Payback

But I wasn’t so naive that I thought Jameson had suddenly changed because of me.

“I can practically hear the gears grinding, baby girl,” he murmured. “What’s going through that head of yours?”

“I’m confused,” I admitted.

“By what?”

“This.”

“Oh.”

I rose up on my elbow to stare down at him. Jameson was, by far, the most handsome man I’d ever seen and that didn’t seem fair. He made me melt with so little effort on his part.

“What happens when this case is over? Are you going to walk away from me and whatever is happening between us like it never existed?”

He sighed. “I thought you were tired.”

“I was.”

But I wasn’t any longer. I needed to know where I stood with him.

Jameson played with a long, curling strand of hair that’d fallen over my bare shoulder but I caught his fingers and squeezed. “Jameson,” I implored. “I need answers.”

Jameson’s expression shuttered and he rolled away from me, reaching down to grab his jeans and jerk them on. “Baby, what do you want me to say?” he said, pushing his hand through his hair. “That I’m falling in love with you and none of this makes sense but I don’t want to quit?”

My heart leaped a beat. Did I want that?

But Jameson wasn’t offering that. “Well, I can’t say that to you. I won’t lie. I don’t want to hurt your feelings — you’re a good kid — but I’m not the guy you want me to be. I don’t do backyard picnics and go to the movies for date-nights.”

“I’m not a kid,” I retorted, wiping at the sudden tears in my eyes. “And if you thought I was a kid, you shouldn’t have down what you did.”

He turned to look at me. “You’re right,” he agreed with a bitter downturn of his lips. “Do you want me to say I fucked up? Yeah, I did. My head wasn’t on straight and I fucked up. Does that make you feel better?”

“No.”

“Then, what do you want from me?” Jameson rose and stalked from the room, leaving me in the dark.

What did I want? That was a valid question. He’d never made me any promises. I never thought I wanted anything from him.

But I was wrong.

I didn’t know when it’d happened but something clicked between us and I wasn’t the only one who was feeling it.

I kicked the blankets free and followed him into the living room.

“You’re a fucking coward, Jameson Reed,” I told him, not letting him escape from what I needed to say. “You feel something for me but you won’t admit it. At least I have the balls to admit that there’s something between us — even if I didn’t want to feel anything for you.”

Jameson’s mouth quirked in a sardonic parody of a smile that cut me to my core. “You want a prize or something? I never asked you to fall for me. Hell, I pretty much figured I’d guaranteed you would hate me. How was I supposed to know that you were going to go and do something stupid like get feelings?”

“Don’t you dare try and make me feel as if I’m the defective one,” I warned, hot tears burning behind my eyes. “You’re doing this in some misguided attempt at pushing me away. I get it, you’re an asshole, you don’t have to put the exclamation point on the statement. But just remember this, Jameson…someday life will be about more than the job, more than just putting away the bad guy, but it’ll be too late. You’ll be an old, bitter piece of shit who can’t stand his own company and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

“Are you finished?”

“Yeah, I’m finished.” Finished with you, asshole.

“Good.” He grabbed his keys, jacket and was gone.

Damn you, Jameson!

I dropped into the chair and cried my eyes out.

This was my own fault. I had no one to blame but myself.

I should’ve never taken Jameson up on his devil’s bargain.

But then how could I have known that, somehow, someway, that miserable son-of-a-bitch would find his way into my tender heart?

I couldn’t go back to my bed. Not where his scent lingered. Not where the memories still lived and breathed.

Grabbing a throw blanket from the back of the sofa, I curled up and cried myself to sleep.

Jameson

I didn’t want to go home.

I couldn’t stay at Ivy’s.

Everything she’d said had been true.

I was a miserable bastard…a coward.

I did have feelings for Ivy that I couldn’t reconcile.

I didn’t have any business feeling anything for her. She deserved far better than I could give her.

I wasn’t lying when I said she was a good kid, excuse me, person. She was the best of people.

Kind, generous, compassionate…all the things I’d long ago forgotten how to feel.

She warned that I was going to end up alone and bitter.

I already had the bitter part down.

The cold place in my chest where my heart should be, ached with something that I couldn’t quite put a name to.

Bits of my childhood crashed into memory, igniting a powerful burn that I couldn’t avoid.

When did I become such an asshole?

I flexed my hand on the steering wheel as a phantom pain erupted in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger where an old circular scar remained.

Thanks, Dad.

Eight years old. Punished with a car lighter for complaining about the cold.

We’d been driving for hours. It was late, probably around one in the morning. My dad had been up for days, now he was hallucinating.

And paranoid.

It was me, my older brother, Jack, and my younger brother Johnny. It was fucking winter and he had the windows down, ranting about how the world was fucked and everyone in it, a liar and thief.

Snow was lightly falling. We were climbing in elevation. All I saw were darkened trees on either side of the road.

Johnny wasn’t shivering anymore.

Somehow he’d fallen asleep against me.

The kid was only three years old. Barely potty-trained.

Dad had jerked us out of bed and thrown us in the car without letting us get dressed first.

Somehow the courts had thought Dad was the better parent. I suppose when you have to pick between two shitastic parents, you pick the lesser of the two evils.

Johnny always slept in a t-shirt and a diaper just in case he had an accident.

We tried to save the unsoiled diapers to use again because my dad wasn’t exactly big on providing for his kids.

And sometimes we had to reuse the diaper because there was nothing else.

This was one of those times.

Johnny wasn’t crying any more either.

“Dad, we’re cold,” I leaned over the front of the bench seat but he responded with more ranting. And then lightening fast, he took the car lighter and slammed it down on my hand with a wild laugh as I shrieked.

“Are you cold now, Jamie?”

Jack pulled me back as I whimpered, holding my injured hand, biting back sobs. We had to ride out whatever Dad was going through.

No one was coming to help us.

No one even knew where we were.

Dad stood on the brakes, fishtailing the old Buick as we chewed up the shoulder.

“Bitches. No good bitches!” Dad roared to the cold silence. “That’s all they are! Everyone wants to fuck me over. Everyone! But I know what they’re doing and I see it! I won’t let them get what they’re after. No way. They’ll have to fucking kill me first.”

He turned to us, his eyes wild and terrifying. “Don’t you fucking move. You wait here, you hear me?”

We jerked scared nods. Satisfied, he jumped from the car and left us behind, his angry voice echoing in the gloom.

The cracked vinyl of the old car seats felt like a slab of ice beneath our bare skin. We huddled together for warmth, our breath clouding in small, desperate plumes.

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Every sound echoed. My childhood terrors jumped from every moving shadow as the trees moved to the wind.

Dad never came back.

Tears I hadn’t cried in decades crowded my sinuses and I ground them out.

Shit, why’d I have to remember that?

There was a reason I didn’t think about that night.

A reason I didn’t dwell on the past.

Because no matter what I said or did, nothing would change what’d happened.

Nothing would change that my little brother froze to death that night.

Ahhh, fuck.

I pulled off the road and threw the car in park. Grinding my eyes free of the tears, I hated the helplessness that tightened my chest whenever I thought of that night.

Twenty-seven years was a long time to nurse a wound.

Jack, a year older than me, had turned into a drug addict. I hadn’t seen him in years. I caught wind of his arrests now and then but I’d cut off ties a long time ago. When I didn’t answer his calls, he stopped calling.

I had other siblings, scattered here and there. Dear ol’ dad had seemed on a mission to populate the earth. I didn’t even know half their names.

Except for Katie.

Her mother had been smart, unlike mine.

She’d dropped Dad like a bad habit as soon as he’d knocked her up.

Katie was a good kid.

It was better she had nothing to do with her ratchet half-family anyway.