Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Myles
The funeral home looked like it could be an insurance office building, all angles and glass walls. A residential area sprawled on one side of the place and a church and an actual insurance office were on the other side. Where was the mountain view?
A lanky young man was standing outside the funeral home, surrounded by a cloud of smoke. He was adding to the cloud, squinting and crooking his mouth as he exhaled.
His shaggy hair could use a trim—or a hacksaw—and his scruff should just go. I parked and got out. He took a drag and eyed me. A guy always on the defense. I used to have the same look. I probably still did.
“Lane?” I asked.
The man’s eyes narrowed. He took another slow puff from his smoke and studied me. I continued walking toward him. If he didn’t want to answer, I’d go inside and find someone who would. I had quit putting up with a lot of Gianna’s bullshit. I wasn’t tolerating a stranger’s, blood relative or not.
“Cruz,” he said when I almost walked past him, getting a chilly lungful of cigarette smoke.
I stopped and looked him over. Christ, was he even eighteen? “You and Lane want to hold our happy reunion after we deal with paperwork bullshit?”
He shrugged like he didn’t care either way. “Speaking of paperwork bullshit…” He took another pull, then tossed the butt on the ground and let it smolder against the cold concrete. “You got Venmo or something to pay for this?”
Once I’d gotten the info on where and when, I had expected to fork over all the cash needed to take care of Gianna’s remains. But if that was all my brothers tried to fleece out of me, I’d be surprised.
A small tendril of sympathy cinched around my chest, weak and fragile but still there. If this kid was over twenty, I’d be shocked. Lane couldn’t be that much older. Had they had more contact with Gianna? Had they been closer to her? Had they been smothered by the python of her manipulation?
I had assumed I would have to pay to be out of their lives, but I hadn’t considered wanting to stay instead. How did they feel? “Where’s Lane?”
Cruz kicked his almost-burned-out cigarette off the sidewalk and into the snow-packed lawn with his heavy black boot. How magnanimous of him. He jutted his chin toward the door.
I walked in with him, his fresh-ashtray smell surrounding both of us. He went around the corner to an office that said Director, but he didn’t go inside.
“You can tell me how fucking much it costs all you want, doesn’t mean I’m going to shit out a gold brick.” The deep, hostile voice had to be Lane. I’d heard Gianna use the same phrase.
“I understand that you’re upset,” someone responded.
An older man, probably the director or some other poor schmuck used to dealing with broke-ass family members.
Family members who were embarrassed and pissed they’d been left with the bills of a defunct mother who’d smoked or injected or drank all of their money.
When I appeared in the office door, Lane looked over. He resembled Cruz with the longish dark hair and dark scruff. He had brown eyes like his brother. Same dad? Some guy who’d funded Gianna’s habits for more than a few years?
Instead of dressing like he fronted a grunge band, he wore jeans with holes and a ratty sweater.
“About fucking time.” Lane pushed out of his chair. He gave me an appraising look from head to toe, his mouth curling when it reached my loafers. I had dressed the same as I would for the office. The only difference was the long, black wool coat and cream scarf.
I returned the inspection. Lane didn’t appear much older than Cruz, but his eyes said otherwise. How often had Lane put himself between Gianna and Cruz? How much had he hid what our mother was really like so Cruz didn’t have to experience what we had?
I switched my gaze to the pleasant man behind the desk.
He’d be about Darin’s age, which for some reason, made me instantly calm.
I’d be a dick to hate the guy on sight with his wire-rimmed glasses, thinning gray and blond hair, and cream-colored sweater over a dress shirt.
No one could look more harmless or more ready to help grieving families deal with their loved one’s burial.
He glanced impassively between all of us, but relief filled his face when he met my gaze.
He rose and extended his hand. “Hello. John Silvan. Nice to meet you.”
I shook his hand. Firm, cool grip and a bit of surprise. But he had to have a backbone to still be tolerating Lane’s attitude. “Myles Foster. Whatever you need, I’ll take care of it.”
The relief magnified. “Have a seat. You’re, uh…” He glanced from Lane to Cruz.
“Brothers,” I finished as I draped my coat, folded, over the back of an office chair, and sat. I left out that this was my first time meeting them. Fuck, I looked like I could be their father. Did we have the same last name?
“Right. Your brothers are welcome to stay.”
My estimation of John went up. He could’ve booted them, and I wouldn’t have argued. By the time I was their age, I had learned how pointless outbursts were. Except for the night I got drunk, which would’ve been pointless if it hadn’t been for Darin.
