AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He’ll leave town?” Evie said. “Do you think that? Because he hasn’t gone yet, and I’ve already told him I’m not interested multiple times. Why, Gage?”
Good question. I was struggling to remember why I made the offer.
Right. Because he was good with Kurt. He may actually have a little bit of decent guy hidden somewhere in there.
Nope. Because I wanted him gone, and he’d told me he wasn’t leaving until Evie sold to him.
“I don’t know.”
Evie shook her head. “I’m not going to listen to his offer, because I’m not going to sell to him. That’s that.”
14
Sawyer
I should be driving home by now. Enjoying a leisurely ride across the country, contract on file and deal in the bag.
Instead I was sitting on a bench outside the motel laundry room, counting stars and pretending the direct view of the cemetery didn’t bother me.
My phone rang. Hudson. “Yeah,” I answered.
“You on your way home yet?”
What did he do, read my mind? Sense my frustration in some brotherly act of caring, from across the country?
No. He was calling to gloat.
“I like it here. Lots of potential. I’m sticking around for the scenery.” Somehow I managed to keep any trace of sarcasm from my voice.
“Uh-huh. Can’t close the deal, huh? That’s not like you.”
A fly buzzed around my head, and I swatted ineffectively at the air. “How the fuck do you know what is and isn’t like me?” We’d said more to each other in the last few weeks than in the last ten years. Why was I suddenly of any concern to him?
Besides the obvious answer of I was working to take his birthright.
“I know you hate an unjust deal, and something isn’t right about this one,” Hudson said.
“Like what? You keep calling me. You keep trying to talk me out of this. Tell me why.”
Nothing.
“Great answer.” This time I let sarcasm ooze in.
“Walk away, Sawyer. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone.”
Seriously. Like a broken fucking record. “I’m not giving up. I’m not Tony.“ I didn’t mean to mention him. Not here. Not ever to Hudson. “I won’t just surrender and leave.”
“He didn’t surrender anything.” Hudson’s voice was hard.
I could do that too. “He surrendered everything.”
“No.” Hudson bit off the word. “He got sick. He chose to live the rest of his life on his own terms, rather than being hooked up to machines and drugged out of his mind. He made the same choice Mom did, and then he died. He didn’t give up. He didn’t fucking leave you. My wife left me. I know the difference. Mourn him. Admit you miss him. Grieve so you can start to heal.”
The ache that stabbed me through the heart almost made me whimper, and I shut that part of myself down in a blink. If I chose to hear him, I’d curl up in my room and—
What did he say? “Your wife left you?” That was so much easier for me to focus on than the hole Hudson’s words dug out of me.
“That’s not what we’re talking about.”
