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“Answer me.”
I pried his fingers off. “None of your business. Now stop being a shithead asshole fucker.”
“I believe you’ve taken over that role this morning.”
Because that was something I was comfortable with. Well, not comfortable, but I was accustomed to.
“I’ll take Blake. You’ve got other things to do.” And I shouldn’t be dumping my child on him, even though they seemed to be getting along fabulously. I didn’t want to take that from Blake.
“Like hell you are. We have plans.”
I didn’t know how he made it work with as busy as he was, but I couldn’t ignore the fierceness with which he wanted hang out with my son. He deserved as many people like that in his life as he could get.
I stared at him, a little in awe. “Fine. I’ll text you to check in.” He picked up Blake and moved toward the door. “Where are you going?”
“None of your business,” he shot back.
Yeah, okay. The taste of my own medicine hurt.
“Did you do this?”
Holt pointed to the walls of his office as I slung my bag on the desk.
“Nice color.” I put my hands behind my back.
“Yeah.” He scratched his neck. “I guess Baker had it done to surprise me.”
“Guess so.” I strolled toward him, pretending to examine the work. “Looks like it needs another coat. I’ll see if I can find the paint and finish it up for you.”
“Uh, sure.”
“Have you decided what you want to do with the floors?”
He glanced down. “Get rid of this nasty shit.”
“That’s a given.”
“I haven’t thought much about this room. It’s the least important.”
I nodded. “I’m going to get to it.”
I was almost to the door when he spoke. “We missed you last night.”
My brother hadn’t meant that as a dig. Hadn’t meant for it to hurt. The genuineness was written all over his face. But it was painful. Because I’d missed more time with my family.
What was there to say to that?
Once I hadmy paint supplies set up, I dug in my purse for my phone. Instead of it, I found two sleeves of crackers and a bottle of ginger ale dotted with beads of sweat.
I swayed into the desk.
My hands trembled as I opened the crackers and fished a few out. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t be nice to me when I was so awful.
I sipped on the ginger ale and found my phone. I typed out a thank you text. Erased it. Typed another version of it. Erased that.
How’s Blake?
What I finally settled on was inadequate.
