"What, you need a ride because you guys are going to drink?" Lily asked, shifting her weight. All she wanted was a bath. She did not want to talk to her brother, not when he was going to ask her a dumb question that would piss her off. She didn't even care that she was probably coming across like a bitch to Jack.
"First of all, I am offended that you would insult me in such a way," Alec said, placing his hand over his heart. "You wound me, sister. Secondly, no, we're not going to drink and we don't need a ride. Players are actually encouraged to bring their family if they have family nearby. Family gets a special discount if they choose to buy season tickets, and Seraphina Hanson likes to meet a player's family."
"I already met her."
"He means she wants to get to know everyone," Jack said from the couch. "Make it more than just the cordial hello from when she met us before the draft."
"And you want me to go?" Lily asked.
"You're my only family that lives close enough to attend," Alec said, throwing his arms out. "Honestly, Lil, you should be honored. You don't even have to pay to come."
"I wouldn't pay if I had to," Lily said. "I can't go."
"What, you have a date?" Alec asked, smirking as he did so.
Lily flared her nostrils. "Actually, I do," she snapped.
"You do?" Jack asked, surprise clear in his tone.
"You know, I am capable of dating," Lily said, though who she was speaking to, she didn't know anymore. "Some guys actually find me pretty and charming, as hard as that might be to believe."
"I didn't mean—"
But Lily refused to listen to either of them any longer. She walked past them, all but stomping in her room and slamming her door shut. Perhaps, in retrospect, she should have garnered a better control of herself. She was barely eighteen and she was still acting like she was a spoiled middle school girl. That was the last way she wanted to act in front of Jack Ruby.
However, it frustrated her that he—or Alec, her own brother, for that matter—didn't believe she actually had a date. And technically speaking, she didn't. A cute guy from Starbucks—one of her regulars—wanted to meet up and talk about a class they figured out they both shared together.
It was totally not a date, at least, not in her eyes. However, they didn't need to know that.
She blew out a breath, her bangs flying out of her face. She picked up her purse and placed it on the foot of her bed, shaking out the kinks in her neck. She wanted to take a bath. She did not want them to be there when she got out. Quickly, she stripped off her clothes and headed into the attached bathroom. She turned on the faucet of the tub and started filling the tub with hot water. She wrapped one of her grape-colored towels around her naked body and headed back into her room to grab her phone. There was a book she had been reading that she wanted to finish.
There was a gentle knock on the door that caused her to nearly drop her phone.
"Go away, Alec."
"It's not Alec," Jack's gentle voice returned.
Lily swallowed, her mouth going dry. She hated that Jack had this power over her, hated that she was such a weak, silly child when it came to Jack.
She paused and slowly padded over to the door before cracking it open. She was struck by Jack's dark eyes and she stepped back. She kept hold of the door, however, not wanting to give him any indication that he was welcome in her room while she was in just a towel.
"Oh, sorry."
"What do you want?"
He cocked his to the side, causing a couple of strands of dark hair to litter his forehead.
"I just wanted to apologize. It wasn't my intention to offend you at all. It wasn't what I meant, actually, I just—" He stopped and cleared his throat. "Anyway, you're busy. I'll leave you alone."
Lily watched him go, her face even warmer than she expected it to get. She hadn't expected an apology from Jack Ruby. The thing about Jack Ruby was he didn't apologize.
The truth of the matter was, Lily didn't have a date. Not one that would lead to romance, at least not on her end. That didn't mean, however, that she was going to drop everything just because her brother told her to do it. But maybe if Jack Ruby…
No.
She couldn't think like that.
Lily closed the door to her room and padded across the carpet and into the bathroom. Her bath was nice and hot by the time she got there. After dropping a colorful bath bomb into the water, she climbed in and leaned her head back against the incline of the tub, letting the pink and purple water coat her body. She closed her eyes and breathed in the fruity scent before letting herself relax.
