62. Present Day
Present Day
If they hadn’t run out of beds, Lindsey wouldn’t have opened the door and lifted the blinds.
She turned from the window and appraised the Jetson bed where Jason Young took his last breaths.
The mechanical beast was almost tragically serene in the dust swirling through the afternoon sunbeams. Behind it, the king-size bed he’d slept in before he got sick was pressed against the back wall, stripped down to the memory foam mattress.
“Have you seen Helen?”
Graham was in the doorway, not even a toe inside his dad’s former bedroom.
“She’s at the library,” Lindsey said, relaying the barely believable lie she’d been asked to tell. Helen was actually using Lindsey’s apartment to have a video call with the university to save her job. “For work stuff.”
He frowned. “Library?”
“Will you help me switch the beds?” Lindsey asked quickly.
“I thought we agreed to keep this room locked?”
She didn’t recall any such conversation. It was more of a quiet understanding.
“We’re out of places to put people,” she said.
He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. “If we weren’t running a boardinghouse, it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“What would you have me do instead?”
“Kick them all out.”
“I can’t kick out a pregnant woman.”
Graham smirked. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
It didn’t matter if she had. A lot.
“Will you help me or not?” she asked.
He hesitated on the threshold. She didn’t blame him for not wanting to come inside the too-empty room.
“Graham?”
His face twisted in a thoughtful scowl as he finally approached the Jetson bed. “We can call and get this one picked up.”
“It’s not your dad’s?”
He kicked the wheel closest to him. “It’s a rental. The number is…somewhere. Aldridge knows. She’s still alive, right? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“She’s taking some time off. We’re stepping all over each other anyway.”
“Let’s push this one against the windows for now,” Graham suggested.
They wheeled the Jetson bed across the room, clearing the way to the king.
“Where did he keep the linens?” Lindsey asked.
“There’s storage in the frame.”
Graham bent and opened one of the drawers in the king’s frame and laid a set of white sheets on the mattress.
“How’d it go with the tent?” Lindsey asked, shaking out a giant fitted sheet.
“It’s up,” Graham said. “We’ll be sleeping on the ground tonight.”
She tossed Graham a corner of the sheet and they tucked the sides underneath the mattress.
“You ever think we’d be doing this?” she asked. “Working together, not arguing.”
“I don’t think we made a bed together when…” He trailed off without stating the obvious when we were sharing one.
Lindsey frowned, thinking back and agreeing. “We didn’t.”
They’d been a couple, dipped toes into each other’s lives, met each other’s families after Lindsey’s parents insisted, but that’s as far as they went.
They never made future plans, were never domestic.
Never made beds or washed dishes or folded clothes together.
The distance between them, even then, was probably what allowed them to live under the same roof now.
“Who’s going to sleep in here?” Graham asked.
“I was going to offer it to Luke, if you don’t mind,” Lindsey said.
“He’s wearing my dad’s clothes, sleeping in my dad’s bed,” Graham said. “What-the-hell-ever.”
“I don’t want to use this room either,” Lindsey said. “We could always get another tent and set it up next to yours. How long do you have to sleep out there?”
Graham shot her a look over the bed. “You’ll get Jase back tomorrow.”
Lindsey handed one side of the top sheet to Graham, and they shook it out.
“You can keep him,” she said.
“Right,” he drawled. “Too much baggage?”
“As you’ve been keen to remind me,” she said, glancing at the chest he wasn’t clutching.
Lindsey opened a drawer beneath her side of the bed and came up with two pillows and dropped them on the bed.
Graham smoothed the already-smooth sheet, watching her out of the corner of his eye. “That was before.”
“Before what?”
Shouts in the hall cut off whatever he was about to tell her.
“This is crazy, and you know it,” Charlie was saying.
“No, what’s crazy is following me here.”
“Believe me, Chlo, I know.”
Graham tipped his head to the hall, and Lindsey crept quietly behind him to the doorway to listen.
“I didn’t ask you to,” Chloe said.
