Taking Jana (Paradise South #2)

by Rissa Brahm

  But his dreams of Jana had at least replaced his nightmares of Michelle. He could only feel relief, an inner liberation from the hold his wife, God, soon-to-be ex-wife, had on him. With Jana taking over his dreams, the image of Michelle became fuzzy, blurry. It was better. He felt stronger.

  The shower sputtered to a start, and he stepped under the water. Not having even turned on the hot, he had nothing to wait for. His hard-on was bordering on painful.

  As soon as the water hit his chest and stomach, he blew out a stream of air with the shock. This would do it. This would cool him off, at least until noon.

  He dropped his chin to his chest, letting the showerhead’s icy daggers attack the top of his head and spill down his back. Shivers sprang from his shoulders, and he had to work to unclench his teeth.

  He took the bar of soap and spun it around in his palms. Lather bubbled up through his fingers as he started humming a song from his playlist, one that Jana had been singing incessantly all week long, an older ballad by ARBY. It was officially stuck in his head. That might help his hard-on die down. Because without Jana’s voice, only the words to go by, it actually made him think of Michelle, and she was a definite erection-killer.

  Raise up. Or die.

  Stand up. Just try.

  You expect her to leave you, she will.

  Don’t just wait for it, you go first.

  So just tear it up. Tear it out. Tear it down.

  You be the one with the whip. Not in the ground.

  And they’re the ones begging for mercy.

  They’ll be lost and you’ll be found.

  Lost and found. Lost and found. You’ll be found.

  He slammed his fist on the wall. And then again.

  If he’d just opened his goddamn eyes. Damn her. He pounded the tile a third time and immediately forced his mind’s eye to replace Michelle with Jana. Jana’s eyes, Jana’s neck, and her body’s curves. Then he imagined her voice.

  Jaws clenched, feet anchored, biceps tightened, he thought of Jana. She was with him in his mind, right behind his tensed body. Her wet, slippery skin, radiating warmth; her nipples pressed against his back. Her hands held his hips and then slid around to his front and down, teasing his engorged length with her light, soft touch. He imagined her taking him in her slender hands while he took his rock hard cock in his right fist and stroked its pulsating length to its crown. Then he slid it back down, tight and hard. Her lips, he imagined, pecked light kisses on his back, down his spine, then back up to his shoulder blades. Her imagined breath gave him the chills and pushed him closer to the brink. His left arm rose up and slapped the wall and pressed forward, keeping him stable. He widened his stance, bracing himself. His fist glided along his thickness faster and faster. Oh God, Jana. His glutes tightened, his abs tensed, his shoulders held strong, supporting the quickness of his stroking arm, driving him closer and closer to release. Jana.

  And when he went, the torrential groan that rumbled in his throat echoed in the small space of the shower and in his ears until he got to the very end of his intense orgasm. He still imagined Jana through to the aftershocks, exhaling hard with her name on his lips.

  CHAPTER 29

  He answered her call after many rings. His voice sounded raspy to her, spent. She had woken him. Shit!

  “I’m so sorry, Antonio. Shit, I should’ve just called a cab—”

  “Jana, what’s wrong? Hell, it doesn’t matter. I’m on my way.”

  “No, you’ll miss your class.”

  “No arguments. You’re at the apartment?”

  “Yes. I’ll wait out front.”

  Ten minutes later, Antonio pulled up, his dark hair a bit shaggy and wet, like he’d just jumped out of the shower, not even having time to drag a comb across his head.

  “My mother called. Wouldn’t say what happened. Just to come quick, and then she hung up. She won’t answer her cell now. No one is picking up the hospital room phone either. And I’d rather just start heading up there while I wait through the never-ending cycle of the hospital’s automated system, you know?”

  “Buckle up. I’ll be driving a little faster than normal.” He pulled out and his tires screeched. “Don’t worry…if we get pulled over, I have friends on the local force and in the state patrol. My students. We won’t be delayed.”

