Chapter 28

Over the next several weeks before graduation, things seemed to have calmed down for all of us. Despite the fact that we all knew that Kevin hated Jonathan’s guts and my father continued to ignore Jonathan, he still came over to my house often to spend time with me.

My mother was always nice to him and made sure Kevin and my father didn’t give us any grief. Usually, Jonathan hung out with me in my room, but there were times when we’d be with Sam in her room or in the living room with Sam and mom. My father was rarely home when Jonathan was there and Kevin just sulked in his room avoiding all of us.

Danny had called Jonathan during the first week after he’d met him and they arranged to get together on a Sunday for brunch with Alishia and I included.

I had spent the night with Jonathan that Saturday since he’d picked me up from working late at the store. We’d stayed up watching late night movies and binging on junk food before burning off a lot of those empty calories on his living room floor and then in his bed.

We’d lain in bed with the curtains open to watch the sunrise before catching a few hours sleep. When we woke up, we took a quick shower together doing our very best to keep our hands off of each other in order to make it to Danny and Alishia’s in time for brunch.

After the four of us had enjoyed a wonderful meal made by Alishia, Danny and Jonathan had retreated to Danny’s study to discuss the investments while Alishia and I cleaned up the leftovers. Alishia and I had spent a couple of hours afterwards sitting on her bed trading stories about Jonathan and Danny.

We were still giggling like a pair of adolescents when the guys came out of the study. When Danny asked what was so funny, Alishia and I just looked at each other and giggled some more. My poor older brother continued to look clueless as Jonathan rolled his eyes and scooped me up from the bed and told Alishia she was a bad influence on me.

As we continued to laugh about it, Jonathan and I said our goodbyes and left with Danny still asking Alishia what he’d missed. Jonathan and I spent the rest of the day enjoying the sunshine on the back of his bike out in the country. He found us a nice spot with plenty of shade and a thick patch of lush grass to recline on.

As we both lay on our backs in the grass, looking up at the sky through the leaves above us, we talked about my plans after graduation. I had already gotten an acceptance letter from several good business colleges out of state, but I was still waiting for word from the one in the city.

Jonathan asked me if I’d go to Yale since that had been my plan before and it was one of the colleges that had accepted me with a full scholarship. I told him no, Yale may have been a plan, but I’d never really wanted to go there. The only reason I had chosen that is because I had thought it would get me the farthest away from everything that had plagued me here.

I knew Yale had only been an escape route for me, a way out of the miserable life I was leading. Since I had met Jonathan, my life had changed. Now, I didn’t feel like I was suffocating, like I needed to find a way out of the hole I’d been placed in. I’d grown closer to my mother, my sister, and older brother. I had a terrific sister-in-law that I looked up to and I had a best friend who supported me in whatever I chose to do. I loved them all for being there and not judging me or trying to make me into someone I wasn’t.

Most of all I loved Jonathan for opening my eyes and showing me that I could be strong for myself. That I could make my own decisions and how to stick with them despite the possibility that someone else would be there to try to drag me down. Jonathan taught me that I could make decisions without worrying if anyone else was going to be hurt by them, that first and foremost, it was about making myself happy.

I knew he was just asking about Yale to make sure I understood that he’d back me up no matter what I decided. Even if I chose to go to college somewhere far away from him, he’d respect my decision and continue to help me any way he could. He’d miss me, but he wanted me to be happy first.

The truth was, Jonathan wasn’t the reason why I wanted to go to school close to home. He was a reason, but not the main one. I had spent the last few months thinking about all of my options and realized I’d never wanted to go so far away. Now that things were better between me and my family, I wanted to be close to them to keep mending the bridges we’d almost destroyed.

I’d come to realize that being among those who made me happy, those who enjoyed being with me the way I already was, was what made me thrive. That was what made me want to stay. Jonathan was right about one thing, I had a big heart. The last thing I wanted to do was go off and leave those I’d come to care about immensely.

The following weekend, one of Danny’s investments paid off quicker than he and Jonathan had both estimated, so Danny took us out to an expensive dinner and we’d celebrated the beginning of what we all hoped would be a successful venture for Danny and Alishia. Danny had been so excited that he’d invited the whole family and had even included Sarah and Darryl in the mix.

