Bax blinked at Xavier for a moment. “Wow. Um, well…that’s your opinion, I guess.”
“I’m certainly not attempting to foist my opinion on you, Baxter. It’s just my feelings on the subject, based on my observance of my roommate’s struggles with pornography addiction.”
“Pornography addiction? Really?” Bax demanded, skeptical.
“Yes, really,” Xavier answered. “It was all he did. He skipped class to watch it, flaked out on studying for exams, ditched his friends. He always had other excuses, but that’s what he was doing. It negatively affected his life, and he was both unwilling and unable to curtail his usage of it, which by any definition is addiction, only mental rather than chemical.”
“Huh.” Bax stuffed his phone in his pocket as Zane pulled up outside a warehouse. “That’s not me, though. It’s just something I enjoy, and I don’t see the harm in it.”
He slid out of the cab and slammed the door, tugging the hood of his sweatshirt up against the icy early morning wind as he trudged to the entrance of the warehouse with an armload of supplies.
I patted Xavier’s chest. “I think you made him think harder than he cares to, little brother.”
Xavier searched me. “Am I wrong?”
I shook my head. “No, not at all. You’ve got a great point, actually, which is something I realized myself. I was never as into it as Bax, but when I started seeing Claire, it became something I just…didn’t want anymore.”
“Even though you don’t see her all the time?”
I nodded. “That’s definitely part of it. Things…build up, I guess, and then when we see each other it’s more intense.” I patted him again. “Don’t ever let anyone give you shit about your choice, Xavier. I think it’s admirable.”
He sighed. “It’s hard sometimes. I mean, it can be extremely difficult to not feel embarrassed about still being a virgin, especially having overly-virile sex machines for brothers.” He rolled his shoulders, rubbing his chest where’d I’d patted him, leaning as far away from me as he could get; he disliked physical contact, and we’d been squeezed together for several minutes now. “I need air.”
He got out and shut the door, joining Bax in the warehouse, leaving Lucian and me in the truck with Zane.
I glanced at Lucian. “You got anything to add, Luce?”
Lucian lifted a shoulder. “Nope.” And then he was out of the truck too.
“Heavy conversation for six in the morning,” Zane said, shutting off the truck.
“Yeah, well, if you didn’t drag us out of bed at five-fucking-thirty…”
“You’re really not a morning person, are you?” Zane asked, laughing.
We both got out and hauled supplies into the warehouse.
“I’m really not,” I said. “There’s absolutely no reason to be awake before seven.”
“Don’t you ever get up early to fly?” Zane asked. “Like for airshows?”
“Sure, obviously. But I hate it. And everyone I fly with knows to leave me alone if it’s early, especially before coffee.” I followed Zane into the warehouse and set my load of drywall on the floor just inside.
Zane had purchased the warehouse for a relatively cheap price, considering the size of it and its decent condition; I hadn’t realized Zane had as much money saved as he had, and when I asked, he just said he wasn’t much of a spender, so he’d saved almost all of his earnings over his ten years in the Navy, which, apparently, equalled a sizeable chunk of change. Obviously so, if he could afford to buy the place outright and the supplies necessary to renovate. The warehouse wasn’t abandoned; the company that owned it had gone out of business and needed to unload it. It was, as Zane had claimed, a three-minute drive from the bar, so it was a convenient location. The interior had been set up for production of some kind of metal product, with offices in a loft area over the production floor. The company had removed and sold all the equipment and supplies in an auction before selling the building itself, so there was very little to do by way of clean up and demolition.
Zane, Xavier, and Bax had already spent most of the preceding week in here, knocking down all non-load bearing walls, and getting the interior ready for construction. Apparently Xavier had done some dabbling in architecture and design—because of course he had; only Xavier could “dabble” in something like architecture—so, he already had a CAD program on his laptop and the basic skills necessary to redesign the interior. Apparently Bax had moonlighted at a house building company during the offseason over in Canada, so he was actually a skilled builder, and the rest of us were all fairly handy naturally; Dad had renovated the upstairs apartment himself, so we came by it honestly.
Thus, I found myself roped into helping Zane turn the interior of a ten thousand square foot, one hundred year old warehouse into a liveable home. Despite my complaining, though, it was going to be a fun project. The outside of the warehouse was in excellent condition. Being an early twentieth century design, it was built to last, constructed of deep red brick, two stories, with a row of windows on each level. Inside, the front half of the interior was open from floor to ceiling, and then the back half was split into two levels. It had its own water tower on the flat roof, and a massive and fairly new central heating and A/C system. Zane had already had the electrical and plumbing inspected, so all we had to do was put in walls where he wanted them upstairs, build the kitchen, put down flooring, have some extra insulation blown in where necessary…
Yeah, that was it. No big deal. And, oh yeah, he wanted it done before the baby came, sometime in May. Which meant he was planning on spending every available moment here, and was hoping the rest of us would too. And us being the brothers we were, he knew he could count on us. We’d helped the twins build their studio, we’d all helped each other move, and we’d all pitched in to help both Dru and Mara move as well. If one of us asked for help, he got it, no matter what—and Badd brothers didn’t do anything half-assed.