  Antonio said not another word, completely focused on the road while Jana hung on hold through the various departments and levels to try and get any more information about her mother’s call.

  They were nearly to the hospital’s exit when she finally got connected to the right unit. As she explained who she was to the operator, a text message flashed on her screen.

  From her brother.

  She put the call on speaker and looked at the text while waiting for another transfer.

  Irresponsible much? Dad’s being downgraded rms. for unpaid bill.

  “Stop the car. Please. Just…pull over or get off the highway. Just stop the car, Antonio. Anywhere.” Her breath was shallow. Her words pushed through clenched teeth. A freight train roared through her veins, to her chest, then her forehead, to the top of her skull.

  “What? Is everything okay?”

  “There is. No. Emergency.” She exhaled the statement like a dragon decimating a village with one fiery flame.

  “Your dad is—”

  “Fine. He is the same. The big deal was him being moved into a room without a goddamn television.” Her mother’s cryptic phone call, the one that gave Jana a near-heart attack, was about the billing department ‘needing’ payment. Even though she’d been in daily contact with the hospital since last week when she couldn’t take her mother as the middleman any longer.

  And fucking boo hoo for her dad. No entertainment? Hell, maybe the lack of a TV would motivate him to get out of there, to get home. Maybe he’d get serious about his health, his life?

  And then reporting to Dane? Again! The nerve of her mother, and the bloody gall of her bastard brother. He never even called her to check on things, let alone send a dime. Or better yet, how about coming out to check on their beloved dad? Fucking asshole! Even for a day? Oh no, the cost! Right.

  She brought her attention back to the here and now. “Sorry, Antonio. Didn’t mean to snap.”

  His eyebrows drew together while he shook his head. “No worries and don’t be silly.”

  They drove for a few minutes, she didn’t know where, and she didn’t care. She knew they were no longer going north to Fort Lee, and that was all that mattered.

  *

  When her mind stopped reeling, her eyes came into focus on a road sign out her passenger side window. ‘Welcome to Palisades State Park.’ And the next thing she knew, they were stopped at a grassy expanse, a hill in front of them, blue sky beyond.

  “Come,” he told her, his eyes sweet and understanding, his voice comforting, yet solid. Antonio the Guardian. He was her glowing torch, lighting her way out of a dark, dismal hole.

  She got out of the car, conscious enough to take her purse, but sensing the pureness of her surroundings, she felt almost silly doing so. They’d entered what seemed to be an unspoken safe-zone. Between the lush, pristine park setting and Antonio as her guide, she had not a question in her mind that she was as safe and secure as she’d ever been. But she slid her shoulder strap across her body even still. After five years in the City, she’d become an official New Yorker it seemed.

  They walked along a quaint path winding through the bright green fresh-cut lawn, sporadic trees, park benches, small gazebos, and vacant playgrounds that dotted the way. Sunday, early morning, the place was practically all theirs. It was a bit too surreal.

  *

  Still not a word from Antonio since they’d left the car. She’d only just begun to breathe evenly. The volcano in her chest was simmering, but the molten lava circulating throughout her body was still dangerously hot, scorching right under the now cooling top crust.

  She felt calm enough then to speak. They walked on as she told A
ntonio about her brother who’d abandoned her, robbed her and their parents of much more than money, and her burden, her obligation to her folks, that thankless lunacy. And the dilemma, the constant struggle to reach an unreachable standard in the eyes of her father.

  Antonio listened, absorbed, and processed as she continued her dazed, robotic march and monolog while marching through the twisting, turning path.

  When her rant was done, Antonio stopped her with a light touch of his hand on her elbow. “Jana,” he said, shaking his head to go with narrowed eyes, and God, clamping jaws, shallow breath. “They don’t, I repeat, they do not, deserve you.”

  Jana looked away from his drilling gaze. It didn’t matter if they did deserve her or if they didn’t. “It just is this way.”

  *

  “Look,” he said turning her body with gentle hands. “I wanted you to see this.”

