The Set Up (41 page)

With light strokes he memorizes me with his touch. Glides over every bit of exposed skin with his fingers and his mouth. The tantalizing gentleness he displays only increases my anticipation and my arousal.

A moan I can’t hold back escapes my lips.

He groans around one of my nipples when he hears it and slowly slides his hands down to the button of my jeans.

The coil in my belly tightens.

Slowly, almost torturously so, he unbuttons my jeans and starts to pull the zipper down.

Oh, God, I want him so much.

“Jasper,” a voice calls out from the main living space of the loft.

“Fuck,” Jasper mutters.

“Jasper, I need to talk to you. It’s about Tory.”

I quickly grab my top and put it on.

Jasper presses a kiss to my shoulder. “Let’s go see what Will wants and then pick this back up right where we left off.”

I nod, trying to get my beating heart to slow down.

Naked feet lead the way.

When we hit the living space, I freeze. It isn’t just Will, but Will, Drew, Jake, and Will’s girlfriend, Whitney.

Pink paints my cheeks.

Drew clears his throat. “Oh, hey, Charlotte,” he says, as if trying to make the scene casual and not so embarrassing.

Although appreciated, I’m not sure it eases the fact that Jasper and I look like horny teenagers, in his bedroom before the sun has even gone down.

Jasper doesn’t seem to care.

Everyone greets one another and thankfully ignores the elephant in the room. They all know what we were doing in his bedroom at six o’clock on a Saturday night.

“What’s up?” Jasper asks, running a hand through his hair.

“Come sit down,” Will orders.

“What’s going on?”

“Just sit down. It’s something I need to show you. Not tell you.”

Jasper grabs for my hand in a protective manner and we head to the stools at the bar, where Will is firing up his laptop.

Jake’s busy surveying the mess Jasper and I left behind. Once he’s done, he grabs the wine bottle and brings it to the kitchen, where he finds a glass and pours the remainder of the wine into it. Sucking it down, he turns and grabs another from the chiller. “Anyone else like a glass?” he asks.

Will is busy typing the letters
T-o-r-i-e
into the Facebook search bar, but nothing pops up.

Whitney is by his side whispering in his ear, “There’s an extra
r
before the
i-e
, remember?”

“Stupid stripper name.” Jake mutters something under his breath.

“I’ll have a glass,” Drew tells Jake, grabbing a carrot and sticking it in the hummus still on the counter.

My eyes flicker between Drew, Jake, and Will. The three men Jasper thinks of as brothers. Each has his own sad story to tell of how he ended up in Cass Corridor, but all are thankful they found each other.

Punching the keys again, Will turns the screen toward Jasper. “This is Tory with an
r-i-e
,” he says to Jasper.

Jasper’s intake of breath frightens me.

Almost desperately, I look at the picture and know I’ve never seen the grown-up Tory before. If she was at the bed-and-breakfast it wasn’t when I was there.

“And here’s the picture Alex was referring to.” Whitney shows it to me.

I look at it. That’s the Butterfly House all right in the background. The date of the post is this past spring. It was just before my aunt died. Had my aunt met her? Talked to her? Sent her away? Or had Tory with an
r-i-e
never mentioned who she was?

Sadly, I might never know.

Looking around, I realize the room is silent except for the crunch of carrot in Drew’s mouth, and that everyone is staring at Jasper, who looks like he might throw up any second.

“Do you know her?” I ask.

They all nod their heads and avert their eyes anywhere but at Jasper and me.

“How do you know her?”

Jasper says nothing.

I pull the computer closer. “Is that blue streaks in her hair?”

Jasper is pale. Will is paler. Jake is for once silent. And Drew is staring at Jasper.

Then there is no question. Yes, those are blue streaks in Tory Worth’s hair. “Oh, my God,” I gasp and look at him. “Tell me what I’m thinking is wrong.”

He says nothing.

“Tell me I’m wrong!”

Jasper squeezes my hand so tight it starts to go numb. “You’re not wrong. She’s the other girl I spent the night with last weekend.”

The cloud I’d been floating on doesn’t just drift away. Instead it feels like it’s been yanked out from under me.

Tears I can’t control well in my eyes. “You were with Tory Worth?”

Jasper leans forward, and even through his own distress he tries to calm me down. “We’ve talked about this.”

Yes, we talked about the two women in his threesome. Talked about the fact that it was before he met me again. Talked about the fact that he had sex with only one of them, and it wasn’t Eve, which means it was Tory Worth. Bolting from my chair, I rush for the bathroom and close and lock the door.

That life and this one.

That one.

This one.

That life where I was the needy one and she was the one who got all the attention. That life where she got to be with my mother and I got left behind. This life where she came in and took the one person who ever really cared about me. Why? Because she could—that was always the reason she did anything.

There’s a light tap on the door. “Charlotte, let me in.”

Not wanting to cause a scene, I unlock the door and return to my spot on the tile floor.

Slowly, Jasper pushes the door open and steps in.

I look up but say nothing.

He sits down beside me but doesn’t touch me. “Talk to me.”

I shake my head.

“Talk to me, Charlotte,” he begs.

