Jayson: A New Adult / Coming of Age Romance (22 page)

“Oh, no, I’m not saying I have a problem with his income. But, any logical person would be concerned about her financial stability.”

“Are you worried about it? With him, I mean.”

Inwardly, I refer back to Mom’s warning about living paycheck to paycheck. Even with the most basic understanding of business economics, I know Zephyr Brothers Construction isn’t likely to make Jayson the next Donald Trump. Hypothetically, if we were to stick things out and get married, we might end up in a nice suburban neighborhood but definitely not the enclave of the wealthy that is Pacific Heights. I shrug, knowing Gracie can’t see me through the phone but reluctant to voice my thoughts out loud.

“At this point,” I reply, “I’d rather take this relationship one day at a time instead of commit to uncertain forevers with or without a loaded bank account. The way he makes me feel…I don’t want to ruin what we have by getting ahead of myself.”

Grace hums speculatively but doesn’t press for a less ambiguous answer. I hear someone call her name in the background. “Sounds like my aunt just walked in. I gotta go, homie. We’re about to pop fireworks. Take care of yourself out there.”

“Have fun! Bye, chica-boom.” I hang up the phone and try not to think any further on the conversation, but in the back of my head I wonder if secretly I’m as elitist as I accuse my mom of being. I am, after all, a product of my environment.

“
P
ut it down right there
,” Kit says confidently to the two burly deliverymen. The queen-sized craftsman bed pieces get placed in the middle of her bedroom, and the guys assemble the long boards like a giant puzzle. For a change, I don’t have to lift a hammer.

I step out of their way and look out the French doors at the blue sky beyond and the two white rocking chairs I found for a steal at a garage sale and refurbished for her. The days following Christmas had been spent bargain hunting together. It’s funny, but Kit’s place is starting to feel like home. I’ve spent less time at my apartment in the past few days than ever before, which has Momma pleased as a peach. I’m starting to enjoy this decorating business. Not that I’d want to do it for a living, but for Kit and me? Hell, yeah. We both appreciate craftsmanship and getting something just right. Kit’s looking forward to using the tools I got her and, I admit, it makes me hot thinking of her wielding a hammer or a drill.

Once the plush mattress is placed on top of the bed, completing the hodgepodge design theme she has going, Kit chirps with excitement at the latest acquisitions to House Schneider. “Isn’t it fantastic?”

“I have to agree. I can see the result of our combined tastes coming together.”

After she sees the deliverymen out, Kit comes back upstairs and throws herself down on the mattress. She spreads her arms and legs to take up as much space as possible and mewls like a pleased kitten about the pleasures of sleeping in a bed again. I settle on the edge of the mattress next to her, contemplating trying out the springs. She stretches languorously. Her t-shirt eases up to expose the flat of her stomach. Higher, and the lower curves of her breast might spill free, too. I toy with the bottom of her shirt, inching it yet higher.

“What do you say we christen this new arrival,” I murmur. The buzzing of a phone intercepts the play, however.

“Hang on, lover boy.” With a grin, Kit scrambles away from my questing fingers and pokes out her tongue at me. Grabbing her cell from the new nightstand, she answers the call. I decide to speed the intrusive phone call along with a little interception of my own. Behind her I take off my shirt and drop it over her shoulder. “What are you talking about?” she says in an irritated voice. She pulls my shirt off her shoulder and distractedly throws it to the floor. I realize whoever’s on the phone has changed her mood. Coming around to face her, I lift a brow in question.

“What’s wrong?” I mouth.

Kit holds up a hand to silence me, listening intently. Her face twists in a scowl. “So, basically you’re reneging on our agreement. You told me I didn’t have to pay back the loan for the renovations unless the house sold. You said if I couldn’t find a buyer I had up to a year after the renovations were complete…No, I’m not trying to get over on you, Mom! You know I’m not planning on selling the house now, but that still leaves a year past renovation completion before I’m supposed to start payments!” Kit stands to her feet and paces.

I cross my arms and stand back, a muscle ticking in my jaw with the restraint it takes not to blurt out to Kit that I’ll just pay the loan back for her. Candace doesn’t need to hear me talking in the background. Kit growls, “I know you’re only doing this to coerce me to come back home, back under your thumb. Well, it isn’t going to work, Mom. Expect a money order for the first installment next week. Yeah, whatever. Bye.”

Kit hurls the phone, and it hits the wall with a loud bang, preserved only by the life-proof box that keeps it from shattering into a million pieces with the force of her throw. “Shit!” she screams out her rage. I grab her before my destructive princess does any more damage.

