by Ward, Alice
At one point, Mom was throwing his clothes out the bedroom window, and he had charged at her to make her stop. I hopped between them to protect her, and he didn’t hesitate a second to shove me to the floor so he could snatch from her the belongings she hadn’t yet unceremoniously discarded. A DNA test on the alleged lovechild and four months of couple’s therapy later, their relationship returned to normal, but I never forgot the way my father threw me aside to save a few ties and t-shirts from the mud.
And I would never forget the night I lashed back, the fight to end all fights, the moment when I severed the few threads of dreams he had left for me.
“Gimme that! Give it here!”
I snatched the cans of red spray paint out of Drew’s hands and jerked my elbow in the direction of the shelf where we’d gotten them. He swept half a dozen additional cans into his arms, holding them tightly to his body to prevent them slipping from his grasp and bursting all over the mini-mart floor.
“Think we should get black too?” He balanced his chin against his loot as he swung his gaze to the black canisters.
“Yeah. That’ll be a bitch to cover.” I twisted to look around him, hunting for any sign of our missing comrades. “Travis! Garrett!”
In hushed voices, two baseball hat clad teens rounded the corner and speed-walked down the aisle to us. The burlier of the two, Garrett, had his arms just as full as we did with silly string, while Travis held out a single can of something else. “Look what I found.” He rotated it to show me the label. “Superglue. The only thing that gets this shit off is acetone, far as I know.”
Garrett guffawed loudly, prompting Drew to shush him as I furrowed my brow at the aerosol adhesive. “What are we going to glue, though?”
Travis reached behind his back, shifted his waistband, and withdrew a plastic-wrapped magazine. “Centerfolds. Bare bodies and boobs, man.”
A slow grin spread across my face, and Drew joined Garrett in a second cackle of malicious delight. “I don’t know why you’ve been hiding it, Travis, but you’re a genius.”
We stumbled our way to the checkout counter, dropping everything without preface or explanation in front of the dreadlocked college chick. She started scanning the items with a bored expression tantamount to a robot while we nudged each other and smirked. When she reached the magazine, as well as the twenty other copies Travis had added, she halted. Her bloodshot eyes sidled lazily from one face to the next.
“You guys got some ID?”
Though Travis was the only one of us who’d turned eighteen already, we all reached into the back pockets of our designer jeans to pull out our genuine leather wallets. We could’ve saved ourselves the trouble and had Travis buy the magazines himself after we went out to the car, but his birthday was less than a month ago, and we were still accustomed to our regular routine.
One by one, we flipped our ID cards at her. I didn’t bat an eye when she looked at my picture, then up at me, then back at the picture again. According to the card, I was twenty-two, and there hadn’t been a single time that the fake had failed me.
I was tall for seventeen.
She finally handed back our IDs with a dubious shake of her head, and she mumbled under her breath, “Must be some kind of freaky circle jerk…”
Three minutes later, we crammed ourselves back into Garrett’s Charger with our bags full of tricks and sped off toward our destination. My adrenaline was thrumming through my veins, and I felt as free and unfettered as a wild stallion. Tonight, I was going to make a statement. I was nobody’s project.
There weren’t many other vehicles on the road at the midnight hour, but we ducked down in our seats with each car we passed as we sped along the freeway as if the passengers would know our intentions by sheer proximity. We cackled with thrill, and we compared stories about what wholesome things our parents thought we were doing instead. I was in comfortable company with these guys. Each of us came from wealthy families who’d mapped out our futures for us long ago, and each of us felt vindicated by our plans as we careened through the night.
When we pulled into the parking lot, I was surprised by the density of the darkness. No streetlights had been installed across the vacant lot yet, and the glass doors leading into the store were completely black. It was a new construction set to open to the public in six weeks’ time, and the only identifying thing on the property was the towering sign we crept past as Garrett eased away from the road.
PENNINGTON’S.
“Park over there!” Drew pointed past Garrett’s head at the eastern side of the building where the darkness swallowed everything.
