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Now Julian rose too. He walked over and stood beside me.
“We can fix this,” he said
calmly. “I know a way.”
My body was so stiff and rigid I felt like I might shatter into a thousand pieces. But my lover’s last statement relaxed me, even the smallest bit, like a tiny ray of hope.
“We’re going to need some money,” Julian admitted. “And… something else. I’ll take care of the second part. Maybe you guys can scrape up the first?”
Noah eventually nodded. So did Chase.
“We’ll do what we can.”
“No,” said Julian pointedly. “Do even better than that. Make it happen.”
The guys nodded again, then turned to look at me. Before they could say anything, I whirled on them.
“You’re staying here,” I demanded loudly. “Bedrooms, for each of you. It’s not even a question. It’s totally happening.”
Noah and Chase shared another look, but this one was an easy one.
“Okay,” Chase said humbly. “Thank you.”
“It’s probably best anyway,” added Noah. “Considering everything that’s going on. But yeah. We definitely apprecia—”
“Don’t even thank me,” I cut him off. “I only wish I could do more.”
A silence settled over the kitchen. It was eventually broken by the sound of clinking glass, as Julian pulled a fresh round of beers from the fridge.
“Good,” he said, handing them out. I noticed he didn’t keep one for himself. “Now that this is settled, I’ve got some things I need to take care of.”
He turned and walked away, leaving the three of us standing there in the middle of the kitchen. When we still hadn’t moved, Julian stopped and glanced back at us.
“Get busy planning already,” he ordered, pointing down at the table. “You have some money to raise, and not a lot of time.”
Forty-Four
CHASE
Her hand felt good in mine, soft and perfect, like it was meant to be there. Every part of her was soft and perfect, come to think of it.
“And you never come out here?” I asked, leading the way. “Not even just to see the animals?”
Madison shrugged, ducking beneath a low-hanging pine bough. “He usually comes to me. Only he… forgets sometimes.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “That’s Nolan alright. But to go two months without collecting rent? That’s crazy. Especially when you’re short on money.”
Over breakfast, we’d spent a good hour or so brainstorming ways to drum up money. One of them — collecting unpaid rent from the old stable-owner — was a total no-brainer.
Only Madison had balked. She felt bad about going out to that part of her property, and flat out asking the man for money. She was just too nice. A terrible, terrible landlord. So when I offered to go with her? She was more than willing.
“About your uncle’s stuff…” I said for the third time.
“We’re selling it,” she reiterated. “Or rather, I’m selling it. It’s my choice. It’s my stuff.”
That was the other idea Madison had come up with: selling off some of Travis’s worldly possessions. Most of them were packed in old travel trunks with those colorful stickers still on them, that told you which cities and countries you’d visited. She’d stored them carefully after his death, and hadn’t looked at them since.
“But I know there’s stuff in there,” she’d admitted, dragging her toast through a runny egg. “Good stuff, too. Most were gifts given to my uncle, by people important to him. Things collected from all the different places he lived at one time or another.”
