Page 16 of When I'm Gone

Just my luck.

He crosses his arm over his broad chest with amusement in his gaze, and he just looks at me. Waiting me out, I guess. “It’s been a long few days,” I explain.

Chase frowns. “Get some sleep, Easton.”

My stomach sinks. Did I do something wrong? What happened to Chaos? I shouldn’t care, I don’t, actually. “Good night,” I murmur, sliding off my perch with my burning eyes solidly on the ground. He says it too, but it’s barely heard behind the closed door where he can’t see the way he gets to me so easily.

~~~

Chase

I sleep like shit,which is no surprise. It takes me a solid ten minutes of staring at my ceiling contemplating my life choices before I finally get up, and even then, it’s only because Brady will be knocking in, like, half an hour so we can go to work.

There are no signs of life from my houseguest when I come out, dressed and as ready as I’ll manage for work today. I know I fucked up with him somehow yesterday, though the specifics elude me. I was kind of hoping to see him before Ileft. I scrawl him a quick note and leave it by the coffee maker, telling him when I’ll be home and to help himself to whatever, then grab a granola bar and to-go mug for the road and manage to get out the front door right as Brady pulls out of his driveway.

“You in a hurry today or something?” he asks as I jog up to his car and yank the door open.

Ha. I wouldn’t be leaving Easton alone on his first day here if I didn’t have to, so saying I’m in a hurry for it seems like a stretch. “Just good timing,” I return.

Brady drives off, and I spare one last solemn look in the rearview mirror at my rapidly disappearing house with the lingering feeling that I’m letting Easton down.

“Did he get settled okay?”

I start to tell him about how shaken he’d seemed last night, but it somehow feels too private—which is a bit unusual with my present company. “Yeah, I think so. I didn’t see him before I left.”

“Can you please just tell me if I’m crazy?”

I’m not expecting that. “Like in a general sense or…?”

He huffs. “No, you asshole. I mean, like, am I crazy or does Easton seem a bit… frazzled?”

It is way too soon in the day to psychoanalyze his little brother based on the collective five sentences we’ve gotten out of him in the last twelve hours. “He said that it had been a rough few days, I guess traveling up here or whatever. I’m not sure our limited interactions with him are a good indicator of anything yet, Bray.”

He glares at the road like it’s personally offended him, but we can’t go around assigning random theories about his little brother that are entirely unfounded. So what, the dude runs a little hot and cold. All I know is that I feel stupidly protective of that tiny sliver of vulnerability I saw when he dropped his guard for a minute yesterday.

A call coming through on my phone breaks the uncomfortable silence that was trying to settle over the car ride. When I get a read on the name on my screen, I decide the universe has my back sometimes.

“Hey, Blakely.”

A soft feminine voice answers me, like she’s trying to quiet. “Hi, stranger. I’ve missed you.”

Blakely is the only friend I’ve really kept up with from college. We had the same major and at least a couple of classes together each semester. Like Brady, she just decided we were friends one day, and I never looked back. She travels a lot these days, and it’s hard to nail down a chance to catch up when I'm never sure what time zone she’s in. “Turns out being in a different city every night has downsides, huh?”

She huffs. “The season is getting longer each year, I swear it. All of a sudden, I haven’t been back to Seattle for months. I hate it.” She may say she hates it but the affectionate tone is hard to hide. She may get homesick but she’s living the life most people dream about, and she’s deliriously happy.

“Poor thing. Your ridiculously hot millionaire husband loves you so much he can’t stand to be away from you for long, so he whisks you from city to city so you can be together. Awful. Jesus wept, Blake,” I tease.

She cackles. “Damn you. You’re going to make me wake the baby up.”

Not that I’d say it, but I really do miss that girl. Watching her get everything she was too afraid to want and then some our senior year was incredible, but I still miss having her around. “You in L.A.?”

She may live there, but during the season it’s a glorified post office box. “Yeah, came to see the mini me off to her first day at a new preschool, then back to watch the finals. Which brings me around to my point. I’m sitting here looking at a flight to SeaTac that leaves in two hours, and it gave me thewonderful idea to come hang with you for a few hours until I have to get back to Utah. Thoughts?”

My first one is that I want to tell my friend about all the weird feelings surrounding Brady’s brother and see if she can help me make sense of them, but seeing as he’s next to me, I say my second out loud. “I’ll pick you up from the airport.”

If nothing else, Blakely Ellison is a hell of a buffer, and I’m not afraid to use that for my benefit. She squeals excitedly; I guess no longer concerned if she wakes her niece up. “Yay! I was hoping you’d be down for a quick turnaround because otherwise it would be, like, August before we could get together, and that’s just too depressing.”

“Yes, I’m sure whatever luxurious vacation you have planned for this summer is sooo depressing.”

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