ADAM: A Bad Boy Romance (The ALPHAbet Collection Book 1) Read online

  While I had chosen my major with my heart, Mimi had chosen hers with her future 401(k) in mind. She had taken to working part-time at her current job to pay the bills and the rent before we got the shop sales started. She was an income tax accountant, and interning all throughout high school and college had meant she had bypassed that entry-level bullshit early. Her being connected to a company in San Diego was the main reason why we couldn’t attend the same college. Regardless, we were together now.

  The bookstore was at the moment undergoing renovations. Despite all the things we had had to compromise on and flat out disagreed on, we both agreed that there had to be a coffee area. It was still up in the air whether it was actually going to be coffee and pastries or a juice bar with vegan veggie wraps or whatever. The grand reopening was scheduled for a month from then, and I was itching for it to arrive.

  Making your own money was its own special kind of powerful. The publication I had left in LA was still giving me assignments on a work-for-hire basis, but you couldn’t beat the security of a steady paycheck. I had enough to pay the rent because it was thankfully split and enough for food and utilities but really, I was missing the month-end bank account boost.

  I didn’t like being a dependent and the sooner we could open, the sooner I could force my mother and Frank to cut me off. Following what had happened in Los Angeles, my mother and Frank—her husband/my stepfather (we were much too rude as teenagers to ever call him anything other than Frank)—had swooped in raining dollars, as many as I needed, over my head.

  It was Frank more than Mom really because she had spent most of the time incapacitated or plotting legal action with the lawyer. Frank Weinstein was the man that Mom should have married at 21, instead of my dad. He was a producer and could afford to give my mother the kind of life that would make her happy. He looked at her the way I hoped a guy would look at me someday.

  He had never made us do anything we didn’t want to when we were younger. He wouldn’t take our bullshit, but he never made us accept him as anything other than Mom’s new husband. Upon Mother’s insistence, both Jaden and I had had to take his last name. I would always threaten that I would change it back to Forester—my dad’s last name—the minute the clock struck midnight on my 18th birthday, but I hadn’t. I was still explaining to incredulous inquirers why my name was Weinstein, but I wasn’t Jewish.

  Frank had always said ‘okay’ in this resigned way that used to make me even madder. He was a good man; good for Mom and good for Jaden and me too. After the incident in LA, he had supported my idea to move away fully, giving me the financial resources to do so. Giving, not lending, as he had so heavily emphasized. Once I had made the money back, I planned to pay it back to him somehow, every cent.

  Dad had nearly combusted when I told him at dinner the night before about Mom and Frank supporting me while I got my feet back on the ground in San Diego. He had canceled plans with one of his friends when I had shown up unannounced. He would never admit it, but I think it hurt him that Frank was in the picture for Jaden and me. I couldn’t pretend to understand what a man would feel like seeing another man raise his kids, but I could guess it must have felt rotten. Probably did a real number on your pride.

  That was probably why he offered, no, demanded to help me out with the last $10,000 that I needed to pay for the bookstore. I couldn’t help but see my family’s generosity for my inability. I could take the money, cognitively but had trouble accepting it emotionally. My head had been doing all the thinking and feeling lately while my heart took some time off. It needed it.

  Having three parents had meant that my mother had all but completely slotted Frank into the space where my father used to be for her. They didn’t talk—as far as I knew. They didn’t do holidays together; they didn’t do anything together. Both Jaden and I were grown so we could move freely between the two of them as we desired. This had unfortunately meant that Dad was in the dark about some of what had happened in Los Angeles.

  I didn’t know whether my mother just didn’t want to tell him, or felt that my having Frank around was enough, and she didn’t need to tell him. Maybe she felt ashamed that something that fucked up had happened in her unassailable city. The day the guy had come to the house and Frank had caught him, Mom had nearly clawed his eyes out. Frank had had to physically pull her off of him. She came away with a handful of his hair and his blood under her perfect manicure.

  I felt like a bad daughter sometimes because if it was anyone’s story to tell, it was mine. I felt like it was my responsibility to tell him. The excuse that I just wasn’t happy in LA anymore was one that he just pretended to buy. I knew he didn’t believe me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he knew everything, and he was just waiting till I brought it up with him.

  Between having a mental breakdown hearing his daughter had been rudderless and was receiving support from someone else and throwing money at me, he managed to talk about the car that Grandma had sent him. I had politely declined when he had asked whether I wanted to see it. I couldn’t remember the make and model if I tried and when words like ‘carburetor’ and ‘horsepower’ started coming out of his mouth, I just let him talk until he no longer wanted to any more.

  “I was going to have my car guy come take a look at her today but rescheduled.” Canceled, he had canceled. Because he wanted to spend time with me.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call or anything before coming over.”

  “Don’t worry about it angel. He’s coming over in a couple of days. I always have time for you.”

  That was my dad. Between him and Frank, I wanted for nothing growing up, emotionally or otherwise. I sort of hoped I would never get married because I wouldn’t be able to choose between the two of them to walk me down the aisle.

