2. Chapter 2
Graham stared at the two-story stone house after he ended the call. Jase would come.
He’d better fucking come.
It was a nice house. Maybe if he’d said it more often, Jason Young Sr. would’ve left the house Graham grew up in to at least one of his sons, instead of giving it away, as if it wasn’t worth a small fortune, to someone who wasn’t even family.
Lindsey and I were dating when Dad made the will. Did he think we’d stay together?
Unlikely. His dad also sent Graham to Austin, back to Helen, as if he’d known Graham and Lindsey wouldn’t survive the trip. So then, what? Was the house a consolation prize for Lindsey? An apology?
Graham rubbed his chest with his palm. The knot under his ribs was growing steadily tighter, and if Graham wasn’t texting his brother to come home, he was googling “chest pain and shortness of breath.” He was either suffering from acute anxiety—his socials were chock-full of ads for antidepressants now—or on the verge of death.
If Jase didn’t get his ass back here, someone was going to die.
He shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts and followed the yellow glow from the copper lantern beside the front door up the walkway and inside.
Helen and Lindsey were in the kitchen. He’d read about survivors needing to adopt a new normal after a death.
Graham’s fiancée and his ex-girlfriend spending time together was new, but normal?
He wasn’t sure he wanted it to be, though there was less risk of getting punched in the face if they were getting along.
“Well?” Helen asked from a stool at the large center island that split the room between the stainless-steel appliances and the hand-carved table near the patio. “How’d it go?”
“He was wasted, that’s how it went.” Graham sighed. He reached through her curtain of shiny black hair and massaged the back of her neck. “Guy’s a total mess.”
Helen glanced at Lindsey. His ex-girlfriend was putting a pizza in the oven.
“Is he coming?” Helen asked.
“I don’t know.”
Her face fell. As much as he hated disappointing her, there was no point in lying if his brother didn’t come riding up the driveway in a few days. Graham swirled his second glass of bourbon for the night, a habit he’d taken on in the last few months. Swirling drinks. Watching ice melt in liquor.
“Let me see the deed again,” he said.
“It’s the same as it was the last time you read it, Graham,” Helen said. He hated this development too—his fiancée becoming his ex-girlfriend’s advocate, trying to keep his anger over losing his childhood home in check in front of Lindsey.
The oven door closed with a metal clang that was probably as jarring as Lindsey meant it to be.
Her long brown hair, curlier than usual, flung around her shoulders as she grabbed a packet of papers off the counter and tossed it to Graham.
He didn’t know what he was reading. Legal jargon.
Lindsey’s full name—Lindsey Marie Adams—his father’s signature.
“What did you tell him?” Lindsey asked.
Skimming the papers, Graham said, “Enough to get him to come back, I hope. Nothing else.”
“Not about the house?”
“I don’t know anything about the house.”
“How did he sound?” Lindsey asked.
She was too hopeful. From the wasted optimism in her voice to the skimpy shorts Graham would’ve once found distracting, it was as if Lindsey expected Jase to show up any minute. He’d warned her about his brother. It could be months before Jase showed his face.
If ever.
“Like I said, he’s a mess.” Graham dropped the papers on the counter and ran a hand through his beard. What was his old man thinking, leaving Lindsey the house? It didn’t make sense. “I’ll try him again in the morning. Hopefully he’s dried out by then.”