Ryn ended the call before Maddie could shoot back a snide remark. Maddie always took her father’s side, but someday—if she were lucky enough to get married and have children—she would finally understand the love a mother has for a child. Ryn’s love knew no boundaries, not even the ugly, unappreciative, and deep-cutting jabs to the heart. Her love for Maddie would always be unconditional.
If it weren’t for Maddie, Ryn would not have lived to see forty or Jackson Knight. Preston physically and emotionally beat her to the lowest depths of Hell, but Maddie, her little blonde with pig-tails and bright eyes, kept her breathing—brought her back to life again and again.
*
“Jackson? Did you hear me? Jackson?”
All eighty-eight keys stood idle. Why weren’t they moving? It was a fucking piano lesson, the least she could do was pretend to play, anything to drown out the nagging doubt of Jillian’s wellbeing.
“Time’s up. I have to pick up my kids from school.”
His eyes shifted, following the sound of the voice. The curly-haired brunette wearing a low cut mother-slut-of-three-kids blouse that revealed every detail of her lace bra continued to move her lips. The words began to register like someone turned up the volume to a muted TV.
“Great. Practice it again this week.”
“But I played it perfectly.” She thrust out her chest as if she’d played the piece with her nipples and they were waiting for a reward.
Jackson grabbed the sheet music and tossed it on the floor. “Then let me hear it again.”
Shock grew in her eyes as perfectly-glossed lips parted. “I can’t play it by memory.”
“Then it would appear you still need to practice it. Wouldn’t you agree?”
She deflated. He didn’t care, not that day. Luke calling, Jillian’s proverbial fuck-off still on the table with a dead battery, and his inability to do anything about any of it, severed his last bit of patience. Jackson needed to rid his body of the pent-up anger and anxiety. The woman raping his piano needed to pick up her music and get the hell out of there before he told her how he really felt about her musical talent or lack thereof.
“Fine. I’ll practice it more.” She gathered up her music, slipped on her gray wool coat, and snagged her purse from the table before shoving her feet into her black leather boots and letting herself out.
Jackson clenched and released his fists several times, but the tension wouldn’t budge. The need for a physical release throbbed in his veins, the ticking of a bomb. He threw on jogging pants, a gray hoodie, and a beanie, then hit the snow-mottled sidewalks to run until his lungs burned equally from exertion and the frigid air. The past kept him warm as his memories ignited an anger like a dormant volcano destined to erupt, destroying everything in a hundred mile radius.
*
Day
Jude couldn’t keep his mother’s dirty secret. Every day he felt a piece of his humanity being chipped away. Two days after catching her in the arms of another man, he took his sixteen-year-old girlfriend’s virginity and then told her they were over. No woman would ever have the chance at his heart. If the woman he had on the highest pedestal couldn’t be faithful, then no woman could. Fuck them all. And that’s exactly what he did.
Jessica became the exception. He would protect her, even from her own delusions of Grant and Sunny Day being the perfect couple—the shining example of happily ever after. She wanted to marry a man like their father and love him with Sunny’s passion. Sunny’s fucking passion. She had passion, just not for their father.
Jude planned on telling Jessica, then the both of them would break the news to their father. Grant didn’t share or understand Jude’s interest in computers and Jude had no desire to work under the hood of a car or mess with greasy motorcycle parts, but he respected the man who worked hard for his family and risked his life to protect the lives of others. Grant Day was his father and he loved him.
“Jujube?”
Jude shook his head, staring at his computer screen. “You know I don’t respond to that name.”
Jessica plopped on his bed, stretching her gum out then wrapping it around her finger before sucking it back into her mouth. “You just did respond.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“Because you’re just like Jujubes—tough, yet sweet on the inside.”
“I don’t think Tessa thinks I’m sweet on the inside.”
“Yeah … I heard about that. You dated her for nine months, took her virginity, then dumped her. Was the sex that bad?”
“It wasn’t about the sex.”
“Then enlighten me. Because after nine months, I don’t think the proper protocol for breaking up with a girl is to pop her cherry before shattering her heart. I think you were supposed to promise to respect her in the morning, then cuddle her afterward … or something like that.”