- - -
An hour later, Lily pulled herself up, out of the tub in order to dry herself off. The water had gone lukewarm and she was ready to go over her class schedule and see if one of the books she needed for her English class had finally arrived at the UCI Bookstore. She was supposed to be getting an email any day now.
She changed into her pajamas just in case Jack decided to come back to her bedroom and lifted the screen of her laptop. Her fingers clacked away at the keys, typing in her password, bringing up Chrome, and signing into her email. Nothing from the bookstore, but she frowned when she saw a familiar name.
Andrew Corwin.
Lily frowned. Andrew Corwin was her high school sweetheart. They broke up when he left for college. What was he doing emailing her, of all things?
She clicked open the email and her mouth dropped open.
There was no message. Not one she noticed initially. Instead, there was a video of the two of them having sex when they were in high school. Lily had never seen a camera; she had never consented to being filmed while being intimate with someone she loved. Her eyes immediately filled up with tears. She placed her hands over her mouth and she started to shake uncontrollably. Her wet hair caused goosebumps to prick her skin and her heart jumped everywhere—her throat, the pit of her stomach, against her chest cavity.
She shut it off.
There, underneath it, she saw the text:
A website is willing to pay me twenty-five thousand dollars for this. I thought it was only fair if I gave you the opportunity to at least match it.
Before she could stop herself, Lily threw her computer off of her desk. It crashed into the nearby wall and clattered to the floor. She let out a guttural cry and disintegrated into a heap on her chair. Her body shook. Her eyes were still filled with water that wouldn't fall. She was in pain but she couldn't actually feel it.
A gentle knock on her bedroom door caused the ringing in her head to pause momentarily.
"You okay?"
What the hell was Jack doing?
She closed her eyes, inhaled a shaky breath. She needed to remind herself that this wasn't Jack's fault. This wasn't even her fault. This was what happened when one dated assholes whose best days of his life were behind him.
"Um, yeah?" She had no idea why she decided to form her sentence like a question. It made no sense. Of course she wasn't okay, but she wasn't going to tell him that.
"You sure?"
Why did he suddenly care? Why was even here? She shook her head. This wasn't his fault. It wasn't. But she didn't want to be around anyone right now. She didn't even want to be around herself. She could not believe Andrew had filmed that. She could not believe—
She took a breath. The tears came back to her eyes. This wasn't helping the situation.
"I'm going to come in, okay?"
Jack's soft voice cut through her foggy thoughts and the twisting of the door handle caused her to tense. She was on the ground, a pathetic child who wanted to be cloaked in safety. But she was on her own, now. She was an adult. Nobody could help her—except herself.
When Jack walked in, his eyes fell on Lily and he immediately went to her and dropped to his knees. She felt her face get hot due to his close proximity. Her mouth went dry again. She was pathetic. No wonder something so vicious had happened to her. She was weak.
"You okay?"
"I'm not." She got up. Reg
ret instantly pooled in her gut but she ignored it. She refused to look at him because, if she did she would melt, and if she was going to survive being blackmailed, she could not let Jack Ruby melt her.
"Yeah, I just stumbled and fell into my computer," she said.
Jack opened his mouth. He didn't believe her. She could tell. After a moment, he paused, nodded his head once, and stood up.
"Well," he said. "I'm here if you need to talk."
When the door closed again and Lily was sure he wouldn't be back, she fell to the floor and didn't stop herself from crying.
5
Jack
Jack knew there was more to it; he just didn't know what that was. And it bothered him.
He knew it shouldn't bother him. He knew this because Lily was nothing more than a sister to him. But that would be a lie. She meant much more to him than a sister would. At least, he looked at her differently.
Jack padded back to the couch and plopped down before kicking his feet up and resting them on the coffee table. He grabbed the remote and flipped on the television. Lily only had basic cable so by the time he went through all eleven channels, he had already gone through his options. Instead, he switched inputs, grabbed the Roku control, and put on Netflix. There wasn't anything in particular he had to watch, but he needed background noise to drown out his thoughts. He didn't like the fact that they constantly lingered around Lily.
