36. Jason
36
JASON
W ill and Kristin had built a mammoth of a house next door to Maddie and Luca. I didn’t blame them. It was a great spot, and being right on the water gave the kids something to do.
A long dock jutted off the shore. A skiff was tied off on one of the posts. Instead of driving to Maddie and Luca’s, Steve and Erica had gotten a small boat to cross the bay when they went to poker nights. Apparently, he had used it to come over to Will’s place to work out today.
I wasn’t quite sure what the exercise regimen was going to be. Steve was built like King Kong. Isaac seemed more of a cardio and abs kind of guy. Will and Chase were more well rounded. Luca probably just wanted a nap.
After he and Maddie had made their pregnancy announcement at poker, he ’fessed up and said that Maddie had been having a rough time of the first trimester.
Morning sickness sounded like a bitch, and I had never been so glad to have testicles. Luca was a champ of a husband and stayed up with her while she was puking her guts out at all hours of the night.
I stood on the front porch of Will’s house and rang the doorbell. Mel was working, and Pops was clearing out his stuff from the airfield.
He had told me to stop hovering and stay the hell out of his way.
I was glad the guys had extended an invite. I had some steam I needed to blow off. Sweating it out seemed more productive than pacing a hole into the apartment floor.
“Hey, man,” Will said as he opened the door.
Unless jeans, a hoodie, and socks were the new workout gear, he looked wholly unprepared to break a sweat. Then again, I was just confused why he was wearing a hoodie in the middle of the summer anyway. Fall was right around the corner, but it wouldn’t cool off enough to bust out the long sleeves for at least a few more months.
“Hey.” I stepped inside and followed him through the maze of kids’ toys. “Thanks for having me.”
He waved it off dismissively. “Dude, we’re not strangers. Anyone who gets in the poker club is automatically family. I’m just glad I’m not the new guy anymore.”
Well, okay then. “I guess I am the fresh meat,” I said as I trailed behind him down a set of stairs.
The rest of the guys were already there, sprawled out on bean bag chairs, couches, and recliners. To their credit, there was a treadmill in the corner next to some free weights. No one was even looking in that direction.
Apparently, I was the only one dressed to work out, and I realized that I was missing a rather large part of the puzzle.
Steve was still half in uniform. His dress shirt was untucked, and he had a beer in his hand. Isaac and Luca were in suits. Chase was in swim trunks and a t-shirt that had a faded charity kickball logo on the front. Luca was busy unpacking a brown bag that had the Revanche logo stamped on the side.
“This is a beer affair, DeRossi,” Steve grunted from the spot where he had his feet propped up and a beer bottle hanging from his fingertips. “This ain’t the place for your fancy shit.”
Luca cocked an eyebrow. “Did I say I was sharing? Mind your business, Pelham.”
“Oooh, is someone a little touchy today?” Chase howled. “Are you getting sympathy hormones? You gonna lose the six-pack, DeRossi?”
What in the poker club testosterone was happening?
Luca shrugged out of his burgundy suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, showing off his muscled forearms. It was a silent promise to Chase that he’d beat the hell out of him if he didn’t shut his mouth. Luca looked a hell of a lot scarier with his double sleeves of tattoos on display.
“So, uh,” I stuttered. “We gonna work out?”
Steve snickered from his La-Z-Boy throne. “No one filled him in?”
“Nope. Couldn’t risk him telling Mel,” Isaac said.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We don’t actually work out,” Will said as he pulled a pair of beers out of a mini-fridge and offered one to me.
I wasn’t big on drinking. I’d have one here and there, but I didn’t feel like it today. The only time I had really let myself go was when Mel and I got drunk off our asses on cheap tequila. That had been a fucking awesome terrible life choice.
Day drinking was something I especially avoided.
“I’m good, man. Thanks, though,” I said as I took an open seat on the end of a loveseat, closest to Steve .
He peered at me suspiciously over the rim of his beer. “You’re not your old man, you know.”
“I know.”
“Mel knows that, too,” he said quietly. “She wouldn’t have given your ass the time of day if you were.”
Isaac dropped a bottle of Cheerwine into my hand. Now, that, I happily accepted. I noticed he wasn’t drinking either.
“Pretty sure I’m supposed to be the older and wiser one,” I said with a chuckle.
Steve dropped his shoulders and took a pull from his beer. “Life has a way of knocking us all around. At some point, arbitrary things like ages don’t matter, and you realize that people wade through deep shit in every season of life. It’s best just to put labels aside and decide whether you’re gonna sit in the mess with them or carry them through it. Sometimes it’s a little of both.”
Well, bend me over and fuck me sideways. “I think that’s the most I’ve heard you talk since I’ve been back.”
He shrugged. “I have my moments.”
