
“You are.” I nod once. “And you can do it the easy way or the hard way. Your choice.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you can either walk out the door on your own feet, or I’ll help you exit my house. But know this, if I do it, you’ll be in a whole world of pain, so . . .”
His lips tip up right before a laugh pops out of his mouth. “Jenna, baby, I’m a lot bigger than you. A lot stronger too.”
“Bigger? Sure,” I give him. “Stronger? Not likely.”
He cocks his head as if to say, you can’t actually believe that.
“Leave, Jamie. I’m not asking. I’m not ready for this conversation. I’m not saying it’ll never happen. I’m just saying it isn’t going to happen today.”
He takes another step closer and I step backward. “And I’m telling you, we are having this talk today. Right now,” he says, his tone serious.
“You’re going to make me, aren’t you?”
“How about we stop wasting time arguing and just have it out. Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
I force out a breath and then shake my head. “Goddammit, Jamie, I said—”
I stop arguing at the sound of my front door slamming with so much force that the pictures on my bedroom wall shake. My jaw locks, knowing there is only one person in the entire world that has enough balls to burst through my door like that.
19
— Jamie —
Present
Who the hell is slamming doors? I eye Jenna, silently asking that very question, but like everything else, she doesn’t answer me with a damn thing. I’m trying. I’m trying hard not to blow my shit and lose it. After seeing a piece of what she went through all those years ago, getting pissed off isn’t how I’m going to fix anything between us. But I can’t be the only one giving here. She has to at least give me an inch. I know I don’t deserve it, but at the same time, nothing I did or didn’t do, for whatever reason, gave her the right to keep my son a secret.
“Daniel Thomas!” he yells, his deep voice booming. “Get your ass down here now. Front and fucking center, boy.” The way he calls for my son—demanding Danny’s presence—pisses me off, and I raise an eyebrow at the woman standing in front of me.
It takes everything I have not to demand to know who the hell that guy thinks he is. It also doesn’t go unnoticed that he barged into Jenna’s house without knocking, and that has me wondering if she has a boyfriend and if that’s what he is—her boyfriend.
Less than thirty-six hours ago, I was accusing my best friend of fucking her.
Thirteen hours ago, I was balls deep in her, so . . .
I know she’s changed, but I don’t see Jenna allowing what happened between us last night to happen if she was seeing another man. My fists clench at my side at the thought of someone else touching her. It’s irrational. I’ve fucked countless women. Women I don’t even remember for the most part. It’s not like I can expect her to have limited the number of partners she’s had over the last eighteen years.
I still don’t know if what happened to her back then resulted in more than some twisted fuck beating her. There is so much I need to know. And that’s something I have to squash for the time being. Just that train of thought alone is making me see red. It’s making my skin burn.
“Breckett!” she seethes, her jaw locking right before she pivots, yanking the door open and stomps through. “No one, not even you, gets to come into my house yelling at the top of their lungs. And no one gets to talk to my son like that except for me.”
I walk to the door, stopping and placing my shoulder against the frame. The guy she’s eyeing up and down with her arms crossed and legs spread, almost mirrors the way he’s standing in her living room. He’s tall. Probably three or four inches above me; he’s big too, and older. Probably in his earlier forties judging from the touch of white mixed in with his dirty blond hair. There’s more gray in his goatee than there is in the strands on
top of his head.
He doesn’t take his eyes off the landing that overlooks the living room. “Yeah? Funny. I’m pretty sure I talk to him like that on a daily basis.”
“In the ring is different. At the gym is different.”
A door opens from upstairs like someone’s rushing to get down here and that’s where my attention pulls, my eyes lifting in that direction.
“I’m coming,” Danny says nonchalantly, pulling a black T-shirt over his head.
“Danny!” My eyes cut from him to the girl that’s following him out of his bedroom. “Couldn’t you have finished doing that before opening the door?” she whisper-yells.
His mom lets him have girls in his room?
I’m not sure if I should be surprised or not. There was a time she spent many hours in my bedroom with the door closed and with us doing many things without clothing. As a parent though, I would have expected a higher standard. Wasn’t like I did that shit when my parents were home. We were discreet about it.
