Hopelessly Yours (5 page)

"I think you do," I said, heat singeing my tone. "You went to the same school I did. Studied until your eyes bled and—"
And watched your friends and classmates dress up and party even harder while you stayed in and studied even more?
That was my story. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd been out. It was the reason for my deep-seated hatred of beer and frat boys. My friends on campus called me an old lady, and I pretended their words didn't hurt.

I eyed my mother. Her eyes said everything. She was imagining all my wild nights. Thinking the worst, as usual. I wouldn't correct her. If she still neglected to see the real me, I'd just be the girl she thought I was.

"I partied," I lied. "Hard."

She flinched, like I'd hit her. "Be that as it may, you're not on campus." She sniffed, probably picking up on the beer that still hadn't dried, setting off an aroma of a not-so great night.

She rushed forward, red in her sights. When she got about three feet from me, she stopped like she'd hit a wall and plugged her nose. "You reek of beer."

She looked so disgusted. So...vindicated. I couldn't help but let the truth slip. "A guy spilled a drink on me."

She gave me the steely look she usually reserved for cross-examinations. She was ready to poke all sorts of holes in my story. "So you're saying that you smell like a bar because a drink was spilled on you?"

"That's right," I said defensively.

She invaded my personal space, sniffing a second time. "Did he pour a drink down your throat as well?"

I pushed past her with a groan. I should have known that it was impossible for her to just show up for me. To stay up because she was worried, and not because she was grilling me like I'd committed some capital offense by going to a party.

"It was just a beer, Mom. Not even a whole one. What's the big deal?"

She followed me in the kitchen, not letting up. "You're eighteen, Victoria. Last time I checked, the legal drinking age was twenty-one."

I trudged to the cabinet, retrieved a glass, and went to the fridge. I pretended that I didn't hear her, that her words weren't getting through, but my hand trembled and my throat was on fire with all of the things I didn't say. That she never gave me credit. That she didn't see that I'd always followed the path she and Dad laid out for me to the freaking letter. I got all the right grades from the moment we started getting A's and B's instead of gold stars and pats on the head. I got into every school I applied to, from Harvard and UConn down to my first choice, Yale. I had a 4.0 my freshman year of college, even though I took 18 credits instead of the normal twelve, and volunteered at the hospital 25 hours a week. I was on my way towards being exactly who she wanted me to be...but somehow, that wasn't enough. I saw it in the way she held me at arm’s length. The way she barely smiled when I showed her my grades. The way she looked at me like I was the biggest disappointment she'd ever seen. And considering she prosecuted drug dealers and murderers, that was saying something.

The weight of her judgment was too much to take, and I turned my back to her. I put down my almost full glass and gripped the edge of the granite countertop.

"...if anyone found out that my underage daughter was at some party drinking, I'd be the laughingstock of the county."

The hurt morphed to venom and my lips dripped poison. "I'm sure they would laugh, Mom. ‘Tough-as-nails DA fails to control her slutty daughter, news at 11’." I gulped down the water, but it didn't quench the flames. The anger was going to eat me alive.

"H-how...you think this is funny?" she sputtered. "This isn't funny! And it's not just about my career—"

"Oh please," I rolled my eyes. "Everything's about your career. You could barely carve out the time for your daughter’s coming home dinner." I narrowed my gaze as I caught her flabbergasted expression over my shoulder. She might have been pretty once, but years of work and frowning had turned her soft features hawkish and piercing. Her blonde hair was filled with more gray sections than I remembered. I knew that it was past her usual bedtime of 9pm, but she looked more than just sleepy. She looked exhausted, down to her bones. And if I didn't know better, she actually looked genuinely worried.

I bit my lip, prying my eyes away. I wasn't ready to accept that she hadn't traded in her mothering ability for an 85% conviction rate in a small town that used to be a haven for mob activity. No one could deny that something happened when she was in the courtroom. I'd seen it with my own two eyes. She was a force to be reckoned with.

My heart clenched. If those worry lines were to be believed, tonight wasn't the only night she'd stayed up stressing, either. Was it a case or was it...me?

"Everything all right down here?" Dad was in the doorway. His mop of dark, curly hair stuck out at every end, his eyes glazed with exhaustion. "I could hear you two going at it upstairs."

