Fix You (32 page)

             
His smile was sideways and false; it contorted his features into something ugly. “Don’t act like you know shit about Jessica and me.”

             
“Don’t act like you care about her or Tyler. You were a shitty husband and a shitty dad. This is about control,” Chris said knowingly, watching a shadow cast by a pulsing vein streak across the other man’s forehead, “and you don’t have it anymore. Go back inside before you get hurt.”

             
Chris had seen this posture before: the bowed up spine, the fused eyebrows, the trembling white lips pressed together; it was the blind rage of impotence. The furious realization that he was powerless in this instance had rendered Dylan nothing less than stupid. He hadn’t, Chris knew, expected Jess to move on and find someone new; he’d planned to keep her dangling and hurting, holding her at arm’s length until he grew tired of his new toy. He hadn’t counted on this at all.

             
“She’s not getting a dime from me,” Dylan said through his teeth. “I have pictures. I have – ”

             
“You’re gonna have a broken jaw in about five seconds,” Chris said. “Go inside.”

             
He did; with one last hateful glare that promised retribution, he spun and marched back up the sidewalk, shoulders rigid.

             
Chris sighed. Jess had been right: he was going to cost her the settlement she deserved.

**

              Even with a bellyful of ice cream, Tyler’s eyes were closed when his head hit the pillow. Jess combed her fingers through the soft front strands of his hair and sighed. Then she got to her feet, turned out his lamp, and slipped out into the hall.

             
Chris was waiting propped against the wall, hands tucked in his back pockets. His hair was still mussed from earlier, from her fingers. Tired, eyelids at half-mast, the lines on his face were more visible than normal. His dark brows were tucked together over his roman nose and he was, she saw, thoughtful, which wasn’t normal.

             
“I’m sorry,” she said on a huge exhale.

             
“Me too.”

             
“Why?”

             
He shrugged. “You shouldn’t have to worry about your kid like that – being around that kinda thing.”

             
With a groan, she went to him, slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her face over his heart, its thumping steady beneath the fabric of his t-shirt. “You have to stop saying things like that. I can’t take too much understanding without going soft.”

             
His hands left his pockets and his arms went around her. She felt his face touch the top of her head, part her hair. “I’ll have to remember that.”

24

             
T
he thought of ever returning to his pre-Jess breakfast routine was hellish. He loved the food – this morning it was thick-cut bacon and English muffins with melted jack cheese on top; he’d grown fond of watching the light come through the windows in great yellow shafts, finding shiny things to play with and coursing golden through her hair; he’d become accustomed to her people – her chirpy boyish sister and Tam’s quirky mixture of intensity and irreverence, her gap-toothed kid and little Willa. And Jess: gorgeous and domestic and indomitable.

             
The knock on the backdoor as he was shoveling eggs in his mouth was a surprise, seeing as it was Saturday. The surprise morphed into a foreign sense of dread when he recognized Jess’s dad as the man who turned the knob and came on in uninvited. He had limited experience with fathers. Or…none, if he was honest. He was nervous as a teenager all of a sudden. The only ones in the know about him and Jess were Jo and Tam, and they turned a blind eye. To be at her table, disheveled first thing in the morning, was obvious.

             
Jess’s fork froze halfway to her mouth and her bite of muffin tumbled off the tines. “Dad.” Her eyes went big as green half dollars. “What are you doing here?”

             
He put one of his big, paw hands over his heart as he closed the door behind him. Chris noted his clothes: flannel shirt with a hole in the breast pocket, paint-spattered jeans, old work boots. “Now, Jessie,” he said, voice laced with mock hurt, “that’s no way to say good morning.”

             
Jess groaned.

             
“Morning, Dad,” Jo chimed. And then, echoing her, both kids said, “Hi, Papa.”

             
“Hi, kiddos.” The man had a megaphone voice, and he used it liberally. He clapped a hand on Tam’s shoulder and gave him a familiar squeeze. “Hiya, Tammy.” Then, hand still on his son-in-law’s shoulder, his gaze came to the head of the table, to the place where Chris had dared to sit like he was the new head of the household. Randy Walker was Webster’s definition of a father – the kind of all-American big guy with a big personality and big love for his family – and it was the sort of persona that tended to be discounted. Chris, though, didn’t underestimate for a second the green eyes that raked over him.

