by Jenna Howard
“Did you know, you piece of shit?” Doyle eased Jace forward then slammed him hard into the wall again. “Did you know?” The words were shouted in Jace’s face as he ignored the frantic tugs. “You heartless motherfucker, did you know what he was doing? Stalking her like prey, breaking her down. Stop touching me,” he snarled at whomever was on his back, tugging frantically. “When she came to you scared and terrified, needing you to step up, did you just shrug her off? She is your fucking daughter!” He slammed Jace into the wall again. “Did you know? Answer me!”
“Fuck, D. What is your–”
He pressed his forearm over Jace’s throat, cutting off his air and words. “You think carefully, you son of a bitch, about what is going to come out of your mouth.”
“Jesus, D, you’re going to choke him. Knock it off.”
“You left her alone. She was a kid. Your kid. Bad enough you left her with Beli, but did you leave her with that molesting motherfucker?” The grip on him went slack and a heavy silence hit the room. “She came to you. Even knowing you wouldn’t do a god damn thing, she came to you. I’ve forgiven you for a lot of your bullshit, asshole, including fucking my wife, but I cannot forgive you for Kate. You broke her. You broke her heart, you broke her childhood. I want to kill you for that.” He eased his arm off and Jace gasped for breath, his face red, sweat sliding down his temple, while his pulse jumped and pounded in his neck. “I could kill you for that, but I’ll be fucking damned if I leave her alone because my ass winds up in jail. You did this to her, Jace, just as much as your buddy Berger.” He pushed his face close so he could smell the man’s fear. Jace’s head pushed back as if to get away from him.
“Jesus, D. What the fuck?”
Doyle ignored Max’s whispered words as he stared at Jace. The eyes the same color as his daughter’s shifted away. This man…this asshole who had hurt his Katey. Left her alone with her junky mother and a molester. He grabbed the other man’s jaw and made Jace look at him. “He stalked her in your house. Had access to her room in your house. He terrorized her in your house. He raped her in your house. And you, you fucker, sit here and have the balls to say the man is a pussy god? She is your daughter and you just gave her to him. You, Jace. This is on you. Fuck you. I’m done.” He pushed Jace’s head into the wall because there was all this rage in him about thinking of Kate in that room, that box of shit in his garage. Doyle slammed his fist in the mouth that had made them all wealthy. He felt a tooth cut into a knuckle as blood splattered. He let Jace fall to the floor, bleeding and still trying to get his breath back.
Calmly, Doyle walked over to where his phone had been dropped and with the others looking from him to Jace then at each other in an awkward silence, he walked out.
He didn’t look back.
****
“You’re fucking him.”
The statement was as unexpected as the voice. Looking up from the collection of sketches and photos spread over her bed of her final school project, which centered around the violin necklace, Kate stared blankly at the man standing in her doorway. If asked out of all the people she knew, who she least expected to show up at her small, over-crowded apartment, Jace wouldn’t even be on the shortlist.
There was faint bruising under his eyes and his lip was swollen from Doyle’s fist. Eyes like hers glared at her.
It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t answer. Mostly because shock had robbed her of her voice. Shock because he knew where she lived.
He stood before her as if he had any right to judge her. She loved him. The little girl inside her would always love him, would always crave his love and approval, even though, as an adult, she knew that was never going to happen. She also hated him. With the same intensity of that scared and needy little girl, she hated him. For constantly letting her down and for breaking her heart.
He would never win father of the year, would never even be nominated. So by what right did he have to come into her home, such that it was, and say anything to her?
Kate let all her thoughts swirl around and settle as she looked at Jace. In the ten years she had lived in his home, he had changed. A lifetime of drinking and drugs was starting to take their toll and the good looks that had been there in his thirties were starting to look brittle, making him appear older than he was. Time and life were making their presence known. She knew that she would always see that golden bad boy Mom had loved so much, that face in the photos that had lined the walls of her safe spots. Not that he had never done anything to make her feel safe. Jace Jennings was a mirage. A shimmery image in the distance that a lonely and scared child clung to, and when she got closer, Kate realized there was nothing there.
“How old am I?” Her question made him blink. “When’s my birthday? What’s my middle name?” He simply stood there.
“What does that matter? You’re fucking Doyle and I want you to stop before you ruin everything even more.”
The words hurt in a way that they shouldn’t. That’s how he saw her? As something that had ruined his life. Well, he had ruined hers too. “It matters a lot and your answers will determine the outcome of this conversation.” They were having a conversation. Probably their first one ever. He glared at her, like a sulky teenager who was giving the silent treatment because he didn’t have the answers.
“I’m twenty-four. January third. My middle name is Jace. The last name on my birth certificate is Jennings, for the record. That was the name she gave me: Kate Jace Jennings. You know nothing about me.” She looked down at her sketches, embracing the hurt that statement left her with. She heard Doyle’s voice in her head, telling her to take it in, hold it, because that’s what he made her do when something hurt or felt really good. Take the hurt, feel it, learn it.
Now let it go.
