by Cross,Lexi
“I shouldn’t have to ask to help my own daughter,” he protested.
“But you don’t ask to do anything. First, you’re helping. Then, you’re trying to make decisions for me.”
“How so?” he challenged me.
I realized I didn’t have an answer ready for him. It just always felt that way. It always felt like there were expectations put on any help he gave me, like I had to live up to something. I didn’t want to feel that way again. It was bad enough I was being made to tip-toe around to keep up appearances with the charity. I didn’t want to do that with my parents, too.
“I’m not telling you what to do with your life. I’m not telling you to stop with these charities. You’ve made it obvious more than once that this is what you want to do with your life. I can’t stop you. And I don’t want to stop you. I just want to make it so you don’t have to give up so easily,” he explained.
“I don’t know,” I told him. I didn’t want their money. Their money was supposed to fix everything. That was how they had always used it, as a kind of cure-all for every problem that arose in our lives.
“Well, will you just think on it?” he asked.
“Sure.” I already had my answer, I felt. I didn’t need to think on anything.
“You have my number. Call me and let me know what you decide to do.” He didn’t sound pushy at all, but he never did. He always left it up to me, but he did it in such a way that I knew he expected me to take his help.
We said our goodbyes and hung up. I knew what I was going to do first. I was going to call Lucky and let him have a piece of my mind for going behind my back the way he did.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lucky
The buzzing of my phone in my pocket felt like an accusation. I didn’t want to answer it because I already knew who it was, and I knew I was in pretty serious trouble. I knew it wasn’t going to be a happy call, but I also knew there weren’t any other options left for Kendra other than talking to her parents.
I was standing on the balcony outside my bedroom, looking out over the patio and pool. I was using what I had imagined her father doing as advice for what I should have been doing to keep from going stir crazy while I was stuck at home and unable to play.
It had been shaping up to be a beautiful day outside, but something told me all of that was about to come to an end. My stomach knotted up tighter with each ring. I was merely prolonging the inevitable by not answering right away.
I pulled my phone out. It was Kendra. The phone buzzed insistently in my hand, demanding that I answer it.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey? Is that all you have to say for yourself?” she snapped right away.
“How’s the funding going?” I asked, avoiding her question.
“Okay, fair enough. You want to know how looking for money is going? My father called me today. He called a number I never gave him to talk to me about my boyfriend and the money I need in order to save Older Brothers. What do you know about that?” There was no more playing dumb with her, even though I was curious to see how far she was willing to go before she actually came out and accused me of calling her parents.
“I know that he wants to help you, and I know that he’s worried about you, in his own way,” I added, dodging her remarks again.
“In his own way is right,” she said. Every word that came out of her mouth felt like a new accusation of wrongdoing.
“Listen, Kendra. You should at least listen to him. Your parents care about you,” I told her.
“Sure, they care. Of course they do. I’m their daughter. They pretty much have to care. But you don’t know what it was like growing up with them,” she insisted.
“What, they bought you everything you wanted? You had the best of everything?” I asked, challenging her.
“But I paid a different kind of price for that,” she continued.
“You’re right, Kendra, I don’t know what that’s like,” I told her. “You saw my parents’ humble home. I didn’t come from money. I didn’t have to deal with getting everything I wanted. I had to deal with busting my ass to make anything happen in my life.”
“But your parents didn’t try to control you, did they?”
“No more than any other parents, I guess. I mean, they weren’t overbearing, but they did try to establish rules and guidelines for my life.” I laughed, because everyone knew how well rules worked for me.
“But you play by your own rules, don’t you?” she asked, still trying to poke holes in my arguments and challenge me.
“I do, but it’s like what the teachers used to say in school. You have to know the rules before you can break them. I learned the rules. I broke the shit out of them. And then I made up my own. The reality of it all is that they can only exert as much control over your life as you allow them to,” I said, trying to break it down for her.
“If only it were that easy,” she continued arguing.
“You have a rebuttal for everything, don’t you? Kendra, you’re an adult. You have some authority over your life, whether you want to admit it or not. You’ve made it this far without their help. That gives you more than a leg to stand on when it’s time to put them in their place,” I told her.
“Yeah, I guess so, but their place isn’t in my life.”
All I could do was shake my head and laugh. She was so hell bent on being right and being independent. Maybe too much.
“Fine. Do what you will. But there’s a better option on the table than sleeping around to get the money. Once it gets out that you’re selling ass for Older Brothers, how do you think that’s going to go over?” I asked her.
“I know. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t just jump on the offer right away,” she admitted to me.
