Jake
Aly and I strolled out of the restaurant side by side, and I didn’t want the night to end. It couldn’t end yet . . . I still had some fixing to do.
“Want to grab a cocktail in the lounge?” I asked her, still amazed that the beautiful woman was here with me. She was more than long legs, red hair, and creamy skin, much more than I’d expected. She was a whole woman. A good person, a sexy woman, a well-educated lawyer, soft and sensuous on the inside and so damn smart and tough on the outside—like an alley cat.
“I really can’t. We’re working this big case at the office, and we have an early debriefing meeting. I need to be on top of my game.”
She turned to face me and stood up on tiptoe to place a small kiss on my cheek. Her lips lingered for a few heartbeats along my face. They felt like a piece of silk floating over my stubble and with each breath, my coarse five o’clock shadow was snagging her perfection—a warning if there ever was one. But I was a rule-breaker.
“Thank you,” she whispered, pulling away. “This was surprisingly nice.”
I took her hand and led her to the other side of the lobby, next to the waterfall for some privacy, where the lapping of the water would drown out our words. Turning her to face me, I took her face in my hands and bent down to place a gentle kiss on her lips. It was nothing like I wanted to do. It was more of a caress when I wanted to devour her whole, but this wasn’t the time. I feared if I took one small nibble, I’d eat her alive right in the middle of the hotel for everyone to see.
“Aly, remember when I said everything was going to change?”
“Uh-huh.”
I took her hand in mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. “And you asked about my other car, and I said I’d made a different investment?”
“Jake, I don’t know where you’re going with any of this.” Confusion swirled in her green eyes, and a line formed between her brows.
“I sold the car and used the money as a down payment on a small duplex. I now own two rental units in Highland Park. On the bus line. And I want you to live in one of them.”
“What?” she shrieked, but contained her volume to an urgent whisper between clenched teeth. She snatched her hand away from me with a force I didn’t know she had in her. “Jake! What in the world? I’m not a charity case!”
If I’d been looking for a way to bring out her fire, I had apparently found it.
“I know,” I said in a soothing voice, trying to calm her down. “I felt indebted to you, Aly, that’s all. And you and I both know, your place is awful. And dangerous. I hated dropping you off there, and now you can live at my new building. As a favor, I’ll match what you pay now in rent.” I might be stupid, but not dumb enough to admit I’d intended to let her live there rent-free.
“That’s the most preposterous thing I ever heard!” she said before she turned and stalked toward the revolving front door of the hotel.
“Aly!” I chased after her, my heavy boots clunking on the marble floor, echoing throughout the quiet lobby.
She held up a hand to warn me off, and I skidded to a stop. Yes, I could have caught her, but I didn’t. There was no way I’d make a scene—or more of one—in front of the front desk staff and valets. So I stood like an asshole on the other side of the glass door and watched the valet open a cab door for Aly. She slid into the backseat without even a glance back.
I knew it was rash and insane, selling my car and buying a rental property, asking her to move in. All of it was fucking nuts, but my brother went all crazy when he met Bess, inviting her to visit him in Florida. It had worked for him, so why not for me? We were identical twins, together since birth, so was it so bad that I wanted what he had? I didn’t know how he did it, but I was going to find the fuck out. Fast.
At least Aly took a cab and not the bus this late at night, I thought as I settled into my Hummer a few minutes later and drove away.
Then I had another irrational idea. Maybe I should swing by her place and at least make sure she got home safely. Isn’t that what men who liked women did? Looked out for them and shit. Or would that just scare her off?
My mind whirled, trying to come up with a way to fix this. Maybe I should have started smaller than an apartment? Like with flowers, or a puppy?
Nah.
It had been nearly forty-eight hours since Aly ran out of the hotel on me, and I couldn’t stand to be around all weekend without charging into her apartment and packing up all her shit. So I opted for a weekend with my brother’s family. Saturday morning, I let myself into his country house, ready for some of that domestic chaos to wash over me.
