by Jo Raven
Yeah, so the kids were about to turn in, and I’m disrupting their day schedule. If this deviation from their daily fucking ritual scars them for life, I’ll live with it. And the award of the Best Dad of the Year goes to…
I drive slowly, forcing myself not to step on the gas. Endangering my kids isn’t worth it. Let the only scars they bear be psychological.
Christ, a therapist would have a field day with me.
Thank fuck I avoid their kind like the plague. If one got hold of me now, I’d be locked up, maybe even in a straitjacket—because I’m vibrating with rage. When I get my hands on the guy who touched Octavia and frightened her like that, the guy circling around my family like a goddamn shark, all bets are off. I’m gonna wring that motherfucker’s neck.
Yeah, see? A good thing I avoid therapists. And fuck, I can’t stop my mind from spinning around in useless circles, jumping back and forth.
Always coming back to Octavia, and my kids, and the riddle of the messages.
The town is tiny. I’m outside Octavia’s house in two minutes. Grabbing my grumpy kids from the backseat, I storm up to the house and lay in on the doorbell.
The person who opens the door is not Octavia. That’s the first thing that registers, and I stare at the blond, slight girl who stares back at me, eyes wide.
Forcing my last remaining neurons to work, I bring forth her name. “Augusta?”
Her mouth quirks, and suddenly she looks quite a lot like Octavia. “Just Gigi. And you’re Matt Hansen. Come on in.”
I don’t ask her how she knows who I am. I mean, a bearded guy with two little kids appearing on the doorstep—who else could I be?
“You shouldn’t open the door to strangers,” I mutter as I follow her inside.
“Sir, yessir,” she says with a grin. “You’re really hardcore, aren’t you?”
Hardcore? I frown as I step inside their living room, Mary squealing when she spots Octavia and trying to free her hand from mine.
I release her and she shoots up to Tay like a dog after a rabbit. Octavia grabs her and lifts her on her lap, and now Cole is trying to dive off me head-first, so I lower him before he manages to slip out of my grip.
When I look up again, I find several pairs of eyes watching me.
But I only care about Octavia’s bright blue gaze. Cole is trying to climb onto her lap, and she helps him up, giving me a faint smile. She looks pale, I note, and there’s a scratch on her cheek. And her throat. A red line there.
Christ.
I keep cataloguing the hurts I can see, feeding my anger, keeping still in the middle of the room with her family all around when all I wanna do is stride up to her, pick her up in my arms and keep her safe.
What will her family think? Her mother, sitting primly in a loveseat, her face an older version of Octavia, her graying hair pulled back. Her blonde sister who’s still grinning like the cat who caught the canary and is planning how to eat it. And her brother, Merc for Mercury, with his blond hair and light blue eyes who’s looking at me calmly, as if he expected me to show up.
If so, he’s the only one. The rest of the family are staring at me like I’m ET with a beard.
Octavia is okay, I tell myself again. She’s fine, right here, my kids in her arms, but I can’t get my heart to stop racing, my rage and fear looking for an outlet they can’t find.
And she comes to me. She gets up, takes my kids’ hands and comes toward me. “Are you all right?” she asks.
My eyesight blurs. She was hurt because of me, and she is concerned about me. I don’t fucking know what to do with this.
That funny breathing thing my lungs do? It’s the opposite. It’s as if my chest is expanding, and I’m inhaling all the oxygen of the world.
I love her.
She’s in my arms before I have time to process the thought, the feeling, the concept, my kids squirming at our sides, poking their heads and hands between us, but they’re not pulling us apart, only merging us more tightly together.
“Goddammit, Tay.” I bury my face in her hair, tug her against me, my dick hard despite my worry, because it can’t be any other way around her. “What the fuck. I thought…”
I can’t even finish the sentence.
I tip her head up and kiss her, not caring anymore what her family thinks of me, the bearded savage who ravaged their daughter. Did they even know before tonight, before now, that we’re more than employer and employee? That I fucked their daughter? That I care for her more than I admit even to myself?
