Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
The Hero
“She’s forgiven me,” I say to Pete, barging into his office.
An hour later, after I’ve put her to sleep in the bed.
I couldn’t sleep though. I couldn’t stay there either.
At the scene of my crime.
At the scene where I touched her with my dirty hands. Touched her pregnant, warm belly and her soft, swollen tits. I touched her pussy.
I touched my gorgeous, glorious, pregnant Fae when I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t touch her, make her all dirty.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Pete asks from his beat-up office without me having to give him any context.
An office with a table that’s overrun with files. A cabinet that hardly organizes anything for him and a computer screen that he was squinting into because like me he can’t sleep either, until I interrupted him.
It’s a tiny place, much smaller than my father’s office, and Pete has had this as long as I’ve known him.
But this doesn’t suffocate me.
It doesn’t choke my breaths.
“Fuck no,” I spit out.
“And how’s that?” he asks, settling into his cheap leather chair that squeaks and is bad for his back. That I’ve told him a million times to replace. But he won’t.
It was a gift from Mimi.
He can be such a sucker.
I plow both my hands through my hair. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Well, that’s not your call to make now, is it?”
“It fucking should be.”
“But it’s not. You wronged her and she moved on. You need to move on too. That’s how it works. An apology, making it up to someone.”
My chest contracts. My fingers flex.
The fingers that touched her because she tempted me.
She wouldn’t let me keep my fucking hands to myself.
I’ve been aching, dying to touch her ever since she told me she was carrying my baby. I was fucking craving to touch her body, her belly that she so freely touches and every time she does, my blood heats up. My fingers hurt for not getting to touch her skin, the life inside of her.
And she fucking took advantage of that.
“What if…” I burst out but then trail off, pacing in his office.
“First, sit down. You’re giving me a headache. And second, what if what?”
I don’t.
I come to a halt though and grab the back of the chair in front of his desk. The chair that’s better than the one he’s sitting in but he won’t replace it because he still loves his dead wife.
What is with people and love?
Seriously though, why is it such a big deal?
“Thanks. But I’ll stand,” I tell him.
He studies my face before shaking his head. “You know what you are?”
“What?”
“A rabid dog.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Thanks, Pete. I feel much better now. I’m glad I came.”
“Good, because you are. You’re like a vicious wild animal that bites the hand that dares to pet you. Because that’s all you’ve ever known. Biting and snapping your teeth at the world. But as Mimi would say, it’s not your fault. It’s the world’s fault. Because the world has bitten you back.”
I clench my teeth. “Are we done here? Because I’ve got a fucking problem.”
“What is your problem, boy?”
“My problem, old man, is what if it happens again?”
“What happens again?”
I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I don’t even know why I came.
I don’t know why I keep coming to Pete whenever I’ve got a problem. I went to him when my father fucked her over two years ago. I went to him when I found out I fucked her over again and got her pregnant.
And I’m here tonight too.
He never helps.
But the thing is that I’ve got no place to go. And if that doesn’t burn, that the only place I can go to is a fucking garage and the only person I can talk to is a fucking old man who’s still in love with his wife and needs a beard trim, then I don’t know what will.
I swallow, curling my fingers into the chair. “What if she falls in love with me again?”
“Why’s loving you such a bad thing?”
“Aside from the fact that one time she did, and I broke her heart because I was too wrapped up in my shit?” I swallow, my throat feeling tight.
“And then my father used her to get back at me. In case you didn’t know, my father is still alive.
As much as I’d like to kill him, I’m not going to do that because that might also kill my mother.
Who somehow still loves that sick fuck. So nothing’s changed.
She needs to stay away from me, from us.
From Jackson men. We don’t know a thing about love or being decent human beings. ”
Pete stares at me for a moment, rubbing his bushy white moustache, before muttering, “You know why your father used her to get to you?”
“Because he’s a psychopath who only cares about what he wants and because he saw it as an opportunity.”
“Yes. But he’s also smart,” Pete tells me. “He was smart enough to know that you’d do anything for that girl. You’d give up soccer. You’d give up your scholarship, your whole plan of getting into the pros to stick it to him. He knew that.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So you’d give up your fucking soul for that girl. And your father knew that. So what does that tell you?”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”
Pete smiles. “It tells you that you might know a thing or two about love after all, you clueless bastard.”
My chest contracts again. Like a boulder is sitting on it.
A giant fucking wrecking ball. A ticking time bomb that’s going to explode.
But I ignore it. I ignore it all and scoff at Pete. “I made that deal with my father because she didn’t deserve to be used. Not again. She didn’t deserve to be punished for something that she did because she was hurting. Because I hurt her. Not everything is about love.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, kid.”
You love her, don’t you? You love our baby.
The pressure on my chest increases at her words but I ignore that too.
It doesn’t matter if I love our baby or not.
She’s a part of me. Of course I love our baby.
But that doesn’t mean I’m free to love anyone else. I don’t have time for it when I have to protect Fae, protect both of them, from my father.
That’s why I’m doing all this, aren’t I?
That’s why I’m working for him. That’s why I go every time he calls. I attend every goddamn meeting. I sit in on every conference call he makes like a good boy.
I’m giving him every little thing his villainous, corrupt heart desires because I want him to be happy enough to back off, to leave me alone.
I never want him to find out about Fae and our baby. I know he’ll use them as pawns if and when he can.
And it has worked.
He’s a psychopathic toddler. You give him what he wants and he’ll move on to something else.
My father has no clue. He doesn’t know what I do with my time off. He doesn’t care as long as I show up for work and give him what he wants.
But you know what? I don’t know why I’m freaking the fuck out right now.
Nothing has changed.
I promised that I’d protect her from my father and me and that’s what I’m going to do. Unlike last time, I’m going to keep her heart safe from me.
Because no matter what she believes, I can’t love.
I am that rabid fucking animal that bites. Because that’s all I know. That’s how I’ve survived this world. That’s how I’ve survived the man who brought me into this world.
“Thanks for nothing,” I say to Pete, stepping back from the chair, ready to leave. “And I’m buying you a new chair that won’t kill your back. That fucking thing you have right now needs to go to the dump.”
And then I turn around and walk out.
But not before I hear his laughing words. “I’ll throw it in the dump the day you throw away that sweater of yours. The one with that fucking mustang on it that you still keep in the trunk of your car.”
Asshole.