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Chapter 1
Drake
Thirteen Years Ago
I’d been to downtown Boston countless times, so I thought I knew what a city smelled, looked, and sounded like.
But Manhattan?
Crowded and chaotic didn’t begin to describe what I gawked at out Dad’s SUV windows. The stench of the streets seeped through the vehicle’s seams, filling my nose with greasy food and acrid exhaust while I peered up at towering skyscrapers that stole the beauty of the sunset. Obnoxious car horns and gut-rumbling bass from other vehicles drowned Aerosmith’s “Dream On” from Dad’s speakers when we stopped at a red light.
And talk about fucking pretentious. Not just the people with their noses in the air, either.
The building Dad’s new wife lived in—hell, we were moving into—lay directly ahead of us and looked like it was made solely out of glass.
Fucking forty-two floors of glass!
A doorman assured Dad our boxes of shit would be delivered upstairs and that a valet would see to his old SUV. Not trusting strangers with the important stuff, I grabbed my duffel that held my laptop and Xbox.
Dad and I walked into the vast lobby, and I tipped my head back to take in the three-story space laid bare to the bustling world beyond. Everything was either see-through to the pandemonium outside or white furniture with chrome accents. Pops of red and orange littered the walls in funky artwork that didn’t make a lick of sense to me.
Everyone was in such a damn hurry too, not even taking time to make eye contact or say hello as their heels clacked or shoes squeaked while passing us commoners by. The men and women were dressed in expensive clothing and carrying purses or briefcases that probably cost more than Dad made in a month.
He clasped my shoulder once we stood in front of an elevator, waiting for the doors to slide open. “Okay, son?” he asked, assuring me he still cared even though he’d turned my world upside down.
Not wanting to dampen his upbeat mood, I nodded, fearing that me and my dad’s closeness was about to be completely obliterated by the fancy bitch with money who’d whisked him off to Vegas but had refused to take his last name.
Like a Hemmings was beneath her or something.
I followed him into the elevator, relieved to leave the ruckus behind. Glancing over at my father, I wondered if he felt the same sense of being misplaced as I did. A blue-collar worker, he dressed in jeans that had seen better days, a black button-down, and old slip-on shoes he called classy.
He pressed the button for the thirty-fifth floor. A smile I’d become familiar with the previous few days stretched his lips. His blue eyes, the same cornflower shade as mine, were filled with a happiness I hadn’t seen on his face since before his and Mom’s divorce years earlier.
I clutched my bag’s handle a little tighter as though trying to hold onto some sanity in my new reality. I’d enjoyed living in Boston’s suburbs with Dad, but he’d dug us up like a clod of dirt and flipped us wrong-side-up. “Who did you say this woman is?” I muttered.
“She’s the reason my heart is beating again,” Dad said without hesitation or a hint of questioning in his tone. “The love of my life,” he continued as though to himself.
My chest ached a bit at Dad’s statement. His and Mom’s divorce had been the first earthquake in my childhood when I’d been in sixth grade. At least splitting time fifty-fifty between them hadn’t been bad since Dad chose to get along with the woman who’d crushed him.
He hadn’t seen the divorce coming, he’d told me when I was older. There’d been no cheating, no lies, just Mom feeling as though they’d grown apart for whatever reason.
Sounded like bullshit to me, but what did I know about love? In my dreams, it meant a white picket fence, kids, and romantic dinners by candlelight until death do us part. Their divorce fixed in my head that happily ever afters were a fantasy and nothing more.
Mom had met Bob and his two young daughters, Lyla and Kayla, when I was in ninth grade, and when she’d agreed to move into their Rhode Island house, I’d stayed in Boston with Dad. I wasn’t about to leave my hometown, my high school, and my best friend, Sean.
But Dad went to New York on a business trip a couple of weeks ago, met Jacqueline Casswell, took off for Vegas in her private jet, and returned a married man. Then he informed me he would be relocating to Manhattan…yeah. Talk about balls. I was more than a little annoyed to say the least.
Since sixteen was too young of an age for me to stay in Dad’s rental on my own, I was given the choice of going with him or moving in with Mom and my two whiny soon-to-be stepsisters, who were wicked annoying.
With my sophomore year starting in a month and having no real choice, I decided I would experience New York until I could return to Mass for college where I would spend the rest of my life.
Parents or no parents nearby, Boston would always be home to me.
Dad glanced over at me. We stood eye to eye at six foot, both of us brawny with wide shoulders even though I’d just gotten my driver’s license. His grin slowly faded, and I realized I scowled.
“Coming to New York isn’t going to change anything between us, little buddy,” he stated quietly.
I scoffed. “I’m not little.”
