Cut So Deep

by Stasia Black

  But here? There’s nothing but me and him, confined in the box of this limo. Even though the inside of the limo is huge, it suddenly seems far too small.

  “Thank you,” I belatedly respond to his compliment. Then I add, “You, too. Look good, I mean. Handsome.”

  Oh God. Did I just say that out loud? Can we go back to not talking now?

  “Do you mind if I ask how old your son is?” His head is cocked slightly to the side.

  “He’s two and a half.”

  “How old were you when you had him?”

  My jaw tenses. What the hell kind of question is that? I’m already looking at my lap after my previous foot-in-mouth statement, and now I avert my eyes to the window at the endless billboards that stretch along the 101.

  “Sorry,” Jackson’s low voice comes from closer than I expect, and then I feel the heavy warm pressure of his hand on mine. “I don’t mean to pry.”

  I turn and meet his gaze. He’s leaned forward, closing the gap between the benches so that our knees almost touch. I can smell his cologne. The masculine woodsy scent of pine sweeps over me. The earthy smell is so at odds with the city around us. Again, I envision him belonging in a log cabin, maybe in another century. And his size. He’s too large—like he was made to be a lumberjack or out hunting wild boars. Not sit behind a desk writing computer code.

  “How did you get into working with computers?” I ask instead of answering his question. Somehow I need to get this conversation onto business, but I also want the evening to play out organically. And I’m frankly just interested.

  He tilts his head again in that way that makes me feel like he’s trying to puzzle me out, but doesn’t move his hand from where it rests over mine. I have to slide it out from under his to pull it back toward my waist. He doesn’t react to my withdrawal.

  “My foster dad.”

  The answer is short and he goes quiet after, looking down at his hands.

  I think that’s all he’s going to say but after another long moment, he starts talking again. “It was… I don’t know, our thing. I was sort of a,” he shrugs and looks out the window, “handful when I came to live with them. So Dad gave me a bunch of old computers to take apart. Then after they were in pieces, we’d put them back together. Anything to keep my hands busy and keep me out of trouble.”

  Okay. Wow. I really wasn’t expecting him to open up like that.

  “I didn’t know you were in foster care.” I feel stupid after I say it, because it kind of implicitly infers that I’ve researched him or at least run a few Google searches.

  He seems to take it in stride, though, because he holds a finger over his lips. “Shh, I’ve managed to keep it off my Wikipedia page.”

  But he’s telling me? Then I think about all the stories I’ve heard of children in foster care. As if he reads it on my face, his lips tip on one side. He leans forward again just long enough to pat my knee. The quick contact is like a jolt, but he pulls back on his own this time.

  “Oh come on,” he says, “don’t look at me like that.” His eyes narrow at me. “We’ve all got a sad story. Mine’s not any more tragic than most. I was too young to remember my parents when I lost them. Eventually I landed with good foster parents, the Kents, when I was eleven and the rest is history.” He settles back into his seat.

  I don’t miss two key points of that last sentence. Eventually and when he was eleven. What happened during all the in-between years?

  “I thought I read somewhere that you had trouble in school growing up?”

  He shrugs, looking slightly uncomfortable but trying to laugh it off. “You let something slip to a reporter one time,” he shakes his head and flashes a self-deprecating smile that gives me a glimpse of the dimple in his left cheek.

  “Sorry,” I cringe. Now here I’m the one doing the prying.

  “No, it’s okay.” He waves a hand. “I’m not really embarrassed or ashamed about it. It’s always just a little weird when people know things about me already when I first meet them.”

  Double cringe time. “Yeah, sorry again. I googled you before I came to first pitch you.” I scrunch up my face and raise my eyebrows apologetically. “Won’t do it again, scouts honor.”

  He grins, dimple coming out in full force. “How about I choose to be flattered by your interest and we’ll call it even?”

  I let out a relieved breath. Okay, he’s taking the non-douchey path at every turn here. Wow. I don’t quite know what to make of him. I’m still trying to think of something to say to cover up my faux pas when he continues.