Lane scoffed, but he stayed seated. Cruz leaned against the door.
John ran through the paperwork for the cremation, where the remains could be interned since none of us wanted to cart Gianna around or have her toxic ashes on a mantel. When he got to the cremation casket, I tapped one of the top-line options.
Lane sat forward. “Why are you wasting money on her?”
“I’m not,” I said calmly, but my estimation of him rose. It wasn’t greed in his tone, like he’d expected me to dole out the extra to him instead. He was incensed for me, that I was wasting money on Gianna. “It’s for the funeral home’s generosity.”
Cruz snorted and shook his head. He hadn’t moved from the door. Was he invested in Gianna’s aftercare, or curious about me?
John’s silver brows lifted. “Oh, it’s unnecessary, but your generosity is appreciated. For an urn, would you like….” He opened another pamphlet. I went for another higher-rated option.
“You’re getting that urn?” Lane shook his head. The urn was fancy, too nice to be stuck in a dark space for eternity, but I didn’t care.
“All right.” John shuffled papers. “That’s all taken care of. Lane said a private ceremony was unnecessary, but I recommend—”
“He was right.”
John gave one nod and moved on. “For the final resting spot, we can do a burial or a columbarium. You can also—”
“Burial.” The weight of Lane’s and Cruz’s attention was on me.
I wasn’t going to explain in front of John my driving need to have a place to go to curse her out or just sit and pretend that maybe I’d had a normal life, if only for a little while.
I wouldn’t discuss what I felt with my brothers either.
If they didn’t have the same thoughts, I’d only be left the fool.
The older, wiser, yet more attached brother.
If they did have the same emotions clogging their chests, I doubted they wanted to talk about it either.
I took care of the expense immediately to keep John from stressing about an awkward conversation.
John folded his hands on his desktop. “I’ll be in touch with you when we’re ready for Gianna’s burial.”
How weird was it to hear her name come out of someone’s mouth so respectfully. There were no hushed tones because you know what she’s like. As if talking about her would damage me further or summon the beast herself.
“Thanks,” I said gruffly. “You have my number.”
He’d made sure to get that first thing. I rose and got into my jacket. My brothers shuffled out before me.
Lane shoved his hands in his front pockets and meandered toward the door. “What now?”
An irritated how about a thank-you? nearly left me. Then I’d officially be the crotchety old man. “How ’bout we go somewhere to talk?”
Cruz fell into step beside me. “Do you really live in a mansion?”
Lane rolled his eyes at his brother, but he watched me like he was intent on the answer.
“No. I have a loft where I work. A mansion is a waste of money.”
“Which you got a lot of,” Cruz said, half a question, half a statement.
Yes. “I do all right.” I stopped to face both of them before we headed out the door. “And only because of the generosity of one family who was pivotal to me not being an epic fuckup. Maybe I’d have done okay without them, I don’t know, but I’m grateful as fuck I didn’t have to find out.”
“And your point is?” Lane came off flippant, but his gaze was shrewd.
“No free handouts. You want to talk and get to know me? I’d like that.
Finding out I had family was a big goddamn shock.
” I kept my voice down. John was likable enough, but he didn’t need to know Foster business.
“But I’m not interested in fielding calls and messages for money to pay for houses and cars. ”
“That would be an apartment,” Lane said smoothly. “And I now have her car.”
“You got a job to keep them both up?”
The muscles flexed at the corners of his jaw. He was almost as tall as me. Cruz was slightly taller, always looking down his nose at someone if he wasn’t slouched against a wall having a smoke.
“I work.”
I slid my gaze toward Cruz.
He shrugged. “I’m between jobs at the moment.”
Lane’s jaw was granite. Yeah, he’d spent his life covering for his brother and protecting him. He’d taken on a role that should’ve been mine. Fucking Gianna.
“How long has that moment been?” I shook my head. “Are you out of school?”
His dark brows drew together. “I’m nineteen, asshole.”
“And you?” I asked Lane.
“Twenty-two.”
“I was right, then. Just as I got out of the system and away from her, she had more kids.” I normally wouldn’t have confirmed my suspicions out loud but I needed these two to know what our mother was like. That they should question a lot of damn things she’d told them over the years.
Lane huffed out a breath. “Fuck.”
Cruz shrugged. “I’m just a happy accident.”
Lane shot him a glare. “You were her trying to baby trap our dad when he got sick of her shit.”