45. Chapter 45
Jase watched Lindsey’s jaw hit the patio bricks watching Graham profess his undying love to Helen.
It wasn’t just her ex-boyfriend promising the world to another woman right in front of her, it was the world itself.
Every woman, in Jase’s experience, wanted a man to make the kind of vows that gave her a reason to stick around through their boyfriend drinking too much or smoking too much weed or being content to sit in one place—even a crappy apartment—for too long.
Jase hadn’t promised her anything.
He sat back in his chair, slipping his hand off Lindsey’s leg.
“What are you most afraid of?” she asked.
His sigh set the flames jumping. Graham and Helen were kissing, and Lindsey wanted to know what scared him.
“Where do I start?” he murmured.
Always being this. Never being more or better.
Keeping you. Losing you. Keeping you too long then losing you.
Never seeing this house again. Never seeing you again.
Waking up on the other side of the country, with you, wondering what I was thinking.
Waking up on the other side of the country, without you, wondering what I was thinking.
He wasn’t prepared to admit any of those things. After a drink he turned it back on her. “You? What’re you most afraid of?”
Helen, apparently done making out with his brother, answered for her: “Failure.”
Lindsey tipped her bottle across the fire at Helen, who was cozied up in Graham’s lap.
“That ranks pretty high up there,” Lindsey agreed. “Next question.”
Jase held the box out to Lindsey, and she drew an envelope.
“H-how—” she stammered. “How do you really feel about Lindsey inheriting the house?”
Silence. Nothing but crickets and frogs on the pond and furrowed brows around the fire, until Helen said, “Relieved.”
Graham’s head snapped up, and she shrugged.
“Right,” Jase said, his voice coming out as gravelly and tired as he felt. “It was the right thing to do.”
“That’s not a feeling,” Lindsey said.
“It feels right, Linds.” Jase lifted his bottle to his lips. “I was never here anyway.”
“I was.”
All eyes flicked to Graham.
“Maybe not enough,” he said, pressing a palm into his chest. Graham hadn’t been rubbing his chest as much lately, and Jase almost stopped worrying about it. “When it mattered, I was here.”
“Except the day he—” Lindsey stopped herself from saying died. Graham pinned her with his glare anyway.
“Graham,” Jase warned.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Lindsey said. “He never told me his plan.”
“Then why?” Graham demanded. “Why you?”
“I don’t know,” she insisted. “Why did he do any of this? Why include me in the first place? Why include Helen? If this was all about you and Jase, he could’ve kept us out of it. You think I wanted this? What am I supposed to do with it, Graham?”
“Whatever you want, apparently.”
“Drop it,” Jase said.
“You want it?” Lindsey asked over the flames. “Take it. It’s yours.”
“No.”
Now all eyes flicked to Helen, who stood and put a few feet between her and the chair Graham seethed in.
“This is our chance to get out, Graham,” she said carefully. “I want to make our own life.”
“We will. This isn’t about a house, anyway. It’s why I—we”—he motioned to Jase—“why we don’t get a say in what happens to the place we grew up in. Our mother’s house. Why is it all up to her?”
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Helen asked. “It’s like your proposal. He gave her a reason to stay.”
All eyes fell on Jase, as if it was his fault.
“I’m out,” Lindsey said, standing.
“Out? You’re leaving?” Graham asked.
“Out of beer.”
She held up her bottle and headed for the garage.
Jase flipped open the lid of the cooler between him and Graham. “There’s plenty in here.”
She didn’t look back, which meant they were in deep shit. Graham dropped his head and swore.
“You’d better try to fix this,” Helen said to Jase when she should’ve been jacking up her fiancé for throwing a hissy fit.
“You’d better hope I can,” he told his brother, and took off after her, feeling like a world-class prick.
Chasing Lindsey was definitely about the money this time.