“Yeah, but we wanna paint the front. Nobody’s gonna see it over there,” Travis pointed out.
“We still should park out of sight.” Drew craned his neck to peer out of the rear window behind him. “If a cop sees a car here, they’ll check it out.”
Garrett coasted the car to a stop against the eastern wall, and as I climbed out, I realized Drew had been right. The whole vehicle from the custom fender flares to the bright racing stripes was doused in shadow, and I couldn’t make it out after only a dozen strides away. Grabbing a heap of the goods, I led my friends around the building to the front.
“Are we writing anything specific?” Drew asked, shaking a can of spray paint.
“Yep.” I started shaking my own can, counting the clicks of the ball inside. “‘Fuck Corporate America.’”
With simultaneous chuckles, we pulled off the caps and started spraying.
Between the four of us, we had a good portion of the building’s face covered in offensive phrases, outlandish drawings, and superglued pinups in twenty minutes. I was in the middle of outlining a pig face when a flash of light crossed the paint’s path. Whipping around, I spied a car heading straight for us with a spotlight moving from one desecration to the next.
“It’s a cop!”
Travis’s hiss had barely left his mouth before we dropped everything and bolted for Garrett’s car. Behind us, the cruiser picked up speed, and I heard a voice boom over a loudspeaker.
“Stop where you are!”
Against his orders, I picked up speed and nearly tripped over my sneakers. The only thing I could clearly see was the hood of Drew’s sweatshirt flying out behind him like a bad parachute, but I could hear our pounding footsteps blending with the pounding of my heart. We didn’t even reach the shadows where the Charger was parked before the cop pulled up next to us, jerked the cruiser to a stop, and leaped out of his car. The next thing I knew, he was calling for backup, and I was being handcuffed and shoved into his back seat with Drew.
The rest was a blur. We were taken to the police station. Fingerprinted. Searched and separated from our phones, keys, and wallets. I was let out of my cuffs and thrown into a cell where a drunk man was hunched over with his head between his knees. The rest of my crew joined me in there.
Garrett, Drew, and I were summoned out one by one to give our parents’ contact information, and Travis, being eighteen, was permitted one phone call. I never registered the color of the walls or the smell of the cell. My adrenaline had crashed, numbing my senses.
A half hour later, my dad showed up.
He didn’t say a word to me when the cop walked me out into the lobby and handed me my things. He refused to make eye contact with me as he politely thanked the officer with a handshake and apologized for the trouble. When he turned to leave, I expected him to hook a hand around the back of my neck and push me with barely controlled rage, but he didn’t touch me. I wasn’t naïve. A storm was brewing, but Chaz Pennington was too important a guy to let anyone else see it.
And then we got home.
The garage door hadn’t touched the ground before he rounded on me. “You selfish, worthless, ungrateful little bastard!” He slammed his fist down on the hood of his Mercedes, and when he lifted it, I saw a noticeable dent. “Do you have any idea how difficult it will be for me to cover this up?”
I cocked my head. “The scandal or the va
ndalism?”
He let out a roar that echoed through the huge garage, making my ears ring. “Don’t get smart! What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking maybe you’d finally get it.” Heat was rising from my gut to my throat, and the ringing in my ears turned to a rushing noise akin to whitewater rapids crashing over rocks. Dad had a way of triggering my temper, but I’d always been able to keep my anger contained. This time, I was boiling at the top of the pot, and I had the distinct feeling all control would leave me if I boiled over.
“Oh, I’ve got it.” He started advancing on me. “You want the world handed to you, and you have no respect for everything I’ve built.”
I stood my ground, lifting my chin to meet his eyes straight-on. “No, I just don’t want to be a royal asshole stepping on everyone else to be king.”
His hand swiped out, fingers clenching my chin, but I ripped my face from his grasp and jumped out of reach. “I haven’t spent seventeen years raising you to be a prick!”
