by D. B. Webb
“So Madison and the kids are doing great, thanks for asking.” I had barely sat down in his office before Devlin started bombarding me with his personal life’s details. I hadn’t asked about Madison and the kids because I really didn’t care. He was my business partner, not my friend. Not anymore at least.
“I’m back with Ryan. You remember her, right?”
I was being a dick, and I knew it. Honestly, I really just wanted to see the look on his smug little face when I broke the news that I was with his ex again. Years with Madison and I knew he had to regret letting Ryan go.
If he was affected by the news, he didn’t show it. Which pissed me off further. I had expected an outburst, yet I hadn’t even gotten so much as a thick swallow.
“Oh?” he asked casually. As if I hadn’t just told him I was back with the girl he had threatened be about ten years ago.
“Yep.” I let the ‘P’ pop at the end. He gave a smile, and I wanted to punch him in his damn mouth. He didn’t get to smile about this.
“I’m happy for you, man! How did that happen?”
Suddenly telling Devlin about Ryan didn’t seem as fun. He was too happy. Too nonchalant.
“We ran back into each other in New York… I thought you’d be pissed?”
“Why would I be pissed?” It was then that I noticed the slightly higher octave of his voice. I was getting to him, he was just a good liar.
“Dunno, I guess considering you threatened me last time—”
He rolled his eyes dramatically, “I didn’t threaten you.”
“Hmm, really? So why exactly did you go to my dad about dating her?”
“Because she wasn’t yours to have, jackass!”
His sudden outburst had my internal asshole smiling ear to ear. I had gotten to him. I was thrilled that I had what he never could. I loved that there was nothing he could do about it now. He may have played a small part in me losing Ryan, but it was enough of a role for me to hate him.
“You cheated on her. Or do you need to be reminded of that?”
“I remember,” he grumbled. He played with the pencils that were lined up perfectly on his desk.
“So why exactly didn’t I have a right to take her? At least I appreciated her for who she was, what she was.”
“Dude, have you even heard of bro code? You don’t exactly date your best friend’s ex.”
“Dude,” I mocked, “Have you heard of being faithful to a woman you planned on proposing to?”
“I messed up,” he shrugged. The dick fucking shrugged as if he were saying he forgot to water the damn flowers or flush the toilet. That had my blood boiling. I thanked God that Ryan had gotten out of her relationship with him. Because while I didn’t come close to deserving her, Devlin didn’t even deserve to think about her pretty face.
“You messed up?” I ground through my teeth. “I’d fucking say so.”
“Well, it seems like she’s chosen a great guy to settle down with. Seeing how you’re such a saint and all.”
“I’d never do anything to hurt her.” My tone was a warning. He was treading on very thin ice.
“Except that one time when you left her in California and you ran back to New York where you fucked your way through your twenties. Anyone who saw her could see you broke her.”
I slammed my hands down on his desk, but he seemed unfazed. That crazy bastard wasn’t even scared of me.
“And why do you think I had to leave her behind? Let’s take a trip down memory lane where my supposed best friend called my dad and ratted me out!” I was yelling, deep and bellowing. People had stopped outside of Devlin’s door and were watching us with curious and scared eyes.
“I did what I thought was best for you.”
I pointed my finger in his face and leaned across the desk. I ignored as the pencils toppled off the desk when I called him out. “Bullshit. Bullshit, and you know it. You threw a little fit because if you didn’t get her, nobody could.”
Again he looked unfazed. He lazily looked into my angry eyes and smiled.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
I stood up and fixed my jacket. I was so fucking done with him and his lies.
“Remember we have a conference call on Wednesday!” Devlin called after me as I left his office. I returned his flippant reminder with the bird and walked away without giving him a second glance back.
Kayla was drunk. And by drunk, I meant full-blown singing Whitney Houston in her underwear drunk.
“Ryan, baby, you are still too reserved. For a girl getting dick, you’d think you’d be a bit looser!” She giggled as she shimmied to whatever pop song was blasting through Jackson’s surround sound.
“Kayla, you are wasted!” I laughed back. But I didn’t deny the part about getting laid, because it was true.
“You know, I’m really surprised you still gave it up to Jackson after finding out who his dad was!”
She spun around in circles, a bottle of wine in her hand.
Who his dad was? Benjamin Bennett? I had known who his dad was since we had first met?
“What?”
“His dad!” She stopped spinning and gave me a, duh, look.
“Benjamin?” I asked, still confused as to why I would change my mind about Jackson because of his dad.
“No, silly. His actual dad. Jeffrey.”
Though she continued to spin, I felt like my world had suddenly froze. Jeffrey? Who the hell was Jeffrey?
“When Jackson called me the night he found out his bio dad was the one in the accident, I thought for sure you’d hate him if you ever found out,” she continued, completely unaware that I had no idea what she was talking about. “But here you guys are. Lovebirds loving.”
The accident?
“Accident?” I asked stupidly. I still wasn’t following.
“Yeah, the one…” she paused and gave me a weird look. Her eyes widened. “You don’t know?” she screeched.
