84. Chapter 84
She started with a deep breath.
Next, a step out of the car. One step toward the house. Then another.
She didn’t want to go in.
With another deep breath, Lindsey opened the front door. From the entryway she heard the happy beeps and chimes of frenetic music from the video game her brother was playing in the den.
Her brother, the most successful man she knew, had lost his wife and was going to lose his job since he’d rather play Nintendo and get drunk than take responsibility for his future.
Idiot.
She ran up behind Luke and smacked him on the back of the head.
“Ouch!” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter with you?”
She ripped the cords out of the game console and shook them in his face. “What’s the matter with me? Sitting on your ass in front of the TV isn’t going fix anything. Get up and take care of yourself before there’s nothing left for you worth fixing.”
She kept the cords and left him rubbing his head on the couch.
“A whole house full grown men acting like children,” she muttered, then hollered from the foot of the stairs at her brother, “Call Dad before he calls the vets and then the police.”
Running on the acute irritation of trying to save everyone’s lives except her own—where is Jase, and why wasn’t he one of my many, many missed messages?
—the steps shook underneath her feet. At the top she found the hall engulfed in smoke.
Coughing and clearing the cloud away from her face, she peered into Jase’s room.
In her absence, Hurricane-Six-Foot Bad-Boy had hit, leaving clothes on the bed, shoes on the floor, and pictures scattered across the carpet.
No six-foot man in an ill-fitting T-shirt and motorcycle boots, though.
Across the hall, Graham’s cracked door was spilling laughter and plumes of pot smoke. She really, really didn’t want to go in there.
He really, really wasn’t supposed to be her problem anymore.
A sitcom on the TV in the corner explained the laughter.
Lindsey found her ex-boyfriend on the floor at the foot of his bed with his head in his hands.
Still in the boxers he wore this morning, he was surrounded by the usual suspects: a bottle of liquor, bag of weed, and giant bong he’d probably unearthed from the back of his closet.
“Graham?”
She sat next to him and her nearly naked ex-boyfriend draped his heavy arms around her and nuzzled his face in her shoulder.
“I lost it.”
At least, that’s what she thought he said. It was hard to tell with his mouth muffled against her dress.
He squeezed her tighter and said, “I fucking lost it.”
She patted the cold, clammy skin of his back and asked, “Does Jase know?”
“What? I don’t know. Why would he care?”
Why would Jase care about your fiancée losing your six million dollars?
“Never mind,” Lindsey sighed. “I’m sorry you lost the money.”
“The money?” Graham sat up and squinted through the tears in his bloodshot eyes. “You think I care about the money?”
“You just said—”
“Helen. I—”
“Lost Helen?”
“I lost it on Helen!” His pale fingers scraped through his unkempt hair. “I can’t even believe the things I said to her. They just came flying out.”
“She’s trying everything to make it back,” Lindsey said.
His stare was manic. “You talked to her?”
“She told me what happened with her job and the flights.”
Graham’s cheeks were ashen. The studio audience on TV roared with laughter at his misery.
“She’ll never take me back.”
“Take you back?” Lindsey asked. Her headache pounded with renewed vigor.
“I just saw red, Linds.”
She pried his fist away from the bruise in the center of his chest, and he knocked over the bottle of liquor with his knee. Lindsey reached around him to grab it.
“Pappy 23. Isn’t this what your dad sent to Helen?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“How much of this did you drink?”
If he was drunk, it explained why he was bawling.
“None. I can’t even open the bottle. It hurts too fucking much.”
Okay, so he wasn’t drunk. Would being stoned cause a complete breakdown? His version of events didn’t make sense. Helen, undoubtedly sober, had said Graham hung up on her without saying a word.
“When you talked to Helen, was she at the airport?” she asked.
“Yeah. She was so worried about the money, she never stopped to think. It’s never been about the money. It’s always been about us.”
Lindsey watched him press his palm into his sternum and said, “You need to stay calm. Should I get Luke?”
“What? No.” He batted the idea away. “I’m doing the breathing.”
“I’m confused.” Lindsey set the bottle down. “Didn’t you hang up on her?”
“She hung up on me,” Graham said incredulously. “As soon as she told me she couldn’t get back, I accused her of being selfish, and she hung up. I didn’t mean it. Nothing that I said—”
Lindsey flew to her feet. “Where’s your phone?”
“You were right—what you said this morning. I am a fucking child.”
“Phone, Graham!”
“I threw the goddamn thing against the wall.”
She found it on the floor near the nightstand and pushed the buttons on the side. Nothing happened.
Graham said, “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
Lindsey found the power cord, plugged it in, and within a few seconds of Graham moaning behind her, the screen lit up in her hand.
“The things that came out of me, she’ll never forgive me,” he was muttering. “She shouldn’t forgive me.”
Lindsey knelt beside him and asked, “How high are you?”
“What?”
“How high, Graham?”
His glassy eyes spun around the room before landing on her. “Pretty fucking high.”
“Then you are stupid, but not in the way you think,” Lindsey said. “She didn’t hang up on you. Your phone died.” He stared at her blankly. She scoured the floor and tossed a wrinkled T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts into his lap. “Put these on. Now.”
His brain seemed to finally catch up with the moment and he scrambled to his feet. “You’re serious? My phone just died? She didn’t hear what I said?”
“I don’t think so. She’s freaking out, thinking you don’t love her anymore.”
“Maybe she did hear me.”
“She told me that she can’t lose you. Does it matter what she heard?”
They stared at each other. It was probably the longest and most honest look they’d ever traded, as if they both realized their own relationship culminated here to save his relationship with Helen. Graham sucked in a breath and said, “Airport.”
Lindsey held out his phone. “You can call her if you leave it plugged in.”
“No, I know. I’m not that fucking high,” he said. “Calling isn’t enough. I need to see her. It can’t wait.”
He was determined and suddenly sober, and for the first time Lindsey saw the side of Graham she might’ve fallen for if he’d ever loved her this much.
“Can you drive?” he asked.
“Yes,” Lindsey said. “I’ll look for flights.”
“The passcode is—” Chimes for missed messages on his phone filled the brief pause. “You knew my passcode?”
“I’ve always known your passcode,” she sighed. “Clothes, please. I can’t have a conversation with you while you’re flopping out of your shorts.”
He laughed dryly, followed by the studio audience on cue. “You distracted by my junk?”
“You are so high.” Determined, yes. Suddenly sober? Maybe not. Lindsey looked up from the screen of flights from Dayton to Austin and said, “Your brother can do things with his junk you haven’t even seen in porn.”
The audience roared with approval.