She breaks the kiss, strokes my bristly cheek. “I’m okay,” she says.
The hell she is. “I’ll kill Ross.”
And to hell with John insisting I lie low for a while.
“Shhh.” She laughs quietly. “I said I’m okay. And I don’t think it was him.”
At some point she starts to pull away, but I don’t let her, keeping an arm around her. Can’t bear to part from her again, not after this. She tugs me toward the sofa and we follow, me and the kids. We sit together, side by side, the kids flanking us.
Like a family.
Her mother is frowning at us, and yeah, I bet she had no idea about how things really are between us. Hell, I wasn’t sure until tonight.
I had an inkling, sure. My dreams, my reactions to her, my thoughts around her, they all told me what I now know.
She’s become part of my life, part of my heart. Losing her now would probably kill me. Finish the job.
And I don’t care, or think about turning back.
Too late for that.
“You sure you don’t know who attacked you?” Gigi asks her. “You said his voice was familiar.”
“It was?” I turn to Octavia, who shrugs. “Are you sure?”
“Not really.”
Turns out I walked right into the middle of her recounting of the events. Figures. The moment she called me I dropped everything, took the kids and headed straight here. The attack was twenty minutes ago, tops.
I rub my hand over her shoulder, down her arm, and she leans into me.
Her brother clears his throat, glancing from us to his mother and back. “So… no idea who that was? It wasn’t Ross, you said. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Also, I think Ross is taller.”
“Maybe one of his buddies?” Gigi says.
“Why would one of his buddies do that?” Merc asks, sounding baffled.
“How would I know, dumbass? Maybe he owes Ross a favor? Maybe Ross sent him to drive suspicions away from himself? Tati said she went and confronted him today.”
“You what?” My jaw clenches and my teeth grit with the curses ripping up my throat. “Tay, what did you do?”
She squeezes my hand, reassuring, and I take a breath. Since when do I need her reassurance so much? It curbs my anger, reminds me that I’m angry on her behalf, not at her.
Not at the whole damn world, at everyone and no one. Not anymore.
She’s changing me. Poking at all the claws and fangs. Fearless. Pulling me out of the dark after all this time.
This goddamn girl…
“I just went and told him to stop harassing us,” she’s saying, her small hand still in mine, her gaze level as if daring her family to comment on the gesture. “He denied doing any of it. And that was it. I left and headed home.”
But there’s something she’s not saying. I’m so damn attuned to her by now, I know she’s holding back. She has a tell, I realize. She’s gone very still, barely breathing.
What happened out there? Why won’t she tell her family? The urge to get her alone is getting stronger by the second.
“It has to be Ross,” I tell her. She went and faced him, and then she was attacked. It’s clear as day. That motherfucker Ross went into a rage and tried to hurt her.
She thinks it’s not him? Fuck that. Of course it’s him, the little coward.
“I told the police all this, what I saw, what I thought,” she says. “On the phone.”
“And what did they s
ay?” Merc asks.
“That I should file a report as soon as I can, and that I shouldn’t walk outside alone at night.” A flush colors her cheeks. “As if I haven’t been doing that all my life. It’s safe here.”
“Obviously not anymore,” her mom says sternly, and I glance at her. Something tells me she’s not normally this severe, if the laughter lines around her mouth and eyes are anything to go by. A happy little family. The doting mom, the funny little sister, the pensive younger boy.
And Octavia… They’re scared for her, and I’m the cause. I need to solve this fucking riddle, but how can I protect her without pushing her away?
I’m done pretending. Tired of fighting it. Fighting how much I need her in my life.
And yet I’ll do anything it takes to keep her safe.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Octavia
With Matt’s muscular arm around my shoulders, his big hand around mine, I feel stronger. The fact he drove right over with the kids the moment I called him? Priceless.
Makes me feel precious. Wanted. Cherished.
And I don’t know if I should trust this feeling, this moment with him by my side, but I can’t help but bask in it. Soak in the warmth and power of his presence, the feel of his strong thigh pressed to mine, his scent filling my senses.
