Page 101 of Game Change

“Let’s go have some dinner. You want to go to our little bistro?” He plants soft kisses on my forehead.

“I want their food, but I want to eat it at home with you.”

“At home with me. I love the sound of that.”

“Well, that’s because you love me, Mr. Kincaid,” I say as I look into his face.

“I do.”

“And I love you too.”

“You’d better.”

I didn’t bother taking any work home tonight, and since the May weather has brought mild temperatures, we leave the office and walk across the street like two lovers without a care in the world.

“Just five more days, and I get to take you away and have you all to myself for the next ten,” he says when we get home.

I smile and shake my head at him. “Baby, we live together and work together. You might get tired of me.”

“Stop fishing for compliments. You know that won’t happen.” He kisses my forehead again and volunteers to get our food. While he’s gone, I change into something comfortable.

While I’m in the bedroom, my phone rings. It’s a number I don’t recognize, but I decide to answer it.

“Hello,” I say.

“You have some fucking nerve having my son arrested for some shit he didn’t do.” The voice of Oliver’s mother’s voice makes me instantly regret my decision to answer. Any other time, I’d hang up. I’m not a pushover, but my life’s mission is not to argue with difficult people.

“He did it, though,” I say, doing my best to sound bored. “He’s on camera.”

She gasps at that. Of course, he lied to her and played the victim.

“You saw his face?” she asks.

“I did. My building has security cameras everywhere. Even before I saw Oliver’s face, I knew it was him from his coat and the way he walked.”

She takes another deep breath, and I wonder if she will apologize on his behalf. “Well, if you had only given him a place to live, it wouldn’t have come to that.” And I guess I know my answer. “You have so much, and he has nothing. That woman left him. He lost the house, and you have it. Let him have something.”

I rub the bridge of my nose and ask a higher power for strength. “Vanna, I didn’t get the house. I bought it and spent a ton of money fixing it. It’s an investment, and I don’t remember you fighting for me when your son threw me out of my mother’s house,” I hiss.

“I told him not to do it, but he never listens.”

“I don’t owe him anything.”

“You’re just going to let them throw him in jail?”

“I’m not going to do anything. I will follow the law, and you better pray they don’t arrest you for aiding and abetting.”

“You can help him. You can say it was a misunderstanding. The boy is a fuck up, but he won’t do well in jail. He’s always been jealous of you.”

I don’t know how to take that, and I don’t know if it’s true. Oliver is lazy but talented and intelligent. We didn’t have the same friends or even go to the same schools, so I don’t know why he would be jealous of me.

“It’s true,” Vanna says after a few moments. “You were the smart one, and he was jealous of your relationship with your mother.” But my mother loved him too; I don’t say that, though. It doesn’t matter at this point.

“Do you know he destroyed the urn with her ashes? He threw her all over the floor. He desecrated her resting place, and for that, I can never forgive him.”

“I didn’t know about that,” she whispers.

“It seems you don’t know much, Vanna, yet you constantly blame me for Oliver’s circumstances. All he had to do was leave me alone, like I asked, but he didn’t. When he didn’t get what he felt entitled to, he broke into my house and destroyed it, and now you want me to do what?” I snap at the woman who has finally pushed me to the end of my patience. “I suggest you get him a lawyer.”

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