             
“So, Tammy,” Randy said, “do we approve of the new changes around this place?”

             
From beneath his dark brows, Tam shot Chris an amused glance. “Yeah. We approve.”

             
Randy nodded, gaze lingering a moment longer. “Good.” He jammed his hands in his jeans pockets. “What’re the chances I can get some breakfast, Jessie Mae?” he asked, and Chris filed
Mae
away to ask about later, biting back a grin.

             
Wordlessly, Jess dabbed her mouth with her napkin, pushed back her chair and stood, went to the stove to collect another plate of food.

             
Randy sat at the foot of the table to wait, and his eyes pinned Chris. “Place looks good,” he said, a challenge lurking along the edges of his voice. “Would you mind walking me through? It’s been a while since I was over last.”

             
“Dad,” Jess warned, setting breakfast before him with a quelling glance.

             
“I’m just asking.”

             
“I know what you’re doing.”

             
Chris hadn’t expected this: Jess was worried her dad might not approve. “It’s fine,” he assured, and drew two very different looks from father and daughter. “I can take you through.”

**

              For as long as he could remember, Walt had focused on minimizing risks and maximizing opportunities. Saddled with his grandfather’s hideous hand-me-down name, Walter Wyatt Walker had set out to construct the life his parents hadn’t been able to afford. He’d married his high school sweetheart; Gwen was the sort of woman born to be a mother, born to be a wife. With her home front support, he’d gone from paid intern, to full time, to supervisor; from working for someone else to working for himself. He’d gone from McDonald’s fry cook to CFO of his joint venture marketing solutions company, and he had – perhaps naively – assumed he was setting the bar for his siblings; he was showing them how it was done so they could follow along in his footsteps. He’d done well for himself, damn it. He had real, physical, tangible proof of his intelligence and perseverance.

             
Only his parents didn’t care.

             
And these days, his wife didn’t care either.

             
Saturday dinner with the folks had been, as usual, a mistake.

             
His mother’s meat loaf was a study in cholesterol and he forked another bite into his mouth while thinking about the time he’d spend on the treadmill the next day. On his plate, the ketchup-based sauce was separating into a nauseating palette of tri-colored greases. Walt lifted his head, glanced across the table at the shadows a sputtering bulb in the chandelier flashed across his father’s lined face, and swallowed hard.

             
“I went by to see the girls today,” Randy announced as the bread basket made another trip between chairs. “The house looks good.”

             
The house…His smart sister – the one who hadn’t thrown her life away on some lunatic with gel in his hair – was fast losing her claim to sanity with that house of hers.

             
There were murmurs of agreement from the women. The boys studied their plates and ignored the adult conversation.

             
“Her new guy – ” Randy started and Walt snapped to attention.

             
“Chris?” Beth asked with a certain knowing, casual air.

             
“Yeah. Spent some time with him today. I think I might like him.”

             
“New guy?” Walt asked, not believing that Jess would, or could, have already attached herself to someone else before her divorce was final – before she’d given Dylan a chance to come back to her.

             
No one seemed to hear him.

             
“I think it’s great,” Gwen said as she cut into her meatloaf like the grease puddles didn’t bother her in the least. “She deserves to have some attention paid to her and he seems like such a nice guy.”

             
Beth nodded in agreement. “Jo told me he’s just crazy about Jess.”

             
“Tammy likes him,” Randy put in. “And he don’t just take to everybody.”

             
The way it always did,
that
name brought bile surging up the back of his throat.
Tammy.
Everyone’s precious goddamn Tam. Tam…that wasn’t even a real name anyway. How anyone in his family could overlook what was so obliviously a genetic predisposition to violence…

             
He was too furious and sore about the notion that just walking through the old mental marvel of it all left his hands curled into fists on top of the table. His sister – his sweet little stupid baby sister – had never understood the ramifications of marrying and procreating with a piece of shit like Wales. But the rest of the family – at least his parents – should have seen the wisdom in what he’d done years before. Not even Gwen, her beautiful big eyes glazed with tears as she’d asked, “How could you?” had been able to understand that removing Tam from Jo’s life had been the best thing. The only thing. The only way to protect his naïve sister from something dark she couldn’t possibly begin to understand.