“Jaaaake-yyy!” I heard my name radiating from the kitchen, but it wasn’t who I wanted to be yelling it.
“Hey, James,” I said, greeting my sister-in-law’s best friend. He seemed to be spending more time at Bess and Lane’s country home than his own apartment in South Florida. “You’re back? Don’t you even work anymore?”
“I quit!” he exclaimed, then did a bad imitation of a hula dance, which I supposed was his idea of a “happy” dance.
I shook my head with a grin and let him rattle on since Lane had insisted James was good for Bess. He was part of the AA program, so he and Bess always went to meetings together when he visited them. Bess said that with James’s lifestyle, he’d likely never have a family of his own, so he was always welcome to be a part of theirs.
“I’m working for Lane now,” James explained. “He said he doesn’t want to have to think about wining and dining clients anymore when he travels, so I’m his new lead travel person. I do all the research on where he’s going, finding the best places and making his arrangements, which is a perfect job for me. I’m his own personal concierge.” He flashed me a big grin before he headed back to the coffeemaker, some huge fancy Italian or French deal that probably cost a small fortune.
“Great, I guess. Where is everyone? I told them I was coming down today.” There wasn’t the usual noise and commotion I expected whenever I showed up here. No shrieking baby or hyper dog anywhere.
James put a mischievous smirk on his face before landing the blow. “Oh, Maddy-girl is napping, which means the dog is spread-eagle underneath the crib, and let’s say, Bess and Lane are laying down.”
“Stop! Stop right now, James. Talk to the hand,” I said, raising my palm in the air. “That. Is. My. Sister-in-law.”
James cackled like the mother hen he was, and I headed for the back door to find my own brand of therapy.
Spring was in the air, the sky heavy with moisture and the ground wet as I made my way to the shed out back. It wasn’t Lane’s space, he rarely got his hands dirty with manual labor, but he kept it well stocked for his groundskeeper—and me. It seemed like the only time I visited was when I was in search of some sort of escape from my own damn head.
Sweat dripped down my brow and lined the seam between my jeans and my waist when Lane found me chopping wood a while later. I lifted the heavy ax and brought it down with force, splitting the log in half before I tossed it into the stack I’d already chopped. My breaths came in stilted puffs, shallow inhales and long exhales as I beat the shit out of the wood.
“Bro?” Lane called from a safe distance.
Ignoring him, I brought the ax down again and the snapping sound of the log splitting rang in the air, punctuating the silence. I grabbed another and made quick work of it.
“Bro!”
This time it came louder, and I sank the ax into the wood block with more force than necessary. “What?” I spat out.
“You’re the one who’s here at my house mutilating wood.” My twin approached with caution, his hands lifted in mock surrender as his ridiculous designer boots crunched the thawing ground.
“Right.”
My head hung in shame as I told him what had happened over the last few months, starting with landing my ass in jail over Christmas and everything since, all the way up to my offer to Aly and her running away.
Lane paced the narrow patch of grass as I spoke, shaking his head. “Christ, Jake! You were in jail and didn’t call? And why is it that you feel you have to fight everyone with your fists?”
We stood face-to-face in his backyard during our tense conversation, and I was pretty sure Bess was watching from the kitchen window.
“And you did what?” he said incredulously. “Sold your car, asked a woman to move for you?”
“So the fuck what!” I spit back.
“Pardon me for being confused, but you’ve done nothing but bed hop for years. I mean, I get it. I did it too.”
His said the last part in a low voice, almost a whisper, but I wasn’t sure why. Bess knew he was a man-whore before he met her.
“Yeah, I know that too, but isn’t this what men do when they fall for someone? Don’t they want to protect them? Look what you did for Bess.”
He grabbed his forehead and leaned against a tree. “Jake, I get where your head’s at, but you can’t boss women around in the real world like you do in bed.”
Frustrated, I turned and jerked the ax off the stump to split another log before I responded.
