Burn for You (22 page)

“Please, don’t—”

“Then tell me why I shouldn’t. Explain to me what I’d be fighting for if I stuck around.”

“It’s his story to tell,” Preston said again, but his murmur sounded less convinced this time.

“Is he going to tell it?”

“No, probably not.”

“Does it need to be told?”

His sigh was defeated. “If you’re going to put up with the bullshit he’s going to start throwing your way? Yes.”

“Then get talking, my friend.”

“I have a deadline—”

“I’ll throw in seven desserts.”

Preston shook his head, chuckling. “You drive a hard bargain, Blondie.”

“Do we have a deal?”

“I don’t know…About these desserts…You know how to make tiramisu?”

“My grandparents own an Italian restaurant.”

He leaned back in his desk chair, crossing one ankle over his knee and getting comfortable. “You got yourself a deal, Blondie.”

Chapter 17

“I’m thinking you’ve got about two months before you need to worry. Maybe less.” Preston sat at the kitchen island while Victoria worked on a week’s worth of meals. She’d suggested they move their conversation downstairs so she could get started. Her first order of business was cleaning and cutting all the vegetables she’d be using.

“You’re making it sound like a terminal illness,” she said, tearing up freshly-rinsed lettuce.

“Trust me, if a Terminal Relationship Illness existed, Jason would have it.”

“So, what happens at two months?”

“Well, it usually happens around the four month mark, but he really likes you, so I’m guessing it’ll be closer to two for you. He’ll suggest you cut things off. And if you’re not interested in ending it, he’ll do something douche-y.”

Victoria raised a brow. “How douche-y are we talking here?”

Preston shrugged. “Stop returning calls. That kind of thing.”

“And why does he do this?”

“I saw a shrink once—a modern Freudist. A real quack actually.”

“Okay…” That didn’t really answer her question, but she was willing to trust Preston’s rambling train of thoughts had a destination. “If he was a quack, why did you go see him?”

“Because Jason insisted I see
someone
.” He grinned. “And it’s so much more fun to fuck with the quacks.”

Victoria smiled back. She could just picture Preston with his evil—scratch that—mischievous genius, coming up with made-up symptoms and appalling revelations intended to confound his doctors.

“Anyway,” he said. “Being a to-the-letter follower of Freud, he believed all issues could be traced back to the mother. Personally, I think that’s bunk, but in Jason’s case…maybe it’s not too far from the truth. And by that theory, he’s entitled to a lot of…issues.” Preston’s gaze turned serious. “Because, unfortunately, Jason’s had a lot of mothers. And none of them too good.”

Realizing her hands had stilled, she forced herself to keep tearing lettuce and throwing it into the glass bowl. She wanted to hear what Preston had to say, but she also didn’t want to hear it. She couldn’t stand the idea of a young Jason—or any child for that matter—going from one uncertain situation to the next when he should’ve been growing up in the comfort of a loving home.

“When Jason came to live with us, he was no stranger to foster homes. His father was nothing more than a big fat question mark, and his mother divided her time between drug rehab and jail. She could keep it clean for a few months at a time though, and that’s what kept Jason’s foster care an impermanent solution.”

Victoria nodded, having answered enough overdose calls and seen enough children in drug dens to know how the system worked—or perhaps more accurately, failed.

“I think,” Preston said, “most of those early foster experiences were good ones. At least as good as a situation like that can be. He was placed with good, caring families, but unfortunately never got to experience that stability for too long. Tammy always got him back.”

Preston fidgeted with his powder-blue tie, smoothing it down the front of his chest. “My dad—who was a Chicago cop—was having to deal with Tammy and her son on an almost weekly basis. By the time he turned eight, he’d run away from home four times. I overheard my dad once tell my mom that it killed him every time he had to take that little boy back home to his mother.”

“Did he have to? Didn’t anyone investigate why Jason was running away?”

“Of course, but DCFS is an overworked and underfunded entity. Things have to be pretty bad for a child to be removed, and like I said, Tammy could keep it clean—or at least keep up the appearance of being clean—for months at a time.”

Shaking her head, Victoria went through the motions of putting together a few cold cut sandwiches for Preston’s lunches. Mindlessly, she stacked the meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomato.

“So, anyway. My dad got wind of the fact that Tammy was prostituting herself to feed her drug habit, and he staked out the apartment one night with a partner. They followed the John to the door and listened.” He paused in his story, snapping out of the past and into the present for a moment. “My dad never would’ve told me this, but they had the downstairs bedroom and there’s not a conversation that he and my mother had that didn’t make its way through the vent and into my room.” In a dry tone, he added, “And I barely had to hold my ear to the ground to hear it.”

Victoria laughed a little at that, grateful for the moment of diffused tension.

Preston’s sardonic grin was fleeting, and his face turned grim as he continued his story. Or Jason’s story as it were. “So, Dad overhears Tammy tell Jason, ‘If you love Mommy, you’ll go spend some time with this nice man.’”

“No,” she breathed, so distracted from her task, she almost sliced through her fingers along with the sub roll.

“I know,” Preston said. “Awful right?”

She could do no more than nod.

“It wasn’t until I was older that I realized what that probably would’ve meant for Jason, but at eight, I was blissfully ignorant. I just knew from the way my parents talked about it that it was bad.”

He cleared his throat. “I’d like to think that was the first time Tammy ever suggested something like that, because my dad and his partner busted into that apartment like two avenging angels, and Jason never had to find out what that ‘nice man’—” He practically spat the words. “—had in mind.”

Victoria turned away, ostensibly looking for plastic wrap for the now assembled sub sandwiches. She hoped the sound of her rummaging through cabinets disguised the fact that she was sniffing back tears.

