Page 75 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

A reputation is not a lie just because it requires maintenance.

Jake knew how to keep everything looking picture-perfect on the outside.

For Christ’s sake, he made Lennon looknormal.

And now she’s running around acting like normal was something that justhappenedto her instead of something hebuilt for herwith both hands.

Across the patio, Emily stands near the drink table with a hard seltzer in one hand and goose bumps rising along her bare arms. She’s a pretty enough girl from church. Twenty-eight and compliant. The kind of girl who assumed she’d be picked by now and is starting to get desperate ’cause she hasn’t been.

His mother has been too obvious about Emily all night, which is annoying. She thinks Jake should let go of Lennon and choose a nice girl like Emily instead. Why can’t Mom stay out of shit that’s not her business? For once.

Jake crosses over, easy as anything.

“Cold?” he asks Emily.

Emily glances down at her arms like she’s only just noticed the chill. “A little, I guess.”

Jake plucks the can lightly from her fingers and replaces it with a bottle of water from the cooler.

She blinks. “Oh.”

“You’ll thank me tomorrow,” he says, smiling as he reaches past her for the throw blanket over the back of Brianna’s chair. He settles it over Emily’s shoulders before she can decide whether she wants it. He’ll help her decide she wants it. “Winter in Texas still counts as winter, sweetheart.”

Emily laughs because women usually do when they don’t yet know whether they’re allowed to be annoyed.

“That’s better,” Jake says.

And it is.

Her shoulders are covered. Her drink is appropriate. Her smile is uncertain but grateful enough.

He turns back toward Marcus and one of Jared’s coworkers like the whole thing hasn’t happened.

“Man, I’m telling you,” Jake says, tipping his beer toward his fence line several houses over like the offending property is standing right there listening. “Even the HOA’s gone soft. Sixmonths I’ve had a complaint in about that short-term rental next door, and they’re still reviewing the bylaws.”

He does the air quotes with his beer hand.

“Like I’m supposed to just be fine with strangers sleeping fifty feet from my wife’s bedroom window. People I didn’t vet or invite into my neighborhood.”

Marcus makes the noise men make when they stopped actually listening three sentences ago. Jared’s coworker nods along and flips a burger that doesn’t need flipping yet.

Jake doesn’t much care if they’re listening.

Saying it out loud is the point.

Reminding himself, and anyone in earshot, that he is still the guy standing in a respectable yard, drinking a respectable beer, complaining about his property like a man with a house still worth defending.

A man ought to have some say in what happens fifty feet from his wife’s body.

Nobody gets to rent out that house to fucking strangers just because they Dan struck it fucking rich and gets to spend his time at their new property in the south of France.

“Lockbox right on the front door,” he says. “Different car in the driveway every weekend. Half of them out-of-state plates. One group had the nerve to sit on the upstairs balcony at midnight like this is some bachelor-party rental off Sixth.”

“HOA won’t do anything?” Jared’s coworker asks, finally catching up enough to contribute.

“They say the language is ambiguous.” Jake smiles through his teeth around the word. “Ambiguous. That’s what people say when they don’t want to enforce standards.”

Emily makes a small sound behind him. Agreement, maybe. Or sympathy. Either works.