Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
JENSEN
My heart is in my throat, and I’m trying to ignore it bobbing there and strangling me as I lead the way out into the parking lot.
The Beemer is sitting right at the entrance, impossible to miss, and I still wish I had gone with the green, but I can’t deny the black is impressive.
When I hear them follow me through the doors, I turn and hold my hands out to the side.
“Ta-da.”
Barrett looks confused, but Kasen’s expression doesn’t shift.
“Did you get a new car?” Barrett asks.
Kasen doesn’t say anything.
Makes sense since I haven’t shown him everything yet. “Hold on.”
I round the car to the trunk and hit the button to open it. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Kasen take a tentative step closer, and fuck, I hope I’m reeling him in.
I pull out his blocker with one hand and the glove with my other. “Any other requests?”
I’m expecting a smile or surprise or shock.
All I get is a frown. “Leg pads?”
“Right here.”
“Good.”
Good. It’s on my mind to tell him he’s behaving like an ungrateful shithead, but I swallow that down. “Do you like your car?”
His gaze finally flicks to me. “It’s mine?”
“Well, legally, it’s under my name, but yeah. It’s yours.”
His expression clears an inch.
“But don’t drive like a dick in it.”
The frown is back, and I immediately kick myself for adding that. What did Ben say? Be his friend.
I clear the way my throat is trying to close over with nerves. “Maybe I could help you break the pads in?”
Kasen ignores me and slowly reaches out to run his thumb along the door. “Is that one of your conditions? To giving me this?”
Yes, you little shit. “No. No conditions.” None except you have to like me now.
My gaze finds Barrett’s, and he doesn’t exactly look thrilled by me either.
I huff. “What is up with you two? This is a good thing. Kasen should be excited—how many of your friends have a brand-new car?”
“Hawke, I think—”
But Kasen cuts Barrett off. “Give me a lift home?”
My gut jumps. “Yeah, of course. How long until you can get your learner’s permit?”
“End of the year.”
Which puts his conception at … well, not long before high school graduation. I might have moved to Burlington and lived on campus during college, but I still visited home all the time. Still came home over the holidays. It’s not like I was far.
Why the fuck didn’t she tell me?
I cut off before I can get started down that spiral because it doesn’t help anyone now. If I start blaming Carly, that isn’t going to get Kasen on my side. Especially because he’s giving me a chance. A small chance, sure, but I’ll take every single minute of the lift home.
“You okay?” Barrett asks, and I almost answer him, but Kasen gets in first.
“If he murders me, Coach—” He opens the door and throws his gear bag onto the back seat. “—you know who to send the police after.”
My lips curl back. “Out of the two of us, I think you’re the one with the homicidal tendencies.”
Kasen looks me up and down, no change in his expression, and from the corner of my eyes, I glimpse Barrett run a hand over his face.
Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have called my son a murderer, but in my defense, he did it first.
I mentally groan as those words catch up to me. I’m as mature as a fourteen-year-old. Great.
He still gets in the car, which is a relief, and as I round the hood to climb into the driver’s side, Barrett calls out to me.
“If you’re dropping him off in his own car, how will you get home?”
“I dunno. Walk?”
“From the next town over?”
I didn’t think of that. “Walk … for a while?”
His lips twitch, and this weird little sprig of hope zaps through my gut. “I’m done for today. I’ll meet you there.”
Part of me—the instinctual side—almost tells him to fuck off, but then I remember I’m not mad at him anymore. It’s become a habit, and it’s hard to let go of, but if that zap tells me anything, it’s that I want to let go of it.
I miss him.
“See you then,” is my only reply, even though I want to say so much more.
Except then I climb inside the car, and all thoughts of Barrett are shoved from my head as I’m hit with a wall of smell.
Now, if you’d asked me a few seconds ago, I would have said I’m used to the stench that fills a locker room after a game.
All those overheated, sweaty bodies, drenched pads, damp uniforms, and worn-in skates create the type of smell that you can never really get rid of, but it’s been my whole life for so long that I never notice it anymore.
Now, drowning out the scent of new leather is a smell that has my eyes watering.
Teenage boy.
I turn on the car and, as subtly as I can, put the window down and lean my head out of it.
“You’ll have to give me directions,” I choke out.
“Sure.”
I put the car in drive, and Kasen tells me to turn left out of the lot. All I want is to strike up a conversation, to show him I’m not some asshole who abandoned him, but it’s hard to talk when every time I go to take a breath, it feels like I’m inhaling poison.
He’s slumped down in his seat, sitting so low his eyes are barely over the door and inspecting his bitten-back nails. “You’re a chatty guy,” he says dryly. “Or are you going to act like you’re in shock again?”
