Now, not so much. It probably had been demons out to get him.
Instead of going for an insanity defense or fighting the conviction, his father had pled guilty and been sent right back to Angola. About a year later, just shy of Nick’s eleventh birthday, there had been a huge riot where his father had been wounded. He’d also killed a guard. Something that guaranteed he’d never be paroled again.
Let’s hear it for family.
But Nick didn’t believe blood ties created family, or that his father’s whacked out DNA had to define the person he was to become. In his world, family was something you chose to have. It was the people you loved who loved you back—those you could call in the middle of the night who would rush to your side without complaint. They were the only ones who mattered. The ones who counted. As far as he was concerned, his family was his mom, Menyara, Kyrian, Rosa, Liza, Bubba, and Mark. And Acheron was the weird uncle no one was sure about. Caleb was that acerbic cousin you liked, but you didn’t know why.
And Kody lived in a place in his heart that was uniquely hers.
Maybe he felt that way because, other than his mother, he’d never really known blood kin. He’d never once met his grandparents. The closest he’d come to that was seeing them in passing at the mall during Christmas years ago. His mom had ducked into a store and Menyara had told him who they were, and why his mother was so upset, and didn’t want to be seen. Now, he couldn’t even remember what they’d looked like. He wouldn’t know them if they stepped on him.
“Nick?”
He paused on his way back to the streetcar as he heard his name, but couldn’t place the voice. Turning around, he didn’t see anyone near him.
Just don’t be more mortent demons out to attack me while I’m alone. Caleb would kill him for being so stupid.
“Nick!” A car moved and then he saw Jill running toward him, waving.
What was it about Jill that made him so uncomfortable? And it wasn’t the same kind of nervousness he had with Kody. He was twitchy with Kody because when she was around all he could think about was how good her lips tasted. And his body would go white-hot with horomonal overload until he could barely think of anything else.
He wasn’t attracted to Jill at all. So what about her was fueling his aversion?
Give her a chance, Nick. She’d been nervous on her first day … Just like you’d been.
True. Not to mention, he’d had more than his share of off days since then. He shouldn’t hold one of hers against her.
“Hey, Jill,” he said as she stopped in front of him.
She grinned broadly. “I didn’t know you lived out this way.”
“I don’t. I came by to see Brynna.”
Her face blanched. “The girl who made all those awful photos with animals?”
“No,” he snapped. “The girl someone lied about. Those pictures were doctored.”
She actually got huffy with him. “That’s not what I heard about her.”
Keep talking, babe, and you’re really going to alienate me. And seriously tick him off. “Yeah, well, you’re hearing it now. I was there and can tell you that they were forged. It was obvious. Brynna has never done anything like that, and wouldn’t.”
She smiled. “If you say so. I don’t know her well enough to comment.”
“Then you don’t know her well enough to carry a rumor that is completely untrue.”
Jill went silent for a few seconds. “That’s a really good point. I never thought of it that way.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like gossip.” He’d had too much of it spread about him and his mom. “As my mother always says, great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. And life’s too short to worry about what other people do or don’t do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.”
“Wow, that’s deep. Are you, like, one of the scholarship kids?”
He hated that question. In theory, scoring high enough to get a scholarship should be a mark of honor. But somehow it’d been twisted around by his classmates to mean that anyone who had a scholarship couldn’t afford to go to school at St. Richards and had no business there because they weren’t worthy.
“Yeah, I’m one of the scholarship kids.”
“That’s so cool. Me and my brother got in last year, but we weren’t able to get one of the scholarships. We tried twice, though.”
Now he felt awful. “I’m sorry, Jill.”
Her smile returned. “It’s okay. The church was real good to us. They were taking up a collection to help my parents with tuition when this really nice old couple volunteered to sponsor us. They’re paying for everything … right down to the pens and book bags. They even took us shopping to get new school clothes.”
“That’s decent of them. They must be really great people.” His mom would never have allowed someone else to pay for Nick’s school, never mind his clothes. She was fierce in her beliefs that you take nothing from no one. What you had, you earned, or you did without until you could afford it.
No one owes you a living, Nick, and they definitely don’t owe you respect. Just because they have excess doesn’t mean we’re entitled to it. Life isn’t about what you can take from someone. It’s about what you can earn.
As Kyrian would say, he who dies with the most toys wins and the spoils always go to the victor. So win big.
But then his mom was also the first one to donate to charity any time the nuns called for toys or food or such for the underprivileged. He’d never quite understood that, especially since most of those “underprivileged” people were a lot better off than they were. However, he had too deep a sense of self-preservation to ask her about the dichotomy in her rationale. She could get real testy if she thought someone was calling her a hypocrite.
“They are the best,” Jill continued. “Mr. Gautier is a banker and Mrs. Gautier’s a lawyer with an office downtown. You don’t know them, do you? I was wondering since you had the same last name and all.”
“I don’t. But then Gautier and its variants are fairly common in Louisiana and southern Mississippi. There are four other kids at St. Richards with the same last name. I guess if you go far enough back, we’re all related, but I don’t have any living relatives that I know of.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, my parents are both only children.” Something he’d learned from Ambrose after he’d confessed that he wasn’t really Nick’s uncle. Ambrose didn’t want anyone else stepping forward and claiming to be a long-lost relative of Adarian’s. The last thing he wanted was for Nick to put his trust into the wrong person.
“That’s so sad. I’ve got almost two dozen cousins and a little sister in addition to my brother Joey. What about your grandparents? Surely they weren’t only children, too.”
“I don’t know anything about my grandparents. My dad’s parents died a long time before I was born and my mother never talks about hers.”
“I’m sorry, Nick.”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Nothing to be sorry about. It just is. You can’t miss what you don’t know.”
She smiled again. “I like talking to you. You’re really smart and you have a great way of looking at things. It’s unique and makes me think.”
Every warning bell he possessed rang out. Flattery and insults both brought out the same reaction in him—What do you want? In his experience the people who flattered him to his face were the first ones who stabbed him whenever he turned his back. He hated it. Maybe he was judging her wrongly, but he’d been burned enough to be very wary of people’s motives.
He heard the sound of the arms about to lower over the street. “My streetcar’s coming. I need to get back to the Quarter.”