Park Avenue Punk Page 3

  My eyebrows shot up. “Not what I was expecting.”

  “And what exactly were you expecting, Jameson? That I spent all day shopping and needed a nice, strong man to carry my loot? I swear, you may think my life is superficial—but really it’s your thinking.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize your dad had passed—”

  “And what does that say about you? You think you’re making such a massive political statement by spray-painting your little murals around Tiffany’s, but if you really gave a shit, you’d know that the biggest philanthropist in the city just died, and with him his cash flow. I’ve already been supporting my mother through a breakdown. Forgive me if I don’t have time for your stereotypes about my life.”

  I shot to my feet, red splashes of wine covering my hand as I invaded her space, lust-fueled frustration lacing my veins.

  “You think you’ve got it all figured out, Deven? You think that man told you everything?” I set the glass at my side, caging her in the broad span of my arms until my nose was only a breadth from hers, our breaths heaving as we shared air and intense gazes.

  Her chest heaved with breathless pants, eyes finally averted when I caught her chin in my fingers and forced her lips to meet mine in a slow, soft kiss.

  “You drive me fucking insane, Deven Fairchild. Every soft inch of you calls out to me, begs for my hands, those sexy lips begging me to fuck them until their pink and swollen, but that doesn't change anything. Five years have passed, but the reason we broke up is still there.”

  I passed my nose up the length pf her neck, enjoying the tremor that erupted inside her. Her nipples pebbled, and the soft hum of her heartbeat thrummed like a hummingbird under her throat. I darted the tip of my tongue out, trailing up the contours of her throat before dancing one fingertip in tiny circles around the faint outline of her nipple.

  “Those eyes say yes to everything I want, Deven, but I can’t be trusted to want anything—not when it doesn't have the heart to want me back. I don’t want to make a habit of fucking broken dolls, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”

  I stood, fists clenched at my sides as I left her stunned on her pristine designer sofa, my kiss haunting her lips.

  Chapter 6

  Deven

  Anger vibrated through me as I stood frozen at the window, Jameson’s shadowy black form disappearing into the night two dozen floors below me.

  I gulped down the rest of my glass and then swiped for his at the table, downing that in one motion. I felt the warm liquid loosen my aching body, ready to collapse into bed and forget this day, my life, him.

  Everybody.

  “Play The Nutcracker Suite,” I called out to the smart music system, comforted when the soft strains of the opening melody seeped into my body. I remembered countless nights practicing the music to this on our baby grand piano in the entry. Mom always slammed the door as soon as we started playing, but those were some of my best memories with him. The long hours he worked left him hardly at home, and many nights I’d find him head bent over papers long after midnight, but as soon as my fingers stroked the keys, he stopped whatever he was doing to play with me.

  Fresh tears blanketed my cheeks as I searched the sidewalk around Central Park, desperate for the freedom that Jameson must feel. I’d never felt free enough to walk the streets all hours of the night, my life too scheduled, my reputation too precious according to my mother. I only ever had time for studies and lessons and charitable events, repeat.

  I wondered about the thrill he must feel when he tagged a blank wall for the first time, the charge of adrenaline as he broke the law. I respected his crimes, in a weird way. A lot of anti-establishment hipsters did because he made a statement without hurting anyone. He was preying on the rich where it counted—in their bank accounts—but I lived on Park. I knew these shop owners. They were my community, and I was nothing if not loyal.

  I had trouble figuring out why Jameson was so bitter anyway. He used to be us. I shook my head, cleaning up the wineglasses before heading to my bedroom at the back of the long hallway.

  I brushed my teeth, anger beginning to boil over as I thought about all the prejudices he held against me.

  Here I’d said goodbye to the only man—possibly the only human—to ever show me unconditional love, and I had to go and fight with Jameson fucking Styles? I grew so annoyed with his presumptions that if I wasn’t already stripping out of my dress, I might just be crazy enough—and exhausted enough—to run after him just to give him a further piece of my mind.

  Jameson Styles didn’t know shit about me anymore. I just wish I could kick him out of the real estate in my head.

  “Ms. Fairchild.” My professor nodded somberly the next morning as I stepped into my lecture, approximately ten seconds before class started. “I’m sorry to hear about your father. The wake was beautiful.”

  I nodded, not at all surprised that my professor had been there. He was a tenured professor in the department, and as an alumnus, my father was one of the university's biggest donors. I'd seen the dean and head of the board yesterday through my tears.

  “Thank you,” I breathed, taking one of only two seats left in his crowded lecture.

  “He’ll be missed so much.” The professor was still shaking his head sadly, and I wished instantly for any distraction to relieve me of this torture.

  And then I wished my prayer had gone unanswered.

  The door swung open just as the clock chimed on the hour, and in head-to-toe black with an oversize hoodie pulled low over his eyes, in walked Jameson Styles.

  The man of the fucking hour.

  “Oh my God,” I gritted, eyes rounding when he ignored the professor's gaze and zeroed in on the chair at my side. He slipped in, opening his notebook and pulling a pen out of his hoodie pocket.

  “Morning, Barbie.”

