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“Call in,” Adam suggested again. “Tell him you had bad tacos. It’s what I did.”
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as a bad taco,” I grumbled as I listened to the message Dad left.
“Just checking on you,” he said perkily on the recording. “You’re late. Just calling to make sure everything is all right. Just let me know if you can’t make it in.” There was no disappointment in his voice, no frustration. Definitely not what I would’ve expected from him.
Kyle’s text was a simple, ‘Get to work or you’re fired.’
I was only thirty minutes late. If I jumped in the shower here and got ready, I could probably make it and only be an hour late. Adam didn’t live far from the dealership. I just didn’t have a work shirt. I stood up. “I’m gonna use your bathroom real quick.”
“You’re still going to go?” he prodded, standing and following me to the bathroom. “Why?”
“Because,” I snapped at him, “how else am I supposed to get you your job back?” I waved my hands at him angrily. “I can’t fix this if I fuck up this job with my dad.”
Adam took a step back. “Why are you trying to get me my job back?”
“I’m the reason you lost it. It’s the least that I could do.” I didn’t wait for his reaction. I went into his bathroom and turned the shower on. I started undressing, taking a moment to give my jeans a cautious sniff. They smelled fine. It’d be fine. Everything wasfine.
To my surprise, Adam opened the bathroom door and started undressing too. “I don’t want my job back,” he said as he reached into the shower to test the water. “You can fucking quit. Fuck Kyle, fuck your dad. I don’t want to go back to work for them. I will figure something else out.”
“If I quit, it doesn’t fix any of this,” I protested as I stepped under the spray. I turned to glower at Adam, not understanding why he was trying to be an obstacle. “How am I supposed to keep him from telling my parents what I was doing?”
“So what if they find out?” he asked. He picked up a bottle of 2-in-1 and squirted a healthy dollop into his hand. The scent enveloped the small space between us, and he didn’t wait. He put one hand on my shoulder and forced me to turn around. He washed my back. “What is it going to do? They’ll stop calling you? They’ll be extra disappointed?” He paused, his handsgoing down my back slowly. “They’ll send you back to boarding school?”
I swirled around, ready to snarl at him, then I slipped. His arms were immediately around me, keeping me from falling out of the tub. “Adam!” I clung to him for a beat, trying to get my heart to calm down. “Are you trying to make me break my neck?” As soon as we straightened, I rinsed the soap he’d already put on me.
It took everything in me to not throw a punch at him. The smart thing would’ve been for me to ignore his words. But if we took a moment to review everything that led up to the situation I was in, I couldn’t claim to be intelligent.
I huffed out a breath. “They could disown me, Adam,” I snapped. “Cut me out completely.”
“That matters?” he asked, keeping his hand to himself now. “You’ve been dodging them since you moved out. Every gathering your parents have, you’ve missed.”
“It matters because it’s my choice,” I said, pushing the curtain aside. I stepped out, not bothering to turn the faucet off. “I don’t want to cut off my parents. So I’m going to go to work.”I want them to love me like they love Kyle.I picked up a towel without even caring who it belonged to. I hurriedly dried off, and I stepped out of the bathroom so I could redress. I was gonna get sweaty cleaning up cars, so it didn’t really matter that I wasn’t wearing clean clothes.
I’d just need to get a shirt from the supply closest. Meaning I’d get stuck paying for another one and Kyle would probably know why. There wasn’t any way I could work around that. I stood just inside Cam’s bedroom in yesterday’s underwear.
Adam had followed me out of the bedroom. He didn’t bother to get dressed before he found me. He held Cam’s door open and stood there, both his hands on the door frame as he stood in front of me, casually naked. Dripping wet. He tilted his head ashe eyed me. “Call in. Stay here with me, and I will make it worth it.”
“If I don’t go to work, my brother is gonna know why.”
“How? He hasn’t talked to any of us since all of this got dragged out into the open,” Adam pointed out. “Working two jobs takes away your chances of having a life. You don’t need to work yourself to death for your fucking brother.” He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. “Stay.”
How could I be irritated and tempted at the same time? It would’ve been so easy to fall back into bed with the man in front of me. The longer I stood there looking at him, the more I wanted to do it.
“Grace,” he said again. “You didn’t even get a good shower. How do you think you’re gonna feel after an hour of work?”
“Dammit, Adam,” I swore as I found my phone. I called Dad, not giving it a second guess. I turned away from him, not wanting to see the satisfaction on his face.
Dad answered on the first ring. “Hey Gracie, you’re running late today. Everything all right?”
The guilt hit me immediately. I closed my eyes and lied to my dad. “I slept through my alarm. I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay? You don’t sound like you’re okay,” he said in a tone that I didn’t hear often enough.
The concern made guilt twist up in my chest worse. “I don’t know if I just didn’t sleep well, or if it’s something else.” I covered my face, trying to get into the mindset that I was ill. “I’m not feeling so hot.”
“Well, stay at home. We’re ahead of where we should be with cleaning stock. I’m sure Sean will appreciate not having to keep up with you,” he said easily. “Just do me a favor and give me a heads up on how you’re feeling tomorrow.” He paused for a moment. “If I knew where you lived, I could bring you some soup for lunch?”
“I think I’m gonna try to sleep it off,” I said.How could I make this believable?“I’ve got to call someone to cover my shift at the bar. So I’ll have to text it to you afterward.”
