Chapter Five #2
“—has better luck up north because the earliest the glass will come in is Monday, and that’s not a sure thing with tomorrow being a holiday.” My brother scowls. “You do remember tomorrow is Easter, right?”
“Sure,” I lie. Holidays don’t tend to stick out much in my head these days. We make an effort for Thanksgiving and Christmas with Mom, but the rest tend to go by unnoticed.
It does mean that Wes is going to be relying on me for transportation longer than either of us thought unless he finds someone in Denver willing to work not only a Sunday, but a holiday at that.
My attention wavers back to him pacing by the road.
Even with sunglasses jammed over his eyes, I can see the frustration climbing into his expression, his shoulders high and tight.
He tips his head back and stands there for a long moment, motionless, as though he’s hoping to find an answer in the distant mountain peaks.
Eric sighs, his focus on the car when he says, “You going to stop by Mom’s while you’re here?”
“Wasn’t planning on it. I haven’t even been gone a week.” I don’t want to interrupt the relative peace of my chase season—Wes and his blown-out windows and puzzlingly thoughtful breakfast aside. “I’ll check on her if I have time. Have you or Sam been by?”
Eric only shakes his head. “Been busy with the garage. I called her yesterday. She said she’s fine. You don’t have to do all this shit for her, Sloane. She’s an adult.”
I love my brothers. I do. But as Eric stands there without having the decency to look the slightest bit guilty, the urge to get in my car and leave both him and Wes to solve their own problems is hard to resist.
This is the only break I ever get. Why the hell did I interrupt that for Wes? I might want to beat him fairly, but it’s not even remotely my fault he got himself in this mess.
The man in question growls out a string of curses under his breath as he comes back to where Eric and I are waiting. “I forgot tomorrow is Easter,” he says in a tight, controlled voice. “No one can do anything today. You can get it done Monday when the glass comes in?”
“If I don’t find any nasty surprises, sure,” Eric says easily.
“I’ll pay whatever it takes.”
My brother nods toward the garage behind us. “Come inside and I’ll run a quote. Just need the keys.” His eyes slide toward me and narrow. “You staying at Sloane’s?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” I answer at the same time. Wes lifts a brow at me in question, which I guess is fair with his stuff still spread across my living room.
“We can find you a hotel. That couch is fine for one night but I doubt you want to stay there another two,” I explain, already wondering if it would make me a total asshole to drop him off at a car rental place—if there are even rentals available with the holiday—and head south.
“I’ve slept in far worse places.” Wes flashes another of his broad grins and heads toward the garage.
In search of a distraction, I pull out my phone to check the forecast again. There’s a text from Tracy.
You went home?? AND WHY IS WES WITH YOU?!
“Shit.” I squeeze my eyes shut with a long groan. I forgot about the radar app tracking our locations. Anyone who bothers to look for us can easily see that we’re together. And nowhere near storms.
Before anyone else catches on, I snap a quick photo of the mangled SUV and send it to Tracy. Dumbass finally ran out of luck. We’re at my brother’s garage.
My phone rings immediately.
“Are you okay?” Tracy demands, worry coating every word. “Is Wes okay? What the hell happened?” Then, more muffled, “Did you know Wes wrecked?” and Matt’s distant “What the fuck?”
“We’re fine.” I take a deep breath and quickly explain how we ended up here.
Tracy is quiet when I’ve finished, though I hear Matt’s low curse in the background. “Please tell Wes I said he’s a fucking idiot,” she finally says, worry and fear and anger all wrapped up in one. “Matt agrees.”
“Oh, I did. I’m sure I’ll tell him again.”
“Good.” She sighs. “Does that mean you’re stuck in town? Because Monday is looking really good.”
Of course it is. “I didn’t check the forecast this morning. Where?”
“Southeastern New Mexico into West Texas for Monday. Storms are going to wobble around for the next week before shifting north into Oklahoma and Kansas, possibly Nebraska. Monday’s spot—that’s what, six hours from you?”
“More like eight to ten.” I grimace, glaring at Wes’s SUV. “I should just leave him here and go on my own.”
Of course, if I do that, and I get the cover shot while he’s cooling his heels, he’ll never shut up about it. I can practically hear him complaining that if I hadn’t left him, he could have gotten an even better shot. That I only won because I ditched him.
“Or,” Tracy says, drawing out the r. “You could both leave. In your car.”
“We’ll kill each other before we get out of Colorado,” I protest. But even as I say it, my mind wanders back to my kitchen.
