66. Chapter 66
“Did you know about the whole Kid thing?” Graham asked.
Not Your Oasis was safely behind them, its fetid stink still clinging to their clothes and hair. Jase ran a hand down his face to clear the dust from a day that just wouldn’t fucking end and said, “No. You?”
“No,” Graham said, his eyes flicking to Jase in the rearview mirror then back to the dark road. “Every stop we make, I feel like I know Dad less and less. Don’t you think it’s a little odd he never mentioned any of this?”
It wasn’t a conversation Jase wanted to have. There wasn’t any conversation fit to take place after a night with the Desert Demons.
He sighed. “Dad was in his thirties when he met Mom. Thirty years is a lot of living before he settled down. He was a different person back then.”
“We didn’t know about his life with Mom either.”
“He was a different person,” Jase exclaimed. “And it was too painful to talk about. Can you understand that?”
“He’d have to care about someone other than himself to understand,” Lindsey suggested.
“He does, you’re just upset it isn’t you,” Helen said.
Jase reached across the back seat to Lindsey and shook his head.
“You can keep him, honey,” Lindsey said, ignoring Jase for the twentieth time that day.
“I didn’t realize until tonight how perfect you are for each other.
You were both in relationships when you got back together, and neither of you had the decency to end it before moving on. You’re made for each other.”
“We’re not doing this now,” Graham warned. He eyed Jase in the rearview again. “Dad being part of a murderous biker gang is the kind of thing he should’ve told us. Especially sending us in there without any warning.”
“They weren’t going to kill us,” Jase said, though he wouldn’t have bet his life on it. “He told us what we needed to say. And it’s a club, not a gang.”
“Semantics.”
“Dad wasn’t part of it anyway.”
“He was sleeping with the ringleader. How much farther in did he need to get? Who cares if he didn’t have a tattoo on his arm?”
“He wasn’t a Demon,” Jase insisted. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? You’re never going back there.”
“Are you?”
“No,” Jase lied. He didn’t feel like telling Graham he planned to ride the PCH in California with Curly in memory of their dad.
“Why not?” Lindsey asked. “I thought they were nice.”
“They were nice for wanting to rape you before cutting you up into little pieces?” Graham shot back.
“Wouldn’t be much different than going out with you.”
“I seriously hope you’re kidding,” Graham said.
“Why don’t you just admit you were using me at the end?”
“Lindsey,” Jase said.
“What? I’m tired of playing nice. She wasn’t even supposed to be here.”
“Yes, she was,” Graham said, so softly Jase wasn’t sure he’d heard it.
“What?” Lindsey demanded.
Jase silently willed his brother to keep his mouth shut.
“I said yes, she was,” Graham repeated.
“Here we go.” Jase braced himself on the car door.
“Dad sent Helen his bottle of Pappy Van Winkle.”
“Not the 23,” Lindsey said.
“The 23. Yes.”
“Why would he do that?”
Graham shifted his grip on the wheel.
“Please stop talking,” Jase whispered to anyone who would listen.
“To drink together when I got there,” his brother said.
She looked at Jase. He couldn’t do anything but shake his head and quietly curse.
“He wouldn’t,” she insisted.
“He did, Linds. What’s left of it is in the back if you want proof.”
The car was quiet while the truth settled among them. Finally, Lindsey steeled herself and said, “You told me you didn’t know you were going to see her.”
“I didn’t. He did.”
“Graham, that’s enough,” Jase warned. I’m going to have so much work to do after this. There’s no way she’ll stay.
“She wasn’t in the will,” Lindsey argued. “Just because he knew you’d go see her, doesn’t mean he wanted her to come along with us.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, she’s here and she’s staying,” Graham said.
Lindsey was quiet and Jase dared to hope the silence was permanent.
“Did you tell her about the morning we came to Austin?” she asked after a beat.
Whatever she was about to say, Jase didn’t want to hear it. Graham didn’t either.
“Lindsey,” Graham said, “this isn’t funny.”
“Never said it was. But I think she gets a very different version of you than I did. Shouldn’t she see all your sides if she’s going to marry you?”
“What is she talking about?” Helen asked.
“You’re smart,” Lindsey snapped. “Figure it out.”
“Lindsey,” Jase said.
“He slept with me. That morning.”
“Lindsey,” Jase hissed.
“That’s right, Helen dear. Your precious fiancé had sex with both of us on the same day. I mean, assuming you consummated your engagement in Austin.”
There was a pause. Helen stared at Graham.
“You said no more secrets,” she said quietly.
“It wasn’t a secret. It didn’t think it mattered—”
Graham cut himself off as if he’d said the wrong thing.
“Pull over,” Helen barked.
“What?” Graham asked.
“Pull over. Now!”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere.” Graham gestured to the trees hugging both sides of the road growing thicker with every mile they put between them and Not Your Oasis.
“Stop the fucking car.”
Graham stopped the fucking car. Helen jumped out and Graham followed her, screaming apologies in her wake.
“See how he chases after her?” Lindsey asked. “Disgusting.”
A few days ago, Jase would’ve agreed. Today, seeing how committed his brother was to the woman who was clearly letting him have it in the headlight beams, he wasn’t sure.
Jase sighed and it was louder than he expected in the quiet car. “You’re not going to want to hear this, Linds, but you need to let it go.”
Her eyes flared in the dark.
“I know it’s the shit,” Jase said quickly. “For all our sakes, you have to let it go.”
“Why should I?”
“We’re never going to make it if you can’t.”
In the headlight beams, Graham was animated in his attempts to reassure Helen. Then he grabbed her face and kissed her in a desperate, panicked way.
“You know what’s even more disgusting?” Lindsey asked after watching for a few beats. “How long I waited for him to love me like that.”
Until this moment, seeing her blink back tears while her ex-boyfriend kissed another woman in the middle of the road, Jase never really got it.
Never considered the year she spent with Graham as real time.
Dates and meals and texts and family stuff and sex and sleeping in the same bed.
Lindsey should’ve been hunkered down with her people, getting over her heartbreak, and instead she was stuck in a front-row seat to Graham moving back into the life he never really left, even during the year they were together.
“Lindsey,” he said. Nothing else came out.
She turned to her window. Jase reached into the front seat and honked the horn. Graham and Helen got back in the car and Jase leaned over to take Lindsey’s hand, giving it a squeeze. She surprised him by squeezing back.
And he surprised himself by not letting it go.