“My dad and mom had filled out the paperwork to be foster parents months before. I suspect my dad always hoped he’d be able to take Jason in at some point. He had a soft spot for him, and when this happened, Jason was definitely removed from Tammy’s care.”

“And that’s when he came to live with you and your family?” Victoria asked, finally able to force words out of her mouth. Still facing away from Preston, she quickly swiped under her eyes and then tore off a length of plastic wrap.

“Yep.”

She turned back to the island. “So this thing with his mom…You think that’s why the idea of a long-term relationship scares him? Because his mom…who was supposed to love him…used him?”

Preston shrugged. “Maybe that’s part of it.”

Oh, God. There was more? Please, let there not be more. With trembling fingers, she started wrapping the sandwiches.

“My mom…” Preston looked at some nonexistent point past Victoria’s shoulder. “She was a good person. But she was a nervous person. Anxious all the time. Without my dad’s calming presence, I don’t think she’d have survived parenthood. She just worried. All the time. About everything.”

“I’m surprised your father was able to talk her into being a foster parent then. Seems that would bring a whole new level of worry and stress.”

“You are one-hundred-percent correct. And my mother did
not
want to do it. But my father was determined, and he used her innate Irish-Catholic guilt to his advantage, convincing her that it was their Christian duty.”

“And it didn’t go well?”

“Actually, in the beginning it went quite well. I was a bit of a loner at school—I know, shocking—and Jason was like a built-in playmate. We were inseparable, and I think it eased my mother’s mind to know that I finally had a friend. And Jason was a real brownnoser. Always talking me out of my schemes, insisting that we follow the rules.”

She smiled, no longer working on the meals, but sitting across from Preston, her chin in her hand.

“He worshipped my father. Jason had lived in the Deep South until he was five, but two weeks into living with us, he was talking with a thick Chicago accent. He picked up my dad’s mannerisms, the way he stood at parade rest with his arms crossed over his chest, the way he rubbed his chin when he was thinking about something. I know it tickled my dad.”

There was no jealousy in Preston’s tone. He smiled fondly at the memory. “But even though it was going well, my mother was slow to really warm up to Jason. She didn’t give him hugs, and if she did, it looked stiff and awkward. More like obligation than affection.”

Preston lined up the sandwiches Victoria had just wrapped, positioning them into perfectly parallel sandwich soldiers. “I think my dad might have said something to her about it—about not making Jason feel as if he was part of the family. Because one night they came into our room together to say goodnight, and my dad ruffled Jason’s hair and said, ‘Love you, kid.’ Then my mom kissed both of us on the forehead, something I never remember her doing to Jason, and she said, ‘Goodnight boys. I love you both.’”

Preston continued fidgeting with the sandwiches, this time making a pattern of one perpendicular sub roll in between each pair of parallel ones. “I could barely hear Jason’s response from the top bunk, but he whispered, ‘Love you too.’”

Silent for a moment, Preston stared down at the sandwiches. Finally, he sniffed and said, “I pretended like I didn’t hear it, but Jason cried himself to sleep that night.”

Tears burned the back of her eyes again at the image of a little boy so overcome with emotion just from hearing one simple phrase.
I love you
. Three little words she’d heard so often growing up, she’d completely taken them for granted.

Preston started to speak, and Victoria almost told him to stop. But she stayed silent, holding her breath and waiting for Preston to explain how it had all gone south.

“So, the next day, Jason and I are at school and I’m getting razzed by these punk-ass fifth graders. No other way to describe kids that pick on children two years younger. Anyway, I may or may not have made a smart-ass comment that earned me a fist to the face.”

Preston shook his head, as if years and years later he still marveled over what happened next. “Jason went ape-shit. I mean he just beat the crap out of the kid. His friends tried to get into the fray and Jason went after them too. This one little third grader takin’ on four fifth graders, and he totally smoked their asses.”

He chuckled to himself for a second and then brought his gaze up to Victoria’s. “He did it for me. He did it because they’d hit me. They’d pushed him around before, but he’d never fought back, not until the day they went after me.”

Jason’s young heroics didn’t surprise her. She thought of all the times he’d been there for her in the short time they’d known each other. The hug that’d led to a now-infamous photo, the groomsman he’d been willing to throw from the dance floor, the kiss in the courtyard—given to shut the mouths of a few spiteful women. How remarkable that someone shown so few kindnesses could be so kind to others.

“Unfortunately,” Preston continued, “my mother couldn’t be convinced Jason was defending me. She thought I never would’ve been involved in the fight in the first place if it hadn’t been for him. In a way she was right. Before Jason, I never would’ve been bold enough to tell those kids off.”

The fondness she’d suspected underneath Jason and Preston’s quarreling earlier was crystal clear now. Preston’s voice held nothing but affection for the brother he had, not by blood but by choice.

“We heard my parents arguing through the vent that night. My dad was proud of us for standing up to the bullies. My mother saw it differently. She said Jason was a bad influence on me. That they should call Family Services to find a more suitable placement for him.”

Victoria bit her lower lip. How heartbreaking would that be for a little boy to hear? Even knowing the man he’d become, the capable, successful man he’d become, it still squeezed like a fist around her heart.

“Two days later my dad was killed in a high-speed chase, and my mom told Family Services she couldn’t handle being a foster parent without the help of her husband.”

Preston’s voice went hoarse. “But I don’t think Jason ever saw that as anything other than an excuse to get rid of the kid she’d already changed her mind about. A kid she might not have ever wanted in the first place.”

His story complete, he stopped fidgeting with the sandwiches and glanced back up at Victoria. She swiped at the tear she hadn’t been able to hold back, and he went to the paper-towel rack and ripped off a sheet for her.