Hearts of Jade (A Hidden Hearts Novel Book 3) Read online

  I have been doing this long enough that my area has grown pretty large and I spend a crap-load of time on the road. I often fantasized about having enough free time to just sit around and watch TV and read all of the books that I could possibly find. Yet, now that I’ve had several days of just sitting around watching television and reading, I hardly know what to do with myself. This is not enough for me. I used to think that I was the kind of person that could just lie around and do nothing. Clearly, I am not. I have enough pent up energy that I am about to burst. I’ve tried to get up and pace, but I can’t do that either. Jade took me to my follow-up appointment yesterday with the doctor and they explained results of the MRI of my knee and my ankle and there is some pretty extensive tendon and ligament damage caused by the bruising from the pipe. It’s weird, I could tell the doctor exactly how the pipe hit me to cause that damage, I remember that searing hot pain and the odd squishy, tearing sound coming from my knee joint. The damage to my ankle is a little more of a mystery, but I still recall them hitting it viscously before I passed out. They must have broken my hand when I was trying to hold on to my guitar. It still ticks me off that they felt that they could take everything from me. I don’t know how I’m going to replace it, although I’m not sure what good it would do. The doctors don’t even know if there’s any lasting nerve damage to my fingers. They are a little concerned about the numbness in my thumb. They took my cast off and put a new one on to see if it was just due to the position of my hand. Much to my frustration, the new cast is not any more flexible than the old one and it still interferes with almost everything.

  At least I’m able to operate Jade’s coffee machine. She doesn’t seem to be up yet this morning, so I’m trying to fix her some breakfast. It is freakin’ hard to crack eggs with my left hand and get them into the skillet without cracking the yolks. I finally give up and decide to scramble the eggs. I look in the refrigerator for some cheese, but groan out loud when I finally find it. Why can’t she buy the pre-shredded kind in the bag like all the rest of us? I start opening her drawers to find her cheese grater. Cooking in someone else’s kitchen is really strange. Fortunately, I get lucky and find it in the third drawer. It’s a box grater so it stands up on its own. That’s lucky for me — I don’t know what I would’ve done if I needed to balance it on a bowl. I’m concentrating so hard on grating cheese that I almost forget to stir the eggs. Crap! I forgot toast. When in the world did a simple breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast become as complicated as an Olympic sport? This is crazy!

  I don’t even notice when Jade enters the kitchen. She walks up quietly behind me and reaches around me and grabs a couple of plates as she asks, “Need a hand?”

  I did the unmanly thing right there in her kitchen and I screamed like rabid Miley Cyrus fan, “Oh Geez, I didn’t see you there!”

  Jade raises her eyebrow as she replies, “That’s rather obvious. Good morning, Declan. How are you this morning? Breakfast smells delicious. Do you need some salt and pepper on these eggs?”

  I smack my forehead with my good hand as I remark, “Yes, they need seasoning. It’s a good thing you came down to rescue me or your breakfast would’ve been almost completely inedible.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. I just take a little salt with mine. It’s not like Ivy and Rogue. You don’t want to know what those two do to eggs — you don’t put habañero sauce on yours, do you?” she asks.

  “No, last I checked, I wasn’t insane. I actually use my voice for a living. I need my vocal cords. Just regular, good old-fashioned table salt and pepper is enough for me,” I respond.

  Jade looks around the kitchen and sees the cheese. “Oh good, you grated a ton of cheese. That’s the way I like mine too.”

  She dumps the cheese in the skillet and seasons the eggs before she turns the eggs out onto the plates. She pulls some bread out from her breadbox and inquires, “Light, medium or dark?”

  “Medium is fine, thank you.”

  “Perfect, I don’t even have to change the toaster. Go sit down at the table and I will bring you your toast and coffee when it’s done.”

  “How do you know how I take my coffee?”

  “You’re kidding, right? I’ve known you forever — you take two sugars and one Splenda. I’m not sure what your reasoning behind that is, but whatever. Everybody has a preference.”

