I shut off the light, and the room is plunged into darkness.
The bed dips slightly. Asia returns from the bathroom and closes the bathroom door, leaving a sliver of amber light.
“Just keeping the monsters at bay,” she says cryptically, before curling into a ball. “Last night, there was a fire with shadows in the room.”
Now I feel like a total shit as I told the staff it was too hot in here last night with the fire going. I wondered if the heat had triggered my nightmare. I’m kidding myself. I know it’s got nothing to do with fire, quite the opposite in fact.
“Goodnight,” I say, wondering what monsters Asia has in her closet. I scrub a hand across my face. My monsters party it up in the Taj Mahal packed into Windsor Castle and stuffed into Lake Michigan before landing on Neptune.
Another Asia puzzle for me to unlock in the morning. I don’t like the thought of her afraid of anyone or anything.
The niggling thought from before returns. I know what it’s like to lose a brother, the black cavity in my chest, the unrelenting thorn that turns and bites into my flesh. I can’t get James back, but I can help Asia find her sister so she doesn’t have to go through what I live with every fucking day.
Half an hour later, when Asia is asleep beside me, I leave the bed and sit on the sofa, pull out my phone and hear a gruff voice say, “Jason?”
“Hey, man, heard it took you three hours to watch Sixty Minutes?” I say to Harlan Franco.
“Gotta say, shit happens, and you’re living proof.” Harlan barks back.
“You still yelling into mailboxes to send a voicemail?” I can’t help but grin.
“Figured out how to program your VCR?” Harlan lobs back.
A comfortable silence stretches between Los Angeles and Colorado.
We’ve been in each other’s faces for years. Numbers came easy for me while Harlan recorded 4.92 in the forty-yard dash.
“Hey. Need a favor,” I say. There’s only one person I’d ask this of, and it’s this man.
“You don’t have to ask for a favor, man. Just say what you need.”
Although we don’t see each other often being in different states, we’re tight, as are all the boarders from Stamford Brook. We are bound together, forever, a group of kids who didn’t fit in and found our own clique because of that fucking night.
“Brother, I need to engage your services.”
A gruff chuckle. “You and your fancy private school shit.”
“Same school you went to.” I grin.
“What’s the job? When’s the deadline?”
“I’ll text you through the details. I need everything there is to know about Asia Brown, her sister, and to find said sister.”
“On it.” He pauses. “Is this about protection?”
“Asia isn’t in danger.” Not with me around. “But I don’t know the status of her sister.”
“Praesidio,” he whispers.
“Praesidio,” I whisper back, then he’s gone.
That fucking memory slams into me with all the finesse of a hand grenade. Regret and rage wrap around my chest and pull tight.
I grip my hands together to stop slamming them into the wall.
“We fucked up. We got caught up in our own shit and didn’t see that one of our own was hurting.” I force the words out through clenched teeth.
The boarders from our senior year are huddled into a cell, waiting for the call that will either send us back to school or get us expelled. I hope like shit it isn’t expelled because I’m not going back to my grandmother’s house in Montana. Ever. I’ll take my chances as a seventeen-year-old living under a bridge with the mad conspiracy guy who wraps himself in Reynolds Wrap—or whatever the foil shit’s called—to stop the voices. Better that than go back to that house.
“But, I don’t regret one bit the message we put out there tonight. Don’t hurt one of ours,” Harlan Franco fumes.
Rage and despair fuel my blood. I want to punch something so hard I’m shaking. Second time in my life, I didn’t protect someone.
Second. Fucking. Time.
Zeb Carmichael grunts beside me. “Agreed. Though the execution could’ve been better.”
“What about your place on the team?” I throw Zeb a look, knowing that being the starter QB means a shitload to him. The first Black QB at the school.
“Don’t give a shit. This is far more important.” Fury shines in his arctic blue eyes.
“What about you, Jason? If we’re expelled, where will you go?” Harlan slides down the wall, his head resting on the cold concrete.
I shrug a tight shoulder that I want to snap off. “Don’t care. I’m not going back to my grandmother’s.”
“You can come to mine,” Zan Gillard says distractedly, bouncing on his heels.
My head shoots back. “You think after tonight your parents are going to welcome me with open arms, after what happened to Br—”
“Don’t say it. Jesus. Fuck.” Zan Gillard now paces the small space, his voice anguished. “I had no idea… I had no fucking idea, and I should have.” His easy, charming smile is now gone. He swats at his eyes. “What if we were too late…”
I stand and grab his shoulders. I know he’s barely keeping it together. We’re all holding on by the barest of threads. If one of us breaks, then we all break.
“We weren’t too late.” I squeeze his shoulders.
“We got him out in time,” Gabriel says, his voice icily calm.
“We’ve got you, brother,” Zeb and I say the same time as Harlan.
If Zeb hadn’t noticed the smoke, and Harlan and I the flames… Without a second thought, we’d hauled the kid’s butt out of the burning building. It had shocked the shit out of me when desperate, anguished eyes stared at me, his face melting.
And it wasn’t just any kid.
