I sigh. “And luckily, you’ll never have to find out.” I try to ignore the sinking in my gut when I say it. I switch directions fast. “So, how’s Mindy? How many months now until the, uh…the thing?”
My older brother’s voice reflects his smile. He breathes out hard. “Two months. And not a minute more.”
He doesn’t mention what really prompted me to come back home. Doesn’t have to.
The last weekend I’d spent on business in New York, my eldest brother had been smiling from ear to ear. Because he’d locked down the woman of his dreams.
For good.
His engagement party in the Plaza in two days was a testament to that. But to me?
Being back in New York was proof that my past couldn’t stay where it belonged. And that my present was currently crumbling.
My presence here only solidified that I didn’t belong inside Manhattan’s city limits anymore.
Not when everything around me was going to shit. Personally and professionally.
And Jase just doesn’t know it.
Over the phone, the trusting bastard sighs, and I feel like complete shit. I bask in every compliment about my abilities as co-owner of Quinn Real Estate Group, Inc., hating myself.
And hating him more for believing in me. I listen as he keeps talking.
“I’m just glad you decided to come. I’m happy you’re here…” He trails off. “You know, as opposed to being somewhere in one of downtown Sydney’s famous gutters.”
I snort. “Believe me: I was an ounce of scotch and one bad night away from being in one. It’s not every day that a man gets a firsthand preview of the city’s amazing sewage system. You’ve saved my arse from quite a few in the past.”
“Just feel lucky I like your ass. Not in the physical sense, of course.”
I smirk. “You wish, yer mug. You’ve never seen me do squats.”
I check the time again, feeling obsessed with it, thinking of the million other tasks I need to do…aside from those damned squats.
Impatience is getting the best of me on this long drive, the guilt starting to creep its way in. The thought of all I haven’t told Jase yet is eating away at me especially now in this back seat, and even amidst the jokes and laughs I share with him, I can’t help feeling like I’m going to regret this very moment.
But I push that thought back for another day.
Right now? Priority number one is keeping hold of my calm. Priority number two is making this “meeting.”
A meeting I should tell Jase about. A meeting somewhere in the back of my mind I know I shouldn’t be taking.
But I can’t stop myself.
I take a deep breath into the phone, finding the will to lie. My throat feels tight.
“Can’t say I don’t appreciate the overprotective call, Jase. But really, I’m alright.” I glance out the window. “Listen, I’m knackered as hell…” My throat grows tighter. “So, I might be out of commission if you happen to call later.”
I can hear Jase nod. I swear I can. “No worries. I heard you had a wild night, Big Shot. And I know you’ve got to be tired from traveling. Jet lag is a bitch. Especially when you’ve spent the night before in the bottom of a bottle.” His voice simmers low. “Just call if anything changes, will ya? Otherwise, I’ll have to kick down your door New York-style. And nothing makes a real estate developer more aggro than fucking up property.”
I chuckle. “I believe you. I’ll call you when I get settled.”
The guilt subsides the second Jase is gone, and I instantly feel better.
I’m damn near out of the clear when the sound of a blaring horn cuts through my consciousness, and the town car jerks, swerving around a driver careening down the opposite lane.
Heading in the wrong direction.
My life flashes before my eyes.
In that second, so does the car’s headlights, and my uniformed driver slams on the brakes, the sound of rubber against cement more terrifying than any noise I’ve ever heard.
And I thought LaGuardia was loud.
This noise is obliterating.
Like a nightmare in real-time, the world around slows to a reality-defying pace, and through it all, I can hear my heart beating, feel my pulse.
My throat closes up. My muscles lock up.
Every tooth in my mouth clenches, and before I can think twice, the car is sliding, skidding, drifting through the rain and slush, narrowly missing devastation as the two cars in front of us collide instead in a tangle of twisted metal and gray water.
My heart knocks on the center of my chest.
The town car comes to a halt, just a few short feet from the accident. It teeters on the edge of disaster, somehow missing, and past the symphony of secondary horns that kick up, we continue down the freeway no less than a minute later, the silence even louder than the crash.
Until my driver speaks up.
He spins in his seat. “Mr. Quinn?”
I glance up at him. “Yeah?”
“We’ve been here for two minutes already. Did you plan on leaving any time soon? Looks like the funeral’s begun.”
The tint of the back window is dark. But I can still see out of it.
The grass is unrealistically green, the cemetery lawn too perfect. But it’s the people who catch my eye most, the “shufflers” on it.
In black, my father’s mourners pitter-patter their way through his ceremony, and it takes everything in me, all of my strength—every muscle in my too-sloshed body—to make myself reach for the door handle.
By the time the driver opens the damned thing, I’m already lost in my thoughts, already numb to the world.
I don’t even realize we’re blocking other cars entering our segment of the cemetery until my driver clears his throat, pulling me back from the dead. Slipping him a hundred, I head out, flowers in tow—the ones I requested
