She closed her eyes and the tears pushed against her lids, so hot they burned, ate at her flesh. Maybe if she cried, she’d melt. Melting away into nothingness had a certain appeal so she blinked and a tear escaped down her cheek. It set fire to her skin and she welcomed the scalding sensation, the track of fire searing her flesh.
It was hard to say if it was better or worse than the numbness. At least it was different. Different was a form of better right? That was the kind of nonsensical thing Gavin would say if he were here. If he were trying to cheer her up. He’d call her Tiki, try to make her laugh, and she would so he’d feel better. She hated it when Gavin felt bad, it gnawed at her heart.
He’d feel terrible, if he could see her like this. Maybe he could.
That was the thought that started the flood, the tears she hadn’t allowed to fall. Within seconds, the little balls of fire were rolling down her cheeks unchecked and great heaving sobs ripped at her throat. The sounds coming out of her scared her. People weren’t supposed to sound like that.
But she barely felt like people. She felt like a ball of pain and hurt covered with a slick, smooth icy ball of numbness, but the agony was bursting through. She couldn’t stop it anymore, so she let it come. It would destroy her and that was fine. She wanted to be destroyed, and she was already halfway there. The tears could finish off the rest.
There were hands on her then. People were trying to talk to her, and she turned toward the familiar granite of Jasper’s voice, clawed at it with her hands until she wasn’t sitting on the couch anymore. She was surrounded by his hard warmth but the comfort hurt so much she couldn’t bear it. So she pushed and fought, wailed, and tore at anything in her reach.
“Keyne. Keyne, sweetheart . . .”
Her fingers dug into wool and silk and cotton and muscle and bone. She couldn’t tell if it was hers or not, but then it didn’t matter because her hands weren’t her own anymore to control. They’d been caught, trapped and steered behind her, pressed into her back as she struggled and a hand wrapped around her neck, the base of her skull, and pushed her against that hot, hard living wall. Being contained that way felt if not better, at least safer.
“C’mon, Keyne, breathe.”
When she was a kid, she and Gavin had been horsing around on the swing set in her backyard. She’d fallen off the monkey bars, flat on her back, and hadn’t been able to breathe. If someone asked her now, she’d say the wind had gotten knocked out of her, but then she didn’t know what had happened. Gavin had stood there, staring, as she clawed at her chest and throat, leaving scratches that would last for days, his sweet face wild with panic, his lanky body frozen.
It had been Jasper who’d come running, grabbed her hands and pressed them to the sides of her head. She’d had to stop thrashing because he was holding her down. When she did, the coil of panic that had been choking her loosened. He’d told her, “Breathe, Keyne,” and there hadn’t been any other choice. It had seemed like the most obvious thing in the world.
And then she’d been able to—a welcome breath sucked through lips that had started tingling. By then their parents had reached her, her mother gathering her up into her arms, letting her rest against the boney comfort of her shoulder.
The adults had coddled and pet her, but when she looked beyond them, it was Jasper she saw, pale and scrubbing a hand over his face and into his close-cropped blond hair.
If Jasper was telling her to breathe, there was a good reason for it, so she did.
***
It felt good to sit down. He’d finally gotten Keyne settled enough that she could speak a few actual words. She hadn’t lasted long before she told him she was tired but she hadn’t been sleeping. Did he have something that could help her sleep? He’d retrieved the sleeping pills Dr. Ettleson had prescribed, pocketing them after she’d downed one with a glass of water. He didn’t think Keyne was suicidal, but she was sure as hell grieving and he wasn’t taking any chances with her.
She was all he had left, and loyalty was something his parents had drummed into his head from a young age. Family is everything. We take care of our own. And that had included the O’Connells for as long as he’d been alive. Probably because Bill and Marcy had stayed friends with his parents when so many of their other friends had abandoned them. A baby kind of put a damper on the fun-loving college life.
It had taken awhile, but within half an hour, the complete anguish that had been etched on Keyne’s face dulled until he was sure she was asleep. The dreamless sleep of the drugged, but it was better than nothing. Wasn’t it?
The amount of second-guessing he’d done over the past month was beyond anything he’d ever experienced. He’d always relished being called a cocky bastard, took it as a compliment, but right about now he wished he had more experience with uncertainty because this was making him feel like he had eels swimming around his skull. How did people deal with this constant assault of a fear of fucking up?
And he was inviting more of it into his life. Deja had found out that after his own parents, the next of kin listed in the O’Connells’ wills were Sean and Deborah. When Deja had confirmed what he already suspected, his next instructions were to figure out how to get around that. And stall the inevitable custody hearing until he could get his ducks in a row, making sure to do everything right while she was with him in the meantime so the obvious decision would be to leave well enough alone.
At the funeral, Sean had been eyeing Keyne in a way Jasper hadn’t cared for. It wasn’t sympathy, and it wasn’t the morbid curiosity of some other people. It had looked like an expression Jasper was well familiar with. It had looked like greed.
He hadn’t expected Sean and Deborah to object if he offered to take Keyne off their hands—after all, kids didn’t come cheap, especially not high school seniors who were college-bound—but maybe he thought getting custody of Keyne would mean getting her family’s money, too? Well, if Sean wanted a fight, then he’d get one.
