by Hamel, B. B.
“No, I don’t,” I admit. “I hate him right now. But I don’t think he’s a bad person.”
He laughs. “God, that’s so interesting. Don’t you think? Even after this, you can’t hate him.”
“He’s my dad.” I meet his gaze and smile. “You’re not.”
He laughs again, clearly loving it. I look away and go back to building. He turns away and goes back to adding to his own castle, expanding it outward, adding more small towers and walls, but not making it higher.
When I’m done with my bucket, I look up. “Check,” I call out.
Ryan comes running with a tape measure. He flips it out and pulls it, frowning at the number. Shaun watches, more curious than anything else.
“Well… Looks like we have a winner!” Ryan laughs and grins at me. “Just a hair over two feet. Congrats!”
“Great.” I stand up and kick the tower as hard as I can. Sand sprays all over and some of the kids glare at me. “Sorry,” I say to them.
Shaun watches me but he doesn’t laugh this time. I storm away, but he gets up and follows me.
“Look, I know you don’t trust my intentions here,” he says. “But I’m trying to help you.”
“Doesn’t seem like it.” I wish he’d leave me alone. I don’t want to feel bad for his childhood. I don’t want to know him at all. I just want to win this contest and never, ever see his stupid, gorgeous face again.
“Your father’s never going to step down on his own. But he might if I offer him a shitload of money. Can’t you see that?”
“No, I can’t.” I whirl around and glare at him. “You don’t know anything, Shaun. You just waltzed into my life, got me pregnant, asked me to marry you, and now tried to buy my company away from me. So no, I can’t see it. You’ve blinded me. I’m too angry to see a damn thing.”
He frowns and looks away. “I get that. But I’m trying to help.”
“You’re doing a really bad job,” I say. “If you want to help, just go away, okay?”
“You don’t want that,” he says as I turn. “You want me to stay. You want me to touch you again, Klara. You want me to pull you against my chest, press my lips against yours, and make you feel good.”
“Go to hell,” I say, climbing the steps. I don’t stop and I don’t turn around.
Because I know that if I do, he’ll see the lust in my eyes.
He’ll see that he’s absolutely right.
God, I want that. I want that so badly.
But I’m not giving in to him, and I’m not letting him win.
8
Shaun
“Jesus, Shaun, you really are insane.” Lora laughs as I finish telling her what I’ve been up to. “Seriously, what the hell were you thinking?”
“I wanted to buy the company and make her president,” I say. “I thought… I thought it would make her happy.”
“You can see why it didn’t though, right?”
I sigh and tilt my head back. It’s ten at night on the West Coast, and two in the morning back at Lofthouse Manor. I knew Lora would still be awake, fortunately. My little sister’s always been a night owl, and since she’s the baby of the family, she has absolutely no responsibilities.
“Not really,” I admit.
“She thinks you’re trying to steal the company,” Lora says with a laugh. “And even if you’re not, she resents you for trying to roll in and save her or whatever.”
“I’m not trying to save her. I’m trying to be a part of her life.”
“By buying her father’s company?” Lora groans. “You Lofthouse men are such idiots.”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, Shaun. But not that. Definitely not that.”
“Well, now I’m in this stupid contest with her.”
“Let her win.”
“I think her dad will realize if I do that. And I don’t think he’ll be happy.”
“Then you’re screwed. Sorry, brother, but I think you deserve this one.”
I grunt in response. “You’re a peach.”
“Whatever. Look, I’m tired. It’s after two.”
“I know. What are you even doing awake?”
“I don’t know.” She sighs. “Bored, I guess. Always bored.”
“Why don’t you move out of the manor? You spend all your time there. Aren’t you sick of it?”
“Let’s talk more about your bad decisions, how about that?”
I laugh. “Bye, Lora.”
“Bye, Shaun.”
I hang up the phone and stand. I stretch and yawn. I figure I’ll go to bed, get up early tomorrow to work out, maybe think about how to get out of this bad situation. As I step toward the door, my phone starts to ring again.
I figure it’s Lora, so I answer without looking. “Calling to talk about your awful life choices?”
“Nope,” Aldo’s voice says. “Calling to tell you to head on over to the empty parking lot on Kingsley and West Twelfth. It’s next to an elementary school.”
“You mean, it’s the elementary school’s parking lot?”
“Yeah, whatever. Better leave now. I gave Klara a head start.” He hangs up the phone.
I let out a sigh. I don’t feel like doing this. But at least I haven’t been drinking.
I head inside, get in my car, and find the school he’s talking about. It’s Los Angeles Elementary School, and it’s a forty-minute drive.
“Motherfucker,” I mutter to myself and hit the road.
* * *
Traffic is sparse but it still takes me way too long to reach the school. I expect her to be halfway finished by the time I pull into the parking lot, but she’s nowhere in sight.
I park and get out of my car. Two enormous canvases are set up side by side. The young guy from the sandcastle contest is standing there looking bored, but he perks up as I walk over.
“Oh! Shaun! Hey, man.”