Wes didn’t have to go out and get me coffee or make us breakfast. Just like he didn’t have to do that promo for Mae.
Maybe he’s not all bad—but I’m still not sure I want to be trapped in close quarters with him.
“If we get a good weather pattern, backtracking to pick up his car would cost us days of chasing. We could be stuck together for a while.”
“True.” Tracy hesitates, her tone turning contemplative. “You could always tell him if he pulls any shit you’ll drop him off at the closest airport.” And then, softer, “I think he’d behave, though. He’s really not a bad guy.”
“So you keep saying.” I blow out a breath and glance toward the garage. Signing off on a quote can’t take much longer. If I’m going to do this, I need to make a decision pretty quickly.
It’s not like Wes can just get any old rental, and I doubt the kind of SUV with good tires he’d need is going to be available last-minute right before a holiday. If we don’t go together, neither of us is going—and I really don’t want to sit around my house for the next couple of days.
“I’ll talk to him about it,” I finally relent. “Maybe. Probably.”
“For what it’s worth, I have a feeling it will go a lot better than you’re thinking.”
“I’m going to remind you of that when I dump him at an airport in two days.” Movement catches my eye as the garage office door opens. “Looks like he’s done with Eric.”
“See you in a few days!”
Before I can question her singsong tone, Tracy hangs up, and Wes is crossing the parking lot in his long, ground-eating strides.
I’m surprised to see Eric coming too, now that the garage is about to open, but it turns out he hasn’t come to say goodbye to his big sister so much as dump a problem at my feet.
“All good?”
Wes nods. Eric is the one wearing a scowl. “Mom might call you. She’s looking for help with something.”
Far too aware of the heavy weight of Wes’s stare on me, I struggle to maintain a neutral expression while silently cursing. “Mom doesn’t even know I’m in town,” I remind my brother. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
The guilty shuffle of Eric’s feet tells me what he’s about to say before the words come out of his mouth. “I accidentally told her. She heard his voice”—he gestures to Wes—“and wanted to know who was at the garage with me this early. It just came out.”
“Eric!”
“No one says you have to go.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “You can just ignore her drama, you know. Sam and I do it all the time.”
“Yeah, I’m well aware.” My eyes dart toward Wes before settling back on my brother. “Seriously, you and Sam can’t just figure it out?”
As if on cue, my phone lights up with an incoming call. Mom. Great. I decline the call and start to shove my phone in my pocket, but it just starts ringing again.
“I hate you right now,” I tell Eric, wishing I had never opened my big mouth and had just left Wes on the side of the road.
“Tell her you’re busy.”
“Like that will stop her from calling me for the next two days nonstop.” I take a deep breath and accept the third call, striving for a neutral voice. “Hi, Mom.”
“Oh, so you do know how to answer your phone,” she says by way of greeting. “The lengths I have to go to for my only daughter to speak to me.”
“It’s storm season.”
“Well, Eric says you’re in town. I’m sure you can spare your mother some of your precious time.” She sniffs, the crocodile tears always waiting in the wings for another performance.
“Mom, I really don’t—”
“If you’re already at your brother’s garage, you can drive ten minutes more to my house before you run off again.”
She hangs up without another word, leaving me fuming and embarrassed.
“I’m sure it won’t take long to help your mom out.” Wes slides his hands into his pockets and shrugs like it’s no big deal that he’s getting such an unflattering glimpse into my shit show family life. “Moms like me.”
Oh, my mom will definitely like Wes. That’s the problem.
I resist the urge to scream and stamp my feet like the child I was never allowed to be. “Did she say what she needed when you did your Benedict Arnold routine?” I choke out, still glaring daggers at my brother.
Eric shrugs. “Something about a lamp.”
“A lamp? You and Sam can’t handle a lamp?”
“I’m busy with the garage,” he says with a pointed look at Wes’s SUV. “Sam went to the mountains with his girlfriend’s family for the weekend.”
“And you couldn’t tell Mom you’d just come by after you close up?”
“You and I both know it’s not even going to be about whatever lamp she claims she can’t plug in herself. This is just her way of getting attention. If you would stop playing into it, she’d leave you alone. She never calls me or Sam with this crap other than when you’re gone every spring.”
Familiar irritation floods my veins. I don’t ask much of my brothers. “She’s our mother.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
I wave a hand to cut him off and avoid Wes’s questioning look. “I’ll just go. It’s easier than fighting with her. But you owe me.”