  “Yes, I had trouble,” his eyes search the ceiling of the town car like he’s looking for the way to put it, “…focusing my attentions when I was younger. It’s like my mind was moving three times faster than my teachers were talking or anything else that was going on around me. I was slapped with an ADHD diagnosis and put on meds until I was placed with the Kents.” His gaze goes back to the window.

  “Did you actually have ADHD?” Well damn, there goes my curiosity again. Except, he’s the one opening up. I’m not forcing him and suddenly I’m hungry for every tidbit of information he’s willing to share.

  Oh,” he looks back at me, like he was just lost in memory for a moment there. “Dad didn’t like how meds were the go-to solution for troublesome kids in the system. He helped me wean off them. Others just saw me as a disruptive kid, but Dad saw something else.” His fingers thrum on the seat beside him.

  I like the way he talks about his dad. His voice softens and his usually hard features gentle. By that alone I can tell the man is really special to him.

  “He saw how I was always fiddling with things. He worked at Lockheed, so he taught me some basic coding. I really took to it. It was good for me. The control of it. When I started coding it was like this thing I’d been needing my whole life.”

  I scrunch my eyebrows. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, computers just made sense. Like math, but more fun. You have a problem and you write an algorithm to fix it. Life’s always too chaotic but computers,” he shrugged. “It was like for the first time in my life I finally felt in control.”

  “Oh.” It’s all I can say, but inside I can’t stop thinking about Jackson as a little eleven-year-old boy who’d been labeled a ‘problem child’ by the system. He’d probably known nothing but chaos for years before coming to live with the Kents. But then Mr. Kent gave him an arena where he could finally reclaim control of at least a little part of that chaos.

  Jackson continues as if he didn’t just reveal something so personal. “Dad made it fun and he just had a way of working with me to help me funnel my energy. So I’d be using my hands and my brain, you know?” Another one of those fond smiles crosses his face. “Robotics was always the perfect match for me.”

  “He was an inventor, too?” The patent that Bryce used to bring Jackson to the table in the first place. Bryce said it had belonged to Jackson’s father.

  Jackson’s jaw tenses slightly. He’s obviously recalling how I know this bit of information. He nods, a quick, tight jerk of his head. “He helped me build my first robot. We entered it in a battle-bot competition. Ours won.”

  “Naturally.” I smile.

  His dimple reappears as his eyes flash to mine. “Naturally.”

  He looks so young when his face softens like that. It strikes me then that he and Bryce must be around the same age. They were in college together after all. So that would make Jackson, what? Thirty-two? Thirty-three? Ten years older than me, but considering all that he’s accomplished, impossibly young.

  “I was hooked from then on,” he continues. “I built all kinds of things. For a while I was obsessed with making robots that were elaborate machines to do really simple things.”

  My smile turns into a grin. I know exactly what he’s talking about. I can’t believe he’s trying to play it off so casually. “Ridiculousrobots.com, right? That site is still epic!” I laugh. “My friends at Stanford were always trying to come up wi
th ideas of things to submit to it.”

  “Ah,” he sighs with a pretend cringe. “The legacy of my seventeen-year-old self. Fifteen years later, and that one’s still the thing I’m most famous for. More than my actual life’s work.”

  I’m laughing full out now. “Aw, come on,” I slap his knee playfully. “It’s a great legacy. My favorite was your ten-foot robot/Rube Goldberg machine that sings Mary Had A Little Lamb, all just to flush the toilet. The grad students at Stanford totally built one like it and installed it for a semester in the lab bathroom. It was awesome,” I shake my head, “though we all wanted to torch Mary by the time finals rolled around.”

  The dimple looks like a permanent fixture in Jackson’s cheek at this point. He laughs too. “I disabled the music box after a week and a half. I can’t believe you guys lasted a whole semester.”