It was the first time Darryl got to meet my family with the exception of my dad whom he’d met before. Kevin as usual had declined to go out with everyone since he’d found out Jonathan was going to be there. It had come as a shock to my family who thought Kevin never turned down a free meal and an expensive one at that. Well, apparently even an expensive dinner wasn’t enough to get Kevin in the same room with Jonathan.

My father was only there long enough to eat a bit of his dinner and congratulate Danny on his success before he seemed to be called away on business. Needless to say, we didn’t let the absence of my father and younger brother deter us from having a great time. We took our time eating dinner and dessert, spending hours talking and laughing among the eight of us.

For my entire life I’d been surrounded and dogged by clichés. Just two weeks before graduation, when I’d thought I’d finally escaped them, I began to find out that all good things must come to an end. In retrospect, we should have seen it coming, but we’d all begun to get comfortable with the way things had been going.

It all began when my father asked me to come into his office one day. The moment he did, my hackles went up. I knew something was up, but I was more than confident that I could handle it.

I walked into my father’s office and stood between the two chairs facing his desk. “What’s up?” I asked.

My father looked up from his desk and motioned to one of the chairs, “Have a seat, Alex.”

As he got up to go close the door, I answered, “I’d rather stand.”

He shut the door and walked back to his desk with a shrug, “Have it your way, then.”

I waited until he returned to his seat behind the desk. He sat back in his chair and looked up at me with a sigh. “I think there’s something you should know.”

Inwardly I braced for it, outwardly I remained calm as I raised an inquisitive eyebrow, “Oh? Like what?”

My father reached into one of his drawers and pulled out a file folder, setting it on his desk between us.

I didn’t say a word, just continued to give him my questioning look, waiting for him to say his piece.

He opened the folder and pointed to the first piece of paper at the top. “How much do you know about what Jonathan did when he was a model?” he asked.

I gave a nonchalant shrug, “I know what Jonathan and Alishia told me about.”

“Really? Well, did Jonathan ever mention to you what he was doing when he wasn’t modeling?”

I sighed, “Dad, where exactly is this going?”

He frowned, “I’ve recently found out some things that I don’t think even his father may know about. Or, if he does, he probably used his money and influence to cover it up.”

I hated to admit that my interest was definitely peaked as I said, “What things?”

My father rummaged through the papers in the file as he began to tell me, “He was a model, Alex. A male model. And as such, he was in a business that is constantly surrounded by temptations that can seriously damage a good reputation.”

I wanted to scream at his vagueness. My father still hadn’t produced anything damaging, he was simply trying to scare me. I refused to rise to the bait. “Father, just spit it out already, what did you find out about Jonathan?”

I could see the ire rising in my father’s eyes as he realized I wasn’t falling for his spiel. He pressed his lips together in a firm line before he finally said, “He was involved with drugs, Alex. He was a male model who lived that sort of lifestyle. He constantly went to parties that were nothing but orgies full of beautiful people who sell their bodies for money, surrounded by drugs and alcohol.”

At my incredulous look, he added, “He was one of those people, Alex!”

I wanted to laugh. I could see he truly believed what he’d just said. He truly believed that Jonathan had sold his body for money, drugs, and alcohol. I knew the truth, but my father didn’t know that.

I continued to look straight at him as I asked, “How do you know this?”

He lifted up a picture and held it out to me as he said, “This is from a file from the city’s local newspaper. The picture was never published because someone paid a lot of money to keep it under wraps.”

I nodded as I looked at the picture that showed Jonathan sitting on a couch in what looked like a club. His head was tilted at an angle to allow the half naked woman next to him to talk in his ear. Her hand rested just inside his thigh, but even I could see Jonathan’s body language said he wasn’t interested.

However, it wasn’t Jonathan and the woman he was talking to that would have caused a scandal. It was the couple in the background, on what appeared to be an elevated table. The woman was leaning back with the guy between her legs. What could be seen of her was the look on her face that screamed she was in the throes of ecstasy and the way the sleeves of her dress were down to her elbows. The guys pants hung loosely around his waist, indicating that they had to be open in the front.