I snort, the fresh air whipping past only enters the car long enough to hit the smell before fleeing again. “Shock is accurate.”
He scowls, and fuck it.
“Did I smell this bad when I was your age? Fuck me, I remember Mom complaining, but I didn’t realize I was a biohazard.”
He chokes on amusement that catches him by surprise, and the way it lights up my chest catches me by surprise.
“I didn’t realize insults were your love language,” I say, throwing a look over at him.
“I don’t have a love language. Just wasn’t expecting you to be a cunt.”
“Whoa.”
I feel his eyes meet the side of my face. “Gonna lecture me for swearing, Dad?”
“I don’t know.” I scratch my face, thinking about it. “There is no way Amelia lets you get away with that.”
“No, but she’d also never buy me a car, even if she had the money.” His lips twitch, reminding me of Carly all over again. “She is going to lose her shit.”
Apprehension clouds my borderline good mood. “She won’t approve?”
“No way. She’ll say you’re trying to buy my love and that it’s irresponsible to buy a child a brand-new car.”
Uh-oh. “Is it?”
“What?”
“Irresponsible to be buying you a brand-new car?”
Kasen shrugs and flicks his curls back from his forehead. “Well, I don’t think it is, and we both know that teenagers have a reputation for good decisions.”
“Fuck me.”
“Well, I guess we know where I get my potty mouth from,” he says with exaggerated affection.
All it’s taken is two conversations with Kasen for me to recognize that I’m in way over my head.
Barrett said he was smart, but there’s a big difference between book smarts and being a smart-ass, but Kasen apparently excels at both.
I thought fourteen-year-olds were supposed to be all awkward and speak in caveman-like grunts.
I’m getting the uncomfortable feeling that all those hits I’ve taken to the head have put me at a severe disadvantage here.
“What do you really think of me?” I get the balls to ask.
“That you’re an asshole.”
“And is there anything I can do to fix that?”
“Of course.” He turns back to picking at his nails. “Go back in time a few years, answer my message, and be active in my life. You know, before someone had to die for you to do that.”
The only thing that stops me from rolling my eyes is concentrating on leaning out the window for more air. “Now, is there anything I can do to fix this that’s actually achievable?”
He crosses his arms, but I’m so tuned in to his every move. Like I’m greedily trying to drink in as much about him as possible, and hopefully, it will give me answers to who this kid actually is. What he responds to. Picking out things that make him close off.
Like right now.
“Did the car at least get me points?” I ask, clutching at straws. “Since Amelia is going to hate me for it?”
“It proved you have ears and remember simple demands, so … A plus for basic human understanding?”
“You called me an asshole before.” I flick a look his way and copy his fake affectionate tone. “Guess we know where you get that too.”
“Please. Keep insulting me. It really helps the familial bond between us.”
“You speak like you’re eighty.”
“I speak like my mom.” The second his tone comes out, I know I’ve lost him.
“Remember her? The woman you abandoned who took night classes, and raised me alone, and picked up extra shifts to pay for my hockey gear, and never, ever let me get complacent about life. All so what? She could fucking die? Driving home late from one of those extra shifts, that she never would have taken in the first place if you’d done your job and been a fucking father? ”
“She didn’t let me!” I know it’s the wrong thing to say before it’s even left my mouth, but this isn’t all my fault.
“I saw her after I left for college. Through the summers, we’d bump into each other, then again every now and then through the years.
She didn’t say a goddamn thing. She hid you from me.
My own fucking son!” Betrayal is burning through my veins, and I should absolutely not be having a meltdown about it here, but Kasen wanted to push me, and he’s succeeded. “That wasn’t fair!”
Kasen points to a house, and I jerk the car into the driveway, but I’m not done.
As soon as I’m parked, I unclip my seat belt and turn to him.
“I deserved to know you. I deserved to see you grow up. And I don’t fucking deserve you putting all the blame on me when I would have done the right thing if I was given a chance. But I wasn’t, and now we’re here, and it’s up to the both of us to work out what we do about it.”
Kasen’s glare is so deep, I can’t even make out the eyes we share.
I let out a long exhale and tip my head forward to pinch the bridge of my nose. I’m not going to cry again, but I don’t know how to get through to him.
“I’m here,” I finally say. “I want to try. That’s all I can give you.”
Kasen sighs, and I think I’ve finally gotten through to him, but when I glance up, he’s back to the carefully blank expression I’ve become used to seeing him hide behind.
“Now, Dad, don’t undersell yourself.” He pops the car door and climbs out. “You can also give me cars and hockey gear. Lucky me. I’ve got a real winner.”
He slams the door behind him, and I watch him all the way up to the house.
What the fuck do I have to do to get through to this kid?