by Laura Drewry
“I tried that, remember? And all they did was stitch me up and throw me back in the room with him. They sent him to juvie for a little while after he broke my arm, but he was coming back, we all knew that, and none of the other guys was going to do anything to help and I don’t blame them. I don’t know if I would’ve, either.”
“But why didn’t they put you somewhere else?”
“There was nowhere else for me to go, Maya. At the best of times, there aren’t many people who want to foster fourteen-year-old boys, and no one was going to take on a kid like me who’d already been busted with weed and who was either really accident prone or who liked to fight.”
“So what happened?” She eased her grip on him a little but didn’t step back, so he didn’t let her go.
“They fixed me up in emerg, sent me back to the house, and for a little while everything was fine. Ascough was in juvie and Jorcke wasn’t about to do anything on his own, but he was still getting messages from Ascough somehow and was only too happy to pass them on to me.”
“What kind of messages?”
“Stupid shit, like what Ascough was going to do to me when he got out.” He tightened his hold on her for a second. “And we all knew he’d do it, too.”
Maya set her hands flat against his chest, but she didn’t look up at him, just pressed the brim of the cap against him and sighed. “There had to be someone who could’ve helped, Jack. Anyone.”
“There was.” Using the end of his finger, he tipped Maya’s face up to his. “Burt and Genie.”
Barely nodding, Maya inhaled deeply over a long blink. “Did they know about this? Is that why they took you in?”
“No.” He traced the line of her jaw with his thumb, hating that he’d upset her like this, yet mesmerized by the fierceness in her eyes. “You’re the only one who knows; you’re the only one who needs to know.”
“This is why you are the way you are with them, why you…”
“Yeah. If they hadn’t taken me in when they did…” Jack huffed out a breath. “I don’t know what would’ve happened. Even if Ascough got sent somewhere else after juvie, he knew where I was, and he told Jorcke he was just getting started with that bat, and that he was going to make me wish I was dead.”
“Oh my God, Jack. You were fourteen.” The look she gave him then, her eyes so soft, so scared yet so angry, almost crushed him.
“Then the Ministry showed up one day, and I was sure they were bringing Ascough back, and I remember thinking I was going to die right there in that stupid room with all those metal bunk beds and Jorcke standing over me. But then they told me to get my stuff and the next thing I knew I was standing in the Carsons’ living room.”
It had been twenty years, and he remembered almost every detail about that moment. Genie smiling nervously in her jeans and cream-colored denim jacket, and Burt standing next to her in his navy sweatpants, his angry gaze fixed on Jack’s still-casted arm. In that moment, Jack felt it all slipping away again: Burt didn’t want a troublemaker in his house and it would be only a matter of time before he sent Jack packing again. But that all changed the second Burt stepped forward and shook Jack’s hand. There was kindness in the man’s eyes, a determination Jack had never seen in anyone else’s.
Will had stayed perched on the arm of the chair, his foot bouncing up and down like he was going crazy waiting for the adult crap to be done with, and Tammy stood in the doorway to the hall, eyeballing Jack like he was some kind of alien.
The house was clean, the TV had been muted, but one quick glance at the screen, and the theme song from Friends lodged in Jack’s head and wouldn’t leave. There was music coming from somewhere down the hall, sounded like Hootie & the Blowfish maybe, and the smell of meat loaf wafted out of the kitchen, making Jack’s stomach growl.
“Jack?”
Blinking past it, he wrapped his arm around Maya’s shoulders and turned her around so they were heading back to the hotel.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t know why I made you come out here in this.”
“I don’t care; it’s just rain. You didn’t have to tell me all this, Jack. I’ve always known you had your reasons for being so loyal to them, and yeah, sometimes it drives me crazy, but I’d never ever expect you to be any different than what you are.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t want you thinking it was just me being a dipshit and going along with Will because it’s Will. It’s not even him, it’s Genie. She’s the one I owe everything to, Will and Tammy are just sort of there by default. I mean, they’re great, don’t get me wrong, but if it wasn’t for Genie, I probably wouldn’t have had anything to do with Will after what he did to you, Snip. Shit, if it wasn’t for Genie, I never would have walked away from you at that stupid party, but…”
“But giving something to Will meant giving something to her.”
“Stupid, right?”
“No.” One word, spoken so clearly, with such certainty, he almost believed her. “Not at all, it’s just that…”
“Shit,” he muttered. “What?”
“Everything you told me makes me sick. I hate that you told me and at the same time I hate that you didn’t tell me sooner.” Lifting her cold, wet hand, she threaded her fingers through his, dangling over her shoulder, and looked up at him with a soft Snip smile. “But all you’ve done by telling me is make this harder.”
“How’s that?” God he loved the way her hand felt in his. So much smaller, and a hell of a lot softer; yet with that simple touch, she had the power to drop him to his knees.
“Well, in case you forgot,” she said. “I thought you were a pretty good guy before we came out here in this monsoon, but now…”
“Snip.” He smoothed his thumb over the top of her hand, slowly, wishing he could stop yet happy he couldn’t.