Luca had prepared himself a whole fucking meal. Meats and cheeses were splayed out on a cutting board. There was sushi and rare steak on another plate, and he had a bottle of wine breathing in a decanter.
“What the fuck is all that?” Chase asked as he kicked his flip-flopped feet up on an ottoman.
“A big fucking secret,” Luca said as he poured himself a glass of red wine—an expensive as hell bottle of syrah. “If any of you fuckers tell Maddie I’m eating all the things she can’t, I’ll sic Nonna on you.”
Steve smirked. “I’ll take my chances. Nonna fucking loves Erica.”
“Not a damn word, Pelham,” Luca said as he shoveled in a sushi roll .
“So, what—y’all just get together and drink instead of working out?” I asked as I took a sip of Cheerwine.
“Nope,” Isaac said. “We commiserate.”
I cracked a smile. “So, you hide from your women?”
“We love ’em,” Will said. “But they’re insane.”
“I think you got the most normal one of the bunch,” Chase said, tipping his beer toward me.
“Ahh, I dunno about that.” I smirked. “Mel’s a firecracker.”
“Y’all really grow up next door to each other?” Luca said between bites of steak and cured meat.
“Yeah. The, uh, Jacobsens moved in the summer before my senior year. Her dad was in the Marines. He’s the one who helped me apply to the Naval Academy.”
“Is it true Pops is calling it quits at the airfield?” Chase asked as he stole a cube of cheese from Luca’s spread.
“Dude, that was Comte PDO.” he said, crestfallen.
“Tastes like cheese to me.”
“I smuggled it back from France for him,” Isaac chimed in.
“You smuggle cheese?” I asked.
“It’s unpasteurized,” Luca said as he popped a piece into his mouth and savored the flavors. “Can’t get the good stuff in the States.” He shook his head and muttered, “Friggin’ FDA.”
“And Maddie can’t have unpasteurized shit since she’s pregnant. Which is why I’m guessing you’re scarfing it down like Aly when she sneaks into the kitchen at night and beelines for the cookie jar,” Steve mused.
“That, and she’s hormonal as fuck,” Luca groaned. “She got mad at me when I grilled a steak at the restaurant because red meat is making her nauseous.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “The steak wasn’t even for me. A guest ordered it, and I was working behind the line for a few hours. When I went to find her, she’d fallen asleep on the mountain of flour sacks outside the stockroom. I’d die for her, and I’m fuckin’ ecstatic she’s pregnant, especially after how long it took us to actually get pregnant.” Luca shook his head. “But she’s driving me fuckin’ crazy.”
Will’s phone buzzed, and he looked at the number. It must have been something important because he excused himself. Pressing the phone to his ear, he said, “Solomon,” and stepped out of the room.
“What does Will do?” I asked.
The rest of the guys laughed.
“Who the hell knows?” Chase laughed. “Dude owns some big tech company or something. Cyber security, I think.”
“He owns the Taylor Creek Inn, too,” Isaac said. “That’s how he and Kris met.”
“He’s one of the big investors in DeRossi Hospitality,” Luca muttered over the rim of his wine glass.
“I think he does some work for private military contractors,” Steve said. “I came over one day when some of those guys were leaving. Scary motherfuckers.”
Well, damn. If Steve thought they were scary, then they must have been ten-foot-tall fire-breathing beasts. Even then, Steve seemed like he had turned into the kind of guy who would show up with a fire extinguisher and tell them to fuck off.
“So, is it true?” Chase piped up.
“Is what true?”
“Pops. Is he really handing over the airfield?”
“Damn small-town rumors,” I muttered.
I hadn’t even had a chance to talk to Mel about it yet. She was dead on her feet when she came home from work and went straight to bed.
I pried her out of her blanket nest around eleven at night with pasta and garlic bread. She devoured it, guzzled a Gatorade, and went back to bed .
“Yeah, it’s true. Just—keep it to yourselves. I don’t want to have to explain to Mel why she heard it from the girls and not me.”
“Rule numero uno of working out,” Luca said, punctuating working out with air quotes. “What happens in the basement stays in the basement. The ladies get girls’ night, and we get our afternoon of solace.”
Steve, Chase, and Isaac grunted in agreement.
“If that’s the case, what do you y’all think of Kyle Kingsley?” I asked as I tossed my empty Cheerwine in the recycling bin.
The silence was deafening. Four pairs of eyes were trained on the floor.
Will walked back into the room, pocketing his phone. “What’s going on?”
“You’ve met Bee’s fiancé,” I said. “What do you think of him?”
Will’s mouth turned into a thin line. “Why are you asking?”
The shift in the mood was obvious. Even Luca had stopped scarfing down his contraband.
“Just curious. He doesn’t come to poker night.”
“He’s not invited,” Steve said.