So I do. I let it all out. “I had this life. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. Then one day it’s gone. So I take this box and put that life away. Then I have another life and soon that one is gone, too. So I take this box and put that life away. And as if twice wasn’t enough, I have to do it again. Now, I’m back here and despite everything going on, I’m happy. I’m happy because I’m with you. And now what, I have to get another box?”

Jasper moves closer to me and takes my hand. Slowly he kisses each of my knuckles. “I know this is hard for you, but she didn’t mean anything to me.”

Unable to contain my tears, I’m sobbing and talking at the same time. “She has a name. Tory Worth. You were with Tory Worth. The poor little girl whose mother died so she always got my mother’s attention. The girl who stole my mother from me, and then comes back here and takes you.”

I know I sound childish, but I can’t help it.

To his credit, Jasper remains calm. “Charlotte, I understand that you’re upset—”

“This isn’t about you, Charlotte.” Jake is standing in the doorway with his arms crossed.

“Jake,” Jasper warns.

Hurriedly wiping my tears away, I look at him. “I know that, Jake.”

“Do you? Because I don’t think you really get it. This girl planned this. Went after Jasper for a reason. Then Eve turns up dead and with Jasper in a whole load of shit, all of a sudden she wants her property back.”

Perhaps in my own duress I hadn’t seen things clearly. I do now. “Oh, my God. Do you think she had something to do with Eve’s murder?”

“We’re letting Todd bring the information to the police. We’ll see what else they can uncover. At the very least she has to become a person of interest.”

Slowly, I get to my feet.

Jasper is still on the ground. It’s then I realize that he, too, has to deal with what happened between him and Tory. I don’t mean the sex. I mean the intentional manipulation. She targeted him.

“Do you think it’s a possibility that she did it?” Jake asks him.

Instead of answering, he just stares at Jake as if he hadn’t seen things clearly either—until now.

And slowly I sit back down beside him.

Take his hand.

And kiss each of his knuckles.

NO PEAS PLEASE

Jasper

THE T-SHIRT I’D
worn yesterday had said it all. “You can’t always get what you want.” The Stones might have sung it, but my mother said it to me over and over.

“Mom, please, I really want to go to the go-cart races on Saturday.”

“Jasper, I said no. Not this week.”

“But Mom, please, Mr. Harvey said he’d take me anytime. You could call him and ask him to take me.”

“No, Jasper.”

“Why?” I stomp my foot.

“Because you can’t always get what you want.”

“I hate you,” I tell her and rush from the room.

In reflection, she probably didn’t let me go because she had already sold my go-cart but hadn’t told me yet.

It’s not that she was a bad mother. She didn’t beat me, neglect me, or put me in harm’s way. She just didn’t know how to deal with me and didn’t want to learn. It took me many years to accept the truth—not everyone who is a mom is made to be a mom.

The car climbs steadily at forty miles per hour up the winding road that leads to Bloomfield Township. Normally, I’d be going faster, but I don’t want to scare Charlotte with the twists and turns. Some people call this area the Automotive Alps, because the farther north you go, the more elite the homes become, homes built on money made from the auto industry of days gone by.

Alex Harper went to school up here at Detroit Country Day in Bloomfield Hills even though he lived in Grosse Pointe. His mother drove him every day. His sister went to the even more elite school of Cranbrook, and Mrs. Harper drove her, too. My mother didn’t even walk me to the bus stop after my father died.

I turn east on Telegraph Road onto Long Lake. We spiral toward the clouds to the house where my mother lives. Her only job now is to be available to Hank Harper. In the summer she spends her days with her precious flowers and waits for him. In the winter, I’m not sure what she does. Charlotte is aware of the situation. I explained it to her last night.

In fact, after everyone left we talked for hours about her feelings regarding her mother, Tory, and her father, and my feelings about my mother, Hank, and Alex. I admitted things to her I’ve never admitted to anyone. I told her why I acted out when I was younger. Although it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that it was to evoke some kind of emotion from my mother.

Good or bad, I didn’t give a shit.

Just
something
.

I also told Charlotte about my time in juvie and that once I left there, I knew I’d never do anything that would cause me to return. I even confessed my jealousy toward Alex and how for a while I thought Hank could replace my father. That is until he actually started taking up with my mother. It wasn’t the fact that my mother was happy that bothered me; it was the fact that we had to hide it. I hated that. I still do. I didn’t like being his other family. I wanted to be a part of his family, or at least feel like I belonged.

Fuck that.

Those feelings passed long ago. I was never part of his family, and his daughter made sure to tell me so when she came looking for me after my high school graduation. Hank was supposed to come but never showed up. Turns out his daughter found out where he was headed and suddenly became really sick. Abby, the spoiled little rich girl, always got her way. And for some reason, she felt threatened by the relationship that Hank and I shared, and wanted it to end. That night she told me to stay away from her father or she’d tell her mother about Hank and my mother. I knew that if Hank’s wife found out, Hank would end things with my mother. No matter how much I disliked their relationship, I didn’t want to be the one to make my mother unhappy, so I pulled away from Hank. And he let me.

The road slopes up to the top of the rise and my mother’s single-story brick and stone house nestled in the trees comes into view.

“She knows I’m coming?” Charlotte asks in concern.

I grab her hand and squeeze it. “Yes, she knows.”

Her eyes are round. “And she’s okay with it. Right?”

I cringe that she even has to ask such a question. “Yeah, she actually sounded excited to see you.”