A boy we should have been looking out for, especially this boy who didn’t want to be treated differently, but he was. Badly. And I should have known. When I’d arrived here, I’d pissed my bed for weeks. Angry, frightened, and so fucking lonely to be here without James, I tackled Harlan thinking he was making fun of me. We’d fought until we started laughing, covered in bruises and cuts. He’s had my back from that day, and I had his. He said nothing about the sheets, instead helped me swap them out for fresh ones. Other boarders had arrived through the years, and we banded together. All with baggage. Some with the amount of an airport carousel, some with only a few bags, but those fuckers were scarred. If anyone should have known what the kid was going through, it should have been me.
The pathetic pack’s ringleaders had crumpled at the sight of Zeb, Harlan, Gabriel, Zan, Holden, and me walking toward them. We never laid a finger on any of them. We didn’t have to, judging by the terrified looks on their faces. They’d confessed to the bullying, the taunts, the whispered threats that had been going on behind our backs, and we hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t noticed, and I knew what it felt like to be different, to be the strange kid no one liked. So in a desperate, insane act to fit in, this kid had nearly killed himself. All for a fucking dare.
His blue eyes were desperate as we’d doused him in water and waited for the ambulance to arrive. We took a pact that night that we’d all take the fall for the fire. When we were asked by the superintendent who’d started it, we’d all put up our hands.
A pact was born that night along with the band of the brotherhood.
I’d inked Praesidio on my right hip. Whenever James was frightened, he’d gripped my hip. Maybe we had some womb thing going on, but it always calmed him.
The others had it inked in different places. It didn’t matter where. Meant the same thing.
Praesidio - Protect.
Chapter Nine
Asia
“J, don’t!”
An anguished cry straight from hell has me sitting up, my heart racing at attack levels. The bed is shaking as the moaning, screaming man beside me twists the blankets and sheets around him.
“Jason.” I
scramble to his side of the bed and touch his arm. “It’s okay.”
Nothing.
This really isn’t okay. I know the man has demons, but by the look on his contorted face, they are riding his soul to hell.
I grab his hand as he twists and turns.
“Jason, it’s okay.” I soothe his bunched muscles.
It isn’t okay, but I wish I knew what it is.
I yelp when his hand streaks from the covers and barely misses my face.
At the noise, his eyes open and latch onto mine.
I suck in a breath at the pain and torment in his eyes.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be all right.” I run one hand up his arm while holding his other hand. His grip is nearly popping my knuckles, but I suck back the pain, intent only at helping this tortured soul.
His face is dripping with sweat, his skin the color of snow. I don’t know how long I soothe and hold his hand, but slowly the tension bleeds from his face.
“Talk to me, Asia. Tell me about your apartment block. Your makeshift family,” he grinds out.
I’m thinking I need to get him some water, start Googling counseling sessions for the man, and I need a slug of tequila to quieten my nerves.
In my twenty-five years, I have never seen anyone so frightened—no, terrified—and it wounds my heart to see the heartbreak crash across his face.
I settle in to tell the story of my amazing friends and neighbors.
“You’d hate living in my apartment block where everyone looks out for each other. If Mary in 2J can’t get to the store because Marcus, her youngest, is sick again and she has to choose between meds and food for four, we get her food and meds.” I smile, the toothy face of Marcus filling my mind. I squeeze Jason’s hand. He squeezes back. “We have movie night every two weeks in alternating apartments. We share a Netflix account and vote on the movie. Sometimes it’s adults-only night, which is fun, but when it’s G-rated, it’s really fun watching the kids’ faces.”
He squeezes my hand. “It sounds like hell on earth. All those people knocking on your door to hang out, exchanging breath, sticky hands going into a single tub of popcorn. Having a group choose a movie? I’d rather pluck hairs out of my balls,” he says in a growly tired way, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Yeah, not your scene at all.” I stop stroking his arm as he seems calmer, more relaxed.
“Don’t stop.” His eyes latch onto mine. “Please,” he whispers.
I swallow over the lump of emotion and run my hand up and down, tracing over hard muscle, the dips and plains.
“We probably could all move to a better part of town, but we all have our reasons for staying.” I swallow another lump, and my eyes get filmy. A happy, carefree, and drug-free image of my big sister before opioids became her family forms in my mind. “None of us are related, but we are one family. Like a mismatched sweater that everyone took a hand at stitching together. Too small in some parts, too big and baggy in others, a couple of holes here and there because no family is perfect.”
“It sounds appalling. Who would want to wear such an abomination of a sweater?” he says in a sleepy voice. “Family,” he whispers. He’s silent for a beat, and I think he’s asleep before he asks. “What are your monsters?”
Nothing like yours.
“A little bit afraid of the dark, especially in unfamiliar surroundings.” I fuss with the blanket. “I was left alone at night during a thunderstorm when I was little.”
It isn’t even a memory but a fear that has stuck with me throughout my life. Mom had apparently confessed to my grandmother that she’d left me and Jamaica home and gone partying. My mom left not long after and didn’t return.
“Family,” he whispers, and I swear I hear a hitch in his voice, then he’s asleep.
