She hadn’t called back to check thirty-one years ago. She hadn’t known about me. She hadn’t cared to know about me. She hadn’t come here to get to know me. He hadn’t wanted me to go to the gym because he’d wanted to spare me from meeting someone who should have cared I’d existed… and hadn’t.
It didn’t hurt my feelings. Or surprise me.
“Lenny, you had nothing to do with her not being around. It’s me she couldn’t stand to see again, do you understand?”
I nodded and clamped those words somewhere else. “There was a voice mail at the Maio House this morning.” I made a face as I finally stood up, making my way toward the sink so I could rinse out my bowl and set it in the dishwasher. “Well, hopefully me telling her I’ll see her again in thirty years got across to her because I have about 0 percent interest in ever seeing her again.”
“You’re not the only one,” he muttered, still sounding strained. “It’s been thirty-eight years for me, and I could go another thirty-eight again.”
I turned around as I wiped my hands on a towel. “You haven’t seen her since Marcus”—that had been my biological dad’s name—“was eighteen?”
Grandpa nodded, eyeing Mo for a moment before blowing a bunch of kisses at her. The little nut cooed, calling him “Baba.” He didn’t bother looking at me as he answered, “Not since his high school graduation.”
“She didn’t go to his funeral?”
He made a sharp, bitter noise in his throat. “No.”
What a bitch.
“She said she couldn’t get away, but that he was in her heart,” he whimpered sarcastically, even bringing up his hands over his heart. Grandpa rolled his eyes. “Marcus wouldn’t have cared, kiddo. I didn’t raise him to be anti his mom. He never liked her in the first place, and I’m not putting that blame on myself. I never said a bad word about her. I didn’t give him a reason to think that I didn’t like her. It was my fault she left, and I made sure he knew that. We shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place, but I thought I could be someone else,” he said carefully, shifting his gaze toward me. “I took years of her life away by not being upfront. I can’t hold too many grudges. I ended up with him, and then you, and now I’ve got my new best friend right here. Life is good.”
Life was good.
Even if I didn’t know or trust this person who had reappeared. This person who had still, after so long, not given enough of a fuck to see me, but had only come around for business purposes. The kind of woman who wouldn’t go to her own son’s funeral because he was in her fucking heart like that meant anything. It was one thing if she didn’t have money to travel or had been too sick to or something, but that bullshit wasn’t an excuse or an equivalent.
Bitch.
Just as I opened my mouth to ask him another question about her, the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it. You wipe her off. I’ll change her shirt in a minute,” Grandpa said, already up on his feet before I could get the door myself.
By the time I had dampened the towel I’d used to wipe my hands off on and scrubbed it over my girl’s face as she tried to get away and fight me with her fists—showing she was her great-grandfather’s granddaughter, the door to the kitchen swung open again. Except this time, it wasn’t just Grandpa Gus. There was someone behind him. That someone being eight inches taller, a whole hell of a lot broader, and nicer. But still an asshole.
It was Jonah.
“I wanted to call,” he stated like Grandpa wasn’t scowling at the world in general in front of him. “But I can’t reach your mobile number, and Peter’s went straight to voice mail.”
He—
Jonah kept going as he stood there in the kitchen, one long arm loose at his side, the other… was holding a children’s book? I was pretty sure it had an illustrated cover. “I was hoping to spend some time with Mo. Start some of my lessons if that’s all right with you.”
Did he have to give me that small, shy smile as he asked that fucking question?
I curled my fingers into a fist and had to fight the urge to flare my nostrils. “I’m sorry, but I’m leaving in a minute.”
Jonah straight-up frowned, but I ignored it as this terrible idea settled into my brain—revenge, it was revenge because I was a petty shit—and it took everything inside of me not to smile at it.
“But,” I continued on, “Grandpa is staying. You can stay with him if you don’t mind him shooting ugly faces at you and being sarcastic and a little rude.”
The look the old man sent me would have me rolling in private later on when he couldn’t see me losing it.
I wasn’t sure what it said about Jonah when he thought about it for all of a second and then ducked his stubble-covered chin. “If he’ll have me, sure.”
“He will not—” Grandpa Gus started to say before I cut him off.
“It would be his pleasure,” I finished, shooting Grandpa a smug smile before eyeing the book in Jonah’s hand again for a second.
He knew firsthand payback was a bitch. Just as well as I knew that he was going to scare the living shit out of me in revenge when I was least expecting it. But whatever. Then I’d scare him back, and our vicious cycle would continue.
“Lenny, are you ready to—” Peter started to call out as he ducked his head into the kitchen before blinking. “Oh. Hello, Jonah.”
“Peter,” the biggest man greeted him.
Peter’s eyes slid to me. “Change of plans?”
“Nope. Jonah is staying with Lestat here.”
Peter pressed his lips together, and his eyebrows arched up a little too.
“You’re going with Peter?” Jonah asked.
I lifted a shoulder.
His shoulders dropped maybe a quarter of an inch and his mouth made a little O for a moment before he said, “If you made plans, you should go.”
I agreed. You shouldn’t go back on your word. Plus, I hadn’t thought about canceling on Peter period.
“If you’re sure...” Peter trailed off, warning me it was a bad idea that we were leaving these three alone, but it amused him anyway, and he was trying to not show it. “Ready?”
Grandpa puffed out his cheeks, confirming yet again that Peter had said something to get him to calm down on the comments.
“I’m ready,” I told him, before dipping down to give Mo a kiss on each cheek and one on her forehead. “I love you. I’ll be right back, booger. Be good.”
Her answering babble probably claimed she was always good. That, or she was telling me to fuck off because she knew what she was doing.
I made a face I wouldn’t call a smile at Jonah, even though he gave me a real one, and gave my grumpy grandfather a kiss on the cheek. “Good luck and behave. Mo and I won’t go visit you in jail.”
I didn’t miss Grandpa Gus’s snicker as I followed Peter out the side door and around his car. We had barely gotten buckled in when he burst out laughing, tossing his head against the headrest. “That was cold, Lenny.”
“That’s what he gets.”
He snorted as he held his palm out to me, and I smacked it.