Page 41 of Wait for Him

I go straight for the television, find the news channel I already know is running this on a loop because that's precisely the caliber of day we're all having, and set the remote down on his coffee table.

Michael lowers himself cautiously onto the couch.

I sit beside him.

Together, we take in the morning's featured segment, which is, in the broadest and most literal possible sense, my brother's cock.

Jackson

“How'd he take it?”

I drape my suit jacket over the back of the chair and slide into the seat across from Rose. She called twenty minutes ago asking me to meet her at Grato, a restaurant bar halfway across town, and my brain interpreted that as get your ass there immediately because I was out the door before she'd even told me why.

I was mid-meeting with our Singapore group when her ringtone, Barbie Girl, started blasting from my phone on the conference table. I had to silence the call while twelve people watched me do it, which went over like a bag of bricks, although I caught a couple of smirks before everyone remembered we were supposed to be serious executives discussing serious executive shit.

I gave them some bullshit about needing to step away and ended the meeting.

No hesitation whatsoever.

One empty wineglass sits between Rose and me, a second already halfway gone. That's how I know it's bad. Rose doesn't drink like she's trying to empty the bottle unless her brother has made himself someone else's crisis, and lately that's become something of a full-time job.

“Better than I expected.” She turns the stem of her glass in slow circles, watching the wine climb the sides instead of looking at me. “Which means terribly.”

I take a moment to study her while she's avoiding my eyes. She's still dressed for work, although the top few buttons of her blouse are undone and her hair has started escaping whatever neat arrangement it must have been in this morning. There's a tiredness around her eyes that wasn't there a few weeks ago, and I fucking hate it because I know exactly who put it there.

A few seconds pass before she finally looks up.

“He said he'd call you.” Her gaze searches mine. “Has he?”

He hasn't.

Why would I think he had?

Bennet Sullivan, her brother, my best friend, business partner, and currently one of the most photographed men in the city for all the wrong reasons, doesn't call the people cleaning up his disasters until they've had sufficient time to ripen.

A few nights ago, he and a handful of the guys we went to university with decided the Pershing Square fountain would be greatly improved by the addition of several half-naked idiots. Somebody with a phone happened to agree. By breakfast, pictures were everywhere, and by lunch our communications team was trying to explain why one of the founders of Sullivan & Associates was trending online in his underwear.

I've been furious all weekend. Not because he went out and got drunk. Fuck, we've all done stupid shit. I'm furious because this isn't one stupid night anymore. It's becoming a pattern, and every time Bennet does something reckless, Rose ends up sitting somewhere like this, trying to figure out how to save him from himself.

Mostly, though, I'm grateful I had an excuse to skip it. I spent the weekend fighting with the old man instead, which might be the first time in my life that particular shitshow has saved me from another one. If I'd been there with Bennet, there's a decent chance I'd have ended up standing waist-deep in chlorinated misdemeanor beside him, and then Rose would be sitting here pissed at both of us.

Actually, no.

She'd be pissed at Bennet. She'd just give me that disappointed look, which is somehow worse.

“He'll surface,” I tell her. “He always does. Usually right around the time it stops being fixable.”

One corner of her mouth quirks up, and there she is. Just enough of Rose breaking through the worry to make something in my chest loosen.

The bartender approaches with my drink, takes one look at her face, sets the glass down without attempting conversation and wisely disappears.

“Smart man,” I mutter.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I heard you.”