We went to work, Xavier guiding our efforts. The day went pretty fast, and we made decent progress. A quick break for lunch, and then we worked through until four. Bast had requested we all put in a few hours at the bar tonight, since he expected a busy crowd and the twins were playing a couple sets and thus couldn’t work the floor, which meant I put in five hours behind the bar before Bast told me I could cut out.
I found Claire by herself up in the living room over the bar, staring at her phone, sniffling, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex. I took a seat next to her and drew her close.
“What’s wrong, babe?” I asked.
She showed me her phone; she had received a text message from an unknown number, the sender’s bubble in green rather than blue.
Them: Claire, this is Hayley. Texting you from my friend’s phone. Dad is sick. Stage 3 cancer. Come home soon.
I read the message several times. “I’m probably latching onto the totally wrong thing here, but why is Hayley texting you from a friend’s phone?” I read the message again. “And…why would she text you this, rather than calling you? And why her and not your mom, or your dad?”
“I told you my family situation was complicated,” Claire said, wiping at her nose.
“Yeah, you said your dad and you haven’t spoken in, what, six years?”
She nodded. “And I told you why.”
“You got pregnant out of wedlock, then had a miscarriage.”
Claire took the phone back, staring at it; she hadn’t responded, I noticed, and she’d received the message more than an hour earlier. “It’s not that we don’t talk, Brock. We didn’t have a little falling out; he disowned me. I don’t exist to him. If you asked him, he’d tell you he only has two daughters, even though Mom bore him three. He took me out of his will, retook all the family photos, deleted me from all contacts lists in his phone, in Mom’s, in Hayley’s, and in Tab’s.” She clicked the side button to put her phone to sleep, and then immediately woke it back up again. “I…do…not…exist to him.”
I hesitated; Claire seemed m
ore fragile than usual, on edge, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed without hurting her more. “And, um…because your dad disowned you, that means your mom and sisters can’t contact you?”
She nodded heavily. “Right. They’re not allowed to talk to me, see me, email me, nothing. I’m not in the family.”
“So your sister felt like you should at least know that your dad is sick, so she texted you from a friend’s phone.”
“What do I do, Brock? He’s my dad and he’s dying, but…he hates me. It wasn’t just the pregnancy and miscarriage, that was just… the last straw. That would have been enough, don’t get me wrong, that alone would have gotten me kicked out of the house at the very least. But I’d been…stubborn. Rebellious. I hated my dad’s rules, hated the church, hated religion, hated being controlled and told what to do. So I did what I wanted. Drank a lot, stayed out for days at a time, did drugs, messed around with boys, and I didn’t try to hide any of it.
Dad tried to corral me, but I refused to listen, refused to capitulate to his fucking rules, so then when I had the miscarriage that was it. I mean, I hadn’t told them I was pregnant. I’d been hiding it, because I had no clue what the fuck I was going to do about it. I couldn’t afford an abortion, and I didn’t think I could go through with that anyway, so…I didn’t tell anyone. Not my friends, not my sisters, not the guy who knocked me up, no one. And then my family came home from mass one day and found me on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. They knew right away what it meant, and once I’d recovered, they kicked me out, told me not to come back.” Claire wiped under her eyes with the Kleenex again. “Well, not they, just my dad. Mom wanted to talk about it, wanted to give me another chance, but Dad had made up his mind.”
I struggled for something useful to say. “I—shit, Claire. I have no clue what to say.”
She laughed and sniffled. “I don’t expect you to say anything. There’s nothing to say.” Another sniffling laugh, but this one was bitter. “My dad is dying of cancer, and I find out via text message from my baby sister. And there’s not a damn thing I can do. I can’t even fucking see him.
“You’re not going back?” I asked, shocked.
She shrugged miserably. “Why? What’s the point? He’ll just ignore me until I go away. You don’t understand my father, Brock.”
I hauled her onto my lap. “Claire, honey, listen. I don’t claim to understand your situation, but you know how I feel about this. I’d give anything to see my mom and dad one more time, literally anything. I’d give up flying, and that’s…flying is my fucking life, it’s who I am.” I cupped her cheeks and forced her to look at me. “You cannot just sit here and pretend it’s not happening, Claire. You have to go back. You have to at least make the effort. If your dad dies and you don’t at least make an attempt to see him one last time, you’ll never forgive yourself.”
She ripped her face out of my hands and buried herself in my shirt. “It hurts too much. I act tough, but…it hurts. I miss my family. I never did any of those things because I don’t care about them, I just…” she shuddered, shook. “I can’t do it.”
“I know it’s gonna hurt, but you have to try. You’ll regret it the rest of your life if you don’t.”