I grinned as I recognized the woman’s face. She was a prized fashion model who was still notoriously famous for enjoying very public sex in very public places. At least those had always been the rumors since there still was no evidence that she did that. No wonder my father had said someone paid money to keep it under wraps.

I looked up at my father and said, “Jonathan told me about this party. It was a birthday party for one of the company’s newest sensations. The woman he’s sitting with was a model he’d worked with often. She had just gotten married two weeks before this party. You can see her ring on her hand. He told me how she’d spent most of the night at his side because she knew he was safe and wouldn’t hit on her. Her husband was a model too, but he was off on a job and the company had insisted that she go, just like they’d made Jonathan go.”

My father arched an eyebrow, “She doesn’t look like she’s missing her husband there.”

I chuckled, “Yeah, Jonathan told me that she had a bad habit of needing lots of physical comfort. She never meant it to be taken as a come on, but it was often mistaken as just that. Once they’d gotten to know each other, Jonathan knew better than to interpret her touches as flirting.”

Knowing he couldn’t win with that one, he flung another picture at me. I looked at it a few moments and said, “That’s the merger party. His modeling agency had just merged with a smaller successful agency and they expected a big payoff. Alishia was at this one too. Since it was a party thrown by the agency, it was very private. Meaning, if there were drugs and too much alcohol imbibed, the agency cleaned it up. The agency themselves didn’t provide any drugs, just the alcohol, but they can’t exactly stop people from doing what they want with their own lives. They can threaten careers and the like, but in the end a person’s going to do what they want.”

“Did they threaten him for doing drugs.”

“He wasn’t doing drugs.”

“He’s holding that thing Alex!”

“It’s called a bong. And yes, he’s holding it and clearly posing for this picture. But he wasn’t using it, Jonathan said one of the models had managed to sneak in a whole bunch of these cheap plastic ones as party favors.”

As my father began to rummage through the papers again, I sighed, “Look dad, Jonathan has told me plenty of stories of parties he used to go to where there were plenty of drugs and people getting high or drunk. He’s even told me that he tried drugs as an experiment, but he’s never made them a habit. And he has gotten drunk on occasion, but he’s never gotten behind the wheel of a car or endangered his life or anyone else’s. And yes, Jonathan has had sex with plenty of women, but again, he’s always been careful. I know Jonathan isn’t perfect and he knows he’s not perfect either. He’s never claimed to be. He knows he’s made mistakes and he’s learned from them. There isn’t anything that you can find that Jonathan hasn’t told me about.”

My father’s head snapped up as he growled, “The fact that there are photos of him at these places is enough to incriminate him, Alex!”

I rolled my eyes, “He’s never been accused of anything!”

“Someone could take these photos and blow them out of proportion! It doesn’t take much for the public to believe anything!”

My eyes narrowed, “What, like you are doing now?” At his gape I hissed, “If you take those pictures and try to use them against him, so help me dad, I will make you regret it!”

“Don’t you get it, Alex! If you stay with him and one of these things gets out, it could ruin your reputation!”

“And that’s a problem why?”

“It’ll ruin your chances with getting into Yale. It’ll make them force you out of their school!”

“Since when did you care about my getting into Yale? You never even wanted me to go to college in the first place!”

“What is going on in here?” Both our heads snapped to the door where my mother had just walked in wearing a frown on her face.

I growled, “He’s trying to threaten me into leaving Jonathan.”

“Daniel!” my mother began, but was quickly cut off by my father.

“Look at these pictures Laura! Look at the things he was involved with when he was a model!” he threw the pictures across the desk.

As my mother picked them up, I said, “Jonathan told me all about them. He’s never kept secrets from me. I know there are certain things that happen at parties backed by money from the rich and famous! I’m not stupid, but I trust Jonathan! He told me what he did!”

My mother frowned at the pictures before she looked up at my father, “Daniel, you’d have to be a special kind of stupid not to know just what could possibly go on at these kind of parties. Why do you think Danny asked Alishia to stop modeling when they had decided to get married? And no, it wasn’t because Danny was jealous, he knew Alishia loved him from the moment they met. He asked her to stop because he was worried that something would happen to her and he wouldn’t be around to help her.”