“Ryan, right?”
He grins and nods. “That’s right, yeah, awesome.”
“I guess Klara isn’t here yet?”
“Not yet.” He frowns and looks at his phone. “She should be coming. I hope. I don’t know. Mr. Funk doesn’t tell me anything.”
“I bet he doesn’t.” I look at the big canvas. It’s leaning back at an angle, and the edges protrude slightly, so I can guess what this whole deal is.
“Okay, well, look. So, this is—”
“It’s a puzzle,” I say, walking over to the closest board.
I pick up a black velvet bag at the base. “These are the pieces. Image goes on the board. Whoever builds it first, wins. Right?”
“Uh, yeah.” He looks disappointed. “Do you have any, uh, questions?”
“Nope,” I say, dumping out the bag. “Looks pretty straightforward.”
“Okay, sure, cool, cool, cool.” He nods and sits down in a little folding chair. “I’ll just sit here and officiate.”
“Officiate what?” I ask.
“You. Doing the puzzle.”
“I mean, how? I can’t cheat. It’s building a puzzle.”
“Yeah, but you know. I gotta, like, make sure it’s all good.”
“Right. You do that.”
I turn to the puzzle on the ground and start organizing the pieces. I have no clue what the image is, but I start to get a better idea as I line out the edges. Once those are done, I put them up on the board, and start in on the middle.
Another car pulls into the lot as I start building the image out. It parks and Klara jumps out. She runs over, cursing as she stares at me. “How’d you get here so fast?” she asks.
“I ran,” I say.
“Shut up.”
“I did. Ran down the road.”
“He’s lying,” Ryan says. “Hey, Klara.”
“Hi, Ryan.” She glares at me. She’s wearing tight yoga pants and a low-cut tank top. My heart flutters ever so slightly at the sight of her. She looks fucking gorgeous, even just wearing some basic outfit. She was probably in bed b
efore this, based on her messy hair. She gathers it up and pulls it back, and I can’t help losing precious time watching her. “Looks like you’re playing now.”
“Looks like it,” I say with a shrug.
“Couldn’t have tried harder with the sandcastle thing?”
“Eh,” I say. “Wasn’t ready.”
“And now you’re ready. Great.”
“Hey, so, Klara,” Ryan says, walking over to her. “The rules of the game are—”
“I get it,” she says. “Build the puzzle. Whoever finishes first wins.”
“Right, but—”
“I got this.” She walks over to the bag and dumps it. “I was born for this.”
Ryan sighs and walks over to his chair again. I almost feel bad for him, but then Klara starts rapidly finding edge pieces, and the game is on.
I try to focus on my own shit, but it’s hard. Klara moves fast and efficiently, grabbing edges, trying them out, moving on. She sorts the rest as she goes and I think she has a better idea of what the final picture is than I do. From what I can tell, it’s some kind of home Polaroid, maybe pretty old. I think there are two people in it, but I’m not totally sure yet.
“You suck at puzzles,” she says as she gets her edges in. I’ve barely made progress on the middle and we’re nearly tied again.
“You suck at banter.”
“Please. This isn’t banter. This is shit talk.”
“Okay, and you suck at that, too.”
She snorts. “Come on. What are you even doing here, Shaun?”
“Building a puzzle.” I find a few lucky pieces and get some solid work done in a corner. “You?”
“Beating your sorry ass.”
“Oh, burn. I walked right into that.”
She grins at me. “You sure did.”
“Come on. You really think you can beat me? I had a head start.”
“Maye. But I’m catching up.”
I frown at her board. Sure enough, she’s actually catching up.
I start moving faster.
“Let me ask you something,” I say.
“Go for it.” She doesn’t even glance over as she slots a piece and moves on.
“You keep saying you want to turn Truth Hurts into something good. What, exactly, does that mean?”
She frowns. “You know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do. You mean, not a reality TV production studio?”
“No,” she says. “I mean, not necessarily. We’d still do that, I guess.”
“Oh, so you’d make like shitty documentaries about whales or whatever.”
She laughs. “I was thinking dolphins, but sure.”
“The dolphin doc was already done. You’re a few years behind.”
“Wow, was that a reference to The Cove? I didn’t know rich guys cared about the environment.”
“We don’t. I had my butler watch it.”
She laughs and I grin at her, but she slots another piece, so I get moving again. I’m still ahead, but not by much, and I need to work hard to match her pace.
“I thought about it,” she says, more to herself than anything. “And I’m, like, why can’t there be reality TV that isn’t just a bunch of young kids getting wasted and having sex with each other?”
“The Divas aren’t all young.”
“Yeah, because I pushed for that.” She sighs and hesitates, frowning at her pieces. “I just mean, there are other shows out there, really good reality shows that are more… real. You know what I mean?”
“Sort of,” I admit. “Isn’t there that Japanese show?”
“Terrace House,” she says. “Exactly. That’s a show where the major drama has to do with someone eating someone else’s food.”
“I think it was beef,” I say absently. I slot a few pieces and glance at her canvas. I’m still ahead, but barely.
