Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
BOBBY
Then
Nathaniel Bynow-Madsen wasn’t the biggest asshole on campus at the University of Richmond School of Law, but he was certainly nipping at the heels of those guys.
If he sneeringly called me “charity case” one more time, he’d be swallowing teeth.
We were supposed to be celebrating tonight after completing the Virginia Bar Exam.
Two whole damn days of it. There had been nine essay questions and ten multiple choice questions on the first day that had focused on Virginia law and two hundred multiple choice questions on national law the second day.
We wouldn’t find out for another ten to twelve weeks if we’d passed or not, but there was no point worrying about it now.
In fact, there was nothing to do now except get blind drunk.
The bar in Jackson Ward wasn’t my type of place.
It was Nathaniel Bynow-Madsen’s type of place, though, and he showed it by slinging an arm around my shoulders, grinning, and saying, “I’ll bet you’ve never had Japanese whisky before, have you, Robert?
I’ll bet you’re more used to moonshine, aren’t you?
Pairs nicely with that roadkill stew your grandpappy taught you how to make. ”
And then he puffed a mouthful of smoke right into my face.
Three years this piece of shit had been all over my ass, and tonight I was finally free of him.
I shook his arm off and pulled mine back, fingers curling into a fist, and suddenly someone was grabbing me and hauling me away.
“Don’t do it,” Granger Kelley said, his floppy fringe falling into his eyes. “Seriously, Bobby, don’t do it.”
Granger was about the only guy who could get away with calling me Bobby, because he didn’t sound like he was talking down to the help when he did it, so I let him steer me out of the bar and into the street before I did something stupid.
It was late and the night was humid. We moved a little ways down the street and leaned against the wall of a restaurant that had closed a few hours ago while I reined in my temper.
Granger rested the sole of one shoe against the wall and dug in the pocket of his jeans for his pack of Newports and the fancy gold Zippo his father had given him when he got into law school.
The Zippo rasped and belched out a flame, and Granger’s handsome features were illuminated in the flickering light as he bent his head to light his cigarette.
He had the sort of angles to his face that caught your attention and held it.
Chiseled, like a Renaissance statue of a god or a hero, where you knew the sculptor was in desperate love, or at least lust, with the model.
When Granger Kelley walked into a room, people looked.
When he walked through it, their gazes followed him.
Hell if I knew what he saw in me, though. I just felt blessed that he’d noticed me at all, I guessed, and I didn’t question my luck by asking about the whys of it. Maybe that was because, deep down, I worried that I knew the answer and I didn’t like it.
Robert James Merritt. Twenty-five years old, which ought to have been old enough to know better, but wasn’t.
Not the best-looking guy on campus, but not the worst either—I’d dodged more hits with the ugly stick than I’d taken, but only barely.
I’d met Granger when we’d both pledged Alpha Tau back at Lassiter—him with all the easygoing confidence of a legacy and me nervously vibrating at a pitch that dogs could hear from a mile away.
We had nothing in common apart from both being in the same place at the same time, but I’d not-so-secretly basked in Granger’s attention and—somehow—he’d liked me.
I told myself we’d been friends ever since, but it was more than that.
Or maybe it was less than that. Sometimes I thought the only thing I had going for me was that I was convenient, easy, and I kept my mouth shut.
But all of my insecurities were really hard to remember as I stared at Granger and he stared back, his mouth quirking up into a cocky grin.
He breathed out smoke, then leaned his head back against the wall as he looked up at the sky. If he was searching for stars, there weren’t any. The city lights drowned them out. He took another drag on his cigarette, then tilted his head back down and said, “Nate’s an asshole. Fuck him.”
“I wouldn’t fuck him with someone else’s dick.”
Granger’s eyes widened, and laughter exploded out of him with a cloud of smoke. “Jesus Christ, Bobby!”
Like he was both delighted and appalled, which was how things usually shook out when I opened my mouth.
I never minded since I liked to make him laugh, and Granger never made it feel like he was laughing at me.
Not like a lot of people. My own fault, probably, for daring to think I had any place at the table of Virginia’s finest. The proudest day of my life had been when I got my scholarship to Lassiter.
Followed that up with four years of being looked down on for it.
Then I’d gone and done it again here at the Richmond School of Law, studying alongside people who thought I wasn’t fit to pump their gas.