As my father sat there stewing, I turned a stunned look on my mother. Even I had always believed Danny had asked Alishia to stop because he didn’t want her surrounded by all those male models. Who knew my brother had only been looking out for Alishia’s best interests. Suddenly, my respect for my older brother had just doubled.

My mother set the pictures down on the desk and her eyes flicked over to the file folder that contained the other documents on Jonathan. She looked up at my father, her frown only deepening. “Where did you get all of this?” she asked.

My own gaze flew to my father’s face since that had been a question that had been floating around in my head too.

He sighed, “What does it matter? The point is that it exists and if these things get out, it’ll ruin Alex’s chances at going to Yale!”

My mother narrowed her eyes as I huffed, “For your information, I’m not going to Yale! I’m trying to get into a college much closer to home.”

My father stood gaping at me as my mother growled, “Daniel, if those things make it to the public, I’m coming for your hide!”

“What!” my father roared. “Are you telling me that after all of this you are not even going to Yale! And all because of that guy!”

“This has nothing to do with Jonathan!” I yelled back.

“This has everything to do with him! You wouldn’t stop going on and on about how you wanted to go off to college and then he comes into the picture and here you are tossing all of it out the window without a second glance! Why couldn’t you have done that for Mark! At least he doesn’t have a past that would ruin your reputation!”

“Daniel Alan McCain! How dare you bring that up! When are you ever going to realize that these are Alex’s decisions to make on her own! You can’t keep controlling her! She’s not a child! Stop treating her like one!” my mother shouted.

As I stood there glaring daggers at my father, trying to count backwards and calm myself down, they continued to yell at each other. I could hear my father accusing Jonathan of convincing me not to go off to Yale, of wrapping me around his little finger. He made it sound like it was all of Jonathan’s fault for my changing completely into someone he didn’t recognize, someone he didn’t want to recognize.

My mother continued to tell him to mind his own business and let me live my life the way I wanted to. She told him to stop trying to find a way to make me leave Jonathan and to stop trying to make Mark look like a saint. She told him to stop trying to make Jonathan into the bad guy because all he seemed to succeed in doing was making himself look bad.

When my father slammed his fist on the desk and roared that he was not going to stand by and watch as that guy’s past ruined his daughter’s reputation and once more issued the order forbidding me to ever see Jonathan again, I snapped.

“You can’t forbid me not to see him! Mom is right! You don’t control me anymore! These are my decisions to make and I’m going to make them! I love Jonathan! I love him! And if you can’t open your eyes and see what a conniving, manipulative sorry excuse for a human being Mark is, then you and I have nothing else to say to each other!”

“How dare you accuse him of being that! He’s only looking out for your best interests! If it hadn’t been for him and Kevin, none of us would have known what skeletons were hidden in Jonathan’s past!”

The moment those words left my father’s lips, his eyes went wide and silence descended in the room. Time seemed to stand still for long moments as my mother and I glared at my father.

Slowly, my mother folded her arms over her chest as I whispered, “I knew it. I knew you couldn’t have gathered this all by yourself.”

My father looked glumly at the papers as he grunted, “Someone had to find out the truth.”

I took a step in my father’s direction, but my mother halted me with her words, “Alex. Why don’t you go visit Jonathan right now? Tell him what your father was up to with Kevin and Mark. The keys to my car are in the side pocket of my purse on my dresser. Take it for as long as you need it.”

I turned to look at her, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her narrowed eyes were trained on my father who was now sitting in his chair looking like a child who was about to receive the grounding of his life.

I swallowed and slowly nodded before backing out of the room and closing the door behind me. I didn’t waste any time running to my parents room and snatching the keys from my mother’s purse.

As I exited their room and headed for the kitchen, all I could hear was my mother’s voice as she laid into my father. The strange thing was, she wasn’t yelling at all. Her voice was loud enough to be heard outside of the room, but it sounded way too calm, too controlled. It was the first time I was ever seriously afraid of my mother.