I would never know exactly why she did what she did. I could barely reconcile my previous image of her as a loving mother with the person she’d become. I also couldn’t make her understand how it felt to be me after the murder, because she chose to disappear and spend the rest of her life without me in it. So it was hard. Really freaking hard. I’d suffered from anxiety issues for years afterwards, and I knew I probably also suffered from some sort of abandonment issues.
But I had to press on with my life. No matter how much I adored my mom as a kid, I didn’t want to turn out the way she did, and so I’d had a regular therapist for years, and that helped me keep the demons at bay. With her help, I’d developed routines to keep me busy—always going to class, always studying a set amount of hours per day at home, always going to bed at the same time. Things like that helped distract me from old trauma and new anxieties, and while I’d probably never feel normal, I knew I was at least stable.
Stable and average. Boring. Ha.
I sighed and kept watching Jackson out of the window, staring with fascination. I hadn’t seen him in person since I was about fifteen, even though he hadn’t moved after the murder. I knew he worked a lot, so he always got up and left very early and returned very late. I guess he was also careful to avoid being seen by either me or my father, because no one wanted to deal with that horrible awkwardness or the painful thoughts that would no doubt surface if we ever made eye contact again.
Usually when I thought of him, my mind would fill with very specific things. Jackson. Dad’s best friend. Well, Dad’s ex-best friend. Kinda hard to stay friends with someone after your wife murdered his girlfriend. But today was different. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and now that I was much older than I was last time I saw him, I noticed something else about him.
He wasn’t just a guy who lived near us. He wasn’t just my dad’s old best friend.
He was…hot.
In fact, he was drop-dead gorgeous. He was tall and muscular with a leading-man chiseled jawline, strong brow and dark tousled hair. Wow. How had I never noticed how handsome he was before? It wasn’t like he’d changed drastically. He’d always looked the same. I’d just never really seen him. Not properly.
I guess the last time I saw him from the back window, I’d barely been pubescent. I was a late bloomer, so even at fifteen when some of my friends were filling out and already thinking about sex, I was still totally flat-chested and dreaming of having a pony. Without all those hormones flooding my body, I’d been able to view Jackson in the same innocent way I always had as a child before all the drama happened. He’d simply been Dad’s awesome friend who I loved to see.
But boy, I loved to see him even more now….now that I’d finally realized how damn sexy he was.
Reality suddenly hit me like a cold slap in the face, and I snapped my eyes shut and turned away, deeply ashamed at the way my mind was working right now. This was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I couldn’t be having these sorts of feelings. There was too much history here. Awful history. My mother murdered Jackson’s girlfriend, for god’s sake. Standing here and thinking about how hot he was seemed really messed up.
Besides, even if it weren’t for all that, he was twenty years my senior. There was no way I could ever touch a man so much older than me. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I knew a mature man who had his shit together wouldn’t go near me. I was still just a little girl, essentially. Nineteen and a virgin, still in college. I wasn’t even close to having my shit together. Especially not like he did—he was a city councilman, successful business owner and prominent candidate in the current race for our state’s next two US senators.
A true powerful man.
Sighing, I turned back to the window, unable to help myself from looking again. I watched Jackson walk over to his car and unlock it, and my insides sighed and tingled as I noticed the way his dark, expensively-cut suit jacket stretched across his shoulders. He’d always dressed nicely. Maturely. I still existed purely in T-shirts, sundresses and cutoffs. God, I felt like such a baby compared to him.
I wondered if there was anyone new in his life. Anyone since Jenna. A handsome, wealthy man like him surely attracted a lot of women, but I knew he was still unmarried—the local paper had done a profile on him the other week for the senator’s race—and he didn’t have any children, either. I had no idea why. I’d always thought he’d make a great dad. Better than my own, anyway. My dad had been a good parent back in the day, but like I said earlier, things had changed since my mother did what she did. Dad was never around nowadays, and he barely knew me anymore. Barely cared for me, it seemed. He just didn’t have time, what with the struggling business and all. I’d practically raised myself through my teen years as a result. I didn’t blame Dad; I understood why he was the way he was now.