  “I don’t know, the Splenda just seems super-sweet to me. I feel like it turbo boosts the caffeine in my coffee or something. It just seems like the perfect balance.”

  “Or something is right,” Jade retorts with a smirk. “I don’t even want to think about how many lab rats died while they were developing that stuff. You could be petrifying your insides.”

  “Says the woman who eats fake brown gravy on virtually everything. I don’t think you have much room to talk. I didn’t even know you knew how to use the appliances other than the microwave,” I counter.

  Jade walks over and hands me a steaming cup of coffee and then toasts me with her cup as she says, “Touché, I can respect a man who makes a good point. Here’s to making new discoveries about each other.”

  She takes a long sip of her coffee and sighs. “You know, I could get entirely too used to having you around. I actually like coffee when you make it.”

  Hmm… Two can play this game. I wonder how honest I can be without flinching. I attempt to act casual as I comment, “It’s nice to be able to watch the games live.”

  Jade shrugs as she replies, “It’s nice to have help with the crossword puzzle.”

  “It’s cool to have Wi-Fi. My cell phone reception isn’t great,” I concede.

  “I sleep really well with you in the house,” she counters.

  “It is nice to have someone to actually talk to. If I talk to myself on the bus, people think I’m crazy,” I admit.

  “I like having someone to cook for. My food really does taste better than TV dinners,” Jade allows.

  “Well, duh!” I exclaim as I eat a few more bites of eggs and toast. “Actually, I think you’re a great cook. I don’t know why you don’t brag about it more.”

  The teasing grin disappears from Jade’s face for a moment as she goes quiet. “I guess cooking was always a fun family activity for me but everyone that I always cooked with is gone and it just seems like such a huge bother to do for just me that I don’t waste my time doing it. Without my grandma and Onyx, there doesn’t seem to be much point in going through the ritual. The whole point of cooking is to see the joy on someone else’s face. I might as well eat from a box.”

  “I like being the person you cook for, I like it a lot. I like that you go out of your way to make me happy,” I respond, admitting more than I probably intended to.

  Jade glances away from me and starts to stack the plates on the table before she clears her throat and replies, “It’s weird. Most of the time people notice when I’m being outrageous or inappropriate. It’s not very often that somebody pays attention to the little stuff that I do. I’ve made a reputation for being edgy and out there. Sometimes it’s hard for people to see beyond that and understand it’s not who I really am.” She stops and runs her fingers through her hair and shakes it out before she continues, “That’s not quite right. There are parts of me that are the really wild and crazy over-the-top Jade everyone thinks I am. I like that part of me too, but that’s not all me. I wish everybody could see that as well as you do. I swear my dad still sees me as the rebellious fourteen-year-old who tried to pierce my own septum by flashlight. I’m not that person anymore.”

  “Jade, I think every parent struggles to recognize that their child has grown up. I think eventually Jett will come around. I know that I like both the loud public side of you and the quieter side.”

  Jade looks a little startled by my confession but the corner of her mouth turns up as she softly declares, “I like you a lot more than I expected to as well. I thought you were going to be a lot more like an overgrown surfer without a whole lot of drive and purpose. I guess I misread
you.”

  “I think there’s a whole lot of that going on, I had preconceptions about you too,” I admit sheepishly.

  A positively evil grin crosses Jade’s face as she challenges, “Care to share? This could be both entertaining and very informative—”

  I nearly choke on my coffee when I think of all the different directions my thoughts have traveled when it comes to Jade. I make a gesture pretending to zip my lips as I retort, “I think I will take a pass on that offer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself. I think we’ve done enough sharing for now. I’m happy here and I don’t want to do anything to upset you so that you feel compelled to kick me out. I can’t deny that I’ve got a little bit of wanderlust going on. I would give anything to have my lyric notebook and my guitar right about now. I’ve got songs tumbling around in my head and no way to pull them out and put them down on paper. It’s so frustrating.”

