Page 5 of His Custody

What did he want with her anyway? Sean and Deborah had never had kids—maybe this was Deborah’s last ditch effort to play mom? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. No fucking way, not on his watch. And it was his watch now.

“Fine.Keyne,” Sarah said, placing an exasperated emphasis on the word, “is a teenage girl. You can’t get rid of her when you’re tired of playing the hero. Teenage girls are awful. Trust me, I was one. And she is going to be royally fucked-up from all this. If the past month is any indication, she’s going to need constant babysitting. Are you prepared for that?”

“I’ll get prepared.” Not tired anymore because of the irritation singeing his veins, Jasper got up and poured a drink. Downed it, the liquor echoing the burn of his blood, and poured another. He’d sip this one. He would. It was possible he’d come to rely on alcohol and drugs a bit much over the past few years, but he could dial that reliance back as surely as he’d ramped it up. He’d always had willpower to spare, and now it was going to come in handy. He took a sip. A small one.

“What the fuck kind of name is that, anyway? Tallulah Keyne O’Connell? I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.”

His pulse was beating at the back of his skull. He was discovering layers of cantankerousness he hadn’t known he possessed, and he wished Sarah would shut the fuck up. Maybe if he answered her, he’d get a moment’s peace. “She’s named after her grandmother. And a saint.”

Standing at the wet bar, he pressed his hands to the edge, fingers spreading over the marble. He’d count to a hundred before he took another drink to prove to himself he could.

As much as he hated to admit it, Sarah had a point about his lack of qualifications to be Keyne’s guardian. He’d never been a parent, didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. And though he’d say he knew Keyne pretty damn well, he hadn’t been spending much time with his family in the past several years. Some of that time had been replaced with spending time at the club and amping up his presence in the kink community, but part of it had been spent in a bottle. Or in clouds of smoke from something stronger than cigarettes, or yeah, a few lines of white powder, because who didn’t enjoy a little blow now and then?

Even so, and despite the fact that Keyne and Gavin had increasingly run off together somewhere to do god knows what, he still knew her better than almost anyone on this earth. She deserved to be with someone who could say that, not some good-for-nothing philistines who’d been awarded custody of her because of a few words on a stupid seventeen-year-old piece of paper.

It wasn’t going to be fun, but it was the right thing to do. If that meant suffering for a year until she went to college, then he’d suffer. He’d lived a charmed life up until now. It seemed fair there’d be a price to pay. The death of his entire family seemed steep, but he’d never known the universe to have any sense of proportion.

He couldn’t think about that anyway, couldn’t let himself get dragged into the mire of self-pity for everything he’d had that was gone now. Focusing on Keyne and everything she’d lost was easier than acknowledging his own world had been lain waste to.

Sarah must’ve gotten up from the couch because she was standing behind him, pressing her body against the length of his, wrapping her arms around him and sliding her fingers up his chest and down again to tease at his belt buckle.

“Let’s go to bed.”

It was tempting. His toys were gone, but he wasn’t too shabby with makeshift bondage. A necktie here, some clothespins there. Sarah got off more on sensation play than straight up D/s, but you didn’t need anything more than a hand for a spanking. Turning her round ass red under his palm had a definite appeal. The sting in his hand would distract him from the rest of his life crashing down around him... Tempting.

He dipped his head as she tugged the leather through his belt loops. “Sarah—”

“Shh. Let me take your mind off all this,” she urged, her voice like the watered silk she was so fond of.

His hand clamped around her wrist before releasing her with a shake of his head. “No. You were right. This is going to be hard and I need to focus. You should go. You shouldn’t be here when the social worker shows up tomorrow. I’ll call you.”

Not that the lack of a woman in his house tomorrow would make up for a reputation with the fairer sex. If he’d known he was going to have to prove himself as a fine upstanding citizen in order to get custody of a child, he might’ve done things differently.

He took another sip, a bigger one this time, but still just the one. He’d always been able to control himself just enough to keep from labeling himself an alcoholic. Bit of a game, really—how far down could he go and still haul himself up the face of the cliff?

Sarah had backed away and when he turned, she stood there with her hands on her hips and a sneer on her face.

“So is this it? This is how you’re going to end things?”

“No.” He liked Sarah, he did. Or he had. He was less sure why now. She was smart, sophisticated, and their kinks were well matched. But since the accident—which the Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies were still investigating to make sure it had been just an accident—she’d been showing her true colors. She’d always been spoiled, selfish. That hadn’t mattered so much when it was the two of them.

But he was tired, not thinking clearly. He could kick this can down the road. Maybe once he got there, things would be better. A man could dream. “For tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow after it’s over.”

Her eyes darkened as she crossed her arms, manicured fingers resting above her elbows. “Tomorrow.”

Chapter Three

July

This was not going well. He dug his fingers into his forehead and then into his scalp. He couldn’t take it anymore.

The visit from Mr. McCarthy the other day had been nerve-racking, but the man hadn’t made him feel like he was on trial. He shouldn’t feel like he was now, either. But the courtroom setting and the judge glaring at him like he was some sort of... of miscreant was maddening.

To be fair, he was a bit of a reprobate, but people couldn’t usually tell fromlookingat him. Plus, he was arichdegenerate, and that bought him some leeway if not an outright Get Out of Jail Free card. Ridiculous and unfair, yes, but that’s how the world worked. Except apparently in Family Court, and more specifically in front of the bench of one peevish Judge Angela Pollard.

He’d liked Judge Pollard on sight, her black hair cropped short in a no-nonsense style, and a jabot that reminded him of the one Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore for issuing her dissents. Which he only knew because Deja was a huge RBG fangirl, and idolized the woman like she was a rock star. To be fair, she was pretty badass, and for some reason the similarity had made him feel better about his chances—as if someone’s choice of accessories were an indication of evenhandedness. But then her dark brown eyes had sized Jasper up, and hadn’t liked what they’d seen.

She had not been charmed by him at all. It’s not like that never happened, but here it might cost him more than a lost opportunity for a date or a scene, or an advantageous business deal. Here it could cost him Keyne, and that was... “unacceptable” was not a strong enough word. It would be unendurable. Granted, he’d already set things in motion to get his way, but making this happen through legal channels was far more desirable. Keyne deserved as normal a life as he could give her, and being kidnapped by a fugitive on the run from the law hardly qualified.

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