  Rather than burden my father with the task of dropping me off, I had left his house after helping him do the dishes. I could have spent the night if I wanted because he had left our rooms exactly the same as they had always been, which I always thought was some sort of incentive to get us to visit more often. Jaden wasn’t down as much as I was and his room was largely disused, but it was always spotless, just in case.

  Dad had briefly left while I was in the kitchen doing the dishes.

  His phone had buzzed on the dining table. I ignored it, but then it had started up again.

  “Hello?” I had said down the line, holding the phone gingerly in my sudsy hand. Whoever it was on the line—I hadn’t checked—was silent for a bit before talking to me.

  “Reggie?”

  “No. He can’t come to the phone just now. Do you want to call in the next half hour?”

  “No… that’s fine. Just tell him that I’ll be over in a couple of days to see the Superbird,” he replied. The voice was gravelly. He was talking in code surely because I had no idea what on earth he was referring to. I said that I would and hung the phone up.

  Earlier that day, while Mimi had lunch at a café when we broke for lunch, I deposited the final $10,000 into the bank.

  The bookstore was ours.

  4

  Adam

  He had said that he was getting a 1970 Plymouth Hemi Superbird.

  “Bullshit,” I had told him.

  “It came in a couple of days ago. Come over and check her out.”

  I had, wanting to call his bluff. There was no way he owned one of them. How many were even produced? Fewer than 150. True to his word, though, there she was, parked in his garage. He made this big show of slowly raising the garage door and revealing the car like she was some show on a stage.

  I had come by Reggie’s right after work. He had called me back the night after I had called him and talked to that woman, whoever she was. She sounded young. I didn’t know if Reggie was dating, but part of me—a part that I wasn’t proud of—wanted to pat him on the back for landing himself a pretty young thing.

  The paint was age worn but not patchy or scratched. She didn’t have that shine that mint condition vintage cars had, but that would be tak
en care of. I almost wanted to ask permission before I touched her.

  “Sorry about the other night. Had my daughter over,” he said.

  “Huh? Oh, that’s fine. Forget about it,” I told him absently. What did he want to do for the paint? I hoped he wouldn’t ask for black or white. “Can I pop the hood?” I asked.

  “Knock yourself out,” Reggie said, smiling. I carefully pushed the hood of the car up revealing an original Hemi engine. “All original parts under there.”

  I nodded my head, impressed.

  “What does she need doing?”

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “From looking at her, I’d say paint, obviously. But besides that, I’d have to get behind the wheel.” I hoped the excitement I felt about driving the Superbird wasn’t apparent in my voice. I had been a car guy before I had become any other kind of guy. My mom’s boyfriend had been a car builder and mechanic. He was a lousy father figure. He was an even lousier partner to Mom, but he had been great with cars. The only time we got along was when there was a car between us. If I can credit the man for teaching me anything, it was my way around an automobile.

  Reggie tossed something in the air. It was shiny; the light glinted off of it. I caught it in one hand and looked at what it was.

  The keys.

  “Take her for a spin.”

  God bless the man for saying those words. I climbed into the driver’s seat and ran my hands over the wheel. The interior had never been redone and showed signs of wear, but when I turned the key, she sounded strong and hardy as ever. I put her into gear and rolled down the driveway. I rode a bike, but if I had to get a car, it would be an old one with a stick shift. I appreciated the control a manual transmission vehicle gave you when you drove it. Reggie Forester and I had built this understanding over cars. He had them, and I could fix them. I couldn’t wait to get the Superbird to the shop and really get into her.

  Though Lawson had not yet been to prison, it was really just a matter of time for that one. You could be a thug, and you could be a fool, but you could not be both those things at once. That was a recipe for disaster. Disaster to the tune of ‘California State Prison.’ My instructions a couple of nights previous when he had tried to get old inmate contacts off of me had been to call me the next day, and we would talk about it.

  He had shown up instead, and not even on the day that I had told him I wanted to talk. Truthfully I didn’t really want to talk, but Lawson was the type that you could not beat sense into. I wouldn’t beat him up of course unless he was really asking for it. He had lit a cigarette, and I had told him to put it out. They obviously had some sort of regulatory effect on his body because as he sat, I watched various appendages begin to twitch and shake. His leg was going, and pretty soon both hands were shaking so bad he kept moving them to disguise the fact.

  “Tell me again why you can’t just borrow the money?” I asked.

  “Why would I borrow money to pay a debt? That’s like digging one hole to fill another.”

  “Unless you have some way to raise the money before whenever it is that you need it, I think that’s just a loss you are going to have to take.”

  “If you just gave me a couple of contacts from your CSP days—”

  “Legitimately. Unless you can come up with five grand—legitimately—before Hanley and Martin come for your kneecaps, you are going to have to think of something more creative.”

  “What do you want me to do? Rob a bank?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “It’s like you want to issue the warrant for your arrest yourself,” I said incredulously. “And where were you yesterday?”

  “I’m out of options Adam; it’s not like you are going to lend me the money.”

  “You’re right. I’m not. Don’t you have savings?”

