by E M Lindsey
He wanted to be loved because of, not in spite of, and he knew that would never be here.
“I’d miss you,” she told him.
He didn’t answer her, because she lied. She lied about a lot of things, he’d come to learn. She lied to keep the peace, and sometimes he wondered if she was capable of telling the truth anymore. But it didn’t matter. He finished his project and documented his results, and he was safely tucked away in his room before anyone else got home.
He supposed he counted himself lucky to be ignored instead of bullied by his brothers. He supposed having his father make snide comments about him instead of hitting him was the better option of the two, but even at the tender age of thirteen, he knew this was not meant to be any child’s life. He was barely a teen but felt like he was a hundred years old, and he was ready to be finished.
Jonas spent his senior year driving himself to exhaustion as he grasped for the position of valedictorian, as he applied for scholarships, and as he extended his reach across the country for any university worth its salt that would get him far away from his family. He collected college acceptance letters, tucking them way inside his desk drawer, and using them to comfort himself whenever things at home were bad.
His brothers, now in high school, were worse than ever. He was well aware his father had paid off their teachers just to get them through. He’d all but funded a damn wing for the school by the time their freshman year was over, and it still wasn’t enough. But Jonas had spent most of his life watching his brothers never suffer consequences for their actions, and it only made him grateful—in a sort of cruel, morbid way—that he’d never caught Peter’s favor. What kind of monster would he be, if he’d been given the same pass?
Yes, he wanted to escape his life, but he’d be able to run with a sense of empathy and kindness that the twins had never figured out. Jonas had been given time in his own life to know himself. He was fifteen when he kissed his first boy and realized that sparks were real, they just weren’t on the lips of girls. He was seventeen when he knew that he wanted to be a pharmacist because something about the way that chemicals changed things fascinated him, and the idea that he could contribute to making people’s lives easier made him sleep better at night.
He knew that Peter and Alexandra served as nothing more than a lesson of how not to be when he set foot in the world as a proper adult, and for that, he found himself able to say thank you. He filled out his acceptance letter to Washington State when he was finally ready to make his choice, and he took a moment to dream about what life would be like there.
He’d seen photos, had spent hours poring over the welcome pamphlet the college sent with the lush greens and the cloudy skies and the wet ground. It was nothing like the vast, endless nothing of the desert stretching for miles no matter what direction he turned. He wanted to take a deep breath and fill his lungs with the breeze off the pacific and connect to something that was his—and his alone.
He wanted to erase these eighteen years of misery under his father’s roof knowing that his very existence was never going to be enough for him. He wanted to take his letter down to his father’s office and watch the relief bloom on his face when he told Peter that he was leaving and wouldn’t be back.
Because there was no other reaction his father could give that would make any sense at all.
It was past eight, which meant that Peter was probably drinking, but Jonas was sure his news would chase away any bad mood his father would fall into when he saw who was standing in his office door. His hand did tremble a little when he lifted it to knock, but he gathered a courage he rarely felt when facing down his old man.
“Come in!” His voice was already harsh, already slurred, like he knew who was waiting for him.
Jonas was never allowed in Peter’s office, not that he’d wanted to spend time there, but he remembered feeling a strange sort of envy when he’d watch them dart in and out unencumbered by simmering resentment. He’d peer around the corner sometimes and watch the way his dad’s eyes would soften when he looked at the boys—long before he knew the cost of that love—and he’d wonder if he’d feel different if he could remember those three early years when his father had looked at him the same way.
Now, standing at the tallest he’d ever be, still lanky and growing into his limbs, he stepped over the threshold and didn’t buckle under the weight of Peter’s glare. He pushed his glasses further up his nose and straightened his shoulders.
“What the fuck do you want?”
Jonas could smell the gin, but he didn’t react. He took his letter from his pocket and laid it on Peter’s desk, though his father ignored it and glared holes into him. “I just wanted to let you know that I have my school thing taken care of.”
“School thing,” Peter repeated.
Jonas shrugged. “Yeah uh…the scholarship I got covers housing and everything, so I can stay at the dorms.” It wasn’t official, but the financial aid advisor he was talking to said that he wouldn’t have to worry, and at best he’d need a part time job for spending money. But he had earned the rest, and he was proud of that.
“Dorms. The campus is like twenty minutes from here,” Peter said, and Jonas couldn’t stop his laugh.
“I’m not…I didn’t apply here,” he said, running a hand down his face.
Peter scoffed. “The business school is perfectly acceptable for a…”
“No.” Jonas’ sharp tone sent Peter sitting back hard enough for his chair to roll and his gin to slosh over the rim of his cup. He felt a spike of fear at the way his father was looking at him now, but he wasn’t going to back down. “I’m not going to business school. I got into pharmacology at Washington State.”
“You can’t take over the damn job with a useless degree like that.” Peter rose, drained his glass, then turned and slammed it down on his bar as he refilled it from his decanter. “Don’t be an idiot, Jonas.”
He blinked at the back of his father’s head. “I’m…what do you mean take over the job?”