“You haven’t spent seventeen years raising me at all!” I was done. The pot boiled over, and I couldn’t hold back. With hands balled into fists at my sides and my entire body shaking with rage, I shouted louder than I ever had at anyone. “That was Mom and the train of slutty nannies you paraded through here! The only thing you’ve ever done for me is stay away at your office or your conferences!”
“Ungrateful!” He gnashed his teeth and reached for me again, but I batted his arm away.
“You know why I did what I did?” I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t relax. “Because I hate you, and I hate everything you are!”
His eyes darkened to onyx. “You’re no son of mine.”
I knew I should’ve felt hurt by his words, that I should’ve bristled or relented slightly to make amends. There was no hurt, though, only fury and pure vindication for everything I’d held inside since I could talk. With an iciness the coldest winter day couldn’t match, I stared him dead in the eyes.
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I didn’t wait for him to reply. I just walked past him to the door. He didn’t try to stop me. I stepped into the house, slammed the door shut behind me, and went up to my bedroom.
I never heard him come in that night.
As I remembered that horrible night, I remembered something else too. Because I’d been born with a silver spoon in my mouth and had been given everything I ever wanted, I remembered that I didn’t even have the right to bitch about anything.
Poor little rich boy.
So I did what I did best. I put on my smirk and faced the world as the asshole I was. The asshole I didn’t want to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gretchen
My apartment smelled heavenly. The sweet, acidic scent of fresh tomatoes stewing down into an herbed sauce mingled with the hearty aroma of ground Italian sausage. Fresh, yeasty dough was parbaking in the oven, which added a deliciously tangy top note to the mouthwatering breaths I took. Cooking wasn’t one of my fortes, but a recipe I’d mastered long ago thanks to spending so much time with Gram was homemade pizza, and making it brought me the same sense of peace I felt during meditation. The actual eating of the pizza was just a nice bonus.
I danced from the kitchen to the living room, slurping on a spoonful of sauce, to check my phone. Cash and I had been texting back and forth for a few hours, switching between idle conversation and suggestive innuendos, and I was eager to see the speech bubble icon indicating a new message. When I plucked my phone from the coffee table, the icon was there, and my stomach flipped with excitement.
Ever had pizza sauce licked off your nipples?
Another flip somersaulted inside me, but this one was lower than the last. I clutched the spoon between my teeth to free up both hands and typed my reply.
Nope. Ever licked pizza sauce off nipples?
I watched the three dots bouncing as the phone sent the message through time and space, then blanked the screen and shimmied back into the kitchen with my panties noticeably damper than before. The sight of the scarlet sauce burbling in the pot made me smile and squirm, and I couldn’t quite push the notion of Cash’s tongue lapping up smashed tomato from my sensitive peaks.
There was never a reprieve from sexual need when it came to him. He was blocks away at Bullfrog Bay, but I was suddenly craving him more than the ambrosia-like pizza.
The phone dinged from the other room as I sprinkled an additional pinch of salt into the steaming pot. I bit my lower lip, aroused by his response without even reading it, but the harlequin thrill trilling through me stilled when the cell dinged again. And again. It wasn’t a text; it was a call.
My inner thighs seared.
Abandoning my cooking and almost galloping to fetch the phone, I ran through a host of potential greetings for my flirting partner. When I spied the lit screen, however, my high crashed. The number was an unfamiliar one, not Cash’s.
I slid my finger across the smooth glass surface and lifted the device to my ear. “Hello?”
“Good evening, ma’am. I’m hoping to speak with Ms. Gretchen Laughlin.” The man’s voice was coarse but polite, and he had such a thick southern accent that he could’ve made Cash pass for a Michigan native.
“Speaking.”
“Ah, good evening, Ms. Laughlin.” He was vaguely familiar, not like I’d crossed paths with him before, but like I’d heard him in a dream once. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
I popped a hip out and leaned against the back of my sofa. “Actually, I’m in the middle of making dinner. What can I help you with?”