I raised an eyebrow. “He’s her fiancé .”
He was unbothered by that little tidbit. “Doesn’t matter. Those are the rules.”
“Says who?” I challenged.
“Heather,” he clipped. The sound of his late wife’s name made the statement very, very final. “She and I came up with poker night. She didn’t want just anyone coming by, especially after she started losing her hair, so we said anyone who wanted to come to poker night had to get an invite or be voted on.”
Something had felt off about Bridget and Kyle’s relationship when we went over there for dinner. She had been playing the doting housewife while Kyle made borderline inappropriate remarks about her .
She took them in stride, but there were little things I noticed. The way she shrank away from him whenever he tried to touch her. The way Mel seemed like a guard dog about to sink her teeth into his throat.
Bee treated Kyle the way she used to treat our dad: with kid gloves and a gentle demeanor. Like she was tiptoeing around a land mine.
“And Bee’s never asked for Kyle to get voted in?” I asked.
“Nope,” Chase clipped, cracking open a second beer.
“Anyone ever ask why?”
Steve seemed more on edge than any of them. It was the way his eyes tracked everyone else that tipped me off. He was waiting for the other guys to show their cards.
But no one was making any moves.
To my surprise, Will spoke up. “I looked into Kingsley.” All eyes were on him, so he didn’t tantalize us long. “I was showing Logan how to uh… Do some internet stuff .”
“Don’t care if it’s illegal,” Steve muttered, closing his eyes as he rode those buzzed beer clouds. “I ain’t on duty. Not my department anyway.”
“I was working on a project, testing some firewalls I built for a rather classified government entity. Logan wanted to see the difference between hackable ones and the ones I built, so I showed him how to hack into the Wake County court system’s server.”
Chase abandoned his beer. “Wake County? What’s that got to do with Kingsley? He lives in Havelock. That’s Craven County.”
“Apparently, when he was in college, an ex-girlfriend filed a restraining order against him,” Will said.
That piqued Steve’s attention. “I ran a background check on him myself,” he growled as he kicked the footrest of the recliner down and sat upright. “Squeaky-fucking-clean. Not even a goddamn parking ticket. ”
Will held his hand up. “The girl who filed the protective order lifted it, and Kingsley got it expunged from his record. It wouldn’t show up on any background checks, but there’s still a record that it happened in the court system. It’s just not able to be pulled for use.”
Steve stroked his beard. “Back before Erica and I got together, a buddy of mine in the Havelock PD was called to Kingsley’s house for a domestic. Apparently, a neighbor called it in when Bee and Kyle got into a shouting match.”
“What’d they find?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “The officers who responded spoke to Bee and Kyle separately. Her story matched his. They got into an argument, and the neighbors were nosey.”
I sighed. “Kyle had a short fuse back in the day… And Bee’s never been one to back away from a fight. Hell, I’ve seen her grab the baseball bat Wanda keeps behind the bar and walk straight into a tussle.”
Luca stared into his wine glass. “Maddie said something about Bee having bruises.”
The room was charged. Chase jumped out of his chair. His foot knocked his beer over and spilled it all over the floor as he stormed toward the door. Steve was faster. He body-checked Chase before he could make it out of the room.
“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” Chase spat.
“You’re not gonna do shit,” Steve said. “Sit your ass down or I’m calling the chief.”
“Do you actually think Bee would let some bitch bag put his hand on her like that?” I said, stepping between Steve and Chase before they escalated to punching the daylights out of each other. “This is my sister we’re talking about. She’s not weak.”
“Don’t play fucking devil’s advocate,” Chase hissed in my face.
“No one said anything about weak, Jase,” Steve snapped as he shoved the two of us apart. “Chase and I see this kind of thing far too often. Did you know that it usually takes someone seven attempts before they leave an abuser for good? Leaving is the most dangerous part. Monsters who put their hands on women go after the strong ones. They get off on seeing them bent into submission. They don’t start by attacking the body. They go after the mind first. If you can’t trust your own thoughts, you’re forced to rely on the one feeding you some kind of security. When the mind games don’t work anymore, they go after the body.”
Fists clenched. Teeth gritted. Threats were spat. If we had pitchforks and torches, we’d be a proper mob.
Steve sensed the climaxing tension and took charge. “Here’s what’s gonna happen.” He looked at Chase. “You’re not going to do anything that will make you lose your badge. You get me?”
Chase didn’t agree. In his defense, he didn’t disagree either.
“And you—” Steve said, turning to me. “—are gonna talk to your woman. I’ve asked Bee about this kind of thing before, and she shut me down. If you come at her with guns blazing, she’ll freeze you out.” He leveled a definitive look across the room, demanding that the rest of the guys fall in line. Finally, he landed back on me. “Of all the girls, if something’s up with Bridget, Mel will know.”