  Jade opens her mouth but no sound comes out for a moment. She tries again after she clears her throat and blinks away tears. “I think I can help you with that.”

  “I’M GLAD TO SEE YOU saw fit to finally drag your butt to work,” my dad taunts, as he passes by me in the office.

  I fight to keep my expression neutral as I respond, “Dad, I wasn’t even gone a whole week. You know that Declan was seriously hurt. The hospital didn’t want him to be left alone. He doesn’t have anybody else. He trusted me enough to let me take care of him. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  My dad scoffs as he answers, “Yeah, I just bet he did. I bet you guys had a great time playing ‘doctor’. Meanwhile, the rest of us were responsible for carrying your weight while you were off flouncing around. Your brother would’ve never done something like that to me.”

  I gasp out loud. I can’t believe he actually said those words to me. I pick up my phone and send Marcus and Rogue a text message. Going to lunch — taking Dad.

  Trying to catch my breath and keep my cool, I grab my sweater off the back of my office chair and take my dad by his arm and escort him out the back door of the shop.

  “Where are we going?” he protests. “I have work to do. So do you, since you’ve been lollygagging around.”

  When we are clear of the shop and the main parking lot, I walk him over to my car and open the door. Fortunately, I parked in the overflow lot this morning and there is no one around. “Unlike you, I don’t like to air our private business in front of all the customers. You and I are going to have a conversation in private. It’s probably going to be a pretty lengthy one, because it’s been percolating for a while, but I’ve had enough.”

  “You’re my daughter. You don’t get to talk to me that way,” my dad grouses. “You should have more respect than that.”

  ‘Actually, Dad, respect is a two-way street. You have to respect me too. I am one-third owner of this business, but you don’t talk to me about business decisions like you do with Marcus. Instead, you talk about me in front of the customers and it’s humiliating.”

  Aa one-third owner of this business, you’d better step up and take over your part of the business. You’ve been slacking off like you don’t care about what happens to Ink’d Deep. I don’t know what’s happened to you since your brother’s death, but you don’t act like you even want to be here.”

  “Dad! That’s ridiculous,” I answer, shock making my voice shaky. “I care so much about Ink’d Deep, you don’t even know. I have worked at this business for as long as I can remember. I’ve practically been an employee of this business since I don’t know — the first grade? I knew how to trace designs on the light box before most kids knew how to color in a coloring book. When most kids were still learning what a nickel looks like, I knew how to make change for a hundred and how to run the cash register. Do not tell me I don’t care about this business.”

  “Then why are you taking time off to play hanky-panky with the rockstar? ” my dad argues.

  “For the last time, I wasn’t on vacation with Declan — I was taking care of him. You have no idea how badly he was beaten. It’s lucky he didn’t come away with a traumatic brain injury. They took after him with a metal pipe.”

  “Let’s say I buy your story about the boy. You’ve been acting strange for a while. The other day, I saw you start a tat and not finish it. What’s up with that shit? We don’t do that around here. You didn’t make those kind of mistakes, even when you were a rookie.”

  “Dad, trust me. That was not a mistake. I did it on purpose. I am well aware that it was not my most professional behavior, and if there are consequences arising from it, I will take them on personally. That customer was nasty to her core and I was not going to allow her to disrespect the memory of my brother just for sport. It was better for my psyche to pay her to go away.”

  “Why did you drive her friends away too?” my dad counters, his voice getting louder with every syllable. “They had tattoos booked that day too. You know, we need business to make the shop survive. We have employees to pay, rent to cover and supplies to buy.”

  This time, I don’t even bother to disguise my frustration as I roll my eyes. “Do you really think I don’t know that? I’ve been helping with payroll and inventory since I was about thirteen years old.”

  “Then why did you let perfectly good customers walk?” he probes, his tone condescending.

