106. Chapter 106
“The fuck you say?” Graham was having trouble seeing through his rage. “What do you mean? Why would—”
“Dad asked me to.”
“No,” Graham said, pushing the idea away. He was having trouble breathing, too. “No.”
He couldn’t comprehend how the culmination of the entire trip could fit inside a rectangular box no bigger than the fan in his bedroom window, or that his treacherous brother knew all along where they were headed.
Graham rushed the package, snagging the white envelope off the top before Jase pulled the box away.
“Leave it,” Jase warned. “It’s for her.”
Graham held the card in shaking hands and read the words in his dad’s familiar script aloud: “‘For Lindsey. Open when you’re alone. You’ll know what to do.’”
“Jase, what is this?” she asked.
He handed the box to her. “Here, take it. It’s yours.”
Graham crumpled the card in his fist. “I didn’t drive three thousand miles on some wild goose chase for a package for my ex-girlfriend.”
“She wasn’t your ex when I put it here,” Jase said.
“This is bullshit,” Graham spat. “Open it.”
Lindsey stepped from the shade of the unit and held the package to her chest.
“I said open it!” Graham pushed past his brother. “Open it now.”
“No,” Lindsey said.
“She can’t,” Jase said, inserting himself between them the way he always seemed to do. “You know she can’t.”
“What’s in it? If Dad really sent you here, then you should know,” Graham said.
“He told me not to open it.”
“You drove all the way out here with a box and a note and didn’t think to ask why or look inside?”
“Isn’t that what we all just did? Dad was dying. I did what he asked me to. End of story.”
“Oh, it’s far from the end. You knew where we were going the entire time?”
“I figured we’d get here eventually,” Jase admitted. “I didn’t know it was the last stop until we opened the envelope.”
“You didn’t think the rest of us needed to know?” Graham demanded.
“Dad told me not to tell you, and you know what? I’d do it all over again. Whatever it took to make him happy.”
“Don’t act like anything you’ve done has ever been about Dad. You’ve always only taken care of yourself. Whatever Jase wants or needs, and screw everyone else. You just did it again.” Graham pointed to Lindsey. “With her.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
Graham had promised Helen he wouldn’t. She’d begged him this morning to let it all go. He might’ve been able to if there was something—anything—other than a package for Lindsey at the end of the line.
“You’re sleeping with her,” he screamed at Jase. The knot in his chest burned with the effort.
His brother opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
“You’re fucking sleeping with her,” Graham repeated.
“Graham—” Helen reached out to stop him and he stepped around her.
“I thought just this once you were better than that,” Graham said. “You’re not. This proves it. You’d do anything for the money.”
Lindsey’s head shot up. “What money?”
Jase turned to her. “Lindsey, hold on…”
Graham’s eyes went wider, wilder and his heart hammered against his ribs. He was about to hurt Lindsey, but she needed to know once and for all the kind of man Jase really was, and Graham was the only person in the world left to tell her.
“You still don’t know? He didn’t tell you?”
“Graham, don’t,” Jase said, balling up his fists.
“Dad left us a small fortune and the only way we could get it is if you stuck around until the end of the trip. You’re only here for the money.”
“Graham.” Helen’s voice was almost inaudible.
“Is he serious?” Lindsey asked Jase.
“It’s not how it sounds,” he insisted.
“It’s exactly how it sounds,” Graham cried, kneading the knot in his chest. “Why do you think he chased you down in Austin? Did you think he enjoyed your company? That he cared about you? We were about to lose out on millions if you left.”
“Graham, knock it off,” Jase snarled.
“I’m just getting started. You want to hit me?
You think I care, after how many hits I took this week?
” he asked. “You couldn’t just cut her in.
No, you had to get her to think she actually mattered to you.
I’m sorry, Lindsey, it was all for the money.
He doesn’t want you. He’s just using you to get—”
A spray of blood left Graham’s mouth, splattering on the cement floor. Pain flared in his jaw and through his head. He’d been punched again, and hard this time.
The sound that tore from his lungs was inhuman. He lunged into Jase’s chest and took his brother to the ground.
At the edge of the fray, barely a blip in his periphery, Lindsey turned and walked away.