Makes me feel I can take on the world.
Or at least confront my mom about what Ross said. I can’t ignore it, can’t rest until I know the truth. Gigi and Merc deserve to know.
I deserve to know, and whatever her reasons for keeping the knowledge of who our father is a secret, it’s time she talked. I’m a big girl now, and Gigi and Merc are barely shy of adulthood.
It’s time.
But not while Matt is here. Don’t want to do this in front of him and his kids. Not just because this is my life, but mainly because I don’t want to see the look on his face when he finds out. I mean, it’s not only that Jasper is my dad and Ross my half-brother, but the fact I hadn’t known. Hadn’t realized that we really are the little filthy bastards everyone teased and bullied us about.
We’ve been living all our lives in the same town as our dad who never wanted us. Who was already married with a kid of his own, and never even bothered to acknowledge us, or even be nice to us. All those times he cursed my name when I walked past his garage, when he let his son call me names, when he called my mom a slut.
My blood is running hot and cold in turns. I’m not even sure who I’m angrier with, and which of all those things makes me more miserable.
When Matt says he has to go, put the kids to bed as it’s way past their time, I’m both terrified and relieved.
I don’t want him to go. And God, I’d love to be there when he sits on their beds and covers them up, kisses their foreheads and tells them to have sweet dreams. Does he read stories to them? Has he found his way to their heart—like he did to mine?
He tells me we should take a raincheck on the picnic we talked about. Tells me to rest and let him know if I feel up to working on Monday.
And although he’s worried about me, and it warms me all the way to my bones, I’m sad. I wanted that picnic so much. I still do. I don’t see how it will help not being with him tomorrow, but by then he’s out the door, and I’m finally alone with Mom, Gigi and Merc.
It’s all too much. My face too hot, and my eyes burning. “Mom… when were you going to tell us that Jasper is our dad?”
The shocked silence that follows my words barely registers over the boom of my heartbeat in my ears. All I can see is three white faces, three pairs of wide eyes staring back at me.
Then Gigi laughs, a high, nervous sound. “What is this, a prank? Did your boss put you up to it, now that you sleep with him?”
“Gigi!” Mom snaps, and Gigi flinches.
“You trust what Ross tells you,” Mom mutters, her face pale, her eyes glittering, “and come here accusing me of things—”
“Mom.” In her eyes, the brief moment she lifts them to mine, there is no shock, no surprise. Only fear and sadness. “Just tell me the truth. Please?”
She swallows hard. “I didn’t… plan it this way, Tati. You have to believe me. I always thought, they’re still too young, I’ll tell them next year. And then the year after.”
“It’s true?” Merc whispers. “This is true?”
“Mom. Why?” Gigi’s face is red, her lips trembling. “Jasper Jones, that worthless piece of shit?”
“Gigi—”
“And Ross… is my half-brother?” Merc goes on, as if in a trance. “That asshole?”
“Merc,” Mom snaps, her hands twisting in her lap, her lips white. “Language.”
“Fuck language. Fuck Ross.” Merc shoots to his feet, his face stony. “You should have told us, Mom. You should have fucking told us, and we should have left this fucking town ages ago.”
We all watch open-mouthed as Merc, sweet Merc, storms out of the living room.
Then Mom starts to cry. I’ve never seen or heard mom cry before, and it’s a knife to my gut. Gigi shoots me a glance that’s a mixture between this-is-all-your-fault and do-something!
“Mom…” I start but don’t know what to say. I get up and go to sit beside her on the loveseat, take her hands in mine. “Mom. Listen…”
Gigi sits on Mom’s other side, leans her head on Mom’s shoulder. “It’s all true, then?”
Mom nods, sniffles. “I was in love. I thought he was, too. With me.”
“He was married,” I say softly. “He was having an affair with you.”
“He said he was leaving his wife. How was I to know it wouldn’t happen? Every time I got pregnant he said he’d sent the papers to his lawyer, and then… nothing. After that, I thought it was better not to have him involved in our lives at all.”