  “What the fuck is this?” I seethed.

  “Biology 310, right? Am I in the wrong class again? These fucking halls are so big, it’s like a Soviet work camp in here, hey, Prof?” Jameson winked as the professor’s mouth dropped open.

  “What? Did I say something?” Jameson looked around at over one hundred sets of eyes all on him. “Does he always have that stick-up-his-ass look on his face? I can’t learn from a dude who looks like that. Shit… First day back, and already I regret coming back for more torture.”

  I shook my head, scooting my desk as many inches away from his as I could before knocking elbows with my other neighbor. The professor started in on his lecture then but didn’t get more than ninety seconds in before Jameson thrust his hand into the air and started bouncing what sounded like impossible questions at him.

  I was lost in scientific lingo from the start.

  Forty minutes later and the professor was not very much deeper into his slides. Jameson had kept him so busy answering dead-end rhetorical questions. His ability to verbally spar anyone was still unmatched.

  I’d loved that about him so much in high school, but he was getting deep under my skin now.

  “What the fuck, Styles?” I hissed as we crowded through the doors of the lecture hall a while later.

  “Needed inspiration. I was hoping to find it in one of America’s finest institutions of higher learning, but turns out this place only crushes the free thought out of you. I’d run if you know what’s good for that pretty little head of yours, Fairchild.”

  He tapped my temple then, and I fumed. “How did you even get into this lecture? I was the last add, and I had to beg them to let me slip in.”

  His grin cracked, sliding to one cocky side and making me want to kick his teeth out. “I’ve got a way with words.”

  I shook my head. “Why are you torturing me like this?”

  His head tipped at an angle, amused grin turning wry. “Because I can, Barbie, and because you deserve it.”

  Chapter 7

  Jameson – Five Years Ago

  When I walked through the front doors, the scent of Deven still on my skin, my mom and
Lori huddled at the kitchen table, place settings all in proper order, but the food still on the stove, untouched. My father wasn’t around, which wasn’t unusual. He worked hard and was barely home as it was. What was strange was that my mother made today’s dinner seem important, and usually for those moments my dad’s presence was a requirement.

  I didn’t care much, not now that I had Deven to occupy all of my time.

  “Who died?” I joked, hanging my jacket behind my chair and sitting down at the table. As soon as I’d sat, my mom began bawling hysterically. Lori hugged her, shooting me a dark look. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  I didn’t understand why she was acting the way she was. My entire life, I’d never seen my mother cry, not once. She was the epitome of measured grace.

  I caught my sister’s eye, and she just shrugged her shoulders, the look of confusion on her face probably mirroring my own.

  “I’m sorry, kids. Can you both sit down—are you hungry?” My mother stood, walking to the stove.

  “Why aren't we eating in the dining room? We always eat in the dining room,” I said, thinking this whole scene was beyond weird.

  Maybe I should have skipped this dinner in favor of Deven’s kisses after all. We hadn’t gone all the way yet, but we were close, and she was on my mind all the time—in fact, since she’d come into my life, home hadn’t seemed quite as unbearable as it had before.

  “Really, Jameson?” Lori scolded, shooting me a death-defying glare.

  I stood and walked over to my mother, taking the white serving spoon from her and placing it on the marble countertop.

  Our apartment was nice. We lived in the Upper East Side. It was nothing like Deven’s place, but we were doing okay. My father was a corporate lawyer and my mother a stay-at-home mom who spent her time taking care of my sister and me. We had a pretty comfortable life, and for the most part we were happy, my mom especially. She was the kind of mother who all my friends growing up wished they’d had. She was present, loving, and completely stable. So seeing her like this, falling apart and looking so sad, it was more disturbing than it would have been for most.

  “What are we going to do?” She hung her head and shook it slowly from side to side.

  “Mom, Mom, please look at me.” I grabbed her hands, forcing her to shift her body so she was facing me. I couldn’t help noticing how tired and worn she was, her usual sunny disposition now covered in defeat.

  “He’s gone,” she whispered, so soft that I didn’t think I heard her.

  “Who’s gone?”

  “Your father. He’s gone. When the police called, I just didn’t believe it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lori asked, getting up from the table, her eyes rounded in shock and her bottom lip starting to quiver as if trying to keep her tears at bay. “Where is Daddy?”

  My mother wiped the tears that had fallen on her face, straightened her back, and grabbed both our hands, walking us back to the table.

  “I need you two to sit down.”

  My sister and I took our seats, not protesting, I think both of us were kind of frightened and confused about the whole situation. Lori was only twelve, and she was much closer to my dad than I ever was. I didn’t want to panic, but I was feeling my own fear starting to take over me, so much that the sensations were nearly crippling.

  My mother’s hands started fidgeting with a manilla envelope that was on the table. Her fingers worked the edges nervously as she looked everywhere but at us.

  “Mom, you’re scaring Lori. Just spit it out. This waiting is making everything so much worse,” I finally said, pounding my fist on the table so forcefully that it visibly shook. My mother’s gaze shot up to me, and the pain was replaced with anger for just a moment before it went back to a mournful look.