  A memorial of the Twin Towers stood before her. Ghost-gray cement replicas, tall, plain, solid. Their mulch foundation base was formed in the shape of a heart.

  Jana crumbled to the ground from where she stood. Staring, tears welling in her eyes.

  Antonio joined her there on the ground, his presence a silent comfort, like the day outside the library when she felt him pass her by. And then her tears rolled down her cheeks so slowly and deliberately, she could almost count them as they fell.

  How small her huge problems were, how insignificant, puny even. Her satirically selfish brother, her unsympathetic, ungrateful and needy mother and the heartless patriarch of her gene pool, Chang Park, none of them made the tiniest dent compared to the representation of tragic tyranny standing there in front of her face.

  “You must think I’m pathetic.”

  “What are you talking about? How can you say that? God, you’re anything but.”

  “I have a family to complain about. How many of those people don’t have families anymore?” she asked rhetorically, pointing at the memorial. “My father is still alive. I’m sulking every day for the injustices of my brother, my parents, the financial crap, all while thousands no longer have dads, or brothers, mothers…futures.”

  “I didn’t bring you here for you to feel guilty. No more guilt, Jana. This was to show you a mirror of your strength. You stand tall, as tall as these towers did originally and do again today. Despite everything trying to tear you down, you rebuild taller, stronger.”

  She let her purse drop on the ground, took a long deep breath and let her head surrender onto Antonio’s shoulder. She exhaled. And let her thoughts go.

  *

  A long stretch of time went by until he gently touched her back, signaling for her to get up and to continue on with him. They continued their walk in complete and divine silence, entering tree cover, thick green leaves altering and shifting the yellow sunlight above. They reached an open clearing then, with tall jagged cliffs to one side and the great wide Hudson River ahead. She couldn’t believe this existed. In all her life, from Fort Lee to her years dancing in Newark, then to Manhattan, she’d never imagined this piece of heaven existed, smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle that was her life. Not even her brief escapes to Central Park could compare.

  “I’m married.” He broke the silence as they approached the banks of the river. “Have been driving around with the divorce papers she served me a few weeks ago.”

  Jana looked at him. All her thoughts on her own mental bubbles of pain popped one by one as a new, larger one grew in her head. He was married? Is married. But divorce papers. Unsigned? Why? Was he still in love with her? Clobbering questions. Unanswered and overwhelming.

  And what was her hitched breath all about? Why did Antonio’s being married or not married or whatever he was matter to her?

  Because it did. It mattered. Deep in her chest it somehow mattered a ton.

  *

  But she could only keep quiet. She turned down the volume in her head and listened for the answers to come.

  He didn’t say another word, though. He only reached for the ring on his left ring finger and twisted it.

  The ring. His real wedding ring?

  He twisted more, then yanked, finally pulling it off. He drew his right arm back with that gold band in hand, took a skip step ahead, and threw it. It flew so far into the Hudson River, she couldn’t even spot where it landed and subsequently sank.

  His chest was heaving, like he was out of breath, but, of course, he wasn’t. It was just tumultuous emotion she was sure.

  “Now I’m ready to sign the papers. Ready to be divorced. Ready to be done with her,” he said as if in mid-thought. And for now, for her wringing heart, that was all she needed to hear.

  He turned to Jana, smiling. He had a glow in his now golden eyes, a new color, a new shade she’d not yet seen. It must have been the rays breaking through the thin layer of clouds above. Diffused but clarifying light and with it, a sense of pure liberation radiated from him.

  He plopped down on the grass, laid back, put his hands behind his head, and let out one loud, seemingly joyful breath.

  She joined him, free-falling into the grass. With the tips of their elbows touching, she stared up at the sky full of those high-flying wisps thinking how any woman who’d won this man could ever think to let him go.

  “I worked a lot.”

  Jesus Christ in Heaven. It was like he’d read her thoughts! Seriously?

  “Well, I still work a lot.” He spoke to her and to the sky above while chills, endless chills, continued up and down her, and in and out of her.

