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Watching him in action was like a master class in diversion tactics, but Lowell was reminded that Vanessa herself was an attorney and wasn’t falling for it.
“What does she have to do with it, though? Was she selling you cocaine? Even though your families have been friends for, like, ever?”
Lowell grinned broadly. It was so much worse than she could possibly guess. When their parents had found out that Grayson had been fucking Sulya Slade since the summer he’d come home to prepare for the LSAT, it had been enough of a scandal. Their mother had been furious. When it had come out that Sulya had been supplying him with cocaine since then, often flying him home for sex and drug-fueled weekends, they had nearly lost their minds. It had been one such weekend when they hadn’t even known Grayson was in town, when he wrapped Sulya Slade’s car around a telephone pole, enough drugs and alcohol in both of their systems to ensure his legal career would have been over before it started.
Gray, being Gray, had somehow managed to talk his way out of lockup that night, convincing the arresting officers that he was too young to know what he was doing, wasn’t that inebriated in the first place, and would very much like to speak with his father. He wouldn’t have been afforded the same courtesy had he been someone even an ounce less privileged, a fact they all knew well. Invoking Jack’s name had been enough to spook the rookie officers, and Grayson had been let go, showing up at home in the middle of the night to inform their father that he had fucked up. Lowell and Owen had watched from the stairwell as Jack ranted and raved, a rare comeuppance for their elder sibling who thought he could get away with anything.
Although, Lowell thought with a huff, Graysonhad, in fact, gotten away with it. He’d logicked his way around their father’s anger, pointing out that he was sitting at the top of his class at the competitive, prestigious law school he attended, that the drugs genuinelywerehelping with his migraines; that he wasn’t stupid enough to have unprotected sex with women his own age, let alone a married shifter fifteen years his senior; that the car accident had happened in the middle of the night when the suburban streets were empty and no one had been hurt, and most importantly, he’d learned a valuable lesson about mixing alcohol and stimulants, a mistake he’d never make again. Lowell privately thought their father had been amused by the situation once his surface anger had faded, particularly with Grayson’s slippery ability to extract himself from trouble.
Sulya was the one who had to contend with Sandi’s fury, the embarrassment of being first caught out with and then jilted by a man more than 15 years her junior, and stuck paying a hefty fine for the accident itself. Lowell had no idea how it was that the two of them had come to own property together all these years later, but apparently, the whole ugly incident was water under the bridge now.
But Vanessa knew nothing about that, hadn’t had years to digest and come to terms with her feelings, and Lowell bounced on the counter merrily, watching her eyes narrow further.
“Were youfuckingher?! Isn’t she like, sixty?”
“She’s not sixty, for fuck’s sake. She’s barely fifty-five, I haven’t spoken to her in probably six months, and before I got pulled into the thing with the house, it had been years. This literally happened when I was 23 years old, I can barely remember two weeks ago. What the fuck is Moon Blooded Breeding? There’s no addressee name.” He was holding up a piece of mail, having deflected the conversation away from his misdeeds once more.
“That’s mine.”
Lowell and Vanessa had spoken simultaneously, and the mirth he felt over raising Grayson’s hackles quickly dissipated.
“That’s mine,” she repeated quietly as his brother’s brows drew together. “That’s the place where I had the-the thing. Wait, that had better not be a fucking bill. Insurance paid that months and months ago.”
As Lowell watched, his brother’s face rapidly cycled from triumph at having turned the conversation to a brief look of confusion, landing at understanding, his eyes closing briefly as he nodded, handing the envelope to his girlfriend. Lowell’s hands bunched into fists as he watched her tearhisletter open, reading a few lines before her eyes lifted to his, squinting in confusion.
“This is yours?”
“Yeah, like I said,” he muttered, heat burning up the back of his neck as she crossed the kitchen in two strides, the envelope in her outstretched hand.
“Whatever. I want to hear the rest of this cocaine story, don’t think I’ve forgotten. And if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I’ll just ask your dad. I’m gonna get ready for bed; if Trophy Wives starts, make sure you pause it for me.”
Grayson waited until her footsteps padded down the hallway, listening as she climbed the staircase. The second the door to the master bedroom clicked shut, he pounced. Lowell should have been ready for it. He’d forgotten how fast his brother was, despite his huge size. There was a crushing hand around his neck, the back of his head thumping into the cabinet, Grayson glowering inches from his face.
“If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will cut out your fucking tongue and eat it for breakfast. Do you understand?”
Lowell wheezed when he was released, sucking in a lungful of air. Heshouldhave known better, but he would take his chances. One of the benefits of being the junior toadie little brother was that he knew where all of the metaphorical bodies were buried, for Grayson and Trapp both.
“Are you trying to have a baby?”
Gray’s dark eyes squinted, his face screwing up in disgust at the thought.
“What? Why would you think that.”
“That place. It’s a fertility clinic.”
“It’s a family planning clinic, actually. For werewolves. I’m sure they offer a whole range of services.”
“So . . . you guys didn’t go there to try to get pregnant?”
Grayson paused, pulling open the refrigerator, taking his time answering. Lowell watched as he refilled Vanessa’s glass from the strawberry-mint-infused water decanter on the center shelf before filling a second for himself. It was a tiny, inconsequential thing, but watching the action made him feel impossibly alone.
“We terminated a pregnancy there, actually. Last year.”
Lowell’s stomach flip-flopped at the thought, and the room suddenly seemed too bright, too close. He regretted saying anything at all, but Grayson only shrugged lightly.
“That’s not in the cards for us, not anytime soon. Probably not ever. We weren’t in a good place anyway, it was the right thing to do. It’s a good thing Jackson is doing his part to keep the family line going. I don’t know how you lived there as long as you did. Every surface in that fucking house is sticky . . . I guess you and Owen need to step it up.”
“Are you in a better place now?” he asked, ignoring the dig.