“Hopefully just one of them.” It was a loaded statement, I knew. That was why I used it. I wanted her to hear how badly I wanted to be one of her reasons, but I also wanted to sound like I didn’t care one way or the other. I felt like I was going to be on my way out the door after pulling that stunt, so it wouldn’t have come as a surprise if she told me to piss off.
“You had to find a way to bring this back around to us, didn’t you?” she snapped.
“I was just saying I didn’t want you to go off sacrificing your dignity and integrity for a little bit of cash,” I argued.
“For just a little bit of cash. What the hell is wrong with all of you? You all want to control my life. You get a little piece of ass and you think you can start making demands. My parents give me a little cash, and they think they can start calling all the shots. This is why I’ve drawn up an agreement with Tommy. Once I sleep with him and he makes his donation, there will be no room for expectations,” she yelled at me.
“That’s not—” I started to argue, but she hung up on me.
“That’s not what I meant,” I finished, talking to my silent phone.
Dammit! I was just trying to help, and it really seemed like I was still screwing everything up, even as I tried to do the right thing. I tapped the screen and tried to call her back, but she didn’t answer. I hung up, refusing to leave a voicemail I knew she wasn’t going to listen to anyway.
I still didn’t really know how her conversation went with her dad. All I knew was that he had told her I had called them to let them know what was going on with her. I didn’t know anything else. If our conversation was any indication, it was safe to assume she’d hung up on him, too.
I knew her father’s type, though. I recognized it from the tone of his voice when we were talking. He was the kind of man who would not take no for an answer, at least not easily. In Kendra’s case, that was a very good thing. She needed someone to make her take the help she needed from them. I wasn’t in a position to do that, but her parents were.
I laughed as I realized that they had apparently decided to help her. Her father told me I would know their decision from the call I received from her afterwards. I could only hope that she would eventually decide she needed t
he money enough to accept their help.
I tried calling a couple more times, but she wouldn’t answer any of my calls. There was nothing else I could do at the time, so I decided to leave it in her father’s capable hands. I had my own problems to worry about, and I had been ignoring them for hers.
It was time to catch up with my lawyers and figure out what they were doing to help me prepare for my case. I called them instead of Kendra the next time, but there still wasn’t any answer.
I laughed at myself. The last people in the world Kendra wanted to help her were trying to get her to accept their assistance. Meanwhile, the very people who were supposed to be helping me through my problems weren’t even talking to me. I had overstepped my bounds with Kendra. I knew that was why she didn’t want anything to do with me. I had no idea why I couldn’t reach my attorneys.
“Maybe I used up all my luck,” I joked to myself. It was beginning to feel like I had done just that, though, and I wasn’t comfortable with the thought.
There was still one thing left for me to do, the last resort. There was one option left that I knew could get me out of all the trouble I was in, one sure fire way to get all the charges dropped. Of course, if I called Raven and agreed to go ahead with sleeping with her to give her a child, I had to find a way to do it without it ending up in all of the papers.
If sex was going to be the answer to Kendra’s problems, then I was going to make it the answer to my problems as well. I had fucked my way into all this trouble. I could fuck my way out, right? That was my line of thought on the matter. I wasn’t sure it was going to work, but it was better than sitting around doing nothing while my future hung in the balance.
I laughed as I thought about drafting up my own contract. Unfortunately, just like Kendra’s contract with Tommy, it wouldn’t have been possible, legally, to come right out and explicitly list the details of what we were doing. I was basically going to be paying her off with sex, paying her to leave me alone and go on about her business without so much as glancing back. I knew she was going to want to sleep with me until she got pregnant, but as long as my luck had run out, it should have been easy to do that.
I flipped my phone over several times in my hand, thinking about calling her, thinking about reasons not to call her, and trying to think about other ways to resolve the matter quickly. I still couldn’t bring myself to admit to Jake and Harley what had happened with Raven, so calling them to have the network fix it was completely out of the question. I didn’t want to have her disappearing on me. That was something I could not afford to have to explain.
The lawyers weren’t doing anything, and they weren’t answering my calls. I felt like I had been abandoned. I knew that if I called her to even talk to her about the possibility of giving her what she wanted, I was jeopardizing my case, but I couldn’t think of any other way. Certainly no faster way.
I tapped the screen on my phone and scrolled through my contacts until I came to her number. I stared at it for a minute, unsure of myself. Once I tapped the screen and told my phone to call, it was all going to be over. There would have been no turning back.