Lifting her lashes, she looked at her father. She never called him that. She would never call him that. He was and always would be Jace. He was just a guy, one wearing bruises Doyle had put on him. Because of her, because Jace had failed her. Jace had hurt her. Just a guy. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t get to storm into my home and tell me who I can or cannot be involved with because he got tired of your bullshit. That’s all you are — bullshit.” She sat up a little straighter, feeling like something heavy just fell off her back. “Do you really think if I’m not involved with Doyle he’ll come back? That he’ll forgive you for being a shitty co-worker and even less of a friend? You slept with his wife. Not because you loved her or even because you liked her. You fucked her because you could. You didn’t want me. You never wanted me. I bet it was Charles who said you had to step up after the social worker contacted you, because it was like that Christmas spread right? Good PR. Legally you’re my father. Genetically you’re my father. But that’s it. You’re not my dad so you don’t get to come in here and suddenly tell me what to do. I’m twenty-four, that makes me an adult, and I can fuck whomever I want. This isn’t even about me and Doyle. This is about you. That’s the problem. It’s always been about you.”
Kate’s heart felt like it was being squeezed as she looked at Jace. Damn, but she wanted him to still be a dad to her. To just once be the father of her childhood dreams.
Take the hurt, hold it. Let it go.
“But it’s not. It should also be about me.” She flattened her hand over the spot that hurt, that felt tight and empty. It would always feel tight and hollow because that’s the spot that he should’ve been in, he should’ve filled. It was a small spot though. She could live with a tiny, hollow piece because those bruises on his face let her know she wasn’t alone. He wasn’t everything. She didn’t need him.
Just his name. She already had that. She let go.
“You need to go.” Dismissing him, she turned her attention back down to her bed, to her dream. It wasn’t even a dream, was it? A dream was something intangible. The shimmery image in the distance. Only when she was close, this was real. Not like the oasis that was Jace. This wasn’t the pot at the end of the rainbow. This was the rain
bow.
She heard his voice in the hallway but she didn’t listen. Probably talking to one of her roommates that he was going to go fuck, because that’s what he did. Grasped at whoever loved him for a moment, because that was easier than Kate. Being wanted he could handle, being needed he couldn’t. And...
She didn’t need him anymore.
Her vision blurred for a minute as that realization hit.
Not because she needed Doyle. She didn’t need him either, because she had Kate.
“Huh,” she said softly in the solitude of her bedroom. Reaching for her cell, she sent a quick text to Doyle: I may or may not have told Jace off.
A soft chime followed and she looked up with the same sense of surprise as when she had found Jace standing there. Unlike that moment, he was utterly welcome. She smiled as Doyle leaned one tattooed shoulder against the doorframe, the relaxed pose of a bad ass. He typed onto his phone and the response showed up on hers. You did.
“So, I don’t get to hit him again?”
Kate grinned at his question because he looked like he wanted to take another swing at Jace. “You can if you want, but no, you don’t need to hit him again.”
“Pity. It was rather enjoyable.” He pushed off and walked into her room, shutting the door. “If those papers are important, you need to move them.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm. Would hate to destroy them when I ravish you.”
Her eyebrows rose even as she began to gather everything up. “I’m going to be ravished?”
He smirked as he grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged it over his head. Kate sat on her bed and took in the sheer perfection that was Doyle without a shirt. “The real question is, when aren’t you being ravished?”
He had a valid point.
“Look at you,” he said as he put a knee on her mattress and captured her face between his hands, tilting it up, “finding your voice. Amazing. I came here wanting to show you something and instead I was shown something. Amazing,” he repeated before he commenced with the ravishing.
Chapter 15
Resting her cheek on her bent knees, Kate watched the dancing flames in the fireplace. There was something comforting about the warmth that radiated out mixed with the scent of burning wood. She liked Doyle’s house. She liked the simplicity of it, the hominess of it. The steady thump of feet on the stairs had her watching Doyle. World War Tween had erupted between the sisters over sink space and not even Doyle’s shouts up at them had broken up the fight. After he had gone up, Willow had stormed down, slamming the door to the half bath after stopping on the stairs to shout at both her father and sister. Doyle had simply stood at the top of the stairs, staring at his oldest, who had finally screamed “Fine!” before the door slamming.
It had been an interesting look for Kate into the life of a healthy family. Never would she have shouted at Jace as a teen and her relationship with her own sister was non-existent. She actually found herself wishing there was something between her and Natalie. To have her sister tantrum at her like that. There was too much poison in their pond though. Shaelynn hated Kate. Hated her. She hated Jace too, but he was the money. Kate was an easy target so Shaelynn had poured all that bad energy into polluting any kind of relationship between Jace’s daughters.
So to watch the two sisters fight and scream while doors were slammed had been a peek into a window that was forever boarded up to her.
Doyle flopped onto the couch, dragging his hands down his face. “They’re like gremlins. All cute and furry until the double digits hit before then they mutate into volatile little things I want to zap in the microwave.” He made an exploding noise while popping out his fingers like bombs going off. “Puberty is awesome.” He sighed.
“This is just the beginning.”
He glared at her and Kate grinned in response. He reached out, grabbed under her legs and yanked so her feet rested on his lap. In a graceful move, he rolled so he lay on top of her, his arms folded over her thighs and his chin resting on his stacked hands. “Dani showed me her bracelet.”
