68. Chapter 68
The crowd was really good. Really drunk and really good.
Cheering and lingerie and drinks were better than the dirty looks being hurled at Jase from across the room.
If Lindsey paid attention at all, she’d know Jase didn’t care about applause and bras smelling like cheap perfume. He’d take her to the women’s bathroom again to prove it, if she wanted. If she’d let him.
He emerged from the pack of women and Luke patted him on the back.
“You’re a rock star,” he said.
Jase raised his cup. “I try.”
“Seriously, you should get an agent or something. Go on tour,” Luke said. “My brother’s boyfriend works for a record company, or something with music. I can’t remember.”
Jase craned his neck between Luke and Helen to find Lindsey. “Which brother?”
“Louis. No—Lawrence! Lawrence.”
“Louis, Lawrence, Luke, and Lindsey?” Jase chuckled. He hadn’t noticed the names of everyone in Lindsey’s family started with the same letter.
“Don’t forget Leroy,” Luke said. “Dad.”
“Your mom?”
“Deborah.” Luke shrugged. “Who knows what they were thinking. Hey, do you want Lawrence’s number? I can set you up. I’m serious, you’ve got talent.”
“Keep drinking,” Jase said. “I sound even better.”
“Cheers to that,” Luke said.
Where the actual hell is she? Jase scanned the room. He usually spotted her easily, even in a crowd.
“Which one are you looking for?” Graham asked Jase. “The one who’s pregnant or the one who’s not pregnant yet?”
“No one,” Jase mumbled. “I keep getting into trouble anyway.”
“What’d you do now?” Helen asked.
“Depends who you ask.” Jase tilted his head at Helen, a very bad idea brewing. He was just buzzed enough to drape an arm around her shoulders and say, “Hey, so, you’re a woman.”
“Keen observation,” she sneered.
“What’s the deal with…women?”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“I thought I had you figured out.”
“You were doing just fine with the ladies up there,” Helen said.
Jase glanced behind him at the geezer butchering a Guns N’ Roses song onstage, and said, “That I can do. It’s…everything else.”
“Still not specific enough.”
“No matter what I do, I can’t make her happy.”
Helen’s laugh was clipped. “The sounds coming through your bedroom door suggest otherwise.”
“All right. That’s my baby sister. I’m out.” Luke put up his hands and backed away. “Who needs a drink?”
“Oh, please,” Helen said. “We all know what’s happening. We can all hear it.”
“No, I’m out too,” Graham said. “Have fun, hon.”
He kissed Helen on the cheek and followed Luke to the bar.
“Shit,” Jase said. Instant regret flooded his system when Helen pierced him with those bright-blue ball-ripping eyes.
“So?” she asked, raising one judgmental eyebrow.
“So, what?”
“Is sex all it is?”
“I don’t know.” Jase shifted away from her. “We haven’t talked about it.”
“Then there’s your problem. If she’s insecure about the way you feel about her, she probably doesn’t want to ask.” Those bright blues began a painful scan from his chest to his face. “You look like you scare easily.”
Do you love her?
Graham’s words came back to bracket his shoulders.
“Plus, she has a lot of competition,” Helen said. “Your pregnant ex is living with us.”
“We’ve talked about Chloe. She’s staying in a hotel.”
“A few minutes ago there was a bra in your face.”
“Oh, come on, that’s all part of—” Jase swallowed a burst of irritation with a hearty drink of whiskey and wondered what he hoped to accomplish asking Helen for advice on love.
Love. That word again.
Where was Lindsey anyway? Did she leave? And if she did, was she alone? She was so fucking good at picking up random assholes just to irritate him.
“It’s nothing,” he insisted.
“Jase, you act like a single man. If it was just sex to Lindsey, I doubt she’d care about your relationships with other women.”
“I don’t have relationships with other women.”
“How long has it been since you had a girlfriend?”
Jase pursed his lips and looked away. Helen gasped. “You’ve never had one! No wonder you’re so inept.”
“Thank you for that keen observation,” he said. He swallowed the last of his drink and looked behind him for the blonde in the black dress to see if she’d appear with another.
“Let me spell it out for you. What these women here tonight see”—Helen motioned to the pack of short skirts and low-cut tops near the stage, some stealing glances at Jase—“is a man they can throw their underwear at and buy drinks for because he is very, very available. Not once have you done anything to contradict that. So, are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Available?”
He licked his lips. It was a question he’d never had to answer.
Didn’t he tell Lindsey this was all new? No matter what she wanted, or how hard she tried, he would never be the guy who fawned all over his girl as if the sun shined out of her ass. He’d never be Graham.
Jase looked over Helen’s head and found his brother at the bar with Luke.
A few months ago, Graham spent the weekend with Lindsey’s family for Christmas.
It wasn’t very long ago, if anyone was paying attention.
A few weeks ago, barely a blip on the calendar, Jase heard them having sex on the other side of the wall in New Orleans, two days before Graham kicked Lindsey to the curb.
They were all tied up and twisted and living under the same roof and the first time Lindsey set foot underneath that roof, it was with Graham, not Jase.
Do you love her?
Helen’s face fell. “Jase, if you really don’t know, then I think it’s time you walk away.”
It wasn’t about Graham. Graham, his history with Lindsey, was just an excuse. Something to blame besides the truth. Jase didn’t know how to be the man she wanted, even if he wanted to be.
He still hadn’t spotted Lindsey. If she decided they were already over, then he should thank her for the easy way out and do the smart thing and take it.
He should. But there had been nothing easy about losing her in Santa Cruz.
And if he found her so much as talking to another guy trying to get up the blue dress she wore tonight, he’d lose it.
Jase had the awful suspicion that, whether he was ready for it or not, it meant Lindsey was his.
Which sounded a hell of a lot better than Helen telling him to walk away.