Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
ROB
I don’t make a habit of doing favors for my half-brother. Jonah is and always has been a momma’s boy. A complaining, self-aggrandizing baby. A user. A taker. An asshole.
He’s still the kid who broke my stepmother’s standing mixer and blamed it on me. The boy who ran down the family dog with his bicycle, breaking her leg, because he “wanted to see if he could.” Did he cry afterward? Sure. He also cried after he ruined my life a decade ago. Minxy walked with a limp for the rest of her life, and Jonah’s apology didn’t do me any good either.
He’ll never be able to give back what he took from me—and even if he could, I’d probably refuse on principle. I wouldn’t willingly give him any more excuses to think well of himself.
But my father recently made a point of asking me to make nice with Jonah, so when my brother sent me an SOS text from an unknown number, saying he’d accidentally swapped phones with Sophie and was worried his wedding surprise for her would be ruined, I figured I’d come through for him.
My job doesn’t start until afternoon, something he knows and likes to remind me of. I played a late set last night, and his text this morning woke me with a jolt, my heart hammering until I saw it was just him. Waking me up early was his first sin, and that moment of panic was the second. I wanted to tell him off, but I came anyway, partly because I feel bad for Sophie. Sure, she’s joined the Cult of Jonah and thinks he burps perfume and shits rainbows, just like his mother does, but Sophie comes off as an innocent. Na?ve. Sweet. So accommodating she’d give someone her parking space at Trader Joe’s.
The world isn’t built for people like Sophie Ginnis. I should know—my mother’s a bit like her.
A generous man would say it’s to Jonah’s credit that he wants to marry Sophie. She’s pretty in a girl-next-door way. Wholesome. My first impression of her was that she probably thinks needlepoint is a fun way to waste a couple of hours and has a favorite pie she likes to bake. Her thick honey-brown hair is always pulled back primly, and she wears generic clothes that neither compliment her appearance nor take away from it. She’s not a woman my brother would normally “honor” with a second glance. But I’m guessing he sees what I do, a girl next door with a sunny smile, a compliment for everyone, and the deductive reasoning skills of a smiley face drawn on the dirt of someone’s windshield.
I don’t admire or respect her for it.
Still, I like her a hell of a lot more than I like him.
So, here I am, on the doorstep of a blue Arts and Crafts style house that has seen better decades but bears a bright red door and shutters that reek of Pollyanna. I’ve come to do the decent thing, yet Sophie is glaring at me like I’m the spawn of Satan.
“Well?” she presses when I don’t immediately explain my presence at her elderly relative’s house at 8:30 a.m. on a Friday morning.
Okay, fair enough.
“Yeah, Jonah told me where you live,” I say, shoving my hands into my pockets. “He said there’d been some mix-up, and you have his phone. He?—”
“Did you know?” she snaps. Her sharp tone is like a jolt of caffeine to the system. I stand a little straighter. Study her more closely. Sophie usually looks soft, like the kind of woman an enterprising guy might pick up in the baking section at a grocery store, but there’s something different about her today. Her hair is pulled back in the same ponytail as usual, and she’s already dressed in a Buchanan Brewery shirt and khaki shorts, even though her shift is probably hours off. The expression in her eyes is almost feral, though, and her posture isn’t gentle and accommodating but confrontational.
She also smells a little like…
“Have you been drinking?” I ask.
It was clearly the wrong question, because she bristles and spreads out her arms, taking up more of the doorway, as if she’s worried I might barrel my way into the house. “Yes, Rob, I’ve been drinking. The last time I checked, it’s perfectly legal for me to drink in my own home whenever I please. What are you going to do, tell on me?”
“Uh…no.”
Her cousin Otis appears in the doorframe behind her and gives me a cautious wave. “Hey, what’s up, man? Nice day, huh?”
It’s not overly hot for early June, but he’s practically sweating through his shirt.
Sophie’s lips firm, and she shifts in the doorway, keeping her hands extended. “ Rob has come for Jonah’s phone.”