While Doyle and Willow had been working on Willow’s song, Kate had been sitting on the lower deck listening while she looked in the toolbox she used for school, determined to make something out of the pieces from the neck of a violin. What was supposed to be a bracelet had turned into a pile of wooden pieces that wanted to go back to being a violin. She had enlisted the help of Danielle, who had been feeling a little left out. They hadn’t come up with a solution to the jewelry puzzle, but Kate had ended up making a simple bracelet with guitar strings, a couple slices of the ebony fingerboard and some alphabet beads that were in her toolbox. She had put the letters in a mishmash order but when they were spaced out along the metal strings they spelled out dream. It was so cute she was going to make an entire line for the store.
“You do know Dani’s jewelry is what started the battle.”
“Oh?”
“Dani flaunted. Willy responded. It moved to a territorial war over the sink and you know the rest.”
“I guess Willy needs one too.”
He nodded. “She is the only one in the house without a Katey Jay design.”
That explained the stink eye she was given when Willow stormed into the bathroom. “Can’t have that.”
“No. Don’t move.” He rolled off her and disappeared into the kitchen.
Reaching back to adjust the pillow, she scooted down so she was on her side, watching the fire dance and pop. The relaxed feeling evaporated when he set a box on the coffee table. A familiar box.
Her stomach snapped tight and she sat up where he had been before, putting as much space between her and the box. He sat on the table and braced his elbows on his knees, watching her watch the box.
She had briefly wondered where it had gone, but she hadn’t let herself think about it anymore, pushing the contents presence back and back and back. “You opened it.” She saw the sliced edges and the tucked ends of the flaps that kept the box shut.
He nodded.
“Why? Why would you…why?”
“Because it pains you.” Her gaze skittered to him and his midnight stare was steady on her. She nervously tucked her hair behind her ear and tried to not look at the box. “You wanted me to or else you wouldn’t have brought it here. Right?”
She shrugged one shoulder, not particularly wanting to talk about this. Her nervous fingers dropped down to her bracelet where she began to worry the hell out of the first knot she found. He reached out and covered her hand with his, stopping the fidgeting.
“Look at me, Kate.”
She did, not realizing she was back to watching the box as if expecting it to come alive and devour her whole. His thumb stroked over the thin leather cords, brushing her skin; his touch calming.
“Nothing,” Doyle said in a tone that demanded she listen, “in that box will hurt you again.”
“Yes, it will.”
He shook his head and she hissed when he pressed on one of the knots, making her look at him. “Only ghosts are in that box. Past hurts that left scars but cannot leave fresh wounds. You have carried the ghosts, and now I’ll carry the load. Is that not why you brought it here?”
She nodded, watching his thumb gently rub over where he had caused the small hurt. “Okay,” he said as he pushed her along the couch and turned her so her back was to the box of memories. He shifted onto the couch and pulled her forward, draping her legs over his thighs. “What do you want to do with it now?”
“I don’t know.” What she wanted for it never have existed in the first place. Resting her head against chest, she felt exhausted. Doyle rested his chin on her head, waiting. “Burn it?”
“You haven’t kept all that shit for this long to set it on fire.” One hand rubbed soothing circles on the small of her back while the other rested on her thigh. She hated logic. It was so damn logical. She sighed heavily, shrugging a shoulder. His voice became low and gentle as he spoke. “What would you say if I told you that within th
e province of British Columbia, there is no statute of limitations on sexual abuse?”
Her breath lodged in her chest and she drew her legs back, wrapping her arms around him as she looked up at him through her lashes. “I would ask why the drummer of a rock band would know that information.”
One tattooed arm stretched over the back of the couch, his thumb beating a slow rhythm that made the small inked demon nod at her. “I asked a lawyer friend of mine.”
“You talked to someone about me?”
“No. I asked a question and she’s now panicking at the thought that one of the girls has been molested. So that’s fun. Before you get defensive and pissed and offended, as the women in my life tend to get, I want you to ask yourself one important question, Katey Jay. Why did you save everything?” He leaned forward, rested his arm on her bent knees and put his face close to hers.
“I don’t throw anything away.” Lame, she thought as those dark eyes looked at her and through the weak answer. That was really…lame.
“Bull shit. Why have you kept everything if you didn’t want someone to see, someone to know…someone to believe? Now I’m putting that shit away again because I’ll be fucking damned if you start going through it, hurting yourself when you don’t need to, and because the very knowledge of its existence makes me want to hunt that fucker down and beat him down.” Despite the violent threat, he pressed a sweet kiss to her forehead and left her sitting there with the conversation spinning around her brain.
Her forehead fell against her knees. “Red,” she whispered because she couldn’t do this. Whatever he was implying, she didn’t know if she wanted to face not just a lawyer but him. She also wasn’t sure if the him in her head was Jace or his friend.
Red, she thought with a panicky desperation. Red.
****
She told herself it wasn’t sneaking away when she had to wait until morning to catch the first ferry. She wasn’t running away, she was going to work in her studio to finish the violin concerto piece and then work on her pieces for her courses.