Page 77 of New Orleans Rush

Fox, for once, wasn’t thinking ten steps ahead. “What’s Vito got to do with this?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Huxley mumbled. He should have listened to Fox’s warning that Oliphant would retaliate with some sort of nefarious activity. Nothing to be done about that now, but the word nefarious winded him.

It made him ache for Beatrice even more.

Fox didn’t push the issue. “What about the graffiti?” he asked. “Isn’t the hearing tomorrow?”

Huxley sighed. “When the enforcer checks the building, he’ll either extend our deadline because of the graffiti, or he’ll assume we did it ourselves to delay the proceedings. If it’s the latter, the court will find us in violation of the City order, we’ll get slapped with a fine and have to repaint. They’ll probably give us one last deadline, but it’ll cost us. Either way, we need cash to fix this. And as much as that all sucks, the blight issue was only ever about the exterior. We have bigger problems now.”

He went on to describe Oliphant’s threat and the possibility of losing the theater if the City discovered the extent of their building’s interior shortcomings. “Basically, we need more cash to fix the graffiti and I need to stop Oliphant from leaking our electrical issues, but I’ll figure it out.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Huxley reared back at Fox’s insult, not that it was off the mark. He’d already surmised as much. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Okay. It’s like you don’t know you have family.”

“Bullshit.” All Huxley did was work to keep his brothers happy. Pay for their furniture, vet bills, magic conferences. Keep them employed.

Fox gestured aggressively between Axel and himself. “Us two guys, your brothers—remember us? We care about the theater, too. And I’m tired of you thinking you have to do everything alone. So, I’ll call Trevor and a couple other guys about repainting. We’ll scrape together cash for a fine if it comes to that and raise more for the work, but the operating word here is we. This isn’t your burden alone, and I’m tired of you thinking it is. And when I’m done making those calls, I’ll deal with Oliphant. I have something on him that will shut him up.”

Huxley narrowed his eyes at his brother. “What exactly is this something?”

Fox’s face was as unreadable as usual. “Don’t ask me about it, like I won’t ask you about the Vito angle that went bust. But if you’d called me right away instead of facing everything on your own, you wouldn’t be sitting here, wallowing.”

Axel said something about helping out, too, but the words barely registered. Huxley was too busy breathing through the dread suffocating him. He really was an idiot. He should have leaned on Fox and Axel, worked together instead of always trying to take care of them. He wasn’t their father, and they were all older now. He no longer had to do the heavy lifting for the family. If Huxley had called Fox first thing he wouldn’t have panicked. He wouldn’t have asked Beatrice for a gambling loan.

She could be reading his texts now. Cursing him. Writing him off. He couldn’t shake the fear that he’d screwed things up with her, no matter his next move.

Edna’s advice was there, too. The soundtrack to his anxiety. “Do you think Dad regrets leaving me the theater? Seeing it like this?”

Axel leaned over the center console. “What was his other option, leave it to me?”

Huxley almost laughed. “I mean the choices I made. I know he wanted to see his legacy go on, but I could have sold it from the start. Split the profits. It would have left us cash. Maybe Xander and Paxton wouldn’t have taken off. Or I could have sold it when you guys asked me to, when business started getting worse. Then Dad wouldn’t have to look down and watch it all fall apart.”

A teenager in basketball shorts rode his bike past the theater. Abruptly, he did a one-eighty and stopped in front of it. The kid proceeded to crack up.

Fox mumbled, “Asshole,” then said, “Dad didn’t leave you the theater because he couldn’t stand the idea of losing it. He left you the theater to keep us together.” When Huxley didn’t reply, Fox shook his head. “Without the theater, we would have drifted apart. Xander and Paxton had no intention of sticking around, even if the accident never happened. Their issues with Dad and our family drama ran deeper than that. And we never should have asked you to sell the building. We did that because we were worried about the stress it was putting on you. We should have pushed harder to be involved instead.”

“But if I sold it, you guys wouldn’t be living paycheck-to-paycheck.”

“You’re right. I’d probably be picking pockets in my spare time, and Magic Mike here”—Fox jutted a thumb toward Axel—“would be working the porn circuit. We’d barely see one another, let alone work together.”

Axel smacked Huxley’s shoulder. “If that’s what I would’ve been doing, then hell yeah—he’d be pissed. I’m pissed. You should’ve sold the theater.” Always the comedian.

Fox held Huxley’s eyes, both of them ignoring Axel as Fox’s reasoning sank into Huxley’s thick skull. Without the theater, they wouldn’t be as close as they were. A flying penis didn’t change that. It couldn’t take away joking and laughing over bowls of his seafood pesto pasta. It couldn’t replace two brothers who did God knew what to fix his vandalized car. Busting his ass to save the theater was about keeping the remains of his family together. That would make his father proud, and finding love was the standing ovation to that performance. The best natural high there was.

Love he might have lost. “I screwed up,” he told his brothers, then explained about texting Beatrice for help and betraying her trust. He may not have actually agreed to the game with Oliphant, but asking for the money was as low as he could have sunk.

“You’re an ass.” Axel’s glare could cut ice. “You don’t meet girls like Bea every day. You said yourself, poker is a deal breaker for her.”

He was lucky to ever have met a girl like Beatrice. “It was a knee-jerk reaction. With the blackmail and everything, my head was spinning. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Fox upped his volume a notch. “So why are you talking to us instead of groveling to her?”

“She’s away.”

“Call her!”