Page 138 of Jaded

“I don’t care.” My heart beats too fast, almost akin to panic. “I want to know why the fuck my daughter is here.”

“She’s helping me.” Jess is still smiling, that same charming, easygoing smile I’ve known all my life. “And I’m helping her—”

“No.” Sudden emotion floods me, leaves me shaky, almost dizzy, but I don’t know what it is. Anger? Fear? “No. You don’t get to be absent her whole life and then, when you want to be the center of the show, pop back in.”

Jess flinches, and the grin vanishes. “It’s not like—”

“No, Jess.” The emotion lists towards anger, my vision tunneling around him. “You had no right to bring her here.”

“Dad.” Syd stands, drawing my gaze, widening that tunnel. “We were just talking—”

“We’re going.” I turn from Syd to Jess. “You want to see her, you talk to me first. That’s not negotiable.”

“Nat,wait.” The pleading in Jess’s voice stops me because I hear young Jesse in that tone, the Jesse who was my brother, who cared. “I’m just trying to help—”

“No.” My hand reaches out of its own accord, my fingers feathering over Syd’s shoulder blade. “Please, Syd.”

She must hear the desperation in my voice. The begging. The ragged edge that says how close I am to breaking.

She shifts to stand at my side, so together, we turn for the door.

“Hope I’ll see you there, Sydney,” Jess says as my fingers curve around the knob. “You and Avery.”

My body goes cold. Cold tingles down my spine and in my fingers and toes. And it’s not anger, not rage. Not even dread.

It’s fear.

“Where, Jess?” I ask. I curl my arm around Syd’s shoulders, like maybe that can protect her from the world. “See her where?”

“Nowhere,” says Syd, at the same time as Jess says, “The Ice Out.”

The fear widens into a dark, cold pool.

“No way. No fucking way. Are you fucking insane?” I let go of Syd to round on Jess. Jess is my size, my musculature, but I haven’t taken shit from anyone in a long time. “You want to invite high school kids to the fuckingIce Out?”

His brows lift in confusion, and I realize—

“Shit. You really don’t have a clue, do you?” I can only stare at the man who’s become a stranger. An outsider. “You’ve been away from this town for too long, brother.”

I turn, nudge Sydney in front of me towards the door.

A warm, heavy hand lands on my shoulder, the gentle tug telling me to stop. But it’s the words that freeze me. “She’s my niece—”

The anger comes on me so suddenly, it’s like crashing into a red wall of rage.

“No, she’s not!” The words crack out across the room as I spin, throwing off his hand. Vision tunneling all over again. “Seventeen years, and what, suddenly you want to be family?”

Jesse flinches, his face slack with shock, like I slapped him. “Nat—”

“You never called.” The words tear from my throat in a snarl. Red tints the edges of my vision. “Never visited. Never sent her a fucking birthday card. I never expected you to offer us a place to stay, but to not care at all?”

My hands clench hard into fists because I’mdonewith this, with him, with trying to be the good guy, the better man. I’m not better. Never have been, never will be.

Jess stares, his face a mess of slackened lines. “Nat, I’m not—”

“You’re a selfish prick is what you are,” I snarl, my jaw clenched so tight I barely grit the words out through my teeth. “You ignore everything in Day River for seventeen years. And then what, it starts making the news and you waltz back in here to steal the spotlight again? To show everybody else how much better you are? Is that why you’re here? So you can dominate this tournament?”

“Fuck you.” Jess’s face is hard, sharp lines. “You never knew how good you had it.”

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