“Hey, hey, calm down. Tell me what happened.” Kit sobs brokenly and when I discover she’s crying, I hold her back so I can look at her face. “Kit, it’s alright, babe.”

“I’m sick of it!” she complains bitterly. I sit down and pull her into my lap so I can comfort her while I make sense of her blubbered responses. “She-she says since I re-refuse to give you up, I might as well pay her back for everything she’s done for me. H-how the hell am I supposed to pay her on top of paying my other expenses?”

“You’re not in this alone,” I say softly. “Us against the world. Remember?” The alternative to me helping her out would be her taking on more hours at work, which is damn near impossible. She’s already working over twenty hours a week and going to school full time. Overworking herself is not the answer.

But analyzing the numbers and weighing the risks comes second nature for me. It would be dishonest to say I don’t wonder how investing more time and resources into helping Kit stay afloat will affect me, personally, because there is no “me, personally.” I’m responsible for covering Momma’s healthcare costs and Ashby’s college fees. I have to keep Castiel and Dev on track at the office; they can’t handle it on their own. They don’t have enough experience. To admit any of these concerns to Kit would be relationship suicide.

So I stroke her hair and whisper soothing promises I’ll have to make good on, even if it drains me. This is why I’ve been avoiding serious relationships for years. They require so much, and at the end of the day I feel like my presence in Kit’s life is subtracting more than it’s adding. Every attempt to extricate myself from this beautiful bondage fails because I don’t want to leave her. I’ve never been in love. It’s possible she’s the one. When it hurts to stick around, but it’s hell to get away, it has to mean something, doesn’t it?

“Things are getting dysfunctional,” I mutter without thinking. Kit mistakes the comment—a reference to our state of affairs—as relating to her situation with her mother.

“It’s always been like this,” she says tearfully. “I take that back. It’s been like this between me and my mom ever since my father died. He was a developer for a program called iGene, on the verge of creating one of the first online genetic databases. Mom had just started working at the hospital. She wasn’t like this back then. They were so happy together.”

“What happened to your dad?” She’d never talked about him, other than sharing a few memories of her childhood—like the time he took her to Ghirardelli’s chocolate factory for her fifth birthday and pretended the guy in charge was Willy Wonka. I think I would have liked her dad.

“Hit and run…He stopped to help a stranded motorist and, as he was crossing the street, another vehicle struck him. He died on impact. I was the only one who could be there for my mother. I became her confidante—almost her equal, in as much as I had to mature very quickly to understand the complexities of her brittle mind. She shut everyone else out, and her life kind of spiraled out of control. It got to the point I could do less and less for her.”

Her voice drops. “When I was fourteen, my mother tried to kill herself.”

“I’m so sorry, Kitrina. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.” She puts her fingers to my mouth to hush me so she can finish her tale. I stroke a strand of hair from the side of her face and rock her gently in my arms. Her gaze bores into the wall, and she speaks quietly, hollowly, of the devastating loss of her father.

“She was admitted into a psych ward at the very hospital where she was working, and I was shipped off to Idaho to spend a few months with my paternal grandparents. They were nice to me, but they were still grieving too and anyway… having my mother in the loony bin made me feel like I had somehow failed her. I wasn’t enough for her to want to keep living. We nearly lost the house. When that happened, Candace snapped out of her depression, but she grew increasingly fearful for my well-being. It bordered on paranoia.”

“She hovers because she worries she’ll lose you, too,” I reply, wiping the tears from her eyes with my thumbs. Kitrina nods, then lifts her chin.

“As much as I understand her motivations, I’m ready to have a life of my own. I’ve spent too long paying penance for her nervous breakdown, working extra hard to do whatever I thought she might need and to be whoever she needed me to be. Can you understand that?”

“Yeah, actually I do.” I’ve been paying penance ever since I got locked away. I had to become the person my brothers needed me to be, even if it meant deprioritizing myself. My decision to change was as a result of recognizing my choices were bringing me closer and closer to destruction. Kit—well, she didn’t have much of a choice.

T
he next morning
when I walk into my office, I feel not just responsible for Momma, Castiel, Devon and Ashby. I’m responsible for Kitrina, too. Am I really ready for that?

Her mom’s been running her life for so long that it must be scary for her to start doing things on her own, which is something I never really considered. I saw Kit as adorably naïve. I didn’t fault her for it, but I felt she had a lot of growing up to do. How was she supposed to grow with Candace holding the reins? Looking at the past two months of rough seas together, it’s a wonder Kitrina didn’t require my help sooner.