“I’ll try to be quick, then. My name is Harlan Dade. I’m a member of Pennington’s Board of Directors.”
A bolt of lightning struck me, and I was rooted to the spot. He was the man Cash called after I caught wind of the building permit rumor, the one with the gruff voice whose side of the conversation I’d been unable to make out. My hackles raised, and I dropped any pretense of courteous engagement.
“It’s a little late in the day to be making business calls, don’t you think?”
“My apologies. Like I said, I’ll try to be quick.” He didn’t seem perturbed in the least by the unfavorable change in my tone. “I’m calling to discuss your current stance on our many offers.”
I huffed out a breath of irritated air and cast a glance toward the kitchen to make sure nothing was smoking in my absence. “Doesn’t the rainforest of letters you’ve sent me that have gone unanswered tell you everything you need to know?”
“It seemed prudent to reach out to you myself. Letters are so impersonal.”
“Uh huh.” Staring down at my bare feet, I started to pace a slow oval around my couch and opted not to point out that Cash being in Fawn had turned out to be more personal than he could’ve imagined. “Well, I’m afraid there are no new developments on that front at this time.”
“You still have no interest in selling your property?”
“Nope.” I popped my lips when I answered for emphasis.
He wasn’t deterred. “Just so we’re clear, Pennington’s only wishes to purchase the property itself. You would still maintain the rights to your business, so you’re free to open up elsewhere and continue as usual.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“Are you looking for a more generous offer?”
I snorted derisively. “No. It’s not about the money. If it was, I probably would have accepted six offers ago.”
“What can I do to make this a more desirable choice for you?”
My temples were starting to throb with the onset of a headache, and I had to suck my cheeks in between my teeth to keep myself from snapping. “Mr. Dodd, the only thing you can do for me is stop hounding me.”
“Surely, you can see this is a lucrative opportunity.” He reminded me of a gruff, grizzly-like mosquito who kept buzzing in my ear no matter how many times I swatted it away.
“You know what?” My patience was
wearing too thin to continue allowing this man to grind his cause relentlessly. “I’ve got food on the stove and in the oven. I don’t have time to needlessly negotiate with you about this, even if I wanted to. Which, believe me, I don’t.”
I was about to pull the phone away from my ear and hang up on him without bidding him farewell when he said something that made me freeze. “You know, Ms. Laughlin, Mr. Pennington has been keeping me up-to-date on what’s been going on between you two. I don’t think you’re as against this sale as you would like me to believe, but I’m sure you’re enjoying Cash’s, um, attentions while he is there.”
The walls started closing in around me, and my head became thick with fog. I didn’t feel any specific emotions because a potent numbness was creeping up from the tips of my fingers to blossom through my entire body, but the numbness was worse than anything identifiable I could’ve felt instead.
My brain refused to believe what he told me, but I couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation as to why he would’ve pulled that particular Hail Mary out of his bag of tricks.
“What do you mean?” My throat was dry, and I sounded like I’d just smoked two packs of cigarettes in ten minutes flat.
“Exactly what I said, ma’am.” I could’ve sworn there was a note of smugness in his voice, and it grated my nerves into feeling again. “Cash is a good boy who is willing to do whatever it takes to close a deal, but this had dragged on beyond tolerance. His attention must turn elsewhere. Am I making myself clear?”
“I don’t think it’s any of your business.”
He chuckled. “On the contrary, ma’am, it’s very much my business. This is the very nature of my business, actually.”
I tried to reply, but nothing came out. I opened and closed my mouth repeatedly, hoping to force some snarky response out to put him in his place. Nothing. I had nothing.
The dank smell of burning crossed my nose, and I spun on my heel to buzz into the kitchen. Neither Harlan nor I said a word, but I had the phone pressed to my ear like I was listening intently. When I reached the stove, I realized my pizza sauce was the source of the acridity, and I dropped the phone onto the counter without warning to the man on the other end of the line to pull it off the eye.