Fuck ’em all to hell, as my Aunt Ginny used to say.
As life philosophies went, it was a solid one.
I reached out and grabbed Granger by the front of his shirt. His eyes widened, and he caught my wrist before I could pull him into a kiss.
He pushed my hand aside. Drew on his cigarette again. “Fuck’s sake. Not in the street.”
As though there was anyone who might see us.
But Granger was right. I’d drunk enough to be too bold for our own good, so I pulled my wrist free from his grip and laughed like it wasn’t a big deal.
Wasn’t that what we’d both been playing at these last few years?
That none of what we did was a big deal.
And maybe it wasn’t, except lately it had been feeling less like a thing we did and more like who we were, and it seemed like that was a whole lot harder to ignore.
“Hey,” Granger said, exhaling another cloud of smoke. “Wanna go away for the week?”
“What? When?”
He grinned at me. “Now.”
“What?”
“My uncle has a place he lets me use.” Granger shrugged, shoulder shifting in that casual, easy way of his, because he was good-looking and rich and he didn’t have to work nights and weekends at Phar-Mor to cover the shortfall between his scholarship and his rent.
I laughed again, because what the hell did I care about my job anymore?
I’d just sat for the bar exam and fucking aced it too, and who cared if I had to live off corned beef hash for a month or two until I got a job at a law firm?
I imagined the face of my asshole manager at Phar-Mor when I didn’t turn up for work.
I knew what my Aunt Ginny would say.
“Fuck ’em,” I said, grinning. “Let’s go away.”
I was still too drunk to drive, and Granger never would have let me behind the wheel of his BMW coupe anyway, so I was riding shotgun as we headed out of Richmond.
It was just coming up on dawn as we headed down I-95, and I dug around in the glove compartment looking for a pair of sunglasses to put on.
Granger was always tossing them in there and forgetting about them.
It was better stocked than a Sunglass Hut.
I found a pair of Ray-Bans I liked and slipped them on, cutting out the glare from the early morning sunlight. Granger glanced across at me and said, “They suit you. You should keep them.”
“Maybe I will,” I said, doing my best to ignore the squirming in my gut.
The glasses were probably worth more than my monthly grocery bill, but Granger was treating them like they’d come from the dollar store.
And it wasn’t that he didn’t know what they’d cost. He just didn’t care.
He’d never been one to get hung up on labels—which was probably why he was hanging out with me, let’s be real.
It was also one of the reasons I liked him so much.
Too much, probably.
“Where are we going anyway?” I asked.
Granger’s mouth tilted up in a grin. “Goose Run.”
“No, geese fly,” I said.
Granger laughed. “Goose Run is a place. A nothing little town, but the lake’s nice. It’s where Uncle John’s cabin is.”
“Well, wake me up when we get there,” I said, reclining my seat and closing my eyes. I figured I might as well get some rest now because, if I had my way, we sure as hell weren’t going to be sleeping when we got to the cabin.
I dozed on and off for the rest of the trip, and the sun had risen properly when Granger put a hand on my shoulder and shook me awake. “We’re here.”
I looked around at the run-down gas station as Granger pulled up to the pump.
Singular. There were potholes littering the parking lot, and the lone gas pump looked like it was last used around the turn of the century—last century, not this one.
Straggly weeds grew up through cracks in the asphalt, and there was a thin film of dirt on the windows.
A neon sign that said OPEN flickered on and off in the window, declaring OPE.
“You sure this place is open?” I asked doubtfully.
“Yep. I told you it was a nothing town,” Granger said, grinning.
We got out of the car. The inside of the gas station was just as neglected as the outside.
An older guy with rough stubble sat behind the counter reading a magazine, and he glanced up and heaved a sigh when the bell over the door rang.
We approached the counter and Granger pulled out his wallet, but I shook my head. “Let me.”
He opened his mouth, caught the determined gleam in my eye, and closed it again.
He was a smart guy, so it hadn’t taken him long after we met to figure out that him paying for everything rubbed me wrong.
He might not fully understand it—and I sure as hell wasn’t going to explain it to him—but when I offered to pay, he always went along with it.
And later we’d both pretend there wasn’t an extra twenty in my wallet that hadn’t been there before.