The Anatomy of Jane (12 page)

My eyes burned. Blinking away the tears, I moved to go sit beside her, but Max beat me to it and perched on the rim of the tub. He put his hand on her cheek as he kissed the top of her head. “You have two reasons right here.”

She glanced up at him, frowning. “You just want to use me to hide your relationship.”

“No,” he said while shaking his head. “At first, maybe, but now…now I want know what it would be like for the three of us. I care about you. Wes is obsessed with you, but none of that means anything without you saying what you want. You don’t have to say it now. Just stay here, okay?”

“Okay.”

Trust didn’t just happen overnight. If it did, she would have come the moment the beating happened. She needed time and space. We’d give that to her. In the meantime, we were going to figure out how the hell to make these bastards pay.

Chapter Seven

Max had left an hour ago in order to prepare for his eight o’clock segment, and I had officially closed my restaurant for the day so one of us could stay with her. The only problem was I had no idea what to do or say. So, I did what any reasonable man should do: I called my mums. Yes, that was plural.

The phone rang a few times as I sat in the penthouse’s living room. The first thing I saw was smoke when the video call connected.

“Mum? You all right?”

She waved her hand through the smoke, and I saw a part of her dirty blonde hair before she stepped outside, coughing. “If it isn’t my favorite little wanker.”

“Mum, you’ve got to stop calling me that,” I replied, even though I couldn’t help but smile when I saw her face more clearly. My mum, Brenda, always kept her dirty blonde hair short, and also had an earful of piercings. “What is going on? Why is the house on fire?”

“Because someone sent a
simple
recipe for their mother.” She pointed at me, taking a seat on the patio.

“It can’t be that bad.”

She turned the camera for me to see the smoke coming out the window…the handiwork of my mother, Pippa.

“All she had to do was melt the cheese!” I laughed.

“Instead, she was trying to melt our house. Come home. Save me. I miss eating home-cooked meals.”

I rolled my eyes at that. “Mum, you’re the one who taught me how to cook.”

“Yes, and you surely surpassed me, so after eighteen years of raising you, little bugger, I deserve to be pampered now in my old age.”

“Look at that skin! You do not look a day over forty.” I winked at her.

She frowned. “I miss you. You look skinny. How can a chef be skinny? No one eats food from a skinny chef.”

“I am not skinny; I’m fit. Everyone here loves me because they think I cook healthy.”

“Do you?”

“Not even a little bit. What is the point of life if you don’t add a little butter sometimes?”

She and I both laughed at that.

“Stop it! You’re making me miss you more.”

“Brenda.” I give her the very same look she used to give me as a child.

“At least say you miss me, too, you little twat.”

“I miss you both.”

She inhaled deeply, like she was getting a power boost before exhaling. “Okay, what does my little wanker want?”

“Can’t I just call to say hi? Or to make sure my childhood home hasn’t burnt to ground?”

“Wesley.” She gave me
the look
, and I cringed at how effective it still was.

“Fine…I have a friend.” I wasn’t sure how else to phrase it, but I wish it wasn’t like that. It felt cliché, but she didn’t interrupt me. “She’s an amazing, hardworking person and a week ago she got hurt. She didn’t come to me until now. Also, I don’t know her very well, but I know I want to help her. I just don’t know how. She’s become quiet and she’s not a naturally quiet person.”

“Sounds like you know her well,” she replied, her eyes softer.

“No.” I frowned, wishing I did. “She’s just a very genuine person. If you met her, you’d like her instantly.”

“Wesley, what’s happening with Maxwell?” she asked and I wished she hadn’t.

“Nothing, we’re still together.”
As far as I know.

She stared at me for a long time before speaking. “Does he realize you have feelings for someone else?”

“She’s just a friend. Honestly, we haven’t known each other for—”

“I’ve known you for thirty-one years—thirty-two, the day after tomorrow, and in all that time you’ve only ever called me twice about specific people in your life: Maxwell and this woman. What’s going on darling?”

Running my hand through my hair, part of me regretted calling. “Mum…can we just focus on her right now? I just need advice. What do I say?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, shrugging. “If she’s as genuine as you say then that’s probably what she wants from you—truth.”

“Women love it when you bare yourself to them.” I heard the soft giggle of my other mum, Pippa. She sat on the armrest of the chair and came into the frame, her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. “If she doesn’t want to talk about herself then be honest with her about who you are. The more she feels like she knows you, the more comfortable she’ll feel about sharing her problems.”

“So be a douche and just keep talking about myself?” That sounded like an awful idea.

“No, you ass, you do things together and sometimes put in a tasteful slip like ‘Oh that shirt reminds me off when…’, things like that. What are the stars telling you?”

“To leave the astrology for you. I’ll call you later. I love you both.”

They waved before hanging up. I pulled the ear buds out of my ears and stood up as Jane came downstairs wearing one of Maxwell’s button down shirts. Her hair was down and was still wet from her bath.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your call.” She lifted her hands as if to push me back. “I just wanted water.”

Nodding, I headed into the kitchen.

“I can get it myself.” She followed after me.

“You’re a guest,” I reminded her, grabbing the glass and the pitcher of water from the fridge. I filled the glass and gave it to her, hoping she wouldn’t run back to the room. For a split second I’m sure it crossed her mind, but she stayed sipping. Maxwell and I wanted to call a doctor, but we also didn’t want her to feel like we forcing her to do anything.

“I was beaten up a lot,” I blurted out, thinking about my mum’s advice.

“What?” She looked so confused. “You look like you’d be doing the beating.”

“Thanks,” I smirked.

“No…I didn’t mean—”

“I got what you meant,” I said, pouring myself a glass of water before taking the seat opposite her.

“Why were you beat up?”