“I know. I need you to see how much I care about you. I’m here for you.”
A pause. “You said you were going back.”
“That’s not fair. You know I can’t leave the bar for that long.”
“Go. I’m not keeping you here.”
“You are. Insisting on this test—”
“I’m doing it, Charles.”
Lindsey mouthed Charles to Graham. His abs ticked with a silent laugh.
“You don’t need to. I don’t care what some test says,” Charlie insisted. “That’s my kid.” Chloe said something too soft to hear, and Charlie came back frustrated. “The math checks out, okay? I want this. I want you.”
Chloe flew into Jason’s room and skid to a stop on the heels of her black boots in front of Lindsey and Graham. They stared at each other for a few awkward moments until Chloe’s watery eyes hardened on Lindsey.
“Enjoying the show?”
“It was loud enough,” Lindsey said.
“What, did we interrupt something?” Chloe peered at the king bed on the far side of the room and raised a dark eyebrow. “Cleaning up the evidence?”
“Excuse me?” Lindsey said.
The black-haired vixen pointed a finger between Lindsey and Graham. “Weren’t you two together…before Jase?”
“Come on, Chlo, let’s get out of here,” Charlie said from the doorway.
“In a minute.” She beamed at Lindsey with sadistic pleasure. “Not really over this one, then, are you?”
“What?” Lindsey shrieked, tossing her thumb at Graham. “Over him?”
“All right, everybody out,” Graham said. “This room is off-limits.”
“You think you’re fooling anyone?” Chloe asked. “Does Jase know?”
“Chloe—” Charlie said.
“The last time someone called me out about Graham, they got hit in the face,” Lindsey said, ignoring Graham’s curious frown. He’d actually been the one to take the punch she’d intended for Helen on the desert highway, but whatever.
“Is that supposed to scare me? Please.” Chloe grabbed Lindsey’s upper arm and managed to squeeze it before Lindsey swatted her away. “I knew you weren’t packing any muscle.”
Lindsey suddenly found herself staring at Graham’s back. He’d stepped between them, warning Chloe, “That’s enough.”
Down the hall, the front door slammed, and Jase called out Lindsey’s name.
She caught the flicker of pain in Chloe’s face around Graham’s shoulder.
For one irritating moment, Lindsey saw the woman hiding beneath the brash attitude and heavy makeup.
The desperate lover who’d crossed the country to make a family for her unplanned baby, only to be rejected by the man she clearly loved.
How inconvenient that Lindsey should feel anything other than strong dislike for Chloe.
She stepped out from behind Graham and said, “I’m sorry he doesn’t want you.”
It wasn’t meant to be a jab. Pain hardened Chloe’s red lips into a snarl.
“Go fuck yourself,” she spat.
“Having a party back here, or what?” Jase called from the hallway.
“Definitely not.” Charlie moved aside to let Jase through the door.
His attention jutted between all the people who had no business being there together.
“Chlo, let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you lunch,” Charlie suggested.
“What’s going on?” Jase asked the room.
“Why don’t you ask them?” Chloe nodded at Graham, who crossed his arms and stepped in front of Lindsey again.
“Why—” are you being protective? Lindsey started to ask.
“Ask them what?” Jase said. Chloe didn’t answer. Jase seemed to pick up on her meaning anyway. He shook his head and said, “Nope.”
He stalked around Graham, took Lindsey by the hand, and hauled her out of the room. She thought she heard Chloe swear and Graham usher everyone from the suite.
At the top of the stairs, Lindsey glanced down at Chloe.
Jase’s former girlfriend or lover or whatever she was, was staring up at Jase as she came up the front hall with Charlie.
There it was again—the irritating inkling that was something other than dislike for the woman whose face crumpled at the sight of Lindsey with the man Chloe loved, and that man bringing her to his bedroom.
“Chlo,” Charlie urged.
The last thing Lindsey heard before Jase closed his bedroom door was Chloe telling Charlie to get her the fuck out of there.