Page 2 of He Is Jensen: Part One

My lips curve with the invitation, and the flutters in my belly transform into a dance. “Yes. I’d like to go to a movie.”

“With me, right?”

I barely bite back another laugh, sure to earn me a reprimand. “Yes. With you.”

“Tomorrow night at seven, right here?”

“Perfect,” I say, and we share a smile, the attraction between us sparking for sure.

“See you soon,” he says, and then he’s gone, and I’m sighing with just how over the top into him I am.

I reach for the worksheet he’d doodled on to prepare for my next student, and it’s not doodling at all. He’s worked every problem, and I’m smiling all over again. He’s gotten all the questions right.

Good-lookingandsmart. I might just fall in love.

Jensen

With a smile on my lips, I whip my battered, black Ford F-150 into the driveway of the equally battered trailer I call home and kill the engine. Easing back into my seat, I arch my back and dig the wad of cash in my pocket out for review. Ten thousand dollars and a date with Layla tomorrow night. I call this one hell of a good day.

I’m going to kiss her and see what honey and sunshine taste like. Fuck yes, I am. And fuck yes, life is good.

“Yeehaw,” I whisper, strumming the cash with my fingers. How many nineteen-year-olds make this kind of dough? I’m liking the heck out of my new job. Hack. Get cash. I snort. “And they say that government databases can’t be hacked. This low-life trailer trash proved them wrong.” That’s what the kids at school call me after my grandmother got herself arrested for public intoxication.Trailer trash.Misfit.“Screw you,” I mumble to the voices I’m making a part of my past. “Screw you all.”

Once I count the money, down to the ten thousandth dollar, I hold out two hundred for my date with Layla and stuff the rest back in my pocket. I scoop up the bundle of flowers on the seat.I was going to hold out the Snickers bar for me to eat before bed, but decide better, snatching it up to hand off with the bouquet.

Candy had worked in my favor with Layla, after all. And I’ll need all the sweetness I can muster to convince Grandmom to head to that fancy alcohol-rehab center I’ve arranged for her to enter up in Temple. It’s close—only twenty miles away—which I hope feels less intimidating to her. She’ll curse me and probably hit me, I expect, steeling myself for what is to come. She’s got a hell of a right hook, but contact doesn’t hurt anymore. Hasn’t for years.

Besides, I know she can’t control herself. I’ve read enough about alcoholism to know it’s an illness, and she needs my love and help to recover. The woman has raised me and considering I’m probably the reason she drinks, I owe her.

I mean, I’m the trigger, because I’m the reason my mother is gone. It sucks, and before I go down that rabbit hole, I need out of this truck.

I open the door and exit the vehicle, slamming the door behind me and whistling my way down the path to the front door. The whistle fades the instant I enter the trailer. Grandmom sits on the couch, wrapped in the same crinkly blue dress that she’d gone to bed wearing, a big bottle of vodka in her hand. Two men dressed in suits sit on either side of her.

“Look what these men brought me,” she says, grinning and holding up the bottle, her prize.

“We know how you like to take care of your grandmother,” one of the men says, his buzz cut flat against his skull.

“Kind of like your father took care of his family,” the other man states, a clone of the first one. They have to be Army or government.Fuckme!

“The resemblance between the two of you is amazing,” the first man says, picking up a picture of my father from the end table. It’s my favorite photo of him, him standing in front of ahelicopter, his blond hair longer than the average enlisted dude, because he wasn’t average. He’d been Special Forces, working undercover all over the map. He’d died serving his country when I’d been barely out of diapers. The man sets the picture back down on the coffee table.

“They’re the spitting image of each other,” my Grandmom declares, her gaze lifting to me, her voice with it. “But Jensen ain’t got no clue who his daddy was. Man was never here. Neither was his mama.” She slugs a drink. “They died. Didn’t they, Jensen?”

One of the men focuses on me. “We think you’re a lot like him. For instance, you both showed an interest in official government business.”

Stab me in the fucking gut, I think. I’m busted. Big-time freaking busted and going to jail. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say in full denial mode. I’m not admitting shit. I won’t go down without a fight, not with my Grandmom dependent on me.

“You know,” the second man drawls, “there’s a lot that can be forgiven if you serve your country. Enlistment’s favorable to other options under certain circumstances. I’m Captain Sherman, son.” He offers a sideways nod to the second man. “That’s Captain Moore. We served with your father.”

“What do you want from me?”

Sherman answers. “Your father was part of a Special Forces unit where certain ‘skills,’ say,computer expertise, can be useful.” He wraps his arm around Grandmom’s shoulders. “In exchange for service in this unit, your grandmother will be well taken care of. It’s time you enlist, son. Be all you can be, like your father.”

Grandmom gulps from the bottle, and I become aware of the flowers in my hand—flowers that weren’t going to erase my problems any more than the wad of cash sitting in my pocket.

“And if I say no?” I ask cautiously.

“I don’t remember asking,” Sherman replies.

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