  “Oh my God, no way! They’ll die if I ever run into them again and tell them! The only reason they kept it was because they were so damned dogged about authenticity.” But then the smile fades from my face. I was never great friends with any of the people in the computer and robotics lab—I was too wrapped up in David for that. Then, when I had the baby, even the acquaintances I’d had petered off faster than you can say ‘diaper change.’ I pull my thoughts back to the present. Jackson’s being so relaxed and easy with me. I don’t want to lose any part of the moment.

  “Are you two still close?” I ask. “You and your dad?”

  A pained look crosses Jackson’s face. “He passed while I was in college. Heart attack.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Almost involuntarily, my hand seeks his.

  He pulls away before I can make contact. My heart cinches and I’m not sure if it’s because he pulled away or because I saw the flash of pain in his eyes about his dad’s loss.

  “We’re here.” He straightens in his seat and I see that we’re pulling up to a well-lit hotel with a line of limos and expensive towncars waiting at the curb.

  I want to ask more about his father, but by his posture and the look on his face, I can tell that the subject’s closed. Yet he opened up to me so much—me, an almost perfect stranger. Why? And at the same time, all I want is to know more. What happened after things turned around with his new foster family? Did everything change after that? Did he start to fit in at school? What about college? I still never learned about his father’s patent and how Bryce came to have it. And obviously it hit Jackson hard when his foster father died—

  “Shall we?” Jackson’s eyes find mine, and he holds out a hand to me as the door opens. Immediately the noise of excited voices and activity breaks into the sanctuary of the quiet car. I take a deep breath as a sweeping lightheadedness hits at the thought of stepping out into all of that.

  In the busyness of getting ready and the overwhelming nature of Jackson’s presence in the car, I haven’t thought about this moment. Being here. Actually here, in the dress, at Jackson’s side. Shit, am I going to be expected to dance? Or use the right fork at dinner? That’s not even to mention what I’m really supposed to be doing here. I’ve let myself get all sentimental about Jackson and his dad when I ought to be cutthroat, using whatever emotional ground I’ve gained to get to the deal. I have to get this done. And not make an absolute fool of myself in the meantime.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit, sh—

  “Breathe,” Jackson whispers into my ear. As if his hot breath on my ear is supposed to freaking help anything. I shiver from the sensual feel of it as he steps out of the car. Then his hand grabs mine and ready or not, he pulls me out after him.

  It’s not a graceful exit, let’s just say that. I end up tripping on some of my dress’s fabric and I fall into Jackson’s chest.

  “Shit.” I grab his lapels in a death grip and my cheeks burn hot with embarrassment.

  “I’ve got you,” he says, eyes locking with mine as his hands go to my waist, steadying me.

  Wow. His eyes are really blue. Like, really, really blue. They must be catching some light from how lit up they’ve got the red carpet, because they’re almost iridescent right now. I’ve never seen any color like that in my life and—

  “I’ve got you,” he repeats in a whisper.

  “If you just come this way,” breaks in a loud-voiced man with a clipboard, alternately speaking to us and then into an earpiece. “Yes, yes, I’m getting the car cleared right now.”

  The slick-haired man who I guess is a concierge or event-organizer smiles impatiently at us. “If you’d like to enter the venue, then we can get the next car moved up.” He gestures toward the red carpet behind us.

  “Of course,” Jackson says. Unlike me, he isn’t watching the concierge. He’s still looking at me. Nervous, I slide away from him, carefully pulling my dress out from underneath my shoe and stepping toward the gauntlet that is the red carpet.

  This is just a charity function, but I suppose in California, everything gets the Hollywood treatment. There aren’t paparazzi per se, but just like Breanna warned, there are lots of camera flashes taking shots for the society pages. Even a few local news crews are out as the Bay Area’s wealthy parade in their finest for charity.

  Jackson joins me, arm proffered for me to take. Then we start down the red carpet.

  It’s not very long, but still, it’s red and there are cameras flashing. I’m on the arm of a gorgeous man, wearing an incredible dress. This is the most surreal moment of my life. It’s hard to keep my eyes open with all the flashes of light in my face, but I do my damnedest.

