“Dad, let’s go.” Connie stepped in and took her father’s hand. “Let’s just go.”
Dad shook her off. “Listen to me, Jasper Dent. I haven’t said this before, but I’m saying it now: Stay the hell away from my daughter. Or else.”
“Or else what?” Jazz said with an infuriating, dead calm that belied his words. Connie knew this voice. “More history lessons about Sally Hemmings?” Almost bored. Contemptuously so. “Maybe this time a video on lynching?”
Connie pulled harder at her dad, who wouldn’t budge. Jazz’s calm was a gimmick, a trick. It was a Billy Dent tactic—forcing your prey to overreact by seeming completely unaffected. Jazz was trying to—
Oh, God. Jazz wanted Dad to take a swing at him. Maybe so that he could hit back and feel justified doing it. Maybe just because he was so pissed about everything that had and hadn’t happened in New York that he wanted to take it out on someone, anyone, and why not the man standing between him and Connie?
“Or else,” Dad said, in a threatening tone Connie had never heard before, “I’m going to make you wish you’d never seen her.”
And Jazz stared at her father. Connie had never seen such a stare. He didn’t move; his expression didn’t change. It was something ethereal, something in his eyes, or in his soul. Something had shifted, and Connie suddenly realized that she’d been wrong before—her father wasn’t the hawk on the high branch.
Jazz was.
“You think you’re scary?” Jazz said quietly, his lips quirking in a little smile.
He said nothing else. He didn’t have to. Connie’s dad swallowed visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Stop it!” Connie hissed at Jazz. She knew him better than anyone else in the world—well, maybe except for Billy—but right now she didn’t know what she was witnessing. “Cut it out. Now!”
Her father pulled his arm from her.
“You don’t scare me,” he told Jazz, but his voice had mellowed just a tad.
And now Jazz smiled a full smile. It terrified Connie, because to anyone not listening in, it looked as though Jazz had just heard something funny. But there was nothing funny here.
“You tell yourself that,” Jazz said. “That’s okay. Keep telling yourself that.”
“Dad,” Connie said, tugging again. “Let’s go.”
This time, he let her pull him away. Connie glared at Jazz over her shoulder. “Knock off the nonsense!” she stage-whispered. He sure as hell wasn’t making it easier for them to be together by pulling this kind of crap. “Seriously!”
But for his part, Jazz just watched them go, still smiling.
CHAPTER 21
As soon as Connie and her dad disappeared around a bend, Jazz blew out his breath and slumped against a nearby wall. What the hell had he been thinking? Was he nuts? Goading Mr. Hall like that? This was the man who could keep him from Connie. Well, at least until Connie was eighteen.
But he had to admit that, deep down, there was a part of him that had loved the confrontation. He hadn’t been able to manipulate Montgomery—the pull of his pension and his career had outweighed Jazz’s “Jedi mind tricks”—but he’d come pretty close to getting Mr. Hall to take a swing at him. If Connie hadn’t been there, Jazz was sure he’d have had her father roaring and punching. And then…
And then what? You beat the crap out of him? Or he beats the crap out of you? What, exactly, was your plan, you dumbass? Or is this just what you do now—you goad and manipulate people just for the hell of it.
No. Not anymore. People aren’t your playthings. People are real. People matter.
Not cool to go all Billy on him, Jazz. Not cool at all.
And the way he’d treated Connie. Double not cool. But he hadn’t known how to talk to her, how to explain his fears. How to explain the role her race played—or had played—in their relationship. They’d been together long enough now that he didn’t think he loved her just because she was black. But he couldn’t in good conscience deny that that had been the original attraction. Her safety, whether real or perceived, had drawn him in. He couldn’t talk to her about sex without talking about his concerns, and he couldn’t talk about his concerns without—
“Hey, man!” Howie said, loping to his side. “Just saw Connie and her pops. That man looked pissed with a capital P, and I thought to myself, That means Jazz must be nearby. And I was right. So, score for me. I should totally be the one the NYPD calls on for help ’cause I kick it all detective sty-lee.”
“Turns out the NYPD didn’t actually call for me,” Jazz reminded him as they headed to Howie’s car. “Why the hell couldn’t you keep my aunt away from Weathers?”
“Ninja, please! It’s Christmas break. I have family obligations. I couldn’t watch your aunt twenty-four-seven. Not that I would mind.”
Howie’s salacious tone was nothing new, but it triggered a memory for Jazz, of Samantha saying that Howie was “friendly.”
“What did you do while I was gone?” he asked.
“Do? Me? I didn’t do anything while you were gone.”
If Howie had been in an interrogation room, the cops would have charged him before the first word was out of his mouth. His poker face was nonexistent. He didn’t just look like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar; he looked like he’d been caught sticking his whole head in there.
“Dude! You hit on my aunt!”
“That depends on how you define ‘hit on.’ ”
“You totally hit on my aunt.”
“Was that wrong? Was I not supposed to do that?”
“You should think about what you just said. Think about it, Howie.”
“I’m just not seeing where I went wrong. For an older woman, she’s got a nice body, and she must moisturize like a mofo because her skin is—”
“Howie. She’s my aunt.”
“You get to have a super-hottie girlfriend. Why can’t I get a little action?”
“My aunt! What are you not getting here?”
“I’m not getting any—”
“Enough!” They were at the car by now. “Take me home so that I can try to scrub the idea of you and my aunt out of my brain.”
“Man, you grew up with a guy who taught you how to carve up the human body and used to show you Faces of Death for a bedtime story and you think the idea of me in bed with your aunt is gross?”
Jazz slammed the door. “Yes. And doesn’t that tell you something right there? Drive.”
They had left New York late in the evening, so by the time Howie dropped Jazz off at home, the sun was just beginning to burnish the horizon. Jazz stood on the front porch for a moment as Howie pulled away, staring at the dawning day. A part of him wanted to throw his suitcase in Billy’s old Jeep and just take off. It seemed easier, somehow. Easier than dealing with Connie’s dad, figuring out how to make up for his idiocy at the airport. Easier than dealing with the weirdness that now vibrated like a plucked harp string between him and Connie. Easier than living with Gramma, for sure. And easier than finally being face-to-face with the aunt he’d never known.
The front door opened and Samantha stood there with a coffee mug, dressed in a loose shirt and yoga pants. “Are you coming in or do you like the cold?” she asked.
Jazz shrugged. “I’m coming in.”
Inside, they sat at the kitchen table. The house felt small all of a sudden. It had been Jazz and Gramma for more than four years, ever since Billy went to prison. Now another presence made itself felt.
“She’s asleep,” Samantha said, in answer to his unasked question. “I’ve always been an early riser, though.”