“I know we weren’t gonna give it to Jonah,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “But what about Rob? He’s a solid?—”
“Rob is here on Jonah’s mission of sin,” she hisses.
A single bark of laughter escapes me. It’s the phrase more than the meaning. Mission of sin . I’m guessing it’s something her great-aunt says, and it’s funny coming from a woman who hasn’t clocked thirty.
Her eyes swivel to me, full of anger but also…
I’ve seen that look in a woman’s eyes before. Sophie’s sad. Heartbroken, even.
Suspicion bites between my shoulder blades. It probably would have come sooner if I weren’t still tired.
Jonah would only ask me for a favor if he were truly desperate. Would he care this much about ruining a surprise for Sophie? Sure, he likes making his big gestures and getting the ego stroking that results from it, but I’m guessing Sophie would normally do him the favor of still acting surprised.
No, now that my brain’s more fully awake, I can tell something else is going on here. My half-brother did something bad, again, and now he’s panicking because he got himself caught and cornered.
“What’d you find on his phone?” I ask, my voice sounding harsh.
My anger is directed at my brother, but she turns back toward me and plants a hand on her hip. Otis is frozen in the background as if he’s forgotten how to move.
For a second I’m distracted by the sight of Sophie’s hand curled around her generous hip. Then she clears her throat, and I meet her gaze. “Are you pretending you don’t know exactly what’s on there? This is why you’ve been such an asshole to me, isn’t it? You knew what Jonah was doing. You’ve probably known all along.”
“He’s cheating on you?” I ask. It’s not the only bad thing I can imagine him doing, but I doubt she’d be this worked up over him lying on his taxes or stealing something from the grocery store to get a dopamine rush.
“You did know.” The hurt in her gaze overpowers the anger, and she slumps against the side of the doorframe. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
I open my mouth to say something, maybe sorry for the Price men. I hate all of them too, mostly , but she saves me from myself by adding, “ I would have warned you .”
“I don’t have a girlfriend right now,” I point out. Again, the wrong thing to say.
“Of course you don’t,” she says tightly, shaking her head. “I’ll bet you’re out with a new woman every night.”
I lift my eyebrows, letting her realize it herself. Jonah’s the one who’s been stepping out, not me.
And I instantly regret it, because her lower lip trembles. Shit. I can see tears welling in her eyes.
“Sophie?” Otis says, and when she turns toward him, he takes two steps backward, colliding with a wall and nearly taking down an aggressively ugly painting of a shepherd herding sheep that look like llamas. “Oh no. We need to get you back to the anger thing. The anger thing was good.”
“I am angry,” she insists in a wobbling voice.
I might not think much of her judgment, but seeing her like this is like a gut punch. It makes me want to deliver a gut punch to the man who’s responsible.
My hand forms a fist as I think about punching Jonah. Something I have absolutely done before, and for good reason. I keep all of the times my fists have met his flesh in my memory bank to take out on special occasions.
But I remember something my mother said to me once . Sometimes people don’t want you to fix things for them, Rob. Sometimes they just need a hug. So I step forward and wrap my arms around Sophie.
She’s soft, and exactly the right height for her ear to be pressed to my heart when she’s against my chest—a weird thing to notice, but let it never be said I’m normal. Her hair smells like flowers, and…
She stiffens as if I’d thrown a bucket of icy water over her. “Oh, no. You do not get to hug me.”
I pull back, fighting a smile for half a second, because at least I got her pissed off again. That’s better than sad and defeated. Shaking my head, I insist, “I didn’t know, Sophie. If I’d known, I would have warned you.”
“Me too,” Otis pipes in.
“So you were just being an asshole because you’re an asshole?” she asks, studying my face. I’d thought her eyes were brown, inasmuch as I’d given them any thought at all, but they’re actually a deep, dark blue, surrounded by thick black lashes. It’s a revelation so surprising that it takes me a second to remember she asked me a question. I decide to keep things simple and nod. It’s not necessary to burden her with my side of the Price family drama. I’m guessing she’d like to shut the door on all of us permanently, and I wouldn’t blame her. It would probably be the best thing that ever happened to her.
