Crazy Stupid Bromance (Bromance Book Club #3) - Lyssa Kay Adams Page 0,90
scribbled in Sharpie on the side.
“Noah! What are you doing here? I thought you guys were heading down today for the surgery.”
Noah jogged up the porch steps to take the box from her. He bent and kissed her head. “Hey, Mom.” He peeked inside the box at the tangle of lights and garland inside. “This for the front porch?”
“I was bringing them out for Marsh. What’s going on? Where’s Alexis?”
“No, she’s, uh . . .” Noah let out a pained breath and a lie. “The surgery’s been delayed. Let us know when dinner is ready.”
His mom went back inside with one last look over her shoulder. Noah set the box down and returned to the base of the ladder. They worked in silence for fifteen minutes, speaking only when Marsh grunted out an order.
Finally, they’d managed to attach nails to the entire length of the garage. Marsh backed down the ladder, and Noah stepped aside to make room for him.
“You need to learn how to do shit like this, Noah.” He nodded toward the box on the porch. “Get me them lights.”
Noah stomped toward the front porch, but his suppressed emotions got the best of him. He turned back around. “Is there anything I do that you approve of?”
Marsh looked over from the ladder, eyebrows tugged together in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t invest my money the way you think I should. I don’t have relationships with women the way you think I should. And hell, I can’t even hammer nails the way you want me to. So I’m genuinely curious if there is anything I do that lives up to your standards.”
Marsh reached for the box with the lights. “It’s not my standards I’m trying to hold you to.”
“I don’t need this shit.” Noah turned on his heel and stomped toward the door, but his hand paused over the handle at Marsh’s next words.
“I saw the news. Did you do it?”
It shouldn’t hurt after all this time to have Marsh doubt him, but it did. It hurt like a motherfucker. Almost as much as to have Alexis doubt him. Noah turned around, jaw clenched. “I came here to talk to my mom, not get interrogated.”
Marsh came down from the ladder and walked toward him, his steps weary and his face tired. He suddenly looked old. The porch light turned his grayish hair a dark silver and deepened the grooves in his forehead. Noah suddenly swayed with the realization that this is what his father would look like now.
Marsh nodded toward one of the two Adirondack chairs on the porch. “Sit down.”
Noah trudged to one of the chairs like a kid who’d just been sent to his room. And the fact that Marsh could still make him feel like that only fueled the fire inside him. He dropped into a chair. Marsh stood at the bottom of the porch steps, stance wide and confident. His father used to stand like that. It was a military thing, a manly thing, an I know how to take up as much space as possible thing.
“I asked you a question, boy. Did you do it?”
“No, I didn’t fucking do it!” Noah shot to his feet. “But you know what? I wish I had. Everyone assumes it was me anyway, so I might as well get the satisfaction of bringing down another company with blood on its hands.”
Marsh shook his head. “You haven’t learned a goddamned thing, have you?” He gave Noah a sad once-over. “Look at you. Hands clenched. Jaw clenched.”
“Because you’re annoying the shit out of me.”
“No. Because you’re still a pissed-off kid with a computer and a need for vengeance.”
Noah’s knuckles cracked under the strength of his curled fists. “What the hell do you want from me? I went to college, consulted for the fucking FBI, and make millions now. Isn’t that good enough for you?”
Marsh raised his eyebrows. “You think you’re successful? You’re not. You may have turned your life around, but you’re still just as mad