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“You guys pitching in a few hours a week won’t cut it. There’s vendors, competitors, spectators, security, staff, sponsors, maintenance inspections. Because of a competing event in Colorado, enrollment for our event is at its lowest. David in business development quit, some sponsors have pulled out—”
“Which is why we can hire people and train them,” Jax said.
“I do have people. An army of people. Guess who oversees them all? Me,” Lucas told them. “I mean, the Sierra Vista Cup alone is a full-time job. Every year, I have to hire enough temp employees to cover the event, but they need to be babysat.”
“Outsource some of the responsibility to the managers,” Jax said.
“I do, but they report back to me. If there’s a problem, I have to make sure it’s fixed. If someone calls in sick, I have to step in. If there aren’t enough hours to get the job done, I stay here until it is.”
“Micromanage much?” Brynn asked.
“I don’t micromanage, I lead by example and sometimes that means working alongside the employees.”
“So you’re micromanaging,” Brynn repeated.
This was going nowhere fast. His brother loved to talk, but was a shit listener. He was seven minutes, a mere four-hundred-twenty seconds, older and the guy thought it entitled him to be right every time. And that drove Jax crazy.
“You need help,” Jax pointed out. “Let us help.”
“You don’t need to be here for this,” Lucas said to Jax.
“But they do?” Jax said, regarding everyone else at the table. Lucas’s silence said everything Jax needed to know about his brother’s stance on how little Jax’s input meant. “Until Peggy and Kent say differently, I have a seat at this table. You want me to leave, you’re going to have to remove me yourself.”
They might be identical twins, but Jax had more bulk. His size came from years of honing his craft, making his body a machine. But he wouldn’t count his brother out. In a fight, they were well matched. Something they’d learned during their one and only fight last year.
“I can handle all aspects of security that day,” Nolan said like he was yard duty, and the twins were errant children. If he’d had a whistle, he would have used it. “I can even get a few off-duty agents to help with crowd management.”
“And I can manage Ski Patrol,” Brynn offered. Being a chopper pilot for the National Guard, she’d had enough medical training to perform open heart surgery from ten-thousand feet up and knew how to put guys twice her size in their place.
“I can act as general contractor on the various structures you’ll need,” Harris offered.
“What about Emma?” Lucas asked.
“I’ll get Mom and Dad to babysit over the next few weekends. No biggie.”
But the whole table knew it was a big deal. Balancing being a business owner and a single dad wasn’t easy, so Harris’s weekends were his most treasured time with his daughter. He didn’t date, rarely went out, and spent his free time volunteering for various parent-y things—like hosting scrapbooking night, planning fundraisers for Emma’s preschool, going to Mommy and Me dance class.
Lucas looked bowled over by the offers and Jax started to see what his brother was talking about. In the past, the whole family chipped in on these bigger events. When had that changed? How long had Lucas been shouldering the burden alone? And how had Jax not noticed the strain?
Trying to juggle separate homebases, between Vail and New Zealand—and his fallout with Lucas—he’d been gone most of the last few years. Had he been that disconnected from his twin?
He wondered just how much Lucas had on his plate. Then he wondered how he could help. The event was four weeks off and the Xtreme games were in two. Not only would he be in Wyoming for the event, he liked to get into town a few days beforehand so he could get in the right mindset, clear out the clutter and gain some of that laser focus he was known for. He wasn’t getting any younger and his time in the pros was limited. His knees had two, maybe three, more seasons.
He was already missing a competition because of Peggy’s birthday; he couldn’t afford to miss another. So while his offer to help had been genuine, the reality of the situation was more complicated.
And what a hell of a time for their through-the-ether way of communicating to kick back in.
That’s what I thought, Lucas’s smug expression said. His brother looked at the rest of the table, purposefully not including Jax when he said, “I’ll take you up on your offers. But I need to tell you that it’s not just Mom and Dad who want to move on to the next chapter. I want out too.”
It was like the oxygen was sucked out of the room. And for the first time since coming home Jax saw the exhaustion on his brother’s face.
“But you love working here,” Brynn said quietly.
“I did. When we were all here together,” Lucas said. “Once Mom and Dad leave, it will be just me. That’s a lot to take on.”
“Then we hire someone to replace you,” Jax said, and immediately regretted it. Lucas’s smile was a ghost and he sat back as if Jax had just punched him in the throat. And whatever his twin felt was nothing compared to the twisting in Jax’s stomach.
Growing up, they’d been replaced a lot. By age seven, they’d both learned that they were on their own. It was them against the world. Now it was as if they were continents apart. And Jax hated that. He just didn’t know how to fix it.