  “Your father had an affair with Mrs. Fairchild, and her husband found out. He got him blacklisted throughout the city—the entire Eastern Seaboard. It all started two months ago—your father has been unemployed for two months! I had no idea. He never told me…” Her voice trailed off, her eyes on Lori, her hand on my fist, wrapping around it as if she was trying to offer warmth and comfort. “I can’t believe I’m saying this…but your father is dead. He took his own life this morning. I went in and identified the body.”

  I stood in shock while Lori cried so hard that she began to hyperventilate.

  My father and I had always had a tumultuous relationship. I couldn’t remember one decent memory with the man. Most of my memories were him drinking a Scotch and working, barely saying a word to my mother or me. Yet the knowledge that he was gone hit me with such a full force that I thought for just a moment that I couldn’t breathe. And then the anger started humming in my veins when the rest of what my mother said finally set in. My father was having sex with another woman who wasn’t my mom. My father was having an affair with Deven’s mom.

  “He was fucking Deven’s mom,” I blurted, not thinking about how callous and insensitive my words were. I was a selfish, self-absorbed teen. Yes, I missed my father, but I also felt like my world that I had constructed so perfectly was just tumbling down, block after block, on top of my head.

  “Daddy is dead, and all you can think of is your rich girlfriend? Her whore mother is the reason that our father is dead!” my sister hollered, her ice blue eyes filled with pure venom and lasered in on me.

  “No, Lori, Dad is the reason he’s dead. He killed himself.” My voice was leveled and emotionless, yet in that moment I felt the pain. The knowledge that my father wanted to be part of that world more than he wanted us. His own children. In that moment, my rage and hatred for the upper crust set in, and in that moment, my whole world started to change.

  In that moment, I knew my father had died because he valued money and prestige more than his own flesh and blood.

  Chapter 8

  Deven

  “Hello again, princess,” his familiar voice hissed softly in my ear.

  Even after all these years, that voice still managed to make my entire body tingle in need and want. That made me angry and confused all mixed together like an overdone stew. I turned around, my face almost touching his and my heart vibrating even more than it was a moment ago.

  Jameson’s lips curled up into a smile. He looked so smug and sure of himself, something I both hated and found immensely attractive. I backed my chair away from him, needing the space, needing to breathe. I’d come to this coffee shop down the street from my apartment for some peace, and his smiling face was the furthest from it.

  He barked a sardonic laugh that curled through my bloodstream like a spider web and then sat down across from me, grin half-cocked and eyes trained on mine.

  “What do you want, Jameson?” I finally asked, exasperated with the game of cat and mouse that we’d been playing. Everything about him pulled me in and made me resentful of his presence at the same time.

  “Can’t a guy just say hi to an old friend?”

  “Is that what we are? Friends?” I asked, zeroing my eyes in on him.

  “Maybe not,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “But I want to be.”

  “Jameson, please stop messing with me. I’ve had a really hard couple of weeks.”

  “Well, I’ve had a hard couple of years,” he spat, his voice low, laced with anger.

  My head shot down, wanting to avoid his face. I knew what my mother did and how it impacted his family.

  It’d also impacted mine.

  After it all happened, my parents lived as nothing more than roommates. If they could avoid each other, they did. My father had threatened divorce, which—thanks to their prenup—would have left my mother penniless. She’d begged me to talk to him, to convince him to not go through with it. Her eyes had been wild and flowing with tears. I didn’t want to help her. I’d wanted her to suffer like my father and I had been suffering. But at the end of the day, she was my mother, so I’d convinced my father to stay with her—something I now regretted.

  “Jameson, none of th
at was my fault.”

  “No. It was your mother’s.” Cold disdain laced his words as he shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, that was a long time ago. Time heals all wounds and all that crap.” He breathed nonchalantly. “Listen, princess, I really don’t want to feel the way I do, but I do. From the moment I saw you, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. The last five years, I thought I was over you, but I’m not. I don’t think I’ll ever be.”

  His words floored me. I just stared at him. Silent. The words caught somewhere deep inside of me, desperate to get out but unable to unbind themselves from the bonds holding them in place deep inside me.

  “So what do you want?” I finally squeaked.

  “I told you. I want to be friends.”

  “Jameson, you and I can never be just friends.”

  “Probably not.” He leaned over, his face so close to my own. “Because every single time I look at you, princess, I want to kiss that red lipstick off your lips.”

  I grew warm everywhere under his hard gaze, and I was sure a flush was now plastered on my face.

  “I missed how red you get when you’re horny,” he whispered so low that I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly.

  “Pardon?” I stuttered.

  “You, Deven Fairchild, are horny.” He said it slowly, enunciating every word, so clearly that it would be hard for anyone to miss.

  I got up quickly, making the chair I was sitting in fall back on the floor, causing all the eyes in the room to land on me.

  Jameson just started to laugh, leaning back in his own chair, arms crossed, staring at me intently. I didn’t know what to say because his words were true and I hated that they were.

  Instead, I silently grabbed my bag, giving Jameson one last look, and stormed out of there.

  Chapter 9

  Jameson