Hopefully, drafting up a contract was going to save me from having to deal with any future drama. Hopefully, I was going to be able to avoid having her come between mine and Kendra’s relationship. I doubted it, but I had also already done a fair amount of damage, so there was a chance that it didn’t matter if she started anything or not.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kendra
After I hung up the phone, Lucky called me back a few times. I let the call go to voicemail each time, hoping he’d either leave a message or get the point. Eventually, he stopped. I wanted to be mad at him for calling my parents behind my back, but the fact of the matter was he was just trying to help. I couldn’t really fault him for trying to help me out.
The longer I sat and stared at the contract sitting on my table for Tommy, the more I realized that Lucky deserved some credit for what he’d done. He’d gone out and found my parents. Then he had called them out of the blue to tell them I needed money to help with Older Brothers. He had done all of that simply because I wasn’t going to accept his cash.
I leaned back in my old office chair and looked around at the walls surrounding me. Age had worn down the building. I wondered if I was even going to be able to come out on top this time. I had failed at other charity ventures, and I felt like I was fighting a losing battle with Older Brothers. I knew my parents didn’t get it, whether they tried to be encouraging or not. I knew Lucky didn’t understand, even though he tried to help. I just wanted to help people.
I wanted to do something that gave back to the community, and I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to do it without the support of my parents. They weren’t part of the community where I was working. They were part of my past. I wanted to be able to accept Lucky’s help because he seemed to support me most out of anyone I had ever known.
It sort of all hit me right then. I had reached the dead end to end all dead ends. I was sitting in a building that had been the last resort of the previous director. They had obviously come to this building to let the charity die. She hadn’t planned on rehabilitating the office. She hadn’t planned on keeping Older Brothers around long enough to even worry about it. Then, it had all been dumped into my lap. Since I had closed a couple of charity organizations before, I was the best candidate for a local chapter that was about to have to shut down.
I didn’t have any friends outside of the charity. I had moved around so much over the years that it was nearly impossible to develop lasting relationships with other people. There was no one to call to vent to. There was no one else to call for help. I had an offer on the table from someone who really just wanted to bend me over the desk and fuck me one good time. I had an offer from someone who just couldn’t get his own life together, despite how much he seemed to care about me. And I had an offer from my parents, who were going to use the money to try to control my life again.
My phone buzzed again on my desk. It was a loud, jarring sound, the only sound filling my decaying office. I looked at the number on the screen. It was my father again. It was like he knew I was thinking about their offer.
The phone kept ringing. It seemed to go longer than normal, as if the voicemail refused to pick it up for me. I stared at it as it continued to ring. He wasn’t going away.
“Hello?”
“Hey, we’re only a few hours away. Meet us for dinner. We want to talk to you about the money you need,” my father said.
I didn’t know what to say. It was only a little while before I was supposed to talk to Tommy again. We were supposed to be meeting up at some point to honor our transaction. I was out of time. Did I agree to meet with my parents and risk missing out on the opportunity to get the money from someone else in case things didn’t go over well with them? Or did I skip out on my parents for a sure thing with Tommy only to alienate them further and ruin whatever Lucky and I had growing between us? I didn’t know which way to go.
“I’m not asking,” my father said, as if he could read my mind.
“Okay. Where do you want to meet?” I asked him.
“The Waldorf,” he said.
“Of course. When should I meet you?”
“We’ll meet you there around seven tonight. Do you need me to buy you something to wear?” he asked.
I laughed. “No, sir, I have something.” I really only had a couple of evening gowns that looked decent, classy enough, but I rarely had the occasion to wear one of them, so it wasn’t like I was always showing up in the same thing. Most of the time, my business attire worked for most appearances.
“Okay. I don’t mind buying you something nice to wear. Your mother and I agree that you need something to wear for formal events and places like this,” he continued.
Before saying anything back to him, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that he was really only trying to help me. What I perceived as controlling was just his attempts at look
ing out for me. I needed to remain calm and keep a cool head about everything. If he was willing to talk to me about the money I needed in order to save Older Brothers, I needed to be willing to let him talk about the annoying little details like my clothes, right?
“Don’t worry, I got it,” I said, refraining from snapping at him.
“Oh yeah, rich boyfriend and all,” he joked.
“Right. That’s exactly it.” It felt good to hear my father make a joke instead of trying to steer me in one direction or another. We were making progress. I wasn’t snapping, and he wasn’t insisting.
“Okay, we’ll let you go for now, but we’ll see you tonight at seven,” he said.
“I’ll be there.”
We hung up, and I saw that I had a missed call from Tommy. I knew he would only keep calling, wondering where I was. I needed to get out of the office in case he came looking for me, which was also a very real possibility. I pocketed my phone and threw my suit jacket over my shoulders as I got up to leave.