I glance at Otis, who looks like he’s not sure where he should be but would prefer to be somewhere other than where he is. “So, where’s the phone, bud? Seems like Soph should bring it back to Jonah personally.”
Sophie flinches. “He’s in a meeting with an important client?—”
“Exactly,” I say pointedly. “Wouldn’t it be a pity if someone barged in and let the world know what an absolute waste of life he is?”
Otis gives a cheer. “I’m gonna go grab it from the freezer.”
I don’t know why the phone is in the freezer, and I’m not interested in asking. My focus is on Sophie.
I notice she hasn’t agreed yet—and also that she still has Jonah’s engagement ring on her finger. My gaze shifts to the little bungalow next door, where an elderly woman with purple hair is openly watching us from behind gauzy curtains. I wave, and she pops down as if to hide. I can still very much see her, but I let it go because I don’t want her to break a hip trying to get fully out of view.
My gaze returns to Sophie. She seems to be waffling, and I don’t want her to give up. I don’t want her to give Jonah the chance to put one of his legendary spins on this.
“Follow your instincts,” I tell her in an undertone as Otis appears with the phone, clutched in an oven mitt.
“She doesn’t need to do that,” he says, waving the phone. “She has evidence. Remember the evidence, Sophie. Don’t let him dismiss what we saw. I took screenshots of everything before I put the phone in the freezer.”
I’d like to know what they found. Then again, there’s a possibility it’s a photo of my brother’s dick, and I already have trouble sleeping at night.
I also don’t want to say or do anything that might unintentionally make Sophie cry.
Maybe this is a sign that I’m yet another Price man who’s a selfish asshole, but I can’t handle tears right now. It still isn’t my normal wake-up time, and it’s already been a crap day.
Her chin lifts as she takes the phone from him, immediately flinching from the cold.
“Sorry, sorry,” Otis says, taking the glove off and handing it to her. She frowns at it. I’m hit with a sudden vision of her storming into Jonah’s meeting with an oven mitt on her hand and dropping the phone into his lap. It’s enough to make me smile—but as soon as I do, Sophie glowers at me.
“This is no laughing matter.”
“Agreed,” I say, wiping the look off my face.
She straightens her spine and hands the oven mitt back to Otis.
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks in a tone that suggests he desperately wants her to say no.
She considers for a few seconds before shaking her head. “Just don’t drink any more of those IPAs in case you need to drive.”
“Is someone going to offer me a drink?” I ask, earning another dark look from Sophie. I lift a hand. “Kidding. Let’s go.”
“Wait, you want to come with me?” she asks, her expression shifting to shock. “But why?”
“Consider me your designated driver,” I say pointedly, even though I doubt she drank enough to need one. Truth is, this is my way of ensuring she sticks to the course.
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Otis says. “You definitely shouldn’t be driving right now, Soph, and not just because of the beer. Remember when Grandma was so upset by that episode of The Young and the Restless that she hit a fire hydrant? I told her it was just a rerun, but she hadn’t seen it before, and?—”
“I’m perfectly capable of driving myself.”
“So maybe I want to see this go down,” I say, lifting my eyebrows. “Jonah pulled me into this, and I’d like to see it bite him in the ass.”
She watches me with suspicious eyes, but then understanding filters into them. “You’re worried I won’t go through with it if I don’t have someone with me.”
I shrug.
“But are you sure you want to be involved in this? He’s your brother.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s exactly why I want to do it. If I don’t help teach him a lesson, who will?”
I’m lucky I’ve learned to lie without flinching. Truth is, I don’t think any kind of consequence exists that will transform Jonah Price into anything other than what he is.
Maybe I just want to see the look on his face when he’s confronted with the truth of who he is, the way we all are at least once in our lives.