After a few minutes, his phone chirped. He furrowed his brow as it continued to ring. Who was calling him? Everyone he knew was aware that Jack didn't like speaking on the phone and would prefer a text. Unless, of course, it was his boss who was going to call anyway, or his mother, who didn't always know how to text. He pulled his phone from his pocket and frowned when he saw his mother's number.
What did she want?
Before Jack answered, he glanced back at Lily's room, almost as though to make sure she wasn't about to step out. He didn't feel comfortable speaking about his mother around Lily—even Alec, to a degree—and the last thing he wanted was for Lily, who was already going through something, to have to overhear a conversation Jack himself probably didn't want to have to endure.
"Hello?"
"Jackie!" his mother exclaimed when he got on the phone.
Jack could feel his entire body tense and he dropped his feet from the coffee table and started joggling his right knee. He could tell by the way she said his name that she wanted something. Money, probably. The fact of the matter was, Jack didn't have money himself. Camp had just started and he needed to actually try out for the team. He hadn't even signed an official contract yet and probably wouldn't until the fall—if he was lucky to make the Mayhem. He didn't expect to make the Gulls. Only a select few rookies made the professional team, and he knew he wasn't in that category. Yet.
"Mom."
He never wanted to call her “Mom” because he didn't really see her as one. Hadn't for a long time. If anyone was his mother, it was Alec and Lily's mom. She took him in when he had nowhere to go because his mother was entertaining company that included tweakers and other drug addicts. She fed him when his own mother spent their last five bucks on cocaine rather than food. And she always bought him two outfits for back to school, even though she was struggling to make ends meet for her own family because the majority of the money went to either rent or Alec's hockey.
The woman on the phone to him was his mother, certainly, but not his mom.
"How-how are you doing?"
Jack shrugged and then remembered she probably couldn't see the gesture. "I'm doing," he said. It wasn't an answer that made sense, but he wasn't in the mood to talk about his day. He didn't want her to know about it anyway.
"Oh." She cleared her throat, sniffed. He wondered if she had a runny nose. She always got them after a particularly hard binge. "Okay. Well, I was just, I just wanted to check in and see how you were, how Irvine was, you know? I've heard it's a beautiful place to live."
Another shrug. She brought out the silence in him.
Jack's eyes slid back to Lily's room and he wondered what had happened to make that crashing noise. He was surprised when she had been abrupt with him—not that she wasn't entitled to do so. Whatever was going on in there was her business and maybe he shouldn't have asked. He just wanted to make sure she was okay. Maybe they weren't exactly close friends and maybe she didn't see him as family, but that didn't mean that he didn't care about her.
"Jack?" Her soft voice reminded him that he was talking to his mother on the phone, not trying to figure out what was going on with Lily.
"Yeah, it is," he forced himself to say. "It is a nice place to live. Look, can I help you with something? I have a lot I'm doing."
"Oh-oh, yes, of course." She cleared her throat. "I just, I just wanted to say that I'm proud of you, Jack. We all are."
Jack rolled his eyes. He knew she was referring to her friends. The same friends who sold her drugs and beat the shit out of her if she was late on a payment because she decided to borrow money from them again instead of going out and getting a job like a normal mom.
"That's nice. Good talk. I gotta go."
"Wait, wait, please, Jack." Her voice broke. Jack hated the way his heart clenched at the sound of it, hated the way he actually hesitated, even though his fingers were just above the red END button. He hated that mothers seemed to have this power over their children, even if they hated them. "I know, I know I don't deserve the time, okay? I know I fucked up. I guess I just wanted to say that I'm proud of you."
"You already said that," he snapped.
"Yes-yes, of course, I know." She was fumbling her words. Was she high? Was she nervous? Could it be both? Jack didn't know. It shouldn't matter. But it did. And he hated that, too. "I know I already said it. I just, I don't think I said it enough when you were growing up."
