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Dad didn’t have the funds to pursue challenging the will in court. He’d shown up for one hearing and then vanished again, but not before making it clear to me that if he couldn’t get what he wanted legally, he was willing to try other methods.
Namely, putting a bullet in my skull.
“Manson.” Jason gripped my shoulders, the strength of his hold finally making me pause. “Deep breaths, man. It’s okay. You’re okay. Vincent was going to tell you, I know he was. He was just trying to figure out the right way to do it. Then with work, and Jess, and everything…he must have forgotten. I know he’ll feel like shit that you found out like this.”
I finally took a deep breath. I had to think logically here.
“Jess isn’t going to mean anything to him,” Jason said, his tone perfectly even. Reasonable. Calm. At least one of us was. “In his eyes, she’s just some girl. He’s not going to bother with her.”
“We don’t know that,” I said, staring at her house. Her unlocked front door, her fucked-up security system…
As if he read my mind, Jason said quickly, “I’m going to go get her alarm fixed. You should head back to the house. Take the day off, relax…” I gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know, you don’t relax. Buttry. Get into Vincent’s stash. He’ll have something to calm you down.”
I nodded, clasping his arm for a moment in thanks. I hadn’t meant to get so upset, but it was hard to think clearly where my father was concerned. I hadn’t heard a thing from him or seen any sign of him since Mom’s funeral, and I would have preferred to keep it that way.
Hopefully, this was just a temporary thing. There was nothing left for him in Wickeston, and if he had any sense left in that rotten head, he’d move on again sooner rather than later.
His truck was gone when I drove past again, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
37
Jessica
I took an extra long shower that morning, savoring every drop of hot water on my aching body. I’d likely be walking stiffly for days, but the discomfort was weirdly satisfying.
It usually felt strange to have someone sleep by my side. I hadn’t had anything that qualified as a “steady” relationship since sophomore year of college — and even that only lasted three months. I preferred to keep it short and sweet. The longer I was with someone, the more annoying they became.
But this was different. Sleeping next to Manson hadn’t felt strange. It felt like coming home at the end of a long day and sinking into your favorite pillow, like a warm blanket on a cold night. I slept like a rock, and when I woke up and saw his hair all messy, his face soft with sleep…God, how could I resist him?
It made no sense that a man who was so unlike me made me feel so heard. Soseen. The messy, uncertain side of me that he brought out felt more like the real me than anything else. It was the side of me that craved scary, unusual, vulnerable things. Things that felt too close for comfort, too real, too raw.
This little game of ours was far harder to play when my heart was determined not to follow my own rules.
The number one rule was to not get attached. The moment thathappened, I’d be in trouble. I could already feel it and it was starting to freak me out, the little ways in which I found myself trying to get more time with them. Even when I wasn’t fulfilling my “duties” as their toy, I still felt this pull to be around them.
I had to be careful. I had my own plans and I couldn’t allow them to be spoiled now.
Jason hadn’t told me what time he would be arriving, but when I stepped out of the bathroom, I could hear someone downstairs. My bedroom door was wide up and I walked out to peer over the railing into the entryway.
“Y’all really don’t like to knock, do you?”
Jason looked up at me. He was seated in the open doorway with a laptop on his outstretched legs, his shaggy blue hair contained under a black baseball cap.
“Knocking feels like asking permission,” he said. “And I wasn’t asking.”
Rolling my eyes, I turned away before he could see me smile. After hurriedly getting dressed, I came downstairs to find he was still sitting in the same spot, forehead creased with concentration as he stared at long lines of text on his screen.
“Do you want some coffee?” I said, peering at him through the doorway from the kitchen.
“I’m good,” he said, holding up a neon green and black energy drink can.
“Ah, I see, you prefer to fuel yourself with straight battery acid.” The coffee machine groaned and that delicious bitter bean juice began to drip. I added some sweet cream to my mug before I walked back to the entryway and sat down beside him. He was so focused on his screen it wasn’t until I bumped against his shoulder that he flinched in surprise and looked over at me.
“I thought your screen would look likeThe Matrixor something,” I said.
He chuckled, shaking his head. “There’s a lot less floating neonsymbols and a lot more math.”
A minute in silence as I watched him, sipping my coffee. Math was one of my strongest subjects, but whatever he was doing didn’t look like the math I was used to. He was speaking an entirely different language in those long lines of code.