“Know what?” I demanded.
“I’m going to murder Jackson.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I should be the one to tell you. Forget I even said anything.”
She slowly slid to the ground and took a large swig from the wine bottle. I watched her and she watched the television that was silently playing an eighties rom com. She was avoiding eye contact. She knew something.
“Kayla what aren’t you telling me?”
She peeked out of the corner of her eye, “I can’t tell you. I made a promise that I wouldn’t. But when Jackson tells you, try to hear him out. He’s done a lot of shit for you that you don’t even know about.”
I wanted to hold her hostage and force the information out of her, but I knew it was futile. She wouldn’t give me what I wanted. She was too loyal to do that to Jackson.
I wondered if what she knew had anything to do with what Jackson had promised to tell me when he returned. My stomach twisted nervously as we slipped into silence and watched the screen of the TV. Neither of us felt like dancing anymore.
Please don’t let this ruin us, I silently begged.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be that bad. Could it?
I arrived back to a quiet home. But Bob had informed me that Ryan had arrived after work, so I knew she was somewhere in my house.
“Ryan?” I called.
When I didn’t get an answer, I dropped my suitcase and bounded up the stairs. It was already ten at night and I was dead tired from a day of traveling.
When I got to my room, I found my beautiful girl curled up on top of my comforter of my bed. I watched her for a moment, allowing her a little more time of peace because when she woke up, I was telling her everything. No more excuses. No more time. I had let this drag out long enough.
Slipping out of my dress pants, I slipped into bed next to her. The movement of the bed must have woken her, because she groaned sleepily and peeked her eyes open. Her mouth curled into a sleepy smile.
“When did you get here?”
I pushed her hair out of her face and brushed my thumb across her cheek slowly. If what I told her changed her mind about us, I wanted to have this last moment together. I wanted to remember her like this. Tired eyes, crazy hair, mine.
“How was California?” she asked in a quiet voice. She didn’t sound like herself. She almost sounded guilty. About what, I wasn’t sure.
“I shouldn’t have gone,” I told her truthfully. The fact was, I wished I hadn’t. I had wasted my time. I went in hopes that seeing my biological father for the first time in my life would be some life-altering event. That everything would fall into place. He wouldn’t have cancer, and we could go on fishing trips or some stupid shit like that. I wouldn’t ever admit that to anyone, but it was the truth. I had hoped that I was wrong about him, about the situation, about my entire life.
But I hadn’t been wrong.
My biological father was dying, and he had left me to be raised by a monster simply because Benjamin agreed to line his wallet.
My best friend was a dick who hadn’t ever deserved to call Ryan his.
And the love of my life was going to find out that my family was directly tied to the accident that claimed her mother’s life.
“Bad business?” Her joke was half-hearted and sounded forced. Something was definitely wrong.
“Ryan…” I wasn’t going to lie to her any longer. But how was I supposed to tell her the truth? “I was visiting my father,” I rushed without thinking. Apparently direct and to the point was how I was going to tell her.
“Benjamin?”
The way she spoke told me that she knew that’s not who I was talking about.
She knew.
“You know?” My voice was forced and low. It sounded as shocked as I felt.
“About Jeffrey? Yes. Kayla’s drunk ass spilled the beans… But there’s more than you not being Benjamin’s, right?”
With a heavy sigh, I pulled myself up. I couldn’t tell her this while laying next to her. Scrubbing my face with my hands, I decided to just go for it. Rip off the bandaid. There was no other way to go about something like this.
“Benjamin isn’t my dad,” I acknowledged. She sat up and nodded her head, willing me to continue. “My mom had an affair with my biological dad, Jeffrey Sawyer. From what I gather, mom tried leaving dad—er, Benjamin—but he wouldn’t have it. He paid Jeffrey a hefty amount of money to stay away. He left mom, and me, and we never heard or saw from him again.”
Her soft touch on my arm pulled me from my thoughts. I watched it as she slowly rubbed my arm in attempt to comfort me.
“I’m sorry…” she told me quietly.
I nodded my head and cleared my throat. That wasn’t even close to being the hard part.
“There’s more,” I warned her. She glanced up at my hesitantly, but remained silent. “We never heard from him again until he was in an accident. His wife, Jane, called mom because she knew he had a son. She knew that we had given him money before and so she needed help. They needed help.”
“Was he hurt badly?”
Her words were soft and thoughtful, and that cut me as though they were sharp. Because she had no reason to be worried about Jeffrey. Not when he had been the cause for so much pain in her life.
“No, he was fine.”
“Why did he need money?” she asked, confused.
“They needed Benjamin to make sure that his name was never connected to the accident. He was fine. But he…”
He killed your mom.
I didn’t want to tell her, but it was necessary.
“Ryan, there’s a reason the man who caused your parents’ accident was never found.”
I licked my lips, my body tense from revealing such an important piece of information to Ryan. The truth was out there now. It hung around us like a shadow. I watched as she processed what I had told her. I saw the confusion melt into realization and realization into shock. The pink color of her skin paled and her beautiful eyes widened. Absentmindedly she touched her fingertips, the ones that had just been running up and down my arm, to her lips on a silent gasp.