"Everything's fine," Mom growled, her cheeks flushing. "Your daughter was out partying all hours of the night and came back smelling like a liquor store."

Dad didn't even look at her as she ascended the stairs, but from the way he flexed his jaw and avoided touching her when she walked past, I wondered if he wanted a liquor store himself. He filled his water with glass instead and downed it in ten seconds. We all watched him, the anchor in our family. I didn't release the breath I was holding until he pecked me on the forehead.

"It smells like you had a good time, Vick." he chuckled.

"Don't encourage her, Bill!" Mom snapped. My heart flip-flopped in my chest. I knew that parents argued. Everyone argued, but there was disdain in her voice and Dad stiffened beside me, like he was fighting to hold his tongue.

I'd only been gone for 9 months. How could things be so different? How could the air in my home go from warm and welcoming to uncomfortable and suffocating?

We needed a subject change. Something that could turn the attention from the fact that my parents, married for 22 years, could barely stand to be in the same room.

"I saw Jace Murrow tonight." As soon as it came out, I wanted to take it back. How was I going to make it better by bringing up a guy that my mother hated the moment I had him over?

*

J
ace gawked at my house like it was a dream. When I nudged him with my elbow, his eyes darkened. Maybe not a good dream. He eyed it skeptically, like he thought either it or he would vanish at any moment.

“It’s just a house,” I said jokingly. “It won’t bite.”

His brown eyes turned into shadows. I’d said something stupid. For someone with all A’s, I’d been saying lots of stupid things whenever I was around Jace Murrow.

“What did I say?” I squeaked, hooking his elbow and forcing him to look at me.

“Only a rich person would say a house like this is ‘just a house’. Someone that...” He adjusted the backpack slung on his shoulder. “Never mind.”

He walked up the steps to the door, suddenly in a hurry to get this over with. I wanted to ask him more questions, to apologize again since our ride over was so amazing. We’d bonded over a secret love of “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha and with the music blaring and the windows down, he relaxed. I swore I even saw him mouthing some of the lyrics when he thought I wasn’t watching. Now the walls were back up and the timing couldn’t be worse.

He was about to meet my mom.

I’d secretly hoped that my dad had a light schedule at the office, but there was no such luck. He would have greeted us at the door, told a few jokes. Sure, it would have been awkward, but not as awkward as walking in and announcing myself like we were in some royal court.

“Mom, I—we’re home!”

Jace perked an eyebrow at me, a smile racing across his lips and disappearing.

I heard the creak of Mom’s office door opening and closing, her stilettos clicking on the hardwood floor.

She wasn’t in her full get-up, but her blouse was still perfectly tucked inside her pencil skirt and she moved like a predator in the brush, Jace her prey. The other guys I’d brought home would be gulping, shrinking. Jace straightened his spine and cleared his throat.

“Hi, Mrs. Johnston. I’m Jace.”

She studied him for a moment more, then shook his hand. “Jace what?”

“Jace Murrow.”

She dropped his hand like he burned her. “Jace Murrow?”

God, she was so embarrassing! “Yes, Mom. That’s his last name. He’s my partner for my US History assignment.” She was looking at him like he was the devil incarnate, so I steered him away from her laser beams. “We’ll be in the—”

“Is your uncle Thomas Murrow?”

Jace pulled away from my grasp, his face registering confusion. “Yeah, how did you know?”

Mom’s nostrils flared like she smelled something rotten. “I’m familiar with his case.”

Confusion melted into something cold and frozen. Jace’s face looked just like it did whenever Josh and his friends came over when we talked and gave him a hard time. It was a look of something wild backed into a corner. He looked moments away from hissing.

Or worse—clawing.

Mom pulled me out of earshot of Jace, her voice lowered. “You need to get a new partner, Victoria.”

I yanked away from her. “What? It’s too late for that.” My lips trembled as I looked back at him and smiled. “Besides, I like my partner.”

She sighed, shaking her head like I’d said the most tragic thing she’d ever heard. “I can see that.” I nearly went into shock when she tucked my hair behind my ear and cupped my cheeks. Mom was never physically affectionate with me. I was lucky that she said I love you every blue moon.

