Page 86 of While You're There
“It’s been a tough week for sure,” he offered, hoping to end the conversation before it went any further.
Jake grimaced and shook his head. “This has been going on for a lot longer than a week, and you and I both know it. Fielding told me about that night at The Grille.”
First the ice trick. Then the sleepover comment. Now this. How was it not even noon, and Fielding Haas, who was apparently not just a fuckboy but also a snitch, had been brought up three times in conversation?
Fucking Fielding.
“You have no idea the pressure I’m under,” Rhett gritted out between clenched teeth, “or what it’s like to lose a child.”
Jake hung his head for a breath, then another. Rhett watched as his hands fisted against the top of the car. “I feel broken inside about what happened to you, bro. I really do. But the drinking… the scene at The Grille? That was an issuebeforeyou went to Columbus last weekend. You are grasping at straws right now, so I'm calling you out.” He looked up then, a storm of accusations and disappointment in his eyes. “Don’t use your dead baby as an excuse for your shitty choices. This is all on you.”
Rhett was around the car before his brain even caught up to his body. He couldn’t help it. It was a guttural reaction, an immediate response triggered by a crassness he never expected from Jake.
His knuckles colliding with the other man’s chiseled features ignited all the anger that’d been bubbling under the surface. His fist connected with his best friend’s face in a satisfying crack. Jake stumbled back, falling into another car before righting himself. Rhett rolled his shoulder once, checking his range of motion before he struck again. It wasn’t until Jake winced and cracked his neck to the side that Rhett realized Jake hadn’t even raised his fists to block the blow.
What the hell was he doing? Had he really just punched his best friend?
“Feel better?” Jake taunted. But there was an underlying sincerity to his question, too.
Rhett opened and closed his hand a few times as his chest rose in deep, heaving breaths. Thathadfelt good.
“There are other ways to work through shit than drowning in a bottle, bro. Join a gym in Virginia. Come over here and use the heavy bag when you’re home. Just get a fucking grip. This isn’t who you are. This isn’t whoweare or what we stand for.”
Rhett gawked as realization dawned on him. “You did that on purpose. You made me fucking hit you.”
Jake nodded as he brought his hand to his jawline. An angry red mark was already blossoming where Rhett’s fist had connected with his face.
“I did. And it was too fucking easy. You’re wound up too tight right now, bro. I know the wedding and Tori’s surgeries and the new job all happened at once. And then Chandler… and the baby… fuck. I’m sorry, by the way. I’m so fucking sorry. I only said that because I knew it’d hit the hardest, and I needed you to react.”
Rhett nodded and instantly accepted his friend’s apology, anxious to end this little heart-to-heart that felt increasingly like an intervention. But Jake wasn’t done.
“You’re hearing me right now, yeah? You have to get it together, Rhett. You have to cut back on the drinking. You have to do it for Tori and for me. You’re my family, bro. I can’t watch you go down this path.”
“I hear you.”
“Good,” Jake replied, tapping his knuckles twice on the hood of the car between them. “Do you want a hug or something?”
Rhett snorted. Leave it to Jake to manipulate him into throwing punches and then offer to hug it out at the end. “Nah. But I sort of want to hit you again now that I know it was all an act.”
Jake let out a laugh. “Hell no, bro. That was your one and only free shot. We’re done now. Let’s get you some wheels so you can get home to your girl. What do you want to drive?”
“What are my options?” He tried to come off as casual, but he still couldn’t bring himself to look Jake in the eye. He’d been slammed with a whirlwind of emotions. Anger, frustration, and shame rippled through him as he tried to process everything that had just happened.
“Literally anything in this garage. Well, except my Jeep. And I don’t have insurance on the Ferrari or the Aston right now, so I guess those are out, too.”
Rhett whipped his head around the cavernous space, quickly counting at least twenty covered vehicles in addition to the two Jeeps. “Wait. Do you have all of your dad’s cars here?”
“All of them,” Jake confirmed with a satisfied smirk.
“Do your brothers know?” Rhett couldn’t hide the shock behind the question. Jake had been all but estranged from his family—including his two older brothers—since before his dad died several years ago.
“Julian drove every single one of them into this garage himself. His cheap ass got sick of paying for a storage unit, but you know Joe.” Jake shrugged as he casually referred to his father by his first name. “There was a provision in his will that we had to store and keep all the cars in pristine condition so we could participate in the Hampton Days car show each year in his honor. I don’t think there’s any way to enforce that condition now, but Julian and Joey were always the suck-ups.”
“How the hell did you convince the other residents to give up their parking spots?” The size of the garage was even more impressive now that he knew every single car belonged to Jake.
“There wasn’t much convincing involved considering I own the building.”
Rhett just shook his head at his best friend’s nonchalance. Very few people knew that Jake owned the entire condo complex where he lived. It was one of the few no-strings-attached gifts his dad had left him in his will. Everything else—well, they didn’t talk about everything else very often, about what Jake would have to do if he wanted to unlock the millions that had been conditionally left to him.
