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Chapter 24
“Ihave a job for you.”
At the sound of his brother’s voice, Gavin looked up from his coffee. It was more assertive than usual, which piqued his interest. Troy was usually such a go with the flow guy. His strength was more of the “immovable rock in a storm” variety, versus the “steamroller” type– but his voice certainly sounded like he was about to start steamrolling, and Gavin was very interested in what was so important to his brother that he’d approach it like that.
“What’s the job?”
“Rinse out your coffee cup and come with me, and you’ll see.”
With that, Troy turned and walked straight to the front door, and then straight out of it, all without turning his head back once to see if Gavin was following him.
Gavin actually barked out a short laugh of pure shock. Damn, what’d gotten into Troy?
There was really only one thing to do: rinse out his coffee cup and follow him to find out.
When he’d climbed into the passenger seat and fastened his seat belt, he turned to Troy with a hint of a grin and said, “Where to, Commander?”
Troy narrowed his eyes at him but didn’t start speaking until they were halfway down the block. When he did, the words were measured and controlled. “This isn’t a joke, Gav. You’re drifting. You don’t want to tell me what’s going on, and honestly, that’s fine. It’s your business. But it’s obviously something big, and sitting around the house isn’t helping it. So maybe this will.”
Gavin marveled at Troy’s persistence in this “badass” routine. Hell, whatever he’d set up for Gavin’s benefit must’ve really been important to him if he was pushing himself this far outside his comfort zone to make it happen.
Well, hell, I guess that means I have to stop being a smartass and take whatever this is seriously. That’ll be a real sacrifice, but…aw, what the hell. Worth it.
He turned in his seat so that he was angled toward Troy. “All right, man. I give. Where are we going? I’ll take it seriously. I swear to God.”
Troy looked over at his face for as long as he could without putting them both in danger as they wound through the curvy streets. When he turned his eyes back to the road, he gave an abrupt nod. “Good. I’m glad.”
Gavin noticed he still hadn’t spilled the beans on their destination. “God, Troy. Are you taking me out in the woods to shoot me or something? Why all the Secret Squirrel bullshit?”
Troy was quiet for a minute, then he said, “You’re coming to work with me.”
“To your construction site?”
Troy let another abrupt nod serve as his answer.
“Damn, dude. If you needed some free labor, all you had to do was ask.”
“See, Gav? This is why I didn’t want to get into this with you. Can you just trust me? For once?”
That last part seemed extremely pointed, and Gavin found that kind of annoying…but, at the same time, he had to admit that his vow to refrain from smartassedness had lasted all of 30 seconds, if that. So it wasn’t as if Troy didn’t have a point.
“I trust you. Let’s do this thing.”
Troy took his eyes from the winding roads again and studied Gavin’s face for as long as it was safe, in fact probably even a little longer than was safe, and Gavin had to wonder how acerbic he usually was if his brother couldn’t even recognize or didn’t trust true sincerity when it came from him.
That was actually pretty sad.
When Troy pulled the truck to a stop, it wasn’t in front of his current job site, though. It was in front of a small, half-framed cottage that Gavin had never seen before, and there were already a half a dozen people standing on the lot.
Gavin turned a puzzled expression on his brother. “What is this? This isn’t the job you’re on.”
“Nope. I’m volunteering with House the Homeless today. I do that about once a month.”
Gavin decided to give the sincerity thing another try. He clapped his hand on Troy’s shoulder. “Well, for today at any rate, we’re volunteering.”
Troy cracked a smile and Gavin felt a jolt of brotherly connection. Okay, so this was a good lesson– even if something like sincerity doesn’t feel natural, to yourself or even to the people around you, it’s worth giving it more than one try. Maybe things like that took practice, just like anything.
As they slammed the car door and walked up toward the house, one of the men standing on the lot waved in a friendly greeting. “Hey, there he is! Our foreman for the day. Hey, Troy, the guys have lined up their tools to get ready. Care to do a quick inspection and then assign jobs?”
