Page 4 of By All Accounts
“Yes,” I interrupted my brother before he could walk back the invitation. “I would love the help, Smith. Thank you.”
CHAPTER 2
FINN
Iwoke up Monday morning with the kind of hangover I deserved and my final lesson learned. Without my phone, I had no idea what time it was, but the sun glaring in through the guest room window led me to believe it was well into the middle of the morning. Stretching out my legs, I groaned, annoyed at the way my hip cracked at full extension. I should have let Smith give me a charger, but I didn’t trust myself to not do something foolish.
Slowly, I extracted myself from the soft and warm cocoon of Smith’s guest bed. God, I didn’t have clean clothes, I didn’t have my car…I hadn’t thought this thing through at all. Cursing my own idiocy, I put on yesterday’s clothes, my watch. I grabbed my dead cellphone and slid it into my pocket, then debated stripping the bed so Smith could wash the sheets. In the end, I chose to make it, fearing I’d end up in it again before he even had time to come home from his boyfriend’s house to do the laundry.
I was wrong about that.
I realized that as soon as I got downstairs and found Smith in the kitchen, fresh coffee in the pot on the counter, and two slices of toast fresh out of the toaster. He was in the act of buttering them when he heard me, glancing up with a nervous smile.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“You’re the one with a watch.”
I huffed, checking my wrist. It was almost ten.
“How long have you been here for?”
“Not too long, but awhile,” he answered. “I heard you moving around so I put some toast in. Figured you’d be hungry since you didn’t eat last night.”
“How do you know?”
I climbed onto one of the barstools at Smith’s kitchen counter. He slid the plate of toast toward me, followed by a mug of steaming coffee.
“Everything is as I left it,” he said simply.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I shoved half the slice of toast into my mouth so I didn’t have to. Smith leaned against the counter and drank his own coffee while I ate, and I hated he’d been right. I was starving and toast was nowhere near enough, but my head felt like someone was battering on it with a rubber mallet and I didn’t trust my body enough to eat more.
Smith took my plate after I finished eating and washed it, returned it to the cabinet, then reached into a drawer and pulled out a bottle of painkillers. He passed that to me next, and I took double the recommended dose, grateful my brother had taken after Marshall in the ways I liked and not just the ways I didn’t. After chasing the pills with coffee—a winning team—I pulled my phone out of my pocket and slid it across the counter to Smith.
“Would you get this enough charge to turn on? Then I want you to go in and block some numbers for me.”
I didn’t need to tell him who, and Smith kept his back to me the whole time he deleted the mark of Neil and Annette from my life. Once finished, he pulled the plug out and gave the phone back to me with a whopping two-percent battery life.
“You don’t have to avoid your phone if they’re blocked now,” he said.
“I know. I kind of just…don’t want it.” I left the phone on the counter. “Not for a forever thing. Just not right now.”
There were pictures that needed to be deleted, but I wasn’t going to ask my baby brother to take care of that dirty work for me. And it was my own fault they were there in the first place. I should have deleted them months ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t too ashamed to admit I still jerked off to them sometimes, but that wasn’t what I’d been doing on Sunday night. I’d used them for a trip down memory lane I should have never taken, and both of us knew where that had gotten me. It was better to stop tempting myself with fantasies that would never really be within my reach.
“That’s fine,” Smith said. “You know, you’re lucky you waited until Sunday to get arrested because Riggs and I were out of town and I didn’t have my phone until we got back to his apartment.”
“It was hardly an arrest,” I countered.
“Wasn’t it?”
“I mean, it would have been. Public intoxication maybe, but the officer who took me in knew Willem.” I snorted, unable to stop a ridiculous smile from splitting my face. The irony of getting out of my first arrest—which would have only been a misdemeanor anyway—because somebody recognized my name and knew my father…it was laughable. Beyond his money and his name, it was the only thing he’d ever done for me that mattered.
Maybe I should send him a thank you note, I thought to myself.
“So.” I shrugged one shoulder. “I slept it off, called you, and here I am. Free and clear.”
“Free and clear,” Smith muttered, the double meaning not lost on me that I was, in fact, neither of those things. He clearedhis throat. “What’s the plan for the day, then? Riggs and I are at your disposal.”
“Is he here?”