“I’m just sayin’.” Her cheeks pinked a little as her smile warmed. “It was hard enough to work around this loyalty thing before, but now that I know just how deep it goes, you’ve gone and made me…like you…even more, so how am I supposed to work around that, huh?”
“Four years,” he muttered, chuckling quietly. “Four years and I’ll be damned if I have the first clue.”
“Okay, well…tell me something awful about you, then. Maybe that’ll help.”
“Just one thing?” he snorted. “There’s a whole list.”
“Let’s hear it, then, smart ass. Come on, give me something to hate.”
“I snore.”
“I already know that. You slept on our couch a few times, remember?” They both winced a little at that.
“I spend way too much time in front of gaming consoles.”
“Doesn’t count,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s part of your job.”
“Okay, well, I suck at math.”
“So do I.”
“Not like me.” He laughed. “I leave the toilet seat up.”
“I leave it down.”
“I burp and fart and blame it on Pete.”
Her head dipped, she laughed, soft and gentle, then…yup…the snort.
“If you think guys are the only ones who burp and fart, you’re living in a dream world, my friend. The difference is that women don’t go at it like it’s an Olympic sport, that’s all. And we don’t blame the dog!”
Jack stared down at her, laughing over his disbelief. “Not gonna lie, Snip, you’re starting to gross me out.”
“Good. Give me something else.”
“Okay.” He chuckled. “When I spill something on the floor, I call Pete over to lick it up.”
“Big deal, I usually use my sock.”
“I drop the F-bomb a lot.”
Maya turned her frowning face up to him. “No you don’t.”
“Uh, yeah.” He nodded, his eyes wide. “I do.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it come out of your mouth.”
“Well, I don’t usually drop it in front of women.” He laughed, lifting his hands. “I’ve got a little bit of class, you know.”
“Is that right?” she scoffed. “ ’Cause I could have sworn it was you a second ago who admitted to blaming the dog for—”
“That’s different; Pete’s a guy, he gets it.”
“Whatever. Moving on.”
“Hmm, let me think for a second. Okay, I got it, and this is something I take very seriously, Snip, so you need to either get on board or hit the road, got it?”
Her only response was to tip her face up at him as she smirked.
“Toilet paper,” he said, drawing each syllable out slowly. “Should roll from the bottom.”
“Oh my God, that’s it.” She pulled her hand free and stepped away from him, laughing, but leaving a huge gaping space in those few inches. “We’re so done.”
The last curve of the trail opened up behind the ninth tee giving a full view of the hotel and restaurant, so while he hated that she’d let him go, it was probably for the best. In a town this size, they were sure to be seen by someone who knew someone who’d be only too happy to elaborate on the fact that Jack was holding Maya’s hand.
There wasn’t anyone on the tee, not in rain like that, but inside the restaurant, the tables along the window were already full and a couple people waved at Maya.
“So.” Needing something to do with his hand, Jack unzipped his jacket while they were still in the elevator. “What’s next? Want me to take you home?”
“No.” Her eyes, so blue and so wide, blinked back at him. “Unless you want me to go, then yeah.”
Jack didn’t even answer, just pressed his hand against the edge of the door when it slid open and waved her out ahead of him.
Pete was waiting for them, tail wagging, when they opened the door, and the first thing Maya did was drop to her knees so she could give him a thorough rub.
“Sweetie Petey,” she murmured. “Such a good boy, aren’t you?”
Jack edged by them and made his way to the other side of the room. Distance was good. “So what d’you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” Pushing herself to her feet, she cast a slow glance around the room, and while Jack might have imagined it, she seemed to purposely avoid letting her gaze linger on or anywhere near the bed. “We could play your Apollo game.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure, why not? Dibs on Mercy.” When he gaped back at her, she just rolled her eyes. “You can’t be friends with Nick and Carter and not play the Apollo games, Jack, and Mercy’s got the fastest ship.”
“Being fast doesn’t make it better, it just—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. You gonna stand there flappin’ your gums or are you gonna set it up?”
Controller in hand, his ball cap still on her head, Maya hopped up on the bed and sat cross-legged while he set up the game and pulled over a chair.
“Remember,” he said, chuckling. “We’re a team, we work together.”
“I know!” Clicking her tongue, she flapped the controller toward the console with about as much patience as a three-year-old waiting for an ice-cream cone. “What’s up first? Sector Selwyn, okay, good, that’s the easy one.”
The game started and they whizzed through the galaxy, dodging space junk and enemy ships as they raced for Selwyn. Leaning his elbows on his knees, Jack held the controller loosely between his hands, while Maya…well, shit he didn’t know what the hell she was doing.
With her gaze focused squarely on the screen and her tongue clenched between her teeth, Maya gripped her controller like a madwoman, leaning forward, then to the side, twisting the controller upwards, then down, sideways, and at one point, she pulled it straight back toward her chest like she was reeling in a fish or something.
The whole time she let out noises like Jack had never heard, part grunt, part curse, part celebration; it was all one long sound rolling out of her and not once did she take her eyes off the screen.