Peter waved his hand and then drained half his glass. His eyes were half-lidded and closing with each sip, and Jonas briefly wondered if he was going to be able to stay on his feet. “This job. My job. What the fuck do you think I mean?”
Jonas’ eyes widened as Peter stumbled over to his chair and sat. “I didn’t,” Jonas started, then shook his head. “You don’t want me to work for you.”
Peter barked out a laugh and dragged a hand down his face. “Of course I don’t want you to work for me. It’s bad enough I had to stare into the face of your bitch mother’s infidelity for the last eighteen years. I didn’t want you with me, but look at your brothers. Pathetic little wastes.”
Jonas wanted to hear the rest, but his mind stuttered to a halt as his father’s first words. “My mother’s what?” His voice was barely a whisper, but he saw the way Peter’s eyes lit up, because the man enjoyed causing him pain.
“She never told you?”
Jonas’ tongue felt too big for his mouth, like it was going to choke him.
“Two weeks after we were married. Two weeks. I don’t even know where she met him, but she insisted you looked like that,” he waved his hand at Jonas, “because her mother was Greek. Lying bitch,” he spat and took another drink. “She finally had to fess up when you were two because you’d fallen and cut your arm open, and the doctors wanted to know where your biological father was. You needed blood, and neither one of us were a match.” His grin was cold, predatory, and Jonas clasped his hand around his wrist where a two-inch scar had once covered half his arm.
“She never said.” His voice was ragged, broken, and he wasn’t sure what it was that he was feeling, but it threatened to swallow him whole. “She never…”
“I’m surprised you were too dense to see it after the boys came along,” Peter said, shrugging as he sat back and kicked one leg up onto the edge of his desk. “They looked just like me—just like her. Nothing like you.”
And he had noticed, he
just didn’t think it mattered.
“I never forgave God for all this, you know. For giving you everything those boys should have had. At least a single brain cell to share between them, but you stripped that all away, didn’t you?”
Peter’s voice was accusing, like somehow Jonas had been himself to spite his brothers. He took a step back and shook his head. “I can’t…I need to…” But in truth, there wasn’t anything he could do. Peter had known all this time, and his mother hadn’t loved him enough to tell him the truth. So, what was the point?
“After all that, after everything she did, and now you want to see my company fail,” Peter said. He leaned forward on the desk. “Don’t you think I’m owed a little better than that, Jonas? I raised you, after all. I fed you and clothed you in spite of everything.”
And there it was. In spite of everything. In spite of this life he hadn’t asked for, and Peter wanted his gratitude and his thanks. His voice died in his throat, and his guts twisted on himself. Freedom had been at his fingertips, just inside his grasp, but the look on Peter’s face said he knew where to hit where it hurt.
“I guess I should have assumed you’d be like her. Selfish. Useless.” He finished his drink then sat back and put one arm behind his head. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”
“I don’t want your business,” Jonas finally said. “I don’t want your name, either.”
“Well, it’s yours. That whore stole it from me and gave it to you and there wasn’t shit I could do about it after that.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” Jonas told him. His throat was tight and he tried to swallow, tried to regain some control because he didn’t want Peter to know.
“I’m not asking you to stay forever. I’m going to die, Jonas, just like you. We’re all going to die, and none of this will fucking matter. But if you stay, at least you can say you did something worthwhile with your miserable existence.”
And it was miserable. He hated that he couldn’t twist his tongue around the word no, around the words go fuck yourself, Peter. Because the man deserved it. But Peter was right about him—he was weak. He had always been weak. It was that weakness, that fear, which had his head bowing and his gazed fixed at his feet.
“Not forever,” he said.
Peter barked a laugh. “Nothing lasts forever, Jonas.”
That thought wouldn’t help him sleep at night, but it was a small comfort in a sea of painful things. He was lost, and maybe he would have to be the one who suffered for the sins of his mother.
Chapter Nine
“I still disagree about the value in the land,” Jonas said tiredly as he stared across the table. Peter and two of his investors had been going back and forth about the Cherry Creek lakefront property for the better part of four hours, and this was just the latest meeting he’d called since setting his sights on the land over a year before. Peter seemed to think it was the gold-mine their company was missing, and Jonas saw nothing but a little mountain town that didn’t have much beyond a small hotel and a couple of shops.
At best, they had Mangia E Zitto—a place he’d visited twice when he was doing his initial assessment of Cherry Creek’s worth. The restaurant was good, and the waitstaff made him feel comfortable without it being overly pretentious. He didn’t get to meet the chef, but Enzo and his YouTuber husband were something of local celebrities.
But they weren’t A-listers. The town had no draw. There was a Farmer’s Market on the weekends during summer, and a weeklong Holiday Market in the middle of December. Other than that, it functioned like any small town existing in a little bubble apart from the major cities within a few hundred miles. What little property it did have wasn’t enough to inflate the market and bring in more investors, and a lot of the land was preserved by the federal government. Even without meeting anyone who lived there, Jonas knew the locals would put up a fight.
It would be a costly battle and one that the company would lose money on, and Peter would somehow manage to turn it around and make it his fault. As he did with every single one of the company’s failures since Jonas had gone to work for him.