“Lane, I’m not you. Not everything I touch turns to gold. I’ve barely been hanging on for years. Now I’ve finally got my business going and I’m done messing around with Camper, and then I meet this woman. She’s the best thing I’ve ever seen, she’s got it all, and there’s this immediate need deep in my belly. I don’t want to hit it and quit it anymore. I don’t want to be that guy, but I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.”
“You could’ve talked to me,” he said with a smirk, “when you didn’t have an ax in your hand.” He leaned against the tree, grinning with his arms crossed over his chest as I split another piece of wood.
“Don’t be Mr. Funny right now, Lane.”
“I just never thought I’d see the day with you all strung out over a woman.”
“You can’t keep fixing shit for me, Lane! I may not have an MBA from a fancy school, but even I’m not dumb enough to believe I can continue living life as I’ve been living it. I’ve not taken any responsibility for myself, and I have to do something about it. The first step wasn’t calling you when I landed my pathetic ass in jail. As for the fight, I pretty much remember you beating AJ within an inch of his life when he went after Bess. And fucking sue me for wanting to get the girl all by myself.”
Tossing the ax down, I started pacing the yard, kicking up clumps of mud with my worn-in boots. The first time I came up here, I’d worn brand-new athletic shoes. Now I came prepared for mucking around in the woods. See, a man can learn.
Lane sighed. “I was in love with Bess, and that fucker almost hurt her. That’s different. You went to jail for Camper and her antics. Who the hell was this guy you went after?”
“That doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is now I’m trying to do right, and this woman is not listening to me.” I glared at my brother, our identical blue eyes staring each other down.
Lane grabbed my jacket by the lapels and pulled me tight toward him. “Jake, you’re whole life women have fallen at your feet, letting you lead them on just to have a chance to fuck you. You’ve never had to try to get a woman to like you for more than your body.”
He released my jacket and moved his hands to my shoulders, gripping them tightly. “Looks like you met your match. Listen to me good, brother. No lawyer—a public defender, no less—is going to fall into line if you boss her around. So put on your goddamn big-boy pants and deal with it. And it’s not because she’s smarter than you, you’re just going to have to work for it.”
Shrugging off his grip, I went back at it with the ax while Lane watched, my muscles flexing and straining with each lift. Sweat dripped down my back again beneath my shirt as I considered what he had said. Stopping suddenly, ax in mid-air, I confessed, “Maybe I don’t deserve to be loved after what I did. If Shirley were behind bars, maybe, but not with blood on my hands.”
Lane shook his head. “I’m not listening to this, Jake. We’ve been through this, hashed it all out. I went to therapy; you’re in therapy. Shirley is beyond the statute of limitations, and you were a little kid who did nothing wrong. There’s no blood on your hands. It’s all on her conscience, and she has to live with that.”
“Go!” I demanded as I turned my back on him. “I need a little more time out here, and then I’ll come inside and behave.”
Just as Lane was about to argue with me, Bess called through the open back door. “Here’s Brooks. Maddy is up, and he needs to run around and lift his leg.”
Her soft voice carried through the air as the dog bounded toward us, and from the looks of it, Bess may as well have announced she was naked and ready for round two. My brother perked up and headed for the house without another word.
“Hey, big guy.” I ran my hand along the shiny black Lab’s flank before giving him a little noogie on the head. With his tail wagging, he ran off toward a tree and did exactly what his mistress wanted him to do, lifted his leg like a good boy.
Did I want to be someone’s good guy? Lose myself in someone’s sweet voice? Sneak in a little afternoon delight while our baby napped?
Am I actually worth it?
Watching Brooks bound around the yard, looking for another spot to mark, I wasn’t so sure, but I did come up with yet another insane idea, Plan C. Lucky for me, I was in the rural back roads of Pennsylvania where I could set it all in motion.
With that in mind, I trudged back up to the house and spent the rest of the day cooing over my brother’s baby girl, counting the minutes until morning.