AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gray
The next morning, after drinking the last of my coffee and eating the last of my oatmeal, Victor announces that he and Ethan are leaving a day early for a meeting with a potential investor in Philadelphia. Ethan hands me a printed reservation for tonight at a luxury hotel on Rockaway Beach. “You guys should take it. We don’t want it to go to waste.”
When we’ve finished saying goodbye, Victor grabs Jonah’s arm. “I’m stealing him for an hour on our way out. Okay? Okay.”
“Wait, what?” But they’re already gone.
As the house settles into that deep, almost physical quiet it hasn’t seen since Jonah moved in, I feel the pull of real life, the place where I can see things starting to unravel, danger on the horizon like dark clouds. Settling down in my neglected study, I call Oliver. “How is your weekend going?”
“They gave me another offer to settle.” He sounds miserable. “They won’t leave me alone.”
My hand curls into the fist I’d love to drive into Colson’s face someday. “Do you want to settle?”
“I know you don’t think I should.” He sighs. “They’re really going after Jackson. It’s not an empty threat.”
Taking a deep breath, I rub my dry eyes roughly. All the protectiveness I felt toward Victor after I learned about his past starts rising up again, a burn in the back of my throat. “That’s what they want you to think. Once they realize you’re not caving, they’ll back off. Don’t speak to anyone you don’t know, and tell Megan not to talk to strangers either. Tell her teachers at school to keep an eye on her.”
“Jesus.” His voice gets panicked.
“She’s not in danger, I promise. But they might trick her into saying something that could hurt our case.”
“This is insane, right? Tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this is insane.”
“You’re not.” Victor’s case was madness, standing up to powerful, wealthy men with everything to lose. During the worst of it, I was genuinely afraid to leave my home. “Hang in there. They’re pulling out the stops because they’re desperate. We have such a strong case.”If the world plays fair. As if it ever has before.
I hang up, staring at the sunlight reflected off the wood grain of my desk. Victor has been my driving motivation for two years. After yesterday, there’s someone else, an even more powerful need. I want to bring enough good into this world to somehow deserve the way Jonah looks at me. To have the right to tell him I think I might be falling in love with him.
Just as I’m starting to worry about him, Jonah comes home and brings a mug of tea into the office for me. He pulls himself up onto the edge of the desk and rests his sock feet on my leg.
“Where did you and Victor go?” I ask.
“To get cigarettes.” He’s fighting a grin and, as usual, losing.
“You were gone for two hours.”
He kneads his toes against my thigh. “They were very elusive cigarettes.”
Leaning over, he kisses my peeved expression, then heads to the living room while I finish answering emails. When I emerge, he’s stretched out in front of the fireplace with earbuds in, listening to one of the audiobooks I bought him. He sits up and pulls them out of his ears when I poke him with my foot.
“Which one did you pick?”
“To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s like lawyer fanfic, isn’t it?” He wrinkles his nose at me. “Fanfic, Dad, is where—”
“I know what fanfiction is, Son.” I’m rewarded with a flash of his dimples, but they disappear immediately at my next sentence. “What suit are you going to wear to dinner at the hotel tonight?”
“Shit. Uh, the one that says Nike on it and is made of polyester?”
“Nice try.”
“My birthday suit?”
“Come on.” I drag him to his feet and into my closet, where he hung his suits when he packed to move out. “Bet you thought you were done with these forever.”
“Yeah.” He eyes me up and down. “To be honest, I’m not sure you’re worth it.”
Things with Colson were always so fragile, on the edge of good or bad, and one wrong word could send everything to hell. Just the fact that he can joke like that so casually makes me feel secure in a way nothing else has.
“I think this one.” I take down the suit he wore on his first day.
