Page 166 of Rush of Jealousy

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t do anything dangerous today at all. Why is he so visibly upset?

He shakes his head and grabs our bags. “Let’s go. We don’t have time.”

Why the rush? I follow him downstairs and see Collins sitting on the couch watching us enter the room. Why do we need a driver to go to his family’s house?

“Ready to go?” Collins asks, standing up and rubbing his hand on his chin. He seems stressed and is wearing a similarly pained expression as Graham has been sporting since he came home. I’ve never seen him rattled before—until now.

I look up at Graham and back at Collins in confusion. “What the hell is going on? Tell me.”

“No,” he snaps. “I have a whole list of other more important things on my mind, dammit, and hashing this out with you right now is not one of them. We need to go. Now. Let’s go. Before—” Graham snaps his mouth shut.

“Before what?” I prop my hands on my hips. “Before I find out what you’re hiding and run? Is that what you both are scared of? That I’ll find out more lies that you spew and then run for the fucking mountains to get away?”

“Let’s go,” Graham says, pulling me toward the elevator and then smashing the button that will take us to the garage with his fist. It seems to take us twice as long to descend. As if every moment from the time Graham arrived home until now is moving in slow motion. My mind searches for clues as to what is happening. What has these two men so frazzled?

Collins opens the backseat door for me of a car that is idling at the curb. He places our bags in the trunk and then slides into the driver’s seat. This vehicle is one I have not been inside before, with very tinted windows and a soundproof privacy screen that takes a button to press for the speaker.

Graham slips into his side and pulls me close to him. He snaps the center seatbelt into place around me. He kisses my forehead and mumbles into my hair how much he loves me. His phone buzzes, and he answers it with an abrupt, “Hoffman.”

I look up at his bloodshot eyes as he growls to the person on the other end. “This changes everything. You know that, right? All the promises I made to you are now gone.” His eyes lose focus for a few seconds, taking him somewhere else that is not here. “I don’t give a damn what consequences I have to endure. But she is my priority.” He squeezes me with the arm he has wrapped around me. Collins has us out of the parking garage and already heading west through the city. “Then let’s work out another deal. Renegotiate. I can’t keep doing this.”

I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket and slip it out to see that it’s Claire sending me photos. I open the text and look down at the images while Graham is busy chatting to whomever is on the other end of his call. I see Paul and Mark in the picture. I also see Mark’s “business” associates, Benjamin, Samson, and Edward—which is not surprising since they have been meeting with Mark since our first date. But the new person in the photo—the one with the sunglasses and ball cap—is someone I don’t recognize. Not surprisingly, since he is trying to remain concealed. I email myself the pictures using my secret account and make a mental note to cross reference them when I get a private moment to myself. I delete the text chain.

“What has you so distracted?” Graham asks, looking down at me as I close down my windows.

I startle at the sound of his voice. “Just catching up on email.”

He nods and then glances out the window behind me. “My mom and dad are so excited to meet you.”

“Yeah?” I ask, looking up at him. None of the stress is washed off his face. If anything, there is more of it visible in his forehead wrinkles and the redness in his eyes.

“Yes. I never bring girls home. Ever. So they’re probably excited that one even exists in my life.”

He says the words so seriously, but I laugh at the meaning behind them. I guess I should feel special. And if it wasn’t for this cloud of mistrust hovering over us, then I probably would.

“I used to love Thanksgiving.”

He looks down at me and frowns. “Not anymore?”

I shrug. “Holidays don’t really mean much to me without a home or a family to share them with. The months before my mom passed, we rushed all of the holidays for the entire year and celebrated one a week starting with New Years and ending with Christmas. We would decorate her room that had the hospital bed and play music. James and I would make pictures for the windows that would represent the season of that particular holiday. It was our way of coping with the uncertainty of when we would lose her. And with losing her came losing all of the traditions associated with those holidays. The day my mom died was the death of so many other things that I could not even comprehend as a twelve-year-old girl. She was the glue that made everything in life better. Without the glue? Life just crumbled.”

Graham hugs me closer to him, and his warmth is comforting. “What about all the years since losing her? You and James would have been still living at home with your dad…”

“It just wasn’t the same. My dad had his own issues that just seemed to grow worse with time. So we basically stopped celebrating anything that used to make my mom happy. It seemed weird making a turkey or putting up a Christmas tree when those were the things that would make her excited.”

“Don’t you think she would have wanted you to keep on living? That she would want you and James and your dad to remember her through the things she once enjoyed?”

I frown. “Maybe. But we were all grieving and never really got over it entirely to truly move forward.”

“So how did you get to this place in your life then? Because youaremoving forward. You are trying to live.”

I give him a half smile. “It took a lot of work to get me to this place. I leaned on James a lot during our teenage years. We would involve ourselves in school and were inseparable. We never dated anyone in high school, so we just spent our days doing schoolwork together or riding bikes or joining clubs. After he died, I went through several months where I had no purpose. No will to live. Then I started to—” I stop. I can’t even say the word.

“Cut?” Graham fills in the blank.

“Yeah. It was a shameful time in my life and not something I am proud of by any means.”

Even though I shared a lot of this with him at the lake house, it oddly feels good to talk about it again and tell him a bit more. Maybe if we keep doing these sessions, he will know everything that there is to know.

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