"You mean when I needed it?" Jack asked. "You can tell me now that I'm drafted to a team but you couldn't say that when I got a sponsorship to the triple A team as a pee wee? You couldn't say that when I constantly got MVP on the ice? When I got drafted to Team USA for the World Juniors? When I made the California Brick team as a mite?"
Jack stopped himself even though there were hundreds of moments he could have listed.
His mother's silence rang on the other line.
"You didn't need to call to tell me that," Jack said after another moment. He was still sitting, his leg still joggling up and down, and somehow, he was out of breath. "You don't need to call at all."
"I-I know." She cleared her throat. Her tone—still sticky-sweet and maybe even a touch genuine—surprised him.
By this time, she would be screaming at him to take care of her, that she gave him life, she stayed when his dad left, that he wouldn't be anywhere in his life if it hadn't been for her. This would also be the point where he hung up the phone and ignored his mom, fed the hunger that consumed him by looking for any sort of fight he could get himself into, until the adrenaline passed and he realized his mother was only saying those vicious things because she was high or looking to get high. He would sympathize, but only a little, only enough where he talked himself into going home to check on her. She would have found her high—he didn't want to think about what she had to do in order to get the hit—but she would always tell him later. She would sell herself or sex and then blame Jack because Jack wouldn't help her buy it. It made him angry all over again. But he couldn't take it out on his mom. She was already living this sad, pathetic waste of a life already. So he bottled it up and waited for a good chance to release it.
"You're right, sweetie, I shouldn't be bothering you." There was a slight pause. Jack pressed the phone tightly to his ear as if he wanted to hear if she was talking to someone. "I hope, well, I hope you're having fun. I miss you. M-maybe you could come by and see me? I wouldn't want to visit you. Don't want to embarrass you or nothing, you know? You have a reputation and I would just…" She let her voice trail off and Jack forced the guilt that started smothering his heart to
go back down to his stomach. "I know there was a reason you didn't want me at the draft. I was angry about it at the time. I was so, so angry. But I understand now, okay? Just, if you could just make the time to see me, well, that would be wonderful."
Jack wanted to open his mouth and tell her to go to hell. He wanted to scoff and bring up all the times he wanted her somewhere—his high school graduation, the World Juniors, any one of his hockey games—but she couldn't find the time to go out of her way and be there for him. Why should he rearrange his life just to see her when she was the last person he wanted to see in the first place?
And yet, the guilt festered. It choked him. It kept his mouth shut until he found himself so frustrated, he couldn't react at all.
"I gotta go," he said quietly into the phone.
"Is that a maybe?"
Goddammit, why did she have to push? Why did she have to point out that he hadn't said no?
"I have to go," he forced himself to repeat.
"Wait, I just." She stopped. "I know, Jackie, I know I'm not the best mom. The fact that you're even giving me the chance to talk to you is a blessing, son. I know this. Trust me, I know. Can you just—can you tell me where you're staying? I just need to make sure you're okay. Please, Jack. I won't bother you. I just need to know where you are. That you're safe."
"I'm safe," he insisted.
"Jack," his mother pushed. Her tone was gentle, though, like even she knew she was aware that he was giving her a chance when he didn't have to. "It would, it would make me feel so much better if I knew you were safe, okay? Please, Jackie. I won't, I'm not going to bother you unless you invite me into your life. I'm not expecting it. I know I don't deserve that much from you. I don't deserve anything from you. But just, please, just let me know."
Jack heaved a sigh. He closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders back. His mother always had a knack for getting under his skin and causing him to tense up. Even her concern was frustratingly annoying. He never knew if she was being genuine or if this was part of one her grand schemes. However, he also knew that this might be the only way to get her off of the phone. And how could he be concerned with Lily when his mother continued to nag him incessantly? Telling her where he wasn't didn't seem that big of a deal anyway.
Rookies Do It Better: Book 1 in The Minor League Mayhem Series Page 3