  “But she said that’s why she left, or rather, went elsewhere. Because I never focused on the most important thing—her. But the fact was, every minute I put into work was a minute closer to starting our life together, our family together. It was all for her!” He paused a beat then turned his head to look straight at Jana. “My goal was always to return to my home, to my Vallarta, to start a family, but only after I was financially stable. Completely set. When Michelle and I got together and throughout our blip of a marriage, she was in love with the idea. She said so at least. She seemed wholly committed, my dream being her dream too. ‘A slice of paradise with the man I love,’ she’d said. Damn lies. All damn lies.”

  “Jesus, Antonio. I don’t know what to say.”

  “It turns out, she was nothing but a gold digger. When my prick boss promised her all the bright shiny objects she could ask for, she took back her promise to me in an instant. We’d been married only seven months.” He blew out a long breath and went on. “In the end, she accused me of marrying her for a green card. For a goddamn green card! My brother-in-law got me in at the Manhattan gig in the first place. All legit. How she thought I managed such a high position in such a large outfit without being legal, I don’t know? And all I ever spoke of was getting back home. I never wanted a green card or citizenship. I don’t know. I guess I overlooked a lot of her flaws throughout our relationship. My blindness—my fault.”

  Jana shook her head. And when her phone rang, definitely the club phone, as she knew the sound by now, she ignored Johnnie’s call. She would have ignored all others too, even Nora’s. She felt like she owed all her attention to the man lying next to her and not a single iota to anyone else.

  But she couldn’t think of anything to say to Antonio, and she somehow knew she didn’t really need to. Instead, she began to hum. A song from his ‘mellow yellow’ playlist from the music player he’d loaned her, that first perfect gesture of kindness; at least, the first that she’d been aware enough to notice.

  The melody brought her peace as the notes rattled in her throat and slipped from her lips. Then the lyrics came to her mind:

  The phoenix, burning up in cleansing flame,

  Just to rise from the ashes, life anew, breathe again.

  The phoenix, incarnation of the sun,

  Deepest in us, never doubt you are the one.

  Never doubt you are the one. The phoenix.

  “You should sing. I mean really sing. For people.” He didn�
��t hide the damp emotion in his eyes. She’d never known a man to be so raw and strong and completely unabashed. And she hardly even realized she’d been singing out loud and she blushed. Then she broke into a helpless smile. “Thank you. For bringing me here.”

  Before he could reply, her phone buzzed the moment away. Johnnie again.

  CHAPTER 30

  She knew Johnnie would keep calling if she didn’t get it, and this moment with Antonio had come and gone, forever. She swallowed back her disappointment and apologized to Antonio with a look as the phone kept ringing from her purse.

  He gave a gentle nod. “You need to take it.”

  So she answered it.

  She prepared to keep her voice and mind level and even, despite her disgust at the crap Johnnie pulled only hours before. Despite it and because of it; he was still her boss. Wednesday’s money was what mattered. Then there were only two more months after that. She had seven years in the game. Two more months was nothing.

  “Hey there.”

  “Where are you?” Well, she could’ve been anywhere, doing anything, especially since the club didn’t open doors for setup until 4 PM, so she couldn’t imagine what business it was of his. At all.

  Breathe, Jana. She sat up and crossed her legs. The wide river in her view made her mind clearer. She sensed Antonio had perked up, and she looked back at him. He was now propped up on his elbows. Protective radar. Then to Johnnie, she said, “I’m on my way to the hospital, why? Everything all right? At the club?”

  “I thought when you had to hang up so quickly before, there was something wrong, you know, with your dad? Called a few minutes ago, too. What happened, you know, at the hospital?”

  Okay, maybe he was concerned. And she had in all honesty forgotten her quick escape excuse. Her mother’s cry-wolf tactic and the self-righteous dig by her brother had turned her brain to electrified gelatin. “Sorry, yeah, everything is fine. Just a false alarm that had me rushing up there until I found out it was a billing thing. I just about had a heart attack myself. I was so fuming pissed I had to stop and compose myself before seeing my family, you know?”