Jack had played Apollo2 a lot, but he’d never played with someone who sucked as badly as she did. If she wasn’t so determined, or so damn cute sitting there with her tongue stuck out like that, he would have ended it before they made it halfway to Selwyn, but then she actually managed to hit the fire button on time for once and took out one of the enemy speeders.
It was the only time she ever took her eyes off the TV and it was to look at Jack, her face lighting up like she’d just seen her first Christmas tree and her eyes dancing as if to say “pretty good, eh?” and then quick as lightning she was back to the game.
She crashed her ship on landing, but that didn’t slow her down; she simply jerked the controller around some more until Mercy somehow made it out of the ship and stumbled down to where Jack’s character, Kingle, was waiting.
“Hi.”
It was like she thought she really was Mercy, and that Kingle could hear her; so even though it was killing him to hold it in, Jack swallowed his laughter and replied.
“Hi.”
“Okay, we need to collect the weapons before we get over to the flats. Go!”
If he thought she sucked before, that was nothing compared to this part of the game. Every time she jerked the controller, Mercy either fell over or ran into something, but Maya never once lost concentration, she just barreled on, barking out instructions to Jack as though he’d never played before, and because it was the best time he’d had in a long time, he did everything she told him to, and then apologized every time Kingle got shot or knocked down.
It was a damn good thing Mercy and Kingle weren’t real or they’d have been dead a dozen times over by the time they finally got to the flats.
“Oh, come on!” Maya cried, throwing her hands up. “How did we not get there in time? What the hell’s wrong with this game anyway?”
“I-I-I don’t know.”
“You made it—how can you not know?” Shaking her head in disgust, she finally turned to look at Jack who was frantically trying to stop the tears that poured out the corners of his eyes. “What’s so funny?”
She was so indignant, so offended, it just made him laugh harder.
“Oh for God’s sake,” she grunted. “Let’s go again, but this time, get your shit together, will ya?”
“Yeah,” he snorted. “Sorry. I’ll do better this time. Are you ready?”
“Of course I’m ready. Are you?”
Chapter 12
“Everything you need to know is in that first kiss.”
Rachel Green, Friends, “The One with the Sonogram at the End”
They’d tried—and failed—about a dozen times to get their characters safely to Selwyn before packing it in. If Jack hadn’t laughed all the way through every game, they might have had a chance; next time Maya would partner with one of the system’s characters.
He took her down to the restaurant for dinner, where she got him talking about the gaming world. The more he tried to downplay it, the more she pushed until she knew all about the team he’d be working with on the new Apollo game and how many people TMJ had working on the new line of racing games they were producing.
So many times he tried to steer the conversation to something about her, but Maya wasn’t having it; she wanted to know everything she’d missed in the last couple of years—including his private life.
It was the first time in hours he didn’t show any hint of a smile.
“Come on, Jack, what’s the big deal? Has there been anyone serious since Christine?”
She knew he’d answer her eventually. It was Jack. He didn’t keep stuff from her; it just took him a while to cough up the information sometimes.
“No.” He sighed. “No one serious.”
“Ah, but there’ve been some not serious ones, right?”
“Maya.”
“How many?” She was teasing him, loving the way his face pinked up so fast. “Six? Seven?”
“I’m not—”
“More?” Gaping, she mouthed a silent “wow.” “Jeez, Jack.”
“None.” He ground the word out, his mouth barely opening, his eyes focused straight back on h
er. “There’s been no one since Christine.”
He had to be kidding. Any second now he’d start to smile, one of those big goofy grins of his, and then…but he wasn’t smiling. He just licked his bottom lip, sucked it in behind his top teeth, and sighed.
Maya waited another second or two, then leaned in a little closer. “No one? But you and Christine broke up a while ago.”
“Thank you,” he growled. “I’m aware of that.”
“Right. Sorry.”
It wasn’t funny; at least he didn’t look amused, so she probably shouldn’t be snickering at him, but she couldn’t help it. Maybe she wasn’t the only one whose parts were on high alert lately.
They talked about Maya’s parents, how much they enjoyed their trip to Red Deer over Thanksgiving, and how they were now talking about moving out there since that’s where their grandchildren were.
It was the perfect opening to tell Jack about Griffin, but for the life of her, Maya couldn’t get the words off her tongue. Not tonight. They’d had such a great day, and if he reacted the way Nick seemed to think he was going to, it would ruin everything. Besides, she still wasn’t a hundred percent sure what she was going to do.
So instead, she reminded him that he owed her a movie and popcorn, and since their choices were a horror movie, a chick flick, or the latest animated 3-D kids’ show, they ended up sitting in the very back row with paper glasses on, sharing a bucket of popcorn.
“You wanna come up?” They’d parked behind her apartment, but neither one had made a move to get out of the Jeep.
His hesitation answered before his mouth even opened. “Probably not a good idea.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I know; I’m just not ready for today to end yet.”
Nodding slowly, his soft eyes searched her face for a second before he finally shoved his door open. “Come on, I’ll walk you up.”
It was only about twenty feet from where they were parked to the door, but it was twenty more feet she’d get to spend with him, so she wasn’t about to tell him it wasn’t necessary. Neither of them hurried toward the door, but neither one of them said anything either, not until she unlocked the door and pushed it open.