tell Jonah Collins to fuck off into another galaxy. But I wouldn’t. Even if it killed me. Even if it went against every instinct in my body. I was done with wanting to scream at him. Beat the shit out of him. Tell him he was a piece of shit. Rip off his balls and soak in his blood. Curse the day we had met on that tour.
But I wouldn’t.
I eyed the picture frame again.
I wasn’t going to do shit.
We don’t always get what we want, Grandpa had told me once when I’d been acting like a brat after losing a match. And he was totally right.
Knowing all of that though didn’t ease even a little of the frustration and annoyance that set up camp in my chest. “I reached out to him, Peter. Not once or twice, but over and over again. It was his choice; not mine,” I explained.
Peter looked at me for so long, I had no idea what the hell he could possibly be thinking.
“Then we don’t do anything,” he finally said. “See if he calls back. See what he wants.”
See what he wants.
I knew what he didn’t want. Peter and I both did. Just about everyone in my life knew, for that matter.
“If he calls again… if he comes here, we’ll handle it. Are you fine with that?”
I squeezed the hell out of my stress ball again but nodded. We were going to have to handle this, one way or the other. I didn’t exactly have a choice.
That had me getting a small smile from Peter, who still seemed different than usual. I couldn’t blame him. But luckily, this was Peter and not my grandfather.
God, I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.
“Can we wait before we tell Grandpa?” I asked him, shaking my leg underneath the desk. Why now? Why period? I knew I was a selfish asshole for thinking that, but I couldn’t help it. Why today?
God, and since when was I so whiny? I disgusted myself, damn it. Why, why, why? Boo-hoo. Ugh.
I could see the argument in Peter’s eyes at my request, but fortunately, that quick mind came to the same conclusion mine did too.
We were going to need bail money if Jonah Hema Collins came here—not that I expected him to. All he’d done was call. For some reason I couldn’t even begin to fucking understand.
And if the thought of him coming here raised my blood pressure—and my middle finger—I was going to need to be an adult and suck it up. This wasn’t about me. So I focused on the topic of my grandfather.
“I don’t want him to know unless he has to,” I told Peter. “He doesn’t need to be getting riled up for no reason. He’s finally just now getting over it,” I explained, knowing this was one of those things that fell into the gray area of not lying to each other.
Peter’s nod was tighter than it should have been, but I understood that too. Of course, I understood. I hated putting any of them into this position in the first place. I hated being in this position to start with, but here we were. It was no one else’s fault but mine. “Okay,” he agreed, clearly slightly torn. But we both knew what the greater of the two evils was.
Neither one of us said anything for so long it almost got awkward.
After what might have been three minutes or ten, Peter stood again and shot me an intense look that immediately had me pressing my lips together and forming something close to a smile.
“Everything is fine,” he stated, calmly, projecting the thought into me.
“I know.”
His eyes flicked up toward the wall behind me, where I figured he was probably looking at a framed picture of the three of us on my eighteenth birthday, crowded around a birthday cake with candles that could have been fireworks. His slim chest expanded and then went back down as he came to terms with whatever it was he was worried about. Everything, probably.
Those eyes took their time moving from the wall to me, but when they did, he managed to give me a smile that was definitely a little strained. “Come work out with the team for an hour. You need to get that look off your face.”
“What look?”
He raised his eyebrows. “That one.”
I pressed my lips together, temporarily shoving the why, why, why aside. “I’ll think about it. My shoulder is extra achy today.”