Page 4 of His Custody

She was all he had left, and loyalty was something his parents had drummed into his head from a young age.Family is everything. We take care of our own.And that had included the O’Connells for as long as he’d been alive. Probably because Bill and Marcy had stayed friends with his parents when so many of their other friends had abandoned them. A baby kind of put a damper on the fun-loving college life.

It had taken awhile, but within half an hour, the complete anguish that had been etched on Keyne’s face dulled until he was sure she was asleep. The dreamless sleep of the drugged, but it was better than nothing. Wasn’t it?

The amount of second-guessing he’d done over the past month was beyond anything he’d ever experienced. He’d always relished being called a cocky bastard, took it as a compliment, but right about now he wished he had more experience with uncertainty because this was making him feel like he had eels swimming around his skull. How did people deal with this constant assault of a fear of fucking up?

And he was inviting more of it into his life. Deja had found out that after his own parents, the next of kin listed in the O’Connells’ wills were Sean and Deborah. When Deja had confirmed what he already suspected, his next instructions were to figure out how to get around that. And stall the inevitable custody hearing until he could get his ducks in a row, making sure to do everything right while she was with him in the meantime so the obvious decision would be to leave well enough alone.

At the funeral, Sean had been eyeing Keyne in a way Jasper hadn’t cared for. It wasn’t sympathy, and it wasn’t the morbid curiosity of some other people. It had looked like an expression Jasper was well familiar with. It had looked like greed.

He hadn’t expected Sean and Deborah to object if he offered to take Keyne off their hands—after all, kids didn’t come cheap, especially not high school seniors who were college-bound—but maybe he thought getting custody of Keyne would mean getting her family’s money, too? Well, if Sean wanted a fight, then he’d get one.

After Jasper deposited himself on the couch in the den, he leaned back, scrubbed a hand over his face and neck and opened his eyes to Sarah staring back at him. He’d forgotten she was still here, and with the pinched, vicious look on her face, he wished she weren’t.

“What do you think you’re doing, Jasper?”

“I’m sitting on the couch and as soon as I can muster the strength, I’m going to get a drink. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re using a distraught teenager as your latest vanity project.”

The muscles along his spine tensed and he wanted a drink more than ever. Which was saying something, because the urge for a drink had developed into a near constant itch in the past few years. The strain of the past month hadn’t helped, and Sarah was making it worse instead of better like one would hope a partner might. “Could we not do this right now?”

Sarah might be a lovely, compliant submissive in his bed, but out of it—

“I think now’s a great time. The social worker’s going to be here tomorrow morning.”

Right. Mr. Dan McCarthy, for what was supposed to be a check-off-the-box formality but didn’t particularly feel like one. When he’d told Ada Mr. McCarthy would be coming, she’d turned into some hyper-organized Tasmanian devil, cleaning things that were already clean, filling a refrigerator that wasn’t empty, and pulling him aside to discreetly ask him what she should do with the small stash of weed and coke he kept at the back of a dresser drawer.

He’d told her he’d take care of it, along with the locked trunk at the foot of his bed, and a few other stores filled with the trappings of his other vice. Christ, he’d thought he was going to have to rent a U-Haul to get rid of it all. Luckily, a quick call to his friend Ryan from the club he used to frequent before he and Sarah had become exclusive took care of it all, the drugs a token of appreciation for storing his kink collection while this all shook out. Which if he managed to get custody of Keyne, would be in five years when she graduated from college. Maybe not even then.

God knows he’d stuck around his old neighborhood, snapping up a house that came on the market right after he’d finished business school and settling in while most of his friends paid sky-high rents in Manhattan. A house that if all went well, he’d be sharing with a high school senior. What the hell had happened to his idyllic bachelorhood? But there wasn’t any other choice, and he’d do his utmost to keep her. Including putting on the world’s most convincing dog and pony show for Mr. McCarthy that he was fit to care for Keyne O’Connell.

“I’m well aware of that.”

“And you’re planning to go through with this? You’re really going to try to get custody of her?” Arms akimbo, eyes narrowed, Sarah was the picture of incredulity, and it irritated him. He had his flaws for sure, but fickleness wasn’t one of them. Once he figured out what he wanted, nothing would stand in his way.

“I am. Why is that so hard for you to believe?”

“Because you’re not known for your selflessness. Or your ability to commit.” Both of those things were true, if harsh. He was thankful she didn’t include his on-again-off-again relationship with sobriety which wasn’t exactly a preferred trait in a caretaker.

“I’ve been faithful to you, haven’t I?”

“I never said you were unfaithful.”

“But you are wondering how long that’s going to last?”

“You’ll get tired of me sooner rather than later, Jasper. We both know it. And that girl—”

“Keyne. Her name is Keyne. She’s been here for almost a month and you’d met her half a dozen times before that. You know her name, fucking use it.”

Sarah held up her hands and rolled her eyes as if he were being dramatic. He knew what she was trying to do. Make Keyne seem like less of a person, more of an object. A burden. It wasn’t going to work. She was a responsibility, to be sure, one he didn’t take lightly. One he wouldn’t be able to live with if he didn’t take on.

He’d said it before and he’d meant it. And if she brought up that Keyne’s uncle and aunt had called, making a wheedling offer to take her off his hands, he was going to flat out lose it.

Sarah didn’t know Sean and Deborah O’Connell like he did. They’d squandered millions of dollars on bad investments, drugs, living above what had been considerable means. Jasper even suspected some outright illegal business dealings.

From the outside, Jasper knew he may not look all that much better. But he didn’t spend money he didn’t have, was a social drug user at most, and while he skirted the law, he stopped any of his more dubious practices before they became illegal. Jasper had been the kind of kid whose antics had inspired new rules in the student handbook. He was the kind of adult whose business practices resulted in investigations, but never sanctions, by the SEC.

While he couldn’t prove it, he had suspicions Sean was venturing outright to the other side of the law out of desperation. Hell would freeze over before he’d let that guy near Keyne.

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