  “I don’t remember you questioning Marcus this much on the way he handles customers,” I observe dryly.

  “Maybe that’s because he uses the good sense his mama gave him,” my dad answers in a huff.

  “I use my senses just fine, Dad. If you can’t trust that I know what I’m doing, maybe you need to find another partner,” I finally answer with profound sadness.

  My dad looks as if I’ve slapped him. I can’t say I blame him. I’m pretty shocked that I actually said those words out loud. “You want out?” he stammers. “Just because I asked you why you went on vacation?” He lifts his heavy ponytail from his neck and tightens the leather thong holding his hair. “I never thought I’d see the day that you were a bigger drama queen than your mother.”

  “Stop. Just stop. This has nothing to do with being a drama queen or going on vacation — although I am seriously due for one. Even when my friends got married in Paris, I was only there for two days. What sane person does that?”

  “What is this about then?” he asks exasperated

  “Dad, I’m just working on keeping a promise I made to Onyx a really long time ago,” I start to explain.

  “Don’t you bring your dead brother’s name into this like it’s some justification for doing a chicken-shit thing to me. He already did that once. Just because he was too weak to live his life, doesn’t mean that you get to use that as an excuse to give up all that I’ve built for you. Are you a Petros or are you going to turn your back on that too?”

  “Daddy! You have no idea what Onyx lived through or why he made his decision. We can only speculate whether it had anything to do with us or the shop or why in the hell he did it. All we have are those few precious words he left in that note — and hundreds of thousands of guesses and nightmares and the conversations we play over and over in our heads. The one thing we cannot do is put ourselves in Onyx’s shoes, because we were not there and we do not know what was happening to him in that moment when he made that decision. We cannot pretend that we were. It is not fair for you to call him weak. You can call me all the names you want to, if it makes you feel better. Go ahead, take all the verbal punches you want to. Leave Onyx out of it because he is not here to defend himself…” I let my speech trail off as my anger boils over and I’m left with nothing but a gaping hole of sadness where my brother once was. I can’t control my sobs. I’m crying so hard that tears are dripping on my steering wheel.

  I search around my car to try to find some tissues. I glance over at my dad and I’m shocked to find that he’s crying as hard as I am. “Manari mou, please forgive an old angry man,” he pleads, with big fat tears falling from his eyes. “I should n
ot be yelling at you, but it does no good to yell at God because he does not bring my son back. I cannot yell at your brother because he is already gone and even if I had known he was leaving, he wouldn’t have listened to me. He always had wild ideas of his own and never consulted with me. I most certainly cannot yell at your mother because her heart breaks every morning when the sun rises again, she opens her eyes and her baby no longer takes a breath on this planet.”

  He pauses to blow his nose on the bandana he keeps stashed in his pocket before he continues, “The person I yell at the most is me. Why did I not know something was wrong with my son? He was the spitting image of me down to his wandering artist’s soul. How could I not see through his ruse? Why did I believe him when he told me things were fine? I should’ve known better. I should’ve known he wasn’t strong enough to be away from his family. Why did I let him go away to college? He could’ve gone to college here. He could’ve painted his pictures anywhere. A good father keeps his family together to stay strong. Why did I let him talk me into letting him go to school so far away? If only I hadn’t done that, he would still be here and you would not be leaving me too,” my dad postulates, as if he worked it out in his head many times.

  “Daddy, I was always going to grow up and figure out my own way in life regardless of what happened with Onyx. I wasn’t going to stay your little lamb forever. Onyx and I started making these plans years ago. I was probably in junior high when we first started talking about the possibility that I might not want to grow up to be a tattoo artist.”

  My dad looks completely befuddled. “Really? Why is this the first time I have heard of this?”

  “Oh Daddy, I know how much Ink’d Deep means to you — it’s always been like your first child. I never wanted to let you down. I was going to wait until Ink’d Deep was safely in Onyx’s hands and then I was going to go to school to become a teacher,” I confess in a rush of speech.