I could easily imagine Jackson being a good father, though. I could picture him pushing a kid on a swing, or teaching him or her to play baseball in the spacious backyard. He’d make that child feel safe, protected, loved; the opposite of how I felt nowadays with my own messed up life.
God, what I wouldn’t do to have a big strong man take care of me like that for once…
A man like Jackson.
A fresh set of tears welled up in my eyes, and I wiped them away as Jackson started his car and pulled out of his driveway, heading closely by our place on his way out to the main road. I quickly ducked down. I couldn’t let him see me. Couldn’t dredge up old memories, tear open old wounds. I had to hide, had to make sure we never got close enough for him to notice me, even though we lived within walking distance. Even though I so desperately wanted him back in my life, just like in the old days when he’d practically been a family member; almost like a second father.
But I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t. It was better this way.
I only needed one daddy.
Chapter Two
Jackson
Who the hell was that?
I frowned and squinted as something caught my eye outside. I was driving past Craig Rubio’s place, and I’d just spotted something at one of his back windows. The flash of movement had been brief and blurry as the figure ducked away, but I’d seen enough to know there’d been a woman standing there, looking at my house. Whoever it was looked petite but had some damn nice curves, and I frowned as I wondered who it might’ve been. It couldn’t be his daughter Lily—last time I saw her, she’d been a skinny little barely-pubescent beanpole, from what I recalled, and surely it hadn’t been that long since then. So was Craig finally seeing another woman? Had he finally managed to move on since his wife Karen disappeared?
Fucking Karen.
Just thinking her name made me feel nauseated. I wasn’t one to describe people as cunts, usually, but she was definitely an exception. She was a fucking cunt of the highest order, and there was a good reason behind the fact that Craig and I had fallen out of touch. After all, it wasn’t every day your girlfriend got shot to death by your best friend’s crazy wife. Everyone knew she did it, too. Slam dunk case, the cops called it. Her prints were all over the gun and her own daughter had heard two women screaming at my house from her bedroom window at their house, as she’d told the police when they questioned her, and one of those women definitely had her mother’s voice. The fact that she fled afterwards and cleared out her bank accounts cemented her guilt.
She did it. That fucking monster.
I knew Craig had to be horrified and deeply ashamed at what his wife did, and that was why he hadn’t been able to meet my eyes whenever we saw each other afterwards. I understood. I really did. We’d been such good friends for so many years, and we’d always been there to support each other. But this….this wasn’t something a friendship recovered from. Not in any way I could see, anyway.
I was glad he was moving on, though, if that was indeed his new partner I’d seen standing by his back window. He was a decent man, and he deserved to find happiness again. I couldn’t hold anything against him; the events of six years ago weren’t his f
ault. It was just fucking impossible to picture myself speaking to him after losing Jenna in such an awful way. I wouldn’t know what to say, and I knew he wouldn’t either.
And Christ, speaking of Jenna….
“Shit...”
I jammed on the brakes and reversed into someone else’s driveway to turn around, and then I headed back the way I’d originally come. When I reached my house again, I put the car in park and dashed inside to double check that the coffee maker was off. It’d never been my habit to do so in the past, but it had become like that since Jenna passed all those years ago—it’d been her habit to always double or triple-check everything like that. I guess I’d subconsciously begun to do it after her death as a strange means of coping with the traumatic way she was lost.
I wasn’t that I was still pining after her. I still missed some aspects of her on occasion, and she certainly hadn’t deserved in any way to have her life stolen in such a manner, but I wasn’t sitting around every night drinking myself into a stupor over my lost eternal love, or anything like that. Truth be told, things hadn’t been great between us for over a year or so before her death, and we’d been on the verge of splitting, so the main emotion I felt back then—and still felt every day—was tremendous guilt. Not love. That ship had sailed a long time before her passing. But I had still cared for her deeply, I knew I did, and like I said, just because things weren’t great between us didn’t mean I would ever be okay with what happened to her.