After Jasper deposited himself on the couch in the den, he leaned back, scrubbed a hand over his face and neck and opened his eyes to Sarah staring back at him. He’d forgotten she was still here, and with the pinched, vicious look on her face, he wished she weren’t.
“What do you think you’re doing, Jasper?”
“I’m sitting on the couch and as soon as I can muster the strength, I’m going to get a drink. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re using a distraught teenager as your latest vanity project.”
The muscles along his spine tensed and he wanted a drink more than ever. Which was saying something, because the urge for a drink had developed into a near constant itch in the past few years. The strain of the past month hadn’t helped, and Sarah was making it worse instead of better like one would hope a partner might. “Could we not do this right now?”
Sarah might be a lovely, compliant submissive in his bed, but out of it—
“I think now’s a great time. The social worker’s going to be here tomorrow morning.”
Right. Mr. Dan McCarthy, for what was supposed to be a check-off-the-box formality but didn’t particularly feel like one. When he’d told Ada Mr. McCarthy would be coming, she’d turned into some hyper-organized Tasmanian devil, cleaning things that were already clean, filling a refrigerator that wasn’t empty, and pulling him aside to discreetly ask him what she should do with the small stash of weed and coke he kept at the back of a dresser drawer.
He’d told her he’d take care of it, along with the locked trunk at the foot of his bed, and a few other stores filled with the trappings of his other vice. Christ, he’d thought he was going to have to rent a U-Haul to get rid of it all. Luckily, a quick call to his friend Ryan from the club he used to frequent before he and Sarah had become exclusive took care of it all, the drugs a token of appreciation for storing his kink collection while this all shook out. Which if he managed to get cus
God knows he’d stuck around his old neighborhood, snapping up a house that came on the market right after he’d finished business school and settling in while most of his friends paid sky-high rents in Manhattan. A house that if all went well, he’d be sharing with a high school senior. What the hell had happened to his idyllic bachelorhood? But there wasn’t any other choice, and he’d do his utmost to keep her. Including putting on the world’s most convincing dog and pony show for Mr. McCarthy that he was fit to care for Keyne O’Connell.
“I’m well aware of that.”
“And you’re planning to go through with this? You’re really going to try to get custody of her?” Arms akimbo, eyes narrowed, Sarah was the picture of incredulity, and it irritated him. He had his flaws for sure, but fickleness wasn’t one of them. Once he figured out what he wanted, nothing would stand in his way.
“I am. Why is that so hard for you to believe?”
“Because you’re not known for your selflessness. Or your ability to commit.” Both of those things were true, if harsh. He was thankful she didn’t include his on-again-off-again relationship with sobriety which wasn’t exactly a preferred trait in a caretaker.
“I’ve been faithful to you, haven’t I?”
“I never said you were unfaithful.”
“But you are wondering how long that’s going to last?”
“You’ll get tired of me sooner rather than later, Jasper. We both know it. And that girl—”
“Keyne. Her name is Keyne. She’s been here for almost a month and you’d met her half a dozen times before that. You know her name, fucking use it.”
Sarah held up her hands and rolled her eyes as if he were being dramatic. He knew what she was trying to do. Make Keyne seem like less of a person, more of an object. A burden. It wasn’t going to work. She was a responsibility, to be sure, one he didn’t take lightly. One he wouldn’t be able to live with if he didn’t take on.
He’d said it before and he’d meant it. And if she brought up that Keyne’s uncle and aunt had called, making a wheedling offer to take her off his hands, he was going to flat out lose it.
Sarah didn’t know Sean and Deborah O’Connell like he did. They’d squandered millions of dollars on bad investments, drugs, living above what had been considerable means. Jasper even suspected some outright illegal business dealings.
From the outside, Jasper knew he may not look all that much better. But he didn’t spend money he didn’t have, was a social drug user at most, and while he skirted the law, he stopped any of his more dubious practices before they became illegal. Jasper had been the kind of kid whose antics had inspired new rules in the student handbook. He was the kind of adult whose business practices resulted in investigations, but never sanctions, by the SEC.
While he couldn’t prove it, he had suspicions Sean was venturing outright to the other side of the law out of desperation. Hell would freeze over before he’d let that guy near Keyne.
What did he want with her anyway? Sean and Deborah had never had kids—maybe this was Deborah’s last ditch effort to play mom? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. No fucking way, not on his watch. And it was his watch now.
“Fine. Keyne,” Sarah said, placing an exasperated emphasis on the word, “is a teenage girl. You can’t get rid of her when you’re tired of playing the hero. Teenage girls are awful. Trust me, I was one. And she is going to be royally fucked-up from all this. If the past month is any indication, she’s going to need constant babysitting. Are you prepared for that?”
“I’ll get prepared.” Not tired anymore because of the irritation singeing his veins, Jasper got up and poured a drink. Downed it, the liquor echoing the burn of his blood, and poured another. He’d sip this one. He would. It was possible he’d come to rely on alcohol and drugs a bit much over the past few years, but he could dial that reliance back as surely as he’d ramped it up. He’d always had willpower to spare, and now it was going to come in handy. He took a sip. A small one.