  Jackson Vale is a somebody, and there are often pictures of him on the society page. He was being absurd in the car when he said he was most famous for ridiculousrobots.com. Gentry Tech is more one of those names you’ve only heard of if you’re in the robotics world or if you studied it like I did, but CubeThink hobby drones are all but a household name. Yeah, they make the professional models that Hollywood uses for filming, but they also make more affordable units, like the toy parents were fighting each over for last Black Friday.

  So yeah, I don’t want to be the idiot beside him wincing away from camera flashes with her eyes shut. I blink quickly when my eyes start to water and make sure to keep them open.

  I paste on the biggest smile I can manage. But does that make me look too beauty queen? I dial it down a notch to what I hope comes across as demure. That’s what a companion to the Jackson Vale should look like. Right?

  Before I can overanalyze it too much, we’re at the end of the carpet by the awning for the entrance to the hotel where the gala is being held. Another organizer tells us to pose against the Red Cross logo backdrop for more photos. Oh great, even more nerve-racking. I don’t have much time to think about my smile before there are even more flashbulbs going off in our faces.

  Christ, give a girl a little warning. I’ve barely just managed to arrange my features into something I think looks like a pleasant expression, and the next second we’re being ushered off the carpet and into the hotel.

  “Damn, I wish I could have like, practiced that,” I whisper to Jackson as we head to the doors. “I swear I’ve never had such a hard time walking and smiling at the same time before.”

  He coughs out a startled laugh as we pass the threshold into the ornately decorated hotel lobby. He looks down at me. Both sides of his mouth are actually tilted up at the same time. “You were brilliant.”

  There’s not much time for the praise to sink in before we’re led through to what I can only call a ballroom. I know this must just be an event center on any regular day, but it’s been absolutely transformed.

  White fairy lights hang from the ceiling and everything else is done in whites and golds. Crisp white tablecloths. Gold napkins. Golden swan centerpieces with vases of white tulips.

  It all looks like something out of a fairytale, and that’s not even taking into consideration the gorgeously-dressed people who’ve begun filling up the space. Beyond the tables is an open area for mingling or maybe dancing later.

  Few people are sitting a
t the tables though. They’re mingling in the open area beyond the seating, on the ballroom floor where servers thread through the crowd with champagne and appetizers held aloft on trays. That’s where Jackson guides me with the slightest of pressures on the small of my back. I’d rather he held out his arm for me to take. I could use the stability of his arm. But the touch of his hand to the skin of my back where the dress dips feels… a little too intimate.

  The surreal feeling is back. Like this is one of those dreams where I’ve gotten myself on a reality show. You know, the kind where they set you up on an elaborate prank and then Ashton Kutcher jumps out at you—except that show was for celebrities and aired forever ago and yeah. Besides, with my luck, it’s more like the dream would turn into a nightmare where everyone starts laughing at me and there are clowns and it all goes downhill from there—

  “So now you know where I come from and how I got into computers. What about you?”

  When I look up toward Jackson, his eyes are so intent and piercing I all but lose my breath. Dear God this man should come with a warning label.

  “I, um,” I stutter, shrugging ridiculously and laughing. “I don’t know. Studying computers seemed like a good way to play against my type cast.”

  His eyebrows furrow like he doesn’t get my meaning.

  I feel my cheeks heat. “You know, blonde bimbo.” I leave out the big boobs part and he’s gentlemanly enough not to drop his eyes to my cleavage that manages to make even this elegant dress that looked perfectly respectable on the hanger into something Jessica Rabbit would wear.

  The crease between his eyebrow only deepens, though. “I’ve never seen you that way, Calliope.”

  A part of me wants to challenge him on it. Then why did you invite me out tonight? All my naïveté was used up a long time ago. I’ve accepted the fact that it’s what all men see when they look at me.

  But what if… could a man ever learn to see past it? I’ve never doubted that there might be good men out there in the world. I just always knew that those weren’t the kind of men who would be attracted to me.