“I’d say sweet dreams, but I don’t think you have any.” I run my hand across his forehead, tuck the blankets into him, and crawl to my side of the bed. Once again, I’m hooked by his arm, and my back is to his front. He nuzzles my hair and sighs. His leg is over mine in a possessive gesture that I don’t mind one little bit. His arm is around my waist and his heat is sinking into my bones. But his fears, his torment, his vulnerability, seep into me.
I want to know this man.
Scrap that.
I’m going to know this man.
“Asia.” Jason’s voice calls my name five minutes after falling asleep in his arms. The smell of coffee wafts into my nose, and I open an eye then sit up. There on the bedside table is a caramel latte with extra cream and sprinkles. I smile, take a sip, and beam at my boss, my heart doing a little leap.
“Did you drive into town to get me a coffee?”
He scowls down at me, looking hot in a black sweater and black jeans. The man needs an injection of color.
“Of course not. I was in town on business and to get you this.” He hands me an ugly grandma floral print nightie, which will have me covered from my neck to my feet.
“I’m not wearing that.” I make a sign of the cross. “It’s hideous.” I tug at his black (what else) shirt I slept in, which has slipped on my shoulder and where he now glares. “I quite like your shirt; it’s rather toasty. So, it’s either my cute pajamas or this shirt.” I take another sip of coffee and moan.
“Stop moaning,” he shouts at me.
Wow, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
“It’s the caramel. Mixed with coffee, cream, and sprinkles? This coffee is a cupcake for the mouth,” I inform my grumpy boss, who after that nightmare must be running on fumes.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do today, and I want to make a start.”
I check the time on my phone and jolt, throwing the covers off the bed. “Shit, is that the time?” I hastily make the bed out of habit. “Why didn’t you wake me?” I turn from the drawers to find his gaze on my legs, which is weird because they are nothing special. Being five foot one and a bit, there isn’t that much of them.
He shrugs a shoulder. “Thought you could use the sleep.”
I straighten. “After last night you mean?”
It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room. “I think you need to talk to someone about your nightmares.”
“No!”
I take a step toward him, the anguish and heartache on display before he wipes his face clean.
“I don’t pay you to sit around and chat. And we will never talk about me, is that understood? Boundaries, Ms. Brown, please don’t forget them. We are both here for one thing. Me to get the house and you the money. Meet me downstairs in ten minutes.” He slams his door on the way out.
Wow, talk about being put in my place. My face burns, along with my anger. I thought we had a little something building here. A little thawing of the twenty-foot barrier of ice between us. But no, we do not. It is only in my imagination.
Tonight, I will sleep on the chair, the floor, in the bath, but I will not soothe the beast of a man who thinks of me as nothing more than a verbal punching bag.
Chapter Ten
Jason
I’ve fucked up.
Asia sits across from me in Gran’s home office. Actually, Asia doesn’t sit across from me. A fire-breathing dragon sits in her place. Since I acted like a fifteen-year-old this morning because again, I woke tangled in Asia after another beast of a nightmare where she talked me down. I like her; I want to not like her, but it’s impossible. She’s slowly creeping under my skin, and I cannot allow myself the distraction. So, for the millionth time I remind myself what our end games are. She’s the white picket fence, and I’m going through life alone. I can’t risk the loss of her in my life when she leaves, because everyone important in my life always does. My twin brother and mom had no choice. My father did, and even Gran walked away instead of wanting to be with me.
“Do you have the figures for the McMurtle deal?” I ask.
We are both logged into the mainframe back in California.
She taps on her keyboard, and a file floats into m
y inbox.
It’s the most she’s said all day.
I could have gotten the figures myself, but I’m trying to soothe the ruffled feathers of my assistant.
I note she is wearing a blue scarf, which indicates she’s having a bad day.
Ditto.
Mine is because I’m blurring lines which should not be blurred, and because I took out my issues on her and have yet to find a way out of the hole I dug myself.
I know the instant she’s left the room. My phone pings and I read her text.
ASIA: Out to lunch, do not disturb. I mean it, Jason. Do. Not. Disturb.
I have a conversation with the head of the household, a quiet, watchful woman, who will ensure there is a fire in our room every night so Asia’s monsters don’t come out and play.
My stomach complains that I’ve not eaten, and it’s after two. I amble to the dining room, surprised to find my grandmother there.
“I thought you’d have eaten hours ago.” I lower myself into a chair, and before I’ve snapped the napkin, a plate is put in front of me by the smiling Swedish help.
I smile in delight.
“Thank you. I didn’t know you’d remember it’s my favorite when I was a boy.” Frankfurters, mashed potato, corn, and a large dollop of ketchup.
My heart is tender when I look at my grandmother. “And James’s favorite as well,” I say before I can stop myself.
Pain contorts my grandmother’s face.
“Shit, sorry.” Blood drains from my head, and I mentally clock myself. I’ve broken the golden rule by bringing up James’s name. After his death, we never spoke his or mom’s name in our weekly phone call. It was as if my grandmother had blocked them. Frozen them in time, maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never gone back to the room James and I shared here. It could be a shrine or completely empty. Same for my parents’ room.
It just hurts too damned much.
“Will Asia not be joining us today?”
Bound to her Fake Fiancé Boss: A Fun Sexy Feel Good Billionaire Office Romance Page 8