“Because I was a scrawny pale child with two mums, thick glasses, and a love for reading. Aka, what you Americans call a ‘nerd’.”
Oh, the good old days!
Bitter sarcasm intended.

“I can’t see it.” She waved her hands over my body, and I realized that once again I stood in front of her half-naked. I was so used to rarely wearing clothes here.
Nothing I can do about it now.

“Puberty, contacts, and a few tattoos do wonders.” I shrugged, leaning forward. “But before that, it was eighteen years of being dragged into closets or washrooms and having teachers make off remarks. Each time I told myself I would fight back. I wouldn’t just let them bully me. And each time I still ended up with a busted eye or broken nose. It didn’t matter if I changed schools. My mums got into arguments about it. Brenda, she’s a poet, and although she looks tough because of her temper, she’s a big softy. She wanted to homeschool me, but my mum, Pippa, she wasn’t having it. She said it would only make me awkward and unable to stand up for myself. They were already stressed over my little brother, Charlie, being sick with leukemia. I couldn’t deal with all of it, so I left home. I went to university in London. Only stayed there for a semester, then my brother died. Instead of going home, I ran away to France.”

“I’m sorry about your brother,” she replied, finishing her water.

I paused, staring at her empty glass.

“Do you mind if we get something stronger than this?” I lifted my glass.

“Yes, please!” She smiled, lifting her glass to me.

Grinning, I took both of them and placed them into the sink before getting proper wine glasses.

“Tell me when,” I said to her after uncorking the red wine. Pouring it into her glass, I waited and waited and she didn’t say anything until the wine was right at the rim.

“Perfect.” She grinned, leaning over to sip the top so it wouldn’t spill over.

“Are you sure? This is very strong.”

She just waved me off and drank like she had been dying for a drink. When she finally took a deep breath and licked her wine-stained lips, her glass was as full as mine.

“Okay.” I laughed. She was so cute.

“Don’t judge.”

“Me? Never!” I shook my head before leaning over to wipe the corner of her mouth. “But what did I say about savoring the things in your mouth?”

Shite! It came off far more sexual than I’d wanted it to.

Her face turned red, which made blood rush to places it shouldn’t…not right then at least.

“You ran off to France?” She changed the subject and I picked up from where I’d left off.

“Yeah, I went to France, not knowing a word of French, thank you. I had no idea what I was going to do with myself. I ended up getting a job at the fish market. Day in, day out, gutting and handling fish. This chef, Chef Dieudonné, a man well into his sixties, came every day and personally picked out all the seafood himself. One day he didn’t show, so I biked in the rain to his restaurant. It was the first time I had been inside a professional kitchen, and it blew my mind.” I couldn’t stop fighting the fat ass grin spreading across my face. “I can’t describe it, the chaos, the excitement, and the speed at which everyone worked. For the first time in my life, I thought…this…this is what I want.”

“So you joined his kitchen?” she asked innocently.

I snorted, wishing it were that easy. “In my dreams. Chef Dieudonné was the best. Everyone who was anyone wanted to be in that kitchen. Who was I to just demand to be there? First, I had to get into culinary school, and if you think secondary schools have bullies, wow, culinary people were cutthroat. If you even touched another student’s knives, there were fights. People sabotaging other people’s dishes, people sleeping with instructors, men or women, they didn’t care. It was just to get by. I didn’t understand at first. Then I remembered I was in fucking France. The country is renowned for its food. They don’t just let anyone be a chef. You need to be cocky, ruthless, and bold. In other words, you truly need to believe you were a god in the kitchen in order to make it.”

“You are cocky, ruthless, and bold. Okay, cocky and bold I can see, but ruthless?” She giggled, drinking some more.

“You’ve never stepped into my kitchen. I make Maxwell look like a little puppy.” I winked at her and took a sip of wine.

“So you made it,” she said, sounding so proud of me that I felt even prouder of myself.

“Yeah, I made it. I wanted to be a chef. I wanted to be in Chef Dieudonné’s kitchen. When you find a passion for something, it’s amazing how tough you can be. I think back to all those beatings I took, and I realized I never fought back as hard as I could have because I didn’t care enough to. School wasn’t my passion. I enjoyed reading fiction but that was about it. The people there meant nothing to me. I visited home, hugged my mums, and then joined the culinary school. Two and a half years later, I graduated and had offers to join kitchens all over the country.”

“So you got to go to Chef Dieudonné?”

“I wish. He died the second year I was there. He left me his knives though. It’s a huge honor. Even I didn’t know why, but his sous-chef told me that the chef had seen me when I had started. He said Chef Dieudonné told him I’d be a chef to look out for one day. I never looked back after that.”

“You are lucky,” she said, brushing her hair behind her ears. “I wish I could find a passion like that.”

“I’m sure you’re good at something and just don’t realize it,” I said, moving closer to her.

We were silent for a while and I watched as her hazel eyes looked over each of the tattoos on my chest. Taking her hand, I put it on the side of my ribs where there was another tattoo.

“This”—I let her hands glide down the Chinese lettering—“means ‘be who you really are’, or at least I hope it does. I was drunk when I got it.”

She giggled and it was a melodic sound. Moving her hand to my chest, I took a deep breath. “This is for Charlie.” I moved her hand to my shoulder. “This is because my mum, Brenda, would always put a dream catcher over my bed, and it made me feel better.

Gliding her hand down my arm, I stopped at the constellation. “This is for the first man I ever truly loved: Maxwell. A hot-blooded Aries.”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were full of amusement, and I had no idea why until she said, “
I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good?
”

“In my defense, I was a nerd who grew up in England. Loving Harry Potter is a given.”

I loved hearing her laugh. Reaching up, I brushed her hair back, my thumb softly rubbing her cheek.