“For real, Danny?” she asks, surprise laced in her voice, so maybe I am wrong about this situation.
“Cat,” Breckett—I’m assuming, since that’s what Jenna referred to him as—drawls out, eyeing her. “You aren’t that naive. They’ve been sleeping together for over a year.”
Something about the pet name he called Jenna ruffles my skin. Could be that no one besides me is supposed to call her by endearing words. That one, though, I just don’t like. It’s not the least bit endearing in my book.
“You know?” The girl cringes and then a horrified expression graces her face as she jogs down the stairs, trailing Danny.
Jenna’s head falls as she pinches the bridge of her nose, then her head shakes.
“Of course I knew, Mags.” Breckett lifts his arm, pointing his finger at my son. “Danny is the one that told me.”
A gasp comes out of the girl’s mouth, followed by her bottom lip dropping, and then she punches Danny in the arm. “You did not tell my dad!” she yells. Danny just smirks, his eyes never cowering from the girl’s father.
“You did what?” Jenna asks, shock evident in her voice.
“I didn’t train him to be a pussy,” the guy declares, and I glare at him, irked by his comment. “A guy wants to date my daughter, he better have balls of steel. Luckily for you, Magdalena, he does, or you wouldn’t be dating him. Might want to remember that, daughter, and consider yourself lucky.”
“So, you’re not gonna kick my boyfriend’s ass?”
He laughs, then my jaw locks, as my hands ball into fists. That earns me a questionable look from Danny, but right now I don’t care. I don’t like this guy, and I really don’t like how close he’s standing to Jenna or how he’s talking to my son. It’s like he’s talking to his own son.
“Girl, I kick that boy’s ass daily. You have no idea what he goes through just to date you.”
Jenna huffs out a breath, seemingly ticked off by his comment, and if she doesn’t shut him up soon, I’m not going to be able to keep my mouth shut much longer. The days of me not being in Danny’s life are over. He’s my son. I don’t need a DNA test to prove he is, I can look at him and see he was made from Jenna and me.
I turn away, needing to focus on something else, or someone else because this is Jenna’s house, so as hard as it is, I’m trying. My eyes land on Seth’s. The way he’s scanning Jenna and her oversized house guest with his head going back and forth between them has me pausing to look at my bandmate. He’s scrutinizing them, or the guy at least. A beat later his eyes grow large, like he just discovered something no one else has.
Cole walks from down the hallway but then stops, his eyes seemingly bugging just as Seth’s were a second ago. Seth’s expression has turned angry, and that has me wondering what the hell is going on.
“Oh, fuck,” Cole whispers, his eyes going from Breckett’s to mine, and then to Jenna until he repeats the same process again.
“Why are all of you here?” Jenna asks, realizing the rest of my bandmates are here. She eyes Seth, and then Trey before flipping her attention to Cole. “And why do you look like a deer caught in headlights? What’s wrong, Cole? Better yet”—her head cocks to the side—”why are you wearing your guilty, I’ve fucked up look right now?”
Danny’s eyes squint and then his head tips to the side. Something is running through his head, but I can’t focus on that. I turn my head, flipping my gaze back on the guy I now know is the father of the girl that Danny is dating. That’s when I see it. It’s like a light bulb turning on. I know who he is, and it’s my turn for my eyes to grow so large I think they’re going to pop out of their sockets.
It’s him. He’s the guy that I watched yesterday beating the shit out of the mother of my child with a baseball bat. He’s the guy that tried to murder the unborn baby she was carrying. He’s the one that took her from me.
I don’t know why it didn’t click when I first laid eyes on him. I saw pictures of him from years ago when Julia claimed my girlfriend willingly ran off with some douchebag that she’d met at one of my band’s gigs.
“Jamie,” Cole calls out in a pacifying voice that makes Jenna whip around, facing me. I can’t take my eyes off him. If she wasn’t in my way, I’d have rushed him the second I realized who he is.
“Jamie?” she questions, her eyes confused, telling me she has no idea that I know who he is. That means Cole didn’t tell her he showed us that video.
