Second Home (Forever Youngs #2)

1. Present Day

Present Day

The twinkling lights behind the bar reflected off the golden whiskey in the glass Jase Young slowly turned in circles, his knuckles still split and his jaw still sore from Graham’s recent pummeling. His brother wasn’t a total puss after all.

The bruises were healing though. He almost missed the sudden rush of pain when he slipped his helmet over his head, and the dull ache in his cheeks for the first few miles of every ride. They were his only physical reminders that his father’s trip had been real.

He’d take the scrapes and bruises over…

Everything else.

Maybe he should piss off some locals and get a good ass-beating. Fresh wounds to keep reminding him that he was, in fact, an asshole—there was no doubt now, not that there ever was—but no punishment, physical or otherwise, would be enough payment for his mistakes.

Recent and otherwise.

Jase found himself mumbling along with the Eagles’ rendition of “Please Come Home for Christmas” pouring from speakers hidden among fake winter foliage behind the liquor bottles.

It was the first time he’d sung anything since karaoke at the bar in Texas a few weeks, or a lifetime, ago.

There was never a sadder song or a worse time to hear it.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Or a worse time for the machine in his father’s bedroom to ring like tinnitus in his ears.

When the beeping followed him, what sounded like dozens of machines was actually one loud, infernal monitor noting every beat of his father’s heart. Jase was more than two thousand miles away the day it stopped beeping.

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his choice.

That his old man sent Jase on a mission to California to put a box wrapped in brown paper and twine in a storage unit.

The box was a gift, still unopened, from his father to Lindsey, who, in the past few weeks, had become so much more than his brother’s ex-girlfriend.

And the storage unit in Santa Cruz was the final destination of his father’s trip.

Jase put down the last swallow of his second, fifth…

tenth? whiskey and set it out for the bartender.

Paula, a surly broad—woman; he’d been called out for saying broad, a term he’d picked up from his old man—in a flannel shirt and flashing reindeer antlers plopped her elbows down in front of him and pursed her lips.

“Never seen you this rough, kid. Don’t tell me you’ve got lady problems?”

“The only problem I got is seeing through the bottom of this glass,” Jase said, holding the tumbler up to his left eye and peering through it.

She snatched it from his hand. “You’re not going anywhere on your bike tonight.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go anyway.”

While Paula took her sweet time getting his whiskey, Jase pulled his phone from his pocket and flipped it open. He thought he’d missed some calls but had no idea how many.

“Hey, what does this say?” Jase held his screen out to Paula when she came back with his drink.

“Whit—hold still.” She steadied the phone with her stout fingers. “Whitlock. Who’s Whitlock?”

“What about the next one?”

Paula pressed the button to the next missed call. “Asshole.”

“Does it say Asshole, don’t answer, or just Asshole?”

“Just Asshole.”

Whitlock was his dad’s attorney. The old codger had been calling steadily for days, probably charging him twenty bucks for every attempt. Asshole was Graham.

How many days ago did Jase leave his brother in California?

“Hey, Paula, what day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

“Doesn’t help me.” He blinked. “What’s the date?”

“The sixth.”

Jase ran a hand down his face to clear the cobwebs. Nine days since Santa Cruz. Nine days of puddle-jump stops and blind drunks.

“It’s ringing again,” Paula said. “Asshole.”

Whitlock would want to know why Jase hadn’t claimed his check yet. Probably figured Jase would’ve been desperate to cash his share of the six million bucks he was supposed to split with Graham after the trip. But Graham? What could he want?

“Yello,” Paula said into the phone.

“Shit, Paula,” Jase hissed, taking it from her.

“Square your life up, kid,” Paula said, as if she knew anything about it, and walked her flashing antlers out of his face.

Jase heard Graham’s voice hollering through the earpiece. He put the phone to his head and said, “Hey, asshole, what do you want?”

“Jase? Are you kidding me? Don’t you check your messages?”

Jase rubbed his eyes and squinted through the bleary mess his fingers left behind. “Mailbox is full.”

“With my messages. You need to come home.”

“What?”

“You need— Where are you?”

“I don’t know. Paula? Where am I?”

“Who’s Paula? Is that Christmas music?”

“It’s Christmas in July, bitch. So, drink and be merry.”

“You’re wasted.”

“I’m not.” Jase reached for the whiskey tumbler that wasn’t there. “Paula? Where—”

“For crying out loud, Jase,” she called from down the bar. “You’re in Nebraska.”

“Nebraska? Great,” Graham said, huffing and puffing the way Graham liked to huff and puff. “You’re wasted in Nebraska.”

“I see being a millionaire hasn’t pulled the stick out of your ass,” Jase said. “Paula? Where’s my whiskey?”

“It’s right in front of you,” she yelled.

“Oh, so you’re right,” Jase said, closing his hand around the glass in front of him.

“I’m not a millionaire,” Graham said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re not done.”

“Done with what?”

“Dad—there’s more. We don’t get the money yet.”

“We finished the trip. It’s over.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Don’t care,” he said after a pause. “I don’t want the money.”

It was the first time he’d said it out loud. Jase considered it for a beat. I don’t want three million dollars?

He didn’t.

At least, not at that particular moment.

“Too bad,” Graham snapped. “Have you talked to Whitlock?”

“I don’t have anything to say to him.”

“Well, he has plenty to say to you.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

He was about to flip the phone shut when Graham hollered, “Wait! It’s Lindsey.”

Jase put the phone back up to his head. “What about her?”

“Something’s happened,” Graham said.

“Is she okay?”

“You need to come home, Jase.”

“Is she okay?”

“I get you’re bent out of shape about how it ended, but you need to dry out and get your ass home.”

“Graham,” Jase growled.

“Right fucking now, Jase. This is serious.”

“Just tell me what happened to Lindsey. Hello?”

Jase looked at the screen. Graham had already hung up.

He squinted through the fuzzy names in his contact list until he found Lindsey, his finger hovering over the button. The last time he called was the day she’d left him rolling around on the floor of the storage unit in Santa Cruz, pounding the piss out of his brother.

She hadn’t called back.

He snapped the phone shut before he left a drunken message he wouldn’t remember tomorrow.

He wasn’t the guy who got wasted and called a woman for anything other than a warm bed.

He sure as hell wasn’t the guy who begged to be let back into their life.

If she was any other woman, he would’ve deleted her number without a second thought by now.

It wasn’t just the bad ending, or that it was his fault.

Those conditions were as typical as the calluses on his palms from the handlebars of his motorcycle and the first beats of confusion waking up in the third motel room in as many days.

They were life. No, the problem was that this time, for reasons he didn’t fully understand, he couldn’t sleep, or eat, or drive very far, as if any miles on his bike were too many miles to be alone with himself and the memories of how it all went wrong.

All he seemed capable of doing since Lindsey left was drinking.

Something’s happened.

He’d already failed her in every possible way. Still, he pocketed the phone and stood. Or he thought he did, until the floor rushed up to meet him.