Oh Mom… I put my arms around her, like I’d done with Matt earlier. She loved Jasper. Maybe still does. And although Jasper is an asshole, who knows how he was with her? Who knows how love works?
Didn’t I fall in love with Matt while he acted like a douchebag, hurting my feelings, shutting me out? I thought I caught a glimpse of the man he is underneath it all, and I was hooked.
Was I right? Am I seeing him clearly?
He hasn’t asked me out. Hasn’t told me he cares about me. I mean, we barely know each other. Not his fault I’ve fallen like this for him. He’s the first guy I’ve slept with, the first guy I’ve had feelings for, and they’re so deep I’m not sure I can let in another.
Does he feel it, too, or will he dump me at the first chance he gets just like Jasper did with my mom?
Mom doesn’t ask me anything about Matt, about how I hugged him and how we held hands as I recounted the story of the attack.
She probably feels so out of sorts with the revelations about Jasper Jones that she couldn’t muster up the energy to demand full disclosure, or to tell me I should stop seeing him immediately.
Not that mom is like that normally. She’s pretty quiet and easygoing.
Still, keeping in mind that this is my boss, and older than me, with kids of his own, I’d expected to be told in no uncertain terms that I should quit and keep away from him.
I wonder if she could tell that we slept together. She’s one of those moms who can smell such things in the air, without needing their kids to fess up.
Anyway, Mom hasn’t breathed a word about it, instead going up to her room, and I’m left with Gigi, who has no compunction whatsoever to interrogate me.
“So when were you going to tell us you’re dating that man?” She rolls on top of her bed, dragging on her pink PJs.
“Matt? I thought you knew.” I’m playing it cool, and truth is, I’d been hoping to avoid the questions until tomorrow. I’m beat.
“I kinda guessed.” She scrunches up her nose. “It’s the way you kept talking about him, and his kids. Like, Matt… oh God, Matt…” She sighs and moans, and I laugh, then throw a pillow at her.
“Shut up. I don’t do that.”
&nb
sp; “No?” She uses the pillow I threw at her to snuggle, wiggling her bare toes. Her nails are painted a hot red. “Hm. What happened to the cute neighbor, Adam?”
“Nothing. I don’t really like him. Told you.”
“Why not?”
I shrug.
“He’s really cute, in that I-am-totally-handsome-and-innocent-but also-banging-every-girl-in-the-vicinity kind of way.”
I shudder. “Ugh. How awesome.”
“Hey, don’t knock the look. Or is it because he’s so different from Matt Hansen The Beast?”
“He’s not like that.” I once thought he was, too. Not so long ago, in fact, just a few weeks back, when I first met him. With that dark beard and brows, the messy, too long hair, the intense stare. “He’s not, Gigi. Matt is great.”
“You’re in love,” Gigi sighs.
Yeah, I can’t deny it. Not anymore.
She sits up, brows raised. “Shut up! You really are. Tati, oh my God.”
“What?” I say irritably.
“You’re not even trying to deny it. So… does this means it’s serious? With Matt? Isn’t he, like, too old for you?”
“He’s not even thirty.”
Gigi’s eye bug out. “Jesus, that’s old, girl. I mean…” She shakes her head. “You’ve only just turned eighteen.”
“It’s not much of a difference. When you’re an adult, a few years up or down don’t mean anything.”
“Oh right, you’re an adult now, I forget.” The sisterly ribbing and snark is back, and it’s a relief.
Besides, yeah, I am. I’m a woman now. And not a virgin anymore, either, which makes me smile, even if I’m still smarting over how my first time with Matt ended.
He did apologize. But guess what has been eating me up inside all this time? Yeah. And here I thought I didn’t need to talk about it.
I thought wrong. I mean, I understand why he reacted the way he did. That he was shocked, and not sure he could be with someone yet.
But I can’t ignore the little voice that questions whether he’s ready now.
And that’s exactly what I need to talk to him about. I don’t want to push him. I understand that he’s only just coming to terms with his wife’s passing, that he tried to hide from the pain, tried to let it out with his blood, with his anger.