Page 78 of Play Dirty

“You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“Tell him what?” I ask. “I don’t know anything. I mean… I live there now. It’s mine. But I bought it in foreclosure and the bank, you know. They’re not chatty. They give you a price and you pay it or don’t. That’s about all I know about that place.”

She sighs with relief. “Good. Good. Well, I did some digging on my own. Lucinda helped me…”

I lose my train of thought for a moment when she mentions Lucinda’s name. Fucking Lucinda. She’s been in my life a lot since I joined the Club a few years ago. She was the first one to accept me. The night of her birthday Bric threw a party and when the Club throws a party for a member’s wife, it’s… a pretty sexy affair.

I fucked her with her husband that night. And everyone watched.

God… last night I thought I was over it. But thinking about what I had, and what I don’t have now… it brings it all back to me. Makes it fresh again.

I’m kind of a sick fuck.

“… so what do you think?”

“I’m sorry?”

“About telling him?”

“OK, explain this to me again? Sorry, I wandered.”

She smiles and huffs out some air. A little bit frustrated with me, but not much. “We figured out who the house belonged to.”

“OK.”

“That family in the pictures that were all over the house.”

“Makes sense,” I say.

“Well, the house was in foreclosure, but it’s the reason why it was in foreclosure that makes me hesitate.”

“Oh,” I say. “OK.”

“They died.”

“They died?”

“Yes. In a horrific car crash last summer on their way home from Grand Lake.”

“Oh…” And then I realize why she doesn’t want me to tell Ixion. “Shit.”

“Apparently there was a freak thunderstorm and they—”

“No,” I say, waving my hand. “I don’t need to know.” Because I don’t want to picture them slipping off the side of a mountain. A whole fucking family. “The baby,” I say. “The house had a nursery.”

“I know,” Evangeline says. “It’s horrible. Just… horrible. I was so obsessed with them when I was in the house last winter. And it felt like they were still living there, ya know? Like they were gonna come home any minute. I had pictured them all on vacation. Perhaps they didn’t like the cold, I remember thinking. And they spend their winters in the south of France. But I was wrong.”

I take a deep breath and let it out. “No, he doesn’t need to know this.”

“I’m glad you feel the same way. I mean, I love the house, Jordan. Love it. Ix mentioned that you’re living there, and I’m so glad it’s not empty. Because I was gonna ask him to try to talk you into selling it to us. But now… I just don’t like the idea of Ixion living in a home where an entire family died like…”

“Like his did,” I say, finishing for her when she doesn’t.

She nods and swallows. “Yeah. Like his did.”

I don’t know why this news upsets me so much. It’s not like I knew that family. But I can’t go home. I just can’t walk in there knowing. And even though I live in the office, I can’t stand to think about the empty nursery upstairs. Or the little girl’s room. Or the teenage boy.

Or the master bedroom.