Fire rages beneath my skin, and I swear to God it feels like I’m about to light up in flames. Breckett’s light blue eyes land on me. I see the recognition when he realizes I know exactly who he is, and that’s when his eyes turn ice cold.
“Bro,” Cole says, his voice getting closer. “Calm down. Let’s talk about this.”
“Talk about what?” Jenna asks. “Jamie, what’s going on? Why are you so . . .” Her arms lift, waving both of her hands in my direction.
“You!” Seth barks. “You’re the guy.”
I step forward, about to launch myself at him when two strong hands grab onto my shoulders, halting me from attacking him. “You don’t want to do that,” Danny says, his tone low so that I’m the only one that can hear. “Let’s take this outside.” He goes to shove me toward the front door, but I don’t give up that easily. I’m about to kill this motherfucker and no one is going to stop me.
“Get out of the way, Danny.”
“I said let’s go outside.”
“Does someone want to explain what’s going on?” Jenna asks, her voice etched with worry and confusion.
“He knows,” Breckett, or I guess Josh Breckett, if the name she called him in the video was his real one.
“He knows what?” she asks, not putting two and two together.
“Please, just come on and let’s go.”
“No,” I argue.
“I’m asking you to do this for me.” That sobers me marginally, and what am I supposed to do, refuse my son the first thing he’s asked of me? No. I can’t, so reluctantly, I let him shove me to the front door and out of it.
“Where the hell are you two going?” Jenna demands, but I don’t stop to answer her and neither does Danny. If I do, there’ll be no way for me not to go after that son of a bitch.
Why in God’s name is he in her house?
Why isn’t he behind bars?
20
— Jenna —
“What the hell just happened?” I ask no one in particular once the front door closes behind my son. Jamie was more than just pissed off at the sight of Josh being here. He was livid and disgusted. It was written all over his face. He was seconds from blowing his shit had Danny not asked his father to step outside.
Which is another thing I’m not getting at this very moment. Danny isn’t that person. He doesn’t buddy up to someone he’s just met. If I’m honest, he’s a lot like me in that way. He’s more reserved and stands back, observing more than interfering.
I don’t believe for a second he and Jamie bonded in onl
y a few hours’ time. It’s going to take a lot more than a few of Jamie’s demands to cultivate a relationship with his newly discovered second offspring.
“He knows,” Josh says from my left, his voice almost a whisper, bringing me out of my thoughts. I swing my head in his direction, a cold detached mask settling on his face. He does that when he doesn’t want to feel things or when he doesn’t want other people to see any amount of vulnerability. He’s a master at hiding his emotions. It’s not often any of us, even me or Jess, his wife, catches him in any exposed manner.
“Wasn’t that Brandon’s dad?” Maggie asks. I turn to where she’s still standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Why did my boyfriend just force him out the door?”
“Time for you to leave, daughter,” Josh says with a don’t even think about arguing with me stare.
“Who knows what?” she asks him, ignoring his order. Like her mother, she pushes Josh more than most people that know him would even consider, let alone actually do. I find it amusing most of the time, but like her, I want to know the answer to that question too.
There’s no way Jamie knows the whole truth about my disappearance or about his ex-wife’s part in what happened to me—or us rather. A cold chill ripples through me at the thought of it all. I try not to think about the past, and when I do, I’m quick to shove it to the back of my mind. No good can come of more people knowing all the sordid details of my ugly past.
It wouldn’t help matters. That truth would only cause pain, and pain is something no one needs if I can help it.
“Maggie,” Josh says in a stern voice, drawing out his daughter’s nickname. “Go home.” The order is clear, even she knows if she doesn’t immediately comply, consequences are likely to follow. She may be a girl, a young and sweet young lady, but she isn’t made of porcelain. Josh is damn near as hard on her as he is Danny.
I used to not agree with him. We used to argue until we were both blue in the face about how to raise our kids. Eventually though, I came around to seeing things from his eyes. I lived through a hell I would never put on my worst enemy and I barely survived it. It was only pure luck, and the fact that I somewhat resembled someone else he could never forget, that I was able to get under his skin.
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