“Your job isn’t to tell me what you think,” Peter snapped. “Your job is to go where I fucking tell you to go and draw up building plans.”
Jonas sighed, pulling his glasses off his face and cleaning them just to give his hands something to do. Once upon a time, words like that from the old man would have gutted him. Once upon a time, Peter knew how to cut right down to the quick. But Jonas was nearing thirty and had grown numb to the fact that the man pretending to be his father only cared that Jonas could hold his shit together better than his useless brothers—who were presently god only knew where.
Racking up credit card debt in Thailand or the Bahamas, most likely, with Peter footing the bill.
Logan had been to rehab twice in the last year, and Chris was busy dodging a woman in town who had given birth to a little girl with his exact face. His family would have done well on reality TV if they had Kardashian money—but they didn’t. They were rich for Arizona, millions in the bank, but not enough for the powerful to give a single shit about who they were.
Jonas liked it that way, though. He was getting a little money when the old man died, and he was getting the company. But he was also fairly sure Peter subsisted off spite and frustration, so he would probably live forever.
“My flight is already booked,” Jonas told him tiredly. “I’m not arguing with you. I’m just reminding you that I think you’ve inflated the value of the land. There’s not enough real estate to…”
“Why don’t you go get us coffees,” Peter snapped.
Jonas picked up his iPad and keys, then pushed away from the table. “Since I’m not your assistant, I’m going to lunch, then I’m going home to pack. I have a flight in the morning, and I’m meeting with one of the men from the Park Service to talk about where the property lines end.”
Peter waved his hand, then went back to pretending like Jonas didn’t exist—which frankly was the way Jonas preferred it. It was easy then to slip out of the office and head down to the street. Most of the staff around there also treated him like he was nothing more than a shadow, and he didn’t mind. He’d never been a social person, exactly, and he didn’t want this company to be his legacy.
He was painfully shy and awkward, his social anxiety through the roof, which set the tone for all of his relationships after high school. In college, he had one undergrad sweetheart he met in his morning psychology lecture. They dated off and on for almost the entire four years, before he ran off to grad school and never thought about Jonas again.
David was no great loss, really. He had no drive and no passion, and for all that Jonas wasn’t the sort of person to be loud and brash, he wanted something more than that. He wasn’t bitter the day David updated his status to engaged, and he’d even sent a wedding present after seeing David and his new husband honeymooning in Hawaii.
Jonas was no heartbreaker, but he supposed it was for the best. His entire life was helplessly tangled in the chaos that was his family, and the last thing in the world he’d ever want was to involve someone in that. So, he casually fucked when he was in the mood, and sometimes a partner stuck around for a few weeks, but it never lasted.
He was resigned to be the sort of man who was good enough for now, but not good enough forever.
Stepping out of the building, Jonas grimaced at the oppressive heat. Even buried three floors underground in the parking garage, the heat was cruel and suffocating. His AC took a minute to catch on, and he stuck his face in the blast of the vent to chase off the beads of sweat forming on his brow. The shade only protected his hands from blisters as he gripped his wheel, and as he pulled out onto the main street, the sun blinded him. Noon was always a terrible time to navigate around downtown, but he found it a relief to put distance between him and the office.
He hadn’t spent a single day after leaving Peter’s office the night he found out the truth about
his birth not regretting his choices. Every night, he went to sleep with a small bout of self-hatred for not walking away. He didn’t owe Peter anything—the man who had gone out of his way to make sure Jonas never felt like family long before he knew he wasn’t his son. And he didn’t owe his mother, who had acknowledged his accusation with a soft lift of an eyebrow and not a single word of apology, for giving him this life.
But it was what it was. Jonas couldn’t go back and find bravery where he only held cowardice. He couldn’t go back and teach that trembling eighteen-year-old how to stand up to that old man and tell him to go fuck himself. He was the product of his choice to stay in the city, to get the MBA he never wanted, and to set up an office in his father’s building. The years crawled by at a glacial pace, and Jonas knew there had to be a light at the end of the tunnel, but he couldn’t see it yet.
Turning the air down once his car had cooled, Jonas pulled onto the freeway and flipped his sun visor down. The traffic was always terrible on his way out of the city, but it cleared up the further down the eighty-seven he drove, and then there was almost nothing as he took the exit toward Fountain Hills.
His home was the one, single thing about his life that felt like a sanctuary. It had been a graduation present of sorts, though really it was just another thing for Peter to lord over him whenever he felt like Jonas’ loyalties were starting to slip. It was a quaint little three-bedroom home, constructed during the last year of his undergrads, and it was surrounded by short rolling hills and wide, empty land that was once meant for grazing.
His house looked like a blemish on the unmarked stretch of desert, but he liked it all the same. It was the furthest he could get from his parents and from the town, and during late nights when there was nothing but the endless black sky and absolute silence, he could pretend like he was somewhere else. He could pretend like he hadn’t padlocked himself to this life until he was too old for any of his own accomplishments to matter. But it was fine as it was. He didn’t love being alone all the time, but there were few people in his life he’d want to share the peace and quiet with. His friends at school had either evolved into the marriage and kids kind of people or were desperately clinging to their youth.