“What the fuck kind of name is that, anyway? Tallulah Keyne O’Connell? I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.”
His pulse was beating at the back of his skull. He was discovering layers of cantankerousness he hadn’t known he possessed, and he wished Sarah would shut the fuck up. Maybe if he answered her, he’d get a moment’s peace. “She’s named after her grandmother. And a saint.”
Standing at the wet bar, he pressed his hands to the edge, fingers spreading over the marble. He’d count to a hundred before he took another drink to prove to himself he could.
As much as he hated to admit it, Sarah had a point about his lack of qualifications to be Keyne’s guardian. He’d never been a parent, didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. And though he’d say he knew Keyne pretty damn well, he hadn’t been spending much time with his family in the past several years. Some of that time had been replaced with spending time at the club and amping up his presence in the kink community, but part of it had been spent in a bottle. Or in clouds of smoke from something stronger than cigarettes, or yeah, a few lines of white powder, because who didn’t enjoy a little blow now and then?
Even so, and despite the fact that Keyne and Gavin had increasingly run off together somewhere to do god knows what, he still knew her better than almost anyone on this earth. She deserved to be with someone who could say that, not some good-for-nothing philistines who’d been awarded custody of her because of a few words on a stupid seventeen-year-old piece of paper.
It wasn’t going to be fun, but it was the right thing to do. If that meant suffering for a year until she went to college, then he’d suffer. He’d lived a charmed life up until now. It seemed fair there’d be a price to pay. The death of his entire family seemed steep, but he’d never known the universe to have any sense of proportion.
He couldn’t think about that anyway, couldn’t let himself get dragged into the mire of self-pity for everything he’d had that was gone now. Focusing on Keyne and everything she’d lost was easier than acknowledging his own world had been lain waste to.
Sarah must’ve gotten up from the couch because she was standing behind him, pressing her body against the length of his, wrapping her arms around him and sliding her fingers up his chest and down again to tease at his belt buckle.
“Let’s go to bed.”
It was tempting. His toys were gone, but he wasn’t too shabby with makeshift bondage. A necktie here, some clothespins there. Sarah got off more on sensation play than straight up D/s, but you didn’t need anything more than a hand for a spanking. Turning her round ass red under his palm had a definite appeal. The sting in his hand would distract him from the rest of his life crashing down around him . . . Tempting.
He dipped his head as she tugged the leather through his belt loops. “Sarah—”
“Shh. Let me take your mind off all this,” she urged, her voice like the watered silk she was so fond of.
His hand clamped around her wrist before releasing her with a shake of his head. “No. You were right. This is going to be hard and I need to focus. You should go. You shouldn’t be here when the social worker shows up tomorrow. I’ll call you.”
Not that the lack of a woman in his house tomorrow would make up for a reputation with the fairer sex. If he’d known he was going to have to prove himself as a fine upstanding citizen in order to get custody of a child, he might’ve done things differently.
He took another sip, a bigger one this time, but still just the one. He’d always been able to control himself just enough to keep from labeling himself an alcoholic. Bit of a game, really—how far down could he go and still haul himself up the face of the cliff?
Sarah had backed away and when he turned, she stood there with her hands on her hips and a sneer on her face.
“So is this it? This is how you’re going to end things?”
“No.” He liked Sarah, he did. Or he had. He was less sure why now. She was smart, sophisticated, and their kinks were well matched. But since the accident—which the Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies were still investigating to make sure it had been just an accident—she’d been showing her true colors. She’d always been spoiled, selfish. That hadn’t mattered so much when it was the two of them.
But he was tired, not thinking clearly. He could kick this can down the road. Maybe once he got there, things would be better. A man could dream. “For tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow after it’s over.”
Her eyes darkened as she crossed her arms, manicured fingers resting above her elbows. “Tomorrow.”
Chapter Three
July
This was not going well. He dug his fingers into his forehead and then into his scalp. He couldn’t take it anymore.
The visit from Mr. McCarthy the other day had been nerve-racking, but the man hadn’t made him feel like he was on trial. He shouldn’t feel like he was now, either. But the courtroom setting and the judge glaring at him like he was some sort of. . . of miscreant was maddening.
To be fair, he was a bit of a reprobate, but people couldn’t usually tell from looking at him. Plus, he was a rich degenerate, and that bought him some leeway if not an outright Get Out of Jail Free card. Ridiculous and unfair, yes, but that’s how the world worked. Except apparently in Family Court, and more specifically in front of the bench of one peevish Judge Angela Pollard.
He’d liked Judge Pollard on sight, her black hair cropped short in a no-nonsense style, and a jabot that reminded him of the one Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore for issuing her dissents. Which he only knew because Deja was a huge RBG fangirl, and idolized the woman like she was a rock star. To be fair, she was pretty badass, and for some reason the similarity had made him feel better about his chances—as if someone’s choice of accessories were an indication of evenhandedness. But then her dark brown eyes had sized Jasper up, and hadn’t liked what they’d seen.
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