Page 12 of Secret Triplets, Second Chances

JAKE

W hen I wake up, my mouth tastes like death and my head is spinning, threatening to make me sick again.

Last night’s single drink turned into a lot of drinks, which turned into getting kicked out because some asshole recognized me and asked if I was going to punch him when he was down, too. When I promised to do a lot more than that, the bartender told me it was time to go.

My eyes focus, and I find the source of the sound that’s woken me up only hours after I managed to fall asleep: my phone on the bedside table, vibrating and lighting up.

Shelby Bradson .

“Fuck,” I mutter, rolling onto my stomach and burying my face in my hands. One call from my sister is the standard — her trying to connect with me, thinking about me, or wanting to fill me in on Wildfern Ridge shit I don’t care about.

This many calls, back-to-back, can’t be good.

When I raise my head up and look around my apartment, I see the bland stainless-steel appliances, the huge TV, the glass of water last-night Jake placed on the coffee table for me.

I thank him and take a drink, even as the pain of last night pounds through my brain, like a pulsing nestled in my skull.

Then, slowly, like my hand is moving through water, I reach for the bedside table and scoop up the phone just as it stops ringing. I start to move through the process to call her back, but it lights up with another call from her.

“Hello?”

“You sound like shit,” Shelby says, and there’s the sound of something in the background — maybe a drill?

“Is that why you called?”

“No.”

When she pauses, a deep, sure feeling settles in my gut. A certain knowledge that surpasses any logical reasoning, so when she finally clears her throat and tells me, I already know.

“Dad is dead, Jake.”

I pause, waiting for those words to bowl me over, but instead I feel nothing. Like the news was a bullet bouncing off a suit of armor. My dad is dead, and I don’t feel a thing about it.

“Okay. Was there anything else?”

“You don’t have to be an asshole,” she says, and I can practically picture her rolling her eyes. As much as I was pissed at her that first year after I left, I also couldn’t blame her for not wanting to come with me. What teenage girl wants to live with her teenage brother in a completely new town?

But I was lonely in Ann Arbor. And I spent enough time worrying about her that I didn’t have the same social life as the other players on the team. They took to calling me “Grandpa Jake” because I was always in bed on the weekends rather than out partying with the team.

“Yes,” Shelby goes on, sounding exasperated, “there is something else.”

Dread settles in the pit of my stomach.

“…he left the house to you, Jake.”

“He left the house to me?”

“The lawyer went through the will with me this morning. You haven’t answered any of my calls this week, and we couldn’t postpone it any longer. I figured you wouldn’t care. Until I found out he left the house to you.”

“What did he leave to you?”

“The business.”

I almost laugh — that was basically already Shelby’s anyway.

She started working there shortly after I left, no matter how much I warned her away from it, and Lawrence would fill me in on her progress.

I followed as she went from knowing nothing about building to basically running the show, as the crew started looking up to her and listening to her despite the fact that she was twenty years their junior.

Leave it to our dad to give her something she’d already worked for and earned.

“Jake,” Shelby says, “it doesn’t matter what Dad left me. I’m calling you because the house is in your name, which means I can’t deal with it. I can’t list it, which we won’t be able to do?—”

“Well, you can have it,” I say, the words snapping out of me. “Whatever we need to do to transfer ownership. I’ll sell it to you for a dollar, whatever.”

It’s fucking rich, him leaving the house to me when the last time I was there, he put all my shit out on the curb, basically a loud and proud sign that he wanted me to get the fuck out.

“That’s not how it works,” Shelby says, and the construction sounds around her disappear. I hear the dinging of a vehicle, then the whoosh of air conditioning. “Besides, you know that I started flipping, right?”

“I know that you were thinking about getting into flipping.”

When was the last time we talked? I try to remember. Months ago… long before the Stanley Cup? Did I invite her to come watch it?

“Well, I’m into it now. Just bought my first property. Got it for a contractor’s price. But I have a pretty tight window for this budget, and we have to get as much done as we can in the upcoming weeks.”

I’m quiet, waiting for what this has to do with me. I’m proud of her for doing it, but I don’t see why she wouldn’t want the house. If anything, she could take it for another flip.

“Which means I don’t have any time to go through the house, Jake. I need you to come back and clean it out. If you want to sell it for any kind of good money, there are a lot of repairs that need to be made.”

My stomach starts to churn at the thought of it — returning to town, going back into that house. Doing work on it when I’d much rather demolish the entire thing.

“Can’t we sell it as is?”

“Jake.” Shelby pauses, and I hear the sharp sound of her sucking in breath, breathing deeply to deal with my attitude.

I’m sympathetic to her but also don’t want anything to do with this, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

“I still have some stuff in there. You have things in the attic. There are… there are some things that belonged to Mom in the storage room, as well.”

I bite my tongue, hating it. Hating that Shelby knew that would change my mind.

Shelby wasn’t old enough to really know our mother. But I was, just, and when I was a kid, her memory flitted through that house like a ghost, a whisper of an explanation for why things had gotten so bad with my father.

“Fine.” I grind out. My agent will be happy. She’d given me an entire spiel about laying low this summer, staying out of the spotlight, getting out of the city. Letting the story about me die down.

“Go crazy,” Abbie had said, waving her arms. “Maybe even think about doing some volunteer work, huh, Bradson?”

“Fine?” Shelby asks, sounding dubious, like she doesn’t quite believe that I would agree to this. I can’t really believe it, either.

“Yes, fine. I’ll fly out.”

When I get off the phone with her, I stare down at the black, reflective screen, thinking about the money in my bank account, the signing bonus I got with the Kings.

Maybe I could pay someone to go into the house, pack everything up and throw it in a storage unit for Shelby to go through another time.

I could use my money to get out of having to deal with this. If I really wanted to, I could avoid ever going back to Wildfern Ridge for the rest of my life.

Then, as so often happens, an image of Lara flashes into my mind.

A whole series of memories, starting with that first night in the tree house and ending with that night on her balcony. A reminder that the town and my dad aren’t the only reasons I don’t want to go back to Wildfern Ridge.

Then, like I always do, I force them out. Refuse to think about it. I can’t look back at the past; I have to keep trudging forward.

Even as I pack a bag to go back to the town I never wanted to see again.