58. Chapter 58
“I couldn’t find the regular bowls,” Luke said.
Lindsey sat at the kitchen table beside where her brother crouched over a giant mixing bowl of brightly colored cereal, milk dripping from the cleft in his chin.
“But you found this junk?” She shook the box Jason Sr. must’ve kept as a guilty pleasure. Or just a pleasure. He wasn’t the kind of man who felt guilty about the things he enjoyed. “You’re a doctor. You should know this stuff will kill you.”
“Not fast enough.”
She set his dry clean-only clothes, fresh from the dryer and miraculously not ruined, on the table between them. The blood on the cuffs of his shirt had turned a faded brown.
“Your face looks good,” she said. “Considering.”
“Head wounds bleed excessively. The injury wasn’t bad.”
Lindsey studied the cuts on his fingers as he scooped another spoonful into his mouth.
“Do you need some pain medicine?” she asked.
“Jase hooked me up already.”
“Hm.”
The bruises on Jase’s own knuckles had finally faded after his fight with Graham in the Santa Cruz storage unit. Two nights ago, she’d kissed each one after he did some particularly interesting things to her body with his hands.
Last night she hadn’t touched him at all.
“What is this, Luke?” Lindsey asked, needing to focus on something—anything—besides Jase and the dark-haired, pregnant reason they weren’t touching or talking. “Don’t you need to go to work?”
“Called in. First time in ten years. I’d say I’m due.”
“And then what?”
He shoveled another spoonful past his cracked lips.
“You can stay here as long as you need to.”
“Oh yeah, this is your house now, isn’t it?” He glanced around the kitchen Jason updated two years earlier. “It’s nice.”
“I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Like what?” he mumbled with a mouthful of cereal.
“This. Passing out on couches, getting in fights.”
“I didn’t even need stitches.”
“Oh, what a relief.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “Luke, you—you’re the one who’s always put together. You’re Dad’s golden child, and you’re sitting here in another man’s clothes eating cereal out of a mixing bowl.”
“Dad would be so proud,” he scoffed. “He’s the reason I’m here.”
“What do you mean?”
Luke dropped his spoon in the puddle of pink milk and looked away. “It’s all I ever heard. ‘You can be whatever you want Luke, as long as it’s a doctor.’”
“I thought you loved practicing medicine,” she said.
His leg twitched under the table, rocking his whole body.
“It was his dream,” he said. “My only option. You have no idea how much pressure it was being first. By the time they got to Louis, Dad didn’t have the energy to care anymore. Environmental lawyer? Are you kidding me?”
“I’d hate to hear what you think of my profession,” Lindsey murmured.
“Bartending isn’t a profession.”
“I’m unemployed, actually.”
“You get a pass because you’re a girl and you’re the baby. You could do no wrong.”
“Dad gives me a hard time too.”
“Really? If I was almost thirty and still hadn’t figured my life out?” He let out a huff. “He would’ve strung me up in the basement and left me to rot. I’d be too much of an embarrassment to be called his son.”
“Are you…did you just call me an embarrassment?”
“No, Linds, of course not,” Luke assured her. “You can’t deny that he’s always gone easy on you.”
“Are we talking about the same man?”
Being criticized for every decision she’d ever made hardly felt like he’d gone easy on her.
“No, actually, we aren’t. The man he is now isn’t who he was when I was growing up.
He was still in the service when I was born.
All discipline, hard work, and no excuses.
You know what kills me? His marriage survived him being a doctor, and they had four kids, and they’re still together.
Four kids, Lindsey, and I couldn’t even manage one. ”
“Stop it. It’s not the same at all.”
“It’s exactly the same.”
“Mom stayed home to take care of us. You married another doctor. It is not the same.”
Luke pulled at the skin on his face, which was more pliable than usual after a string of hard weeks, and dropped his arms on the table.
“Close enough.”
Memories of her childhood rearranged in her head. Luke never seemed unhappy with what she thought had been his chosen profession. He’d been a doctor for twelve years.
And miserable for all of it?
“I’m sorry, Luke,” she said. “I had no idea you were so unhappy.”
“Don’t get me wrong, there are great things about being a doctor. I get to help people, you know? The money’s good. It’s just…” Luke shook his head. “It wasn’t my choice.”
“What would you have done?” she asked. “If you weren’t a doctor.”
“I don’t even know anymore.”
“Did you know then? Before college?”
His fingers tapped on the table, and he cracked a smile. “I liked to cook.”
“Cook?”
“It wasn’t swanky and popular back then. Cooking, being a chef, is what you didn’t do. Ever.”
“Did you tell Dad?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. Dad would’ve had a heart attack and died on the spot. Would’ve solved my problems, I guess…” he trailed off, shrugging.
Lindsey gaped at his admission, and he burst out laughing. Seeing a true smile on his face was a relief. Her tall, confident, commanding brother would be okay.
“Don’t worry about me, all right Shortcake?” he said.
“Don’t show up drunk and bloody and I won’t.”
“Fine.” Luke sat forward, the shadows in his eyes replaced by a curious smirk. “Now tell me about you and the other brother.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” Nothing rated PG anyway.
“Mm-hm. I only caught pieces of it, but something was definitely going down last night. Something about a baby? You’re not pregnant, right?”
“No, definitely not. It’s—”
Complicated? It wasn’t, actually. Graham warned her about his brother, the lothario, and Jase lived up to the name. There was probably a Chloe in every state.
“Chloe might be having Jase’s baby,” Lindsey said.
“She the one with the see-through top?”
“Seriously?”
“I wasn’t too drunk to miss that.”
“Mm-hm,” Lindsey muttered.
“If it’s his kid, that doesn’t make him a bad guy,” Luke said. “You want him to step up and take care of it if it is.”
“Of course I do,” Lindsey said. Her trepidation wasn’t really about a potential child. In four days it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. Both time and Jase were slipping away.
“Without the kid, what’s the problem?” Luke asked.
“When this is over, he can leave, and I have no idea if he’s going to.”
“Have you asked him?”
The look on her face must’ve answered for her. She was still in freefall from the cliff she’d toppled over at the end of Jason’s trip, with heartbreak waiting at the bottom.
Where her brother would welcome her to a spot on the sofa with a bowl of kiddie cereal and a game controller.
Luke chuckled and shook his head. “You’re too afraid to find out.”
“Honesty, Luke,” she said, “I’m terrified.”