             
“I’m sure,” Walt said, unable to keep the sneer from his voice, “that if Wales likes him, he must be marriage material.”

             
Beth laid down her fork with one of those overtaxed maternal deep breaths. The eyes she lifted to him were sad; she was disappointed in him. “Now, Walt – ”

             
“No,” he said, and heard Chase and Logan’s feet clatter against the rungs of their chairs; he’d used his angry-dad voice. “It’s bad enough that walking train wreck is a part of the family; I’m not going to sit here and pretend it’s okay for him to pick out Jess’s new boyfriend.”

             
Randy scowled the scowl that Walt was starting to be able to see in the mirror: his own DNA haunting him. He made a disgusted, harrumphing sound in the back of his throat. “Jess can pick out her own boyfriend, and she did. Tam ain’t you – he’s not trying to play matchmaker with the women in this family all the damn time like some kinda – ”

             
“Randy!” Beth snapped. “Don’t say anything else.”

             
He seemed, for a moment, like he would comply. His wife had always held ultimate sway over him. He watched her a moment from the corner of his eye, paying her a moment of silent respect, then his gaze swung to Walt, and it was livid. “I am so,” he began in his slow, good ol’ boy drawl, “sick and goddamn tired –”

             
Beth started to interrupt with her typical admonitions about cursing, but thought better of it.

             
“ – of you having a hard-on for Tam.”

             
One of the boys squelched what might have been a laugh, then said, “I know what a hard-on is,” in a tiny voice.

             
“Logan,” Walt snapped. “Shut your mouth.”

             
Randy’s attention hadn’t wavered. “I’m sick,” he continued, “of my own goddamn son tearing holes in this family just ‘cause you hate anyone who isn’t as perfect as you. Well guess what, Walter: none of us measures up! So get the hell over yourself already!”

             
“Honey,” Beth said quietly. “Let’s not make a scene in front of the boys.”

             
“The boys need to hear it. They need to know what an asshole their old man is!”

             
“
Randall
.”

             
Walt felt Gwen’s hand on his arm and he shook it away. “I get it: success makes me an asshole. A guy’s gotta be a hair-trigger orphan to get any love in this family. Maybe if you guys had slapped me around and then kicked off, I’d be as
great
a guy as Tam.”

             
Beside him, something thumped hard into his bicep: Gwen had hit him. Once upon a time, the thought would never have crossed her mind.

             
Randy, his face a square Frankenstein maze of creases, opened his mouth to retort, but Beth beat him to the punch.

             
She came surging up from her chair like a sturdy little blonde piston, hand slapping her dining room table, glasses and flatware clinking. “I have had
enough
, Walt!” she shouted, eyes flipping wide like she’d startled herself. “You don’t have to like Tam, you don’t even have to speak to him, but he’s your sister’s husband and he’s a part of this family. You
will respect
that, and you will stop acting twelve-years-old about it!”

             
Randy found his voice again and it thundered through the dining room, loud as Zeus shouting from the heavens. “Tam Wales is a damn good husband and a damn good father. And guess what? He and Jo don’t even have to go to counseling ‘cause he’s not an asshole!”

             
It was too much, this undeserved attack, in front of his children no less. “You’re a stupid son of a bitch,” he told his father without a shred of remorse.

             
“You too, kid.”

             
The legs of his chair gave a horrible screech as he shoved it back and got to his feet. Walt didn’t care if his wife and kids were at the table – and at his parents’ mercy – he had to get out of the cesspool that was his childhood home. They – all of them – had been poisoned. Dylan had said that there was no fairness when it came to Randy and Beth: no one could compete with their adopted reject. He’d been right. Being family, it seemed, didn’t automatically count for anything.

             
He was out the front door and around the sidewalk, shoes making contact with the asphalt of the drive when Gwen caught him. Her fingers touched his sleeve at his elbow and he spun, nearly collided with her and sent her staggering back a step. The wind rushed between them, snatching the long, soft lengths of her dark hair across her face; she pushed it back and stared up at him with wide, startled dark eyes.

             
There’d been a time when he’d been completely attuned to her every movement in relation to him; once, he would have spun and caught her, known every inch of air her curves had occupied.

             
Now, she looked like a stranger on the other side of the glass wall that separated them. “We all came in one car,” she reminded in a trembling voice, arms tightening around her middle.