“Don’t get too close, honey. He’s going to break your heart.”

*

"J
ace Murrow?" Dad murmured beside me. He leaned on the counter, ruffling his hair. "That was the guy you dated, right? Skinny kid with the long hair?"

I didn't tell him that he was a muscled, tattooed sex god now. "Uh huh."

Dad traced the rim of his glass. "He was a nice boy. I could tell he came from a tough home environment, but he had a good heart."

"Please," Mom snorted behind us, eavesdropping from the top stair. "I hope you steer clear of him this time, Victoria. Tough home environment is an understatement. His uncle is connected to Macone. I'd put money on the kid getting mixed up in it, too. Crime pays better than McDonald’s."

"You don't know anything about him," I snarled, my face giving away everything.

Even after what happened in the car, when he slammed on the brakes and ignored me the rest of the car ride, I refused to believe that he was
that
different from the guy I knew. The gentle, romantic guy...because there was nothing gentle about Anthony Macone.

Macone hid behind respectable businesses and suits, but the guy just oozed villain. He had the slicked back hair, the empty eyes, and he rode around in an Escalade with pitch-black windows doing God knows what behind them. I wanted to unsee the crime photos I'd sneaked a peek at in my mom's office, with people beaten to the point where dental records were the only way to identify them. Bodies riddled with bullet holes. Women with throats slit.

I even had my own Macone memory. Rachel's dad used to own a franchise sandwich shop, and I remember she and I were eating there late after school one night. I let her talk me into keeping watch while she smoked behind the dumpster.

One of Macone’s SUVs was parked in the alley, and her dad stumbled out of the back. I ducked behind the corner and saw him clutching his nose, blood gushing between his fingers. I knew from the way he shook that he was looking into the eyes of the person that hurt him, but
he
was apologizing. His terror-filled voice would stay with me forever.

"My next payment will be on time, Mr. Macone."

I shook my head so hard my teeth rattled, the memory chilling me to the bone. "No way would he have anything to do with that man. You don't know him." My mind flashed back to the darkness in Jace's eyes as he gripped my chin, his touch blurring the line between firm and pain.
You don't either, Vix. Not anymore.

"I don't want you seeing him again," Mom ordered. She was using her lawyer voice. The one that commanded attention and obedience.

Usually I'd ignore it just to spite her, but there was that worry again. Glowing in her eyes, begging me to heed her warnings.

She'd been right about Jace before.

He did break my heart.

"Okay," I said finally. Lying...because now I wouldn't rest until I knew if my Jace was gone forever.

I
parked my car and strode toward the entrance. Luigi’s Pizzeria was as old as time itself. It stood in the center of Markham street, an ageless brick building flanked by a shiny new McDonald’s and a gas station. Old men perched at the cafe tables outside, playing checkers and pausing to glare at the cars that whizzed by, like they were disrupting their piece of paradise.

I ducked my head in acknowledgment, and they returned the gesture before I stepped inside the restaurant. I made the mistake of rushing past them the first time I showed up at Luigi’s, bright eyed and bushy tailed. It was right after I was expelled from Clint High and learned I’d have to go to Clint Alternative, a school notorious for the learning kids got
outside
of the classroom. Lessons like, life is shit and then you die. And emotions and attachments are weaknesses.

I was fifteen when I first burst through the door of the neighborhood pizzeria, determined to give school the finger altogether and work for Macone like my uncle. I’d barely gotten five feet inside before a tiny old lady grabbed me by the collar. She was a petite little thing, with salt and pepper hair that she wore in a single braid over her shoulder, wrinkles creating deep lines in her face. She told me to mind my manners.

She was the same age as my grandmother. I couldn’t stand my grandmother, or being ordered around, but there was kindness in her jade colored eyes that I’d never seen in my grandmother’s hateful glare. I obeyed the woman’s command, which had been a good thing. The old lady was Macone’s mother—and if I had told her to fuck off, I would have been staggering back to the bus stop with two black eyes and some missing teeth. By going back out and entering the right way, remembering my manners, I’d passed the first test—but Macone took one look at me and said to come back when I was eighteen.