She nuzzled closer, and I held her as tight as I could. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled against my shirt. “I tried to go back, once. Right before I joined the Army.”
“What happened?” I asked.
She sighed. “He slammed the door in my face.” Another sigh. “I’d just broken up with this guy. We’d been dating a few months, and—I was homeless at the time, right? So I was couch hopping. My lease had run out and I’d lost my job, and I only had a few friends, and most of them were druggies. I was fucking…I was lost, a complete mess. No job, no family, no real friends, nowhere to live. So I’d hooked up with this guy, a decent guy, not a bad guy at all. Just…average. I was living with him, but then he broke up with me and…I had nowhere to go. I’d worn out my welcome with most of my so-called friends…so I went back to Mom and Dad’s. Thought I could beg them to let me stay with them for a while, get my feet under me.”
“And he turned you away?” I couldn’t believe it.
She nodded. “Yep. He answered the door when I rang the bell, took one look at me, and slammed the door in my face without a fucking word. Mom came out, gave me forty dollars, and told me to give him some time. My dad started shouting for my mom to stop consorting with a prostitute, and I realized then that…” Claire had to pause for breath, and start over. “I realized that he’d never get over it. No amount of time would change his mind. I’d actually considered prostitution, honestly. Before I got the courage to go home to Mom and Dad’s. I was on the streets, hungry, cold, broke…it seemed like a way to put a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I’d have been able to find a john easily enough, I figured. I didn’t end up doing it, but I thought about it, and the fact that I even considered it was the reason I ended up going back there at all.”
“Jesus,” I breathed. “I didn’t grow up religious, but isn’t there something in the Bible about, like, having compassion and forgiving people seventy times seven times?”
She laughed bitterly. “Yeah, but apparently that doesn’t apply to wayward daughters.” Another long silence, and then she continued. “I walked away from Mom and Dad’s house with that forty bucks in my pocket. I bought a Happy Meal, a bottle of Popov, and a bottle of Aspirin.” She let out a shuddering breath. “I meant to kill myself, and I probably would have succeeded, too. Some skinny teenager vomiting in an alley? Who’s gonna give a shit? Well, on the way to find somewhere I could chase the Aspirin with the vodka, I passed by an Armed Forces recruiter. He got me to go inside and listen to his spiel, and I ended up joining the Army right then and there. His name was First Sergeant Tim Troyer, and he saved my life, very literally. I got into computers while I was in the Army, met Mara in our Sixty-Eight Whiskey unit, and then I met you…” another pause. “But I can’t go back, Brock. I won’t be turned away again.”
I let the silence linger, until I could keep it in no longer. “He’s your father, Claire.” I spoke this in a low murmur.
“He’s no one.”
“Claire—”
“NO!” She shouted, lurching off of me. “Stop trying to push this! He can fucking croak for all I fucking care. He’s a goddamn bastard and I hate him and I don’t fucking care if he dies!”
I stood up and grabbed her, hauled her close, and she readily collapsed against me. “You’re going back, Claire, but you won’t be alone this time. I’ll go with you. I won’t leave your side, not for a second.”
She leaned against me, crying, for several minutes. “I hate you.”
“That’s not how the word ‘love’ is pronounced, babe. But I know what you mean.”
She laughed, despite herself. “You’re so annoying.”
“If by annoying you mean practically perfect in every way, then yes.”
She glanced up at me. “Isn’t that from Mary Poppins?”
I shrugged. “So?”
She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “You’re really weird, you know that?”
“I do know that.” I tipped her face up to mine. “So. Where are we headed?”
She rested her cheek on my chest, staring out the window. “Huntington Woods, Michigan.”
<<<<>>>>
Also by Jasinda Wilder
Jasinda Wilder
Visit me at my website: www.jasindawilder.com
Email me: [email protected]
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My other titles:
The Preacher's Son:
Unbound
> Unleashed
Unbroken
Biker Billionaire:
Wild Ride
Delilah's Diary:
A Sexy Journey
La Vita Sexy
A Sexy Surrender
Big Girls Do It:
Boxed Set
Married
Pregnant
Rock Stars Do It:
Harder
Dirty
Forever
Omnibus
From the world of Big Girls and Rock Stars:
Big Love Abroad
The Falling Series:
Falling Into You
Falling Into Us
Falling Under
Falling Away
Falling for Colton
The Ever Trilogy:
Forever & Always
After Forever
Saving Forever
From the world of Wounded:
Wounded
Captured
From the world of Stripped:
Stripped
Trashed
From the world of Alpha:
Alpha
Beta
Omega
Harris: Alpha One Security Book 1
Thresh: Alpha One Security Book 2
Duke: Alpha One Security Book 3
The Houri Legends:
Jack and Djinn
Djinn and Tonic
The Madame X Series:
Madame X
Exposed
Exiled
Badd Brothers:
Badd Motherf*cker
Badd Ass (Badd Brothers Book 2) Page 22