“Jeffrey…” she choked out after a moment of strangling silence, “Jeffrey was the one…” she couldn’t say the words. She shouldn’t have needed to say them. They were my cross to bear. My burden that I had carried around with me for years.
“Jeffrey was the man who killed your mother,” I confirmed. “And then we paid off the witnesses to make sure nobody found out.”
“Your dad?”
“My adoptive dad did, yes.”
I waited for her to say something. That she hated me. That she never wanted to see me again. That I and my family had ruined her life. But I was met with a stillness from unsaid words. Words I could see running through her mind because her eyes were like windows. I knew she had things to say, but she was refraining from them.
I waited for her to do something. Slap me. Get up off the bed and leave the room. Turn away without a second glance back. But instead she sat motionless like a statue. But I saw the pain etched across her face. I saw the way she was struggling to breathe evenly.
“Your dad… your dad killed my mom?” she asked hoarsely.
“My biological…” I stopped myself from repeating that he was only my biological dad and nothing else to me. Because it didn’t matter that Jeffrey had never been a real father to me. It didn’t matter that I never knew him. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t even met him until this week. Because the truth was, I shared his DNA. He was my father, and he killed her mother. And to add insult to injury, Benjamin had paid off the the witnesses to keep them quiet. Jeffrey would have been caught. He would have paid for what he did, but my family kept the entire thing quiet.
We lived with the heavy truth, while Ryan walked around each day wondering who had taken her mother from her.
I nodded and waited.
Waited for her words. Her goodbye. Her hatred. Her tears.
I waited.
And I would have waited forever if she had asked.
But she didn’t.
She took a deep breath and began…
The information he had told me made sense—logically at least. But I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Because of Kayla, I had known Benjamin wasn’t his biological father. I knew his real dad was named Jeffrey. But I hadn’t ever considered that the truth that Kayla kept from me, that Jackson had kept from me, was that detrimental.
Jeffrey killed my mom. I had a name to place with the man who had taken her from me. I had a family to blame for the lack of justice we had received in her death.
It couldn’t be true.
But as I forced myself to look at Jackson, I knew it was true. He looked in about as much pain as I was feeling.
Not his fault, I told myself. It’s not his fault.
But had he been the one to pay off the witnesses?
“You said we paid off the witnesses…” I didn’t know how to ask what needed to be asked. If he had been the one to keep things quiet, could I forgive him?
“Benjamin and Johnna… They paid off the witnesses. A fact I didn’t know until Jane called me one day and asked for more money. Apparently, dad had sent them hush money too.”
But he had known Jeffrey killed mom. And he hadn’t said anything. Did that make him just as responsible?
“But you knew…”
“I knew.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
He took a moment before he answered, “I was still waiting for my birthday so I could receive the money from my trust. Benjamin threatened me with that and with divorcing Mom… which was on of the reasons I left you ten years ago. He threatened me with that when he found out about our relationship. He wanted me to date women who would benefit our family and his business…” He rolled his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands into them.
“Natalie?” I questioned. He didn’t remove his hands, but nodded in answer.
Why h
e dated her made more sense. I was shocked that anyone’s father would care that much about who their son dated, but then again I wasn’t part of their world.
A world where you could get away with murder.
That thought ripped me back into reality.
“So you didn’t tell anyone that your da—Jeffrey was the reason for my mom’s death because you wanted your money?”
My words were harsh, even to my own ears, and I could feel Jackson tense beside me. I knew that he wasn’t a cruel man. I may have not known him for very long, but I did know that. But I couldn’t get past the fact that he wouldn’t have told anyone…
“No.” His voice was firm, and he sounded kind of angry. But I was still in too much shock to care too much for his feelings. “I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want my mom to be left with nothing. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want you to find out. I didn’t want you to hate me…”
“Why would I hate you?” I demanded. But I knew he had a point. I could see why he was worried I would find out that his bio dad had been the one to kill Mom.
“I don’t know, Ryan,” he ran his hands through his hair, teeth gritted, “Maybe because I’ve hated myself since the day I left you, and I figured you probably did too.”
“But I haven’t… I didn’t ever hate you.”
“I know that now.”
We were quiet for a moment. I could hear his heavy breaths. They were shakier than normal, and I suddenly found myself wanting to comfort him. But my stubborn streak didn’t let me. He didn’t deserve my comfort.
At least that’s what I told myself.
“Do you hate me now?” he asked me so quietly that I could have missed it if I wasn’t as hyperaware of him as I was.
“No.” My voice was a contrast to his small one. It was confident and loud. I didn’t hate him. Hell, I didn’t think I ever could even if I tried. And in the past years, I really had tried.
His beautiful amber eyes trailed up my body and rested on my face. I could see the worry that they held.
“I’m so sorry,” his cracked voice told me.
“I know.”
And I did. I could read his expression—the way he held himself.
We had both been dealt shit hands when it came to life. Him even more than me. It was then that I realized we needed to stop blaming ourselves for things that were out of our control.