  “Do I look like the kind of person who has savings?”

  He had a point. He stood and began pacing around the room.

  “I was talking to Martin and Hanley,” he said, answering the question I had asked, and he had ignored previously.

  “And what did they say?”

  “They said that if I did something for them, this one little thing, then I’d be square.”

  I took a deep breath, bracing myself. I had always imagined the way that Lawson Foley went to prison being one that crept up on me. It seemed it would be coming much sooner than I originally anticipated.

  Lawson looked at me the way he would when he knew I was going to chew him out.

  “They want you to fight.”

  My eyes widened, and for a few seconds, I felt like someone had just doused me in freezing cold water.

  “Get out of my house.” I stood up and walked away into the kitchen. I didn’t check to see whether Lawson had actually left. He didn’t leave. He stood and followed me.

  “Adam, it would be just the one fight. Boxing style in a ring with someone of their choosing for a couple of rounds.”

  “The reason why you can talk about this like it isn’t a huge deal, and a terrible mistake is because you didn’t sign your own idiot self up. You signed me up.”

  “I didn’t sign you up Adam. I swear.”

  “Then what? Hanley and Martin just pulled my name out of their asses when thinking about who they wanted to see get beaten to a pulp next month?”

  “They’ve probably heard about you, Adam… I mean. A couple of people have.”

  I pulled a face and turned my back to lean on the counter.

  I suppose that was what I got. People didn’t exist in tidy vacuums where the things you did didn’t get spread around. Lawson was right. A couple of people had heard about me. That spoke more to their nosiness and the big mouths of others really than my own. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily on the straight and narrow, but I was reformed, at least, loosely.

  “When is the fight?” I asked, my curiosity getting the best of me.

  “In about a month. Down at this spot by the docks.”

  I sighed. No matter how much Lawson badgered me, I wasn’t about to give him the contacts of people I was with in prison. Somebody who might’ve, though, was Gareth Martin.

  Gareth was serving the tail end of what was supposed to be an 8-year arson charge, of which he had only had to serve three years when we met. Arson was what he told people, but I had a feeling it was something else. He and I had dropped out of the same high school. If it was any indication of the kind of person that he was, he elected not to pursue his education further during his time in prison. While I had retired from the low life—sort of—he seemed to still be deep in the shit. There was Lawson’s contact right there; too bad he owed him money. Gareth probably had contacts with most of the criminal and low life elements of the state of California.

  “Tell Hanley and Martin that I’m not going to fight. I’d rather you just asked me for the money straight up than go behind my back and mix me up with those guys.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t want to do it.”

  “So this was your backup plan?”

  I walked out of the kitchen, not because I wanted to get anywhere but because I was agitated and wanted to expend the energy before it expressed itself in broken dishes or a broken Lawson.

  “You know what, just… just leave. I’ll talk to Hanley and Martin myself.” I sighed and looked back at Lawson. For all his foolishness, for all his thuggishness he was one of the few people I could really call my friend. We had sort of glommed on to each other a year ago when I moved to San Diego. He knew I was good with cars and did me a solid, hooking me up with the auto shop. I had managed to build myself up a reputation for good work restoring vintage cars, and it was partly because he had hooked me up with the position in the first place.

  He never held it over me though I completely expected him to at least try. Lawson Foley. What a loser. I loved the guy, but he tried the hell out of me every single day that we spent together.

  “Thanks, man. I owe you one.”

  “Leave, before I change
my mind.”

  Lawson left quietly. I waited until I heard the sound of his Chevy Camaro pulling away from my house. How the hell had this guy made it so far in life? He was one of those anomalies historians would have to study in the future, only they wouldn’t be able to because he would have made it to the end of his life without a criminal record. I picked my phone up and scrolled through the contact list. I didn’t have to scroll far; Anthony Foley’s name was right near the top of my list. The phone rang a few times before he picked up. It was late—past ten at night. Not crazy late, but still a slightly ominous time to receive a phone call.

  “If you are calling me this late, it’s because Lawson has finally been arrested or has died.”

  Anthony Foley was the Foley family’s golden child. Out of the three Foley kids, Lawson was the black sheep. He and Anthony were twins, but their genetic material and last names were the only things that were similar about them. Anthony did something corporate in the financial district and had this beautiful girlfriend, a house, a car and exactly zero outstanding warrants for his arrest anywhere. Their sister was the youngest and was in college becoming a doctor. Lawson… well, he had just been to my house asking me to bail him out of trouble with a couple of criminals he owed money to. It wasn’t hard to see where the label came from.

  “Sorry to disappoint you; neither has happened yet. He is in trouble though.”

  “Good. He probably deserves it.” A muffled female voice was talking to him in the background; my call had probably woken him and his girlfriend up.

  “He always deserves it. He’s been betting on those underground fights, and he owes the organizers five grand.”

  Anthony sighed a sigh of the weary. “Lawson doesn’t have $5000 to spare.”

  “Therein lies the problem.”

  “What will they do to him if he can’t pay up?”