There was also the fact that it was my fault. All my fucking fault. I’d never forgive myself for letting it happen.
In the weeks leading up to the murder, she’d become paranoid. Told me she felt unsafe, and that she felt like someone was coming after her. Targeting her. And what did I do? I fucking laughed it off. Instead of listening to her concerns, I simply chuckled and told her she was watching too many crime shows on Netflix. After all, who the hell would come after her? Sure, she could be a snide, judgmental bitch on occasion (that was one of the many reasons things weren’t so great between us back then) but she’d never done anything that warranted her having some sort of crazed stalker, let alone a murderer. Plus, we also lived in one of the safest areas on the outskirts of the city. Murders didn’t happen here. Hell, people could even keep their doors unlocked here. Nothing bad ever happened….until it did. At the thought, I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.
I should’ve listened.
I should’ve cared more.
I should’ve protected her. Saved her.
Most of all, I should’ve damn well seen it coming and done something to stop it in its tracks. Back then, Craig and I had both known his wife was losing it, ever since the incident when she’d lost her shit at Jenna in a local restaurant and accused her of a non-existent affair. Craig apologized for her behavior, and we’d tried to mend our friendship afterwards, and we thought things would be okay. Neither of us knew that while we were busy at work at his company that day, Karen would finally snap and lose it once and for all. But why? Why had we been so blind? As I said, we both knew she was losing it, but we’d brushed it off as her simply needing a therapist for her jealousy issues. We hadn’t considered that she was far more deeply disturbed than that.
A lump formed in my throat as the guilt rushed back in. I wasn’t sure if it would ever go away. It was no wonder I hadn’t dated anyone since. Like I said, it wasn’t that I wasn’t over Jenna—it was that I couldn’t let this happen again. Couldn’t let myself fail to protect another woman who was my responsibility. I wouldn’t allow myself to fuck up that badly ever again; to fuck up so drastically at doing the one thing a real man was supposed to.
Besides, it wasn’t so bad being alone. It meant I had more time to spend on my job and my senate campaign. That in turn served to distract me from the past, stop the awful memories from pouring back in. And speaking of the campaign….shit, I needed to leave again. I had a meeting with a potential donor in half an hour, so I couldn’t afford to stand around checking the damn coffee machine a hundred times. My team needed that funding.
I stepped back outside and got in my car, and then I pulled out of my driveway for the second time in five minutes. As I cruised past Craig’s place, I glanced at his front porch, spotting something out of the corner of my eye. It was the same female figure I saw briefly in the window earlier, and with shock, I realized I’d been wrong.
It was Lily I saw in the window earlier.
I almost veered off the road as I took her in. She was in the process of stepping out of the house, ostensibly to go to a class, judging by the books and laptop she was carrying, and the clothes she was wearing looked like they were made for her and only her. Her plain white T-shirt hugged her breasts and waist to perfection, and her low-slung jeans hung off her hips, molding to her thighs like a second skin.
Jesus. She grew up. She really grew up.
Now that I thought about it, she actually must’ve been about eighteen or nineteen by now. The last time I saw her was a few years back, and time really flew by—I should know that, seeing as I was thirty-nine and still wondering where the hell my twenties and early thirties had gone. Also gone were the days of Lily Rubio being the innocent, adorable little girl who played in my pool in summer. She was a woman now.
And Christ, what a fucking fine young woman she was.
I watched her in the rearview mirror as I pulled past the house. She’d turned around now to unlock her car, and I felt my cock stiffen as I took in the curves of her ass in those jeans and her long black hair flowing down her back in a mass of shiny waves. An image of her bent over the hood of her car popped into my head, and I pictured myself roughly grabbing her hips and sliding inside her, fucking her senseless as she panted and strained against my cock.
She bent forward to drop her books on the passenger seat, and I almost had a conniption. Jesus fuck. She really knew how to fill out an outfit with that body. So slim yet curvy in all the right places, so sweet and tight.