Minnie, my assistant, taps on my open door. “Heads up. You’ve got company.”

“Is it a client?” I ask. Minnie doesn’t have time to answer before the intruder barges into my office, takes a look around with a sniff and sits cross-legged in the only other chair as if she owns the place.

“Mrs. Schneider,” I greet her warily. I’m instantly put on guard by her presence. “Business or pleasure?”

“Facile of you to ask. I’ve come to bring you this.” Candace drops a thin file folder on my desk. It almost looks empty, but I know otherwise. Our eyes meet.

“What’s this?” I hesitate to pick it up.

“Consider it a late Christmas gift. Provided, of course, we can come to some type of agreement.”

“I usually don’t make deals with the devil.”

“Ha! You think you’re clever, don’t you? Jayson Zephyr, I see right through your pretty little pretend life on the straight and narrow. Thanks to, shall we say, a mutual friend…I know a lot about your years of running from the cops, drinking and driving. And, I have a hunch Kit doesn’t know. My daughter feels she has to distance herself from me in order to find her own way, and I have no doubt you’re to blame for the estrangement. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“For the record, Mrs. Schneider, I did everything in my power to keep that from happening.”

“Everything except leave her alone in the first place. To tell the truth, I’m surprised at you, Mr. Zephyr. From what Lamont says, your stint in kiddie jail made you a new man—a responsible, upstanding citizen, noble and forthright. You managed to get yourself into college and earned a degree. Given your unique history, I commend you for triumphing over obstacles, unlike many men I’ve encountered.”

“…Thank you for noticing. I can’t help but wonder why that isn’t enough to elevate me in your esteem
.
You seem like a logical, sensible woman.”

“That I am, which is why I’m willing to put this deal on the table. Stay away from my daughter, Mr. Zephyr. I don’t care what you have to say to her or do, but you break it off. You and I both know she wasn’t ready for it, and your
charming persuasion
is deterring her from more important tasks, like finishing school and gaining real independence, not this mock dress-up game she's been playing at. I’m sure you realize by now, Mr. Zephyr, that Kit is an impressionable, easily beguiled young girl. Your older age and greater experience wooed her just as surely as it should have warned you to stay away.”

I look away. Her summation matches thoughts I’ve tried to ignore and removes any argument on my part. It’s true, I recognized early on Kitrina lacked experience. I never intended to use her greenness against her, though. Yet, there is a possibility that I unwittingly reaped benefits from it. “What do you propose to trade in exchange for me staying away from Kit?” I ask quietly. I calculatingly look up from beneath hooded eyes.

Candace Schneider smiles and opens the folder she brought in with her. Instead of the copies of my criminal history that I suspected would be inside, the sheaf of papers contain names, addresses and phone numbers of a wide network of contacts directly linked to the construction industry. “With my contacts and investment, Jayson Zephyr, this lovely little aluminum shack could morph into a franchise of Zephyr Brothers Construction companies dotting the nation. I can get you in contact with the people to take this small business large scale.”

“And if I don’t leave Kit alone?”

She slides the folder back to her side of the desk and places it in her lap, hands clasped above it. “You already know how that will end.” She chuckles raspily. It’s like nails clawing down a chalkboard.

“Enlighten me,” I prompt impatiently.

“I’ll tell her everything you haven’t had the balls to say, and I won’t pretty it up, Jayson. Don’t think you can get the jump on me by telling her yourself, because I am infinitely creative in my ability to ruin you. This wonderful list I’m holding? Every name on it will be made aware of your unsavory past, effectively blackballing you from ever working with any of them. The paltry clientele you already have will abandon you even faster. Oh, Mr. Zephyr.” She tsks and shakes her head patronizingly. “Nobody likes to work with a man without integrity, a man who essentially presents himself one way when he has an altogether different side. What’s done in the dark, when it comes to the light, looks so much uglier for the secrecy.”

“You underestimate my standing within this community,” I bluff. “I have friends who will back me, vouch for me.”

“Yes, well, that may be so but it remains to be seen. Certainly, if you’re willing to risk it just for a pretty piece of tail, who am I to stop you?” Her voice is light and I want to smash my fist in her mouth. I wonder if she knows, speaking of risk, the risk she takes speaking of Kit like this to me? “I must be on my way. The offer is on the table until noon tomorrow. That should give you ample time to tie up any loose ends, should you choose to accept my generous assistance in making Zephyr Brothers Construction a household name.” Candace collects her folder and rises to leave. She holds the folder to her chest and flashes a false, benevolent smile.