Page 15 of On the Line

“What the hell?!”

“What?” she asks, slamming on the brakes way harder than necessary to stop for the red light ahead.

“Look at this,” I say, holding the papers out. “Look at the address these statements are being delivered to.”

“Josh Emerson, PO Box 27834,” she reads.

“We don’t have a PO Box.”

The air leaves her with a hiss. “Shit.”

“Well, this explains a thing or two about how Josh kept all of this from me. No wonder I didn’t come across any of the financial stuff in the mail.”

“Do you want to go check it out?”

“Do we have time? Don’t you need to head to Salt Lake City in like an hour to catch your flight home?”

She looks at me like I suggested she run naked through the streets. “Like I’d leave you in this moment, right after you just discovered all this ...”

“Okay, yeah. Let me just text Morgan and see if she can stay with the girls a little longer.”

We head to the post office, and I feel like I’m on autopilot—my emotions frozen and unable to process everything I’ve learned—as I explain the situation and show them a copy of the trust naming me as the beneficiary of all assets, along with Josh’s death certificate. I fill out the paperwork to transfer ownership, and they give me a stack of mail, which I flip through quickly as I wait for them to get me a new key for the PO Box. And the thing that catches my eye is an unmarked envelope like you’d get from a bank, with something stamped in red peeking out through the clear address window.

I somehow manage to wait until we’re back in the car before I tear the envelope open. Then I look over at Paige, eyes wide in terror as I hold up the statement for a mortgage I didn’t know we had on our home so she can see the big red “Past Due” stamp on it.

CHAPTER7

JAMESON

Boston, MA

Lauren

Do you have a minute?

I flip my phone over and glance at the message for the fourth time, then set the phone back facedown on the kitchen table.

“What the hell’s going on?” Jules asks as she tucks a loose strand of her blond hair behind her ear and reaches for my empty plate. “You getting another booty call? It better not be from that bitchy blonde I kicked out of here last weekend.”

“Please don’t remind me.” I swirl my glass of scotch, watching as the amber liquid coats the edges of the glass. As I often do, I’ve poured myself a glass after dinner and I’ll sip it slowly, never drinking the whole thing. Call it a test of my willpower, like I do, or my need to prove I’m not my father, as my therapist does—either way, there’s alcohol in front of me and I’ve still never been drunk.

“It was 4 a.m. and you were having a full-out screaming match in the hallway. You’re lucky it was me you woke up and not Audrey or Graham ...” Jules trails off as she carries our dishes across the antique cross-and-star-patterned terra-cotta tiled floors to the sink, not needing to finish the sentence because we both know what Graham is like—the kid is awesome, as long as he gets enough sleep. If he doesn’t, it’s like he’s been replaced with a demonic changeling.

“We weren’t having a screaming match—shewas the only one yelling. I was trying to calm her down.”

Bringing a woman back to my place is never not a mistake. Not when my two nosy sisters live downstairs and said woman wants to spend the night. Staying over is a hard no, in my book, and something I’m always upfront about.

“Yeah,” Jules says, setting the plates in the sink and turning to look at me. “Because when in the course of human history has a woman ever been calmed by having a man tell her tocalm the fuck down?” She pads across the floor in her fuzzy socks with her leggings tucked inside. With her oversized sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder and her blond hair up in a messy bun, she looks more like a college student than the co-owner of one of Boston’s most up-and-coming construction companies. “C’mon, I raised you better than that.”

“You’re such a smart-ass.” I roll my eyes as she walks back and collapses into her chair across from me, a big smile on her face. My sisters love to throw things I once said to them, likeI raised you better than that, back at me. But she’s right. I should have known better. “Won’t happen again.”

And it truly won’t. It’s just not worth the effort. From now on, if I pick up a woman at a bar, I’m going to her place even if my place is much closer, as was the case last weekend. That way, when I’m ready to head to my bed alone and she decides to start throwing shit, she can break her own stuff and we won’t risk waking up my family.

“So who is it?” Jules tilts her chin toward my phone. It’s taking everything I have not to pick it up and look at it a fifth time. Seeing Lauren’s name is bringing up way too many emotions.

“The wife of a client.”

“How would he feel about his wife texting you?” She could be joking, but it doesn’t really sound like it.

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