I closed my eyes when I reached a stop sign, remembering her beautiful face; those delicate features and pretty dark eyes. She’d always been a cute kid, but damn, I had no idea she’d grown up to be so lovely. You’d think I might’ve noticed, given the proximity of our properties, but I’d taken pains to avoid seeing the Rubios for the last several years, and so I hadn’t seen her in what felt like an age. People always asked me how that was possible, and why I hadn’t simply packed up and moved away after what happened, but I had my ways and my reasons.
Firstly, it wasn’t hard to avoid people, even if they were neighbors. I had some neighbors who I’d never even met, for god’s sake, because they were obviously quite unsociable and liked to avoid people as much as I liked to avoid the Rubios. Plus in a semi-rural location like this, the houses were quite far apart, so it was easy to go unnoticed whenever you felt like it.
Anyway, I always left the house early and returned late, so it was unlikely I’d run into anyone outside, and even if I did so happen to pass Craig in the area, we usually just gave each other an awkward nod before moving on and continuing with our days. I’d seen him maybe three, four times over the last few years.
As for why I hadn’t left the area—well, there was one main reason for that. The house I lived in had been my home since I was twenty-five. It was my first house (the first one I owned, that is) and I’d spent years fixing it up and adding to it. It was the only place that ever truly felt like home to me, and even though something horrendous had occurred here six years ago, I refused to let myself give in and be driven out of my own home due to all the evils in the world. It wasn’t like everything didn’t already remind me of what happened, anyway, whether or not I was here. Maybe it was a little unhealthy that I stayed, but I honestly couldn’t bring myself to leave.
My mind flashed back to Lily again. I’d seen that she was a fully-grown woman now, but at the same time, there’d been such an innocent quality about her. Something…untouched. Something a dark part of
me felt desperate to corrupt.
I wondered if she was a virgin. Wondered if she’d ever go near me.
I pushed the thoughts aside. It wasn’t right. She’d always been such a sweet kid, and she didn’t need a fucked up guy like me coming up with all sorts of twisted fantasies about her, let alone pursuing them in any way. Hell, even letting her see me would be a bad idea, so I needed to be more careful to leave earlier from now on, seeing as she obviously had early classes at whatever college she went to these days. She’d gone through so much at such a young age, what with her mother being a murdering bitch who abandoned her to hide from her crimes, and seeing my face would only remind her of that pain.
But having said that, now that I’d seen the innocent beauty she grew up to be, would I be able to hold out? How could I, knowing that such a perfect little thing lived within a stone’s throw? How could I forget that face, that body? She’d make such a perfect little fucktoy, and while I knew I needed to occupy my thoughts with something or someone else, I honestly wasn’t sure if I could.
But I had to.
One way or another, I had to force myself to stay the fuck away from Lily Rubio.
Chapter Three
Lily
The nightmare was back. It was all happening again. This time, it was even clearer. I was standing in Jackson’s house, holding the gun again. Jenna had her arms up in the air, her face contorted with fear.
‘Please!’ she begged. ‘K, don’t do this!’
She’d always called my mum ‘K’ as a nickname. K for Karen. I guess in this version of the nightmare, I wasn’t myself. I was my mother.
The dream suddenly changed again. I was crouched at a window and my ears were pricked up, so to speak. This time I didn’t hear a woman screaming. There was a man talking. He was saying…crap, I couldn’t quite make it out. But it was definitely a man. His voice was calm, soothing.
I could hear him now. He was telling me that I’d be okay. That everything would be okay. I felt so sleepy, so warm. So relaxed. He was right. Everything would be okay. But then I opened my eyes, and I saw the blood. It was everywhere. Sprayed all over the walls, the ceiling. It was all over me now, and Jenna’s brains were all over the floor. I was back at Jackson’s house, pistol in my hand. I screamed and screamed and screamed, until someone shook my shoulders.
Daddy's Toy-Box (A Daddy's Best Friend Romance) Page 2