“I want interesting characters,” she says. “Not these egotistical, outsized assholes. I want real people, like what The Real World used to be.”
“Before it became just a feeder for The Challenge.”
She laughs and nods. “Exactly.”
“The Challenge is a great show though.”
“Eh, it’s getting a little overproduced these days.”
“You really think you can make that happen?” I ask. “I mean, you think Americans will go for that?”
“I think they will,” she says. “Terrace House was really popular with US audiences. I think people are craving something real from their reality TV, and not just Bachelor-style sheen. Or that horribly written Kardashians stuff.”
“Hm,” I say, slotting a few more pieces. “I mean, I think you have something there. Do you have an idea for a show?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Tell me.”
“No, you’ll just make fun of me.”
“Aw, come on. I won’t.”
She glances over. She frowns at my board and is quiet for a little bit as we both work. I’m still ahead, and the image is becoming clear. I can see a man and a little girl standing on a beach, smiling with each other. The man has his arm around her. I just need to finish out the top right corner and I’ll be done.
She’s not too far behind.
We race to get it done. I grab the last few pieces, shoving them in. She’s throwing her own pieces in there, pushing them, turning them, making them fit. Her jaw is clenched and we’re inches apart.
“Done.”
Ryan comes over and peers over my shoulder. “You’re the winner,” he says.
I laugh and step back. “Oh, shit, that was close,” I say.
She glares at me for a long moment then shakes her head. “Congratulations, Shaun. You decided to show up.”
“You almost got me and I had a serious head start.”
She shrugs. “Whatever.”
“And look.” I tap the image. “Isn’t that you?”
“It’s definitely her,” Ryan says.
I stare at him. “Really, dude?”
“Right, sorry.” He walks over to his chair and slumps into it. “Third wheel, I guess,” he mutters.
“Yeah, it’s me,” she says, coming over to stand next to me.
We both stare at the image. It’s definitely Klara when she was a little girl, maybe nine. She smiling, a big goofy grin. Her red hair is a wild mess but I can see the hint of the beautiful woman she’ll grow up to be in the sweep of her jaw and her sparkling blue eyes.
And her father is next to her, an arm around her shoulders. He doesn’t look like the pompadoured asshole he is today. He’s tan, but not too tan, and his face is clean-shaven. They look happy together, like they’re just having a good day at the beach and asked some stranger to snap a picture of them.
“You ever see this before?” I ask her.
“No,” she admits. “But I’m pretty sure that’s the same beach we were on the other day.”
“Huh.” I tilt my head. “Interesting.”
“What?” She gives me a look.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, say it.”
“Well, the first contest happens to be at the beach you used to go with your dad all the time. And the second contest is a huge picture of the two of you from back when you guys were probably pretty close.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and bites her lip. “So what?”
“Don’t you think your dad is trying to say something?”
She stares at the pictures for a long time without speaking. “Maybe,” she says. “But the asshole could’ve just said it instead of going through this power trip.” She turns and walks toward her car.
I want to say something but, hell, I know she’s right. If her father is trying to use this whole experience as some crazy elaborate way to tell her that he loves her, the message is getting lost.
She climbs into her car. I watch her sit there for a long moment before she bashes her hands against the steering wheel. Ryan starts cleaning up the puzzles as Klara’s horn goes of
f. He jumps a little then shakes his head and just keeps taking things down.
Her car pulls out and she speeds away.
I turn and walk over to help Ryan. He smiles at me and nods as I help him put the pieces away, take the canvases down, and get the shit packed into the back of his truck.
“See you next time,” he says.
“Hey, do you know what the next contest is going to be?”
He shrugs. “There’s a clue.”
“Wait, what?”
“For the winner. You didn’t let me finish the rules, so I figured you didn’t care.”
I give him a look. “Tell me.”
He reaches across the seat and throws me something black and light. I catch it and frown. It’s a sleep mask with the words “Ask Me Anything” written across the front.
“What the hell is this?” I ask.
“I have no idea,” he admits. “I was just told to give that to the winner.”
“Thanks.”
He nods, rolls up his window, and heads out, leaving me alone in the parking lot.
I stand there for a long moment until I remember that this is an elementary school and it’s the middle of the night, so I get in my car and I get the hell away from there as fast as I can.
9
Klara
I wake up the morning after the puzzle challenge and don’t feel anything.
It’s strange. I thought I’d be angry. I was angry last night when I drove home from that school. I went to that elementary school, but I don’t bother telling Shaun that. It’s obvious that my father is trying to send me some kind of message through all these challenges, or at least it’s obvious to me now.
But I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to know whatever insane message he’s trying to send. Maybe years of drinking and drug use and putting on reality TV shows has finally scrambled his brain beyond all recognition, and the only way he knows how to tell me how he feels is through these insane game show antics.
I’m done with that.
I can’t keep doing this. I know it, deep down inside. I’m afraid of what comes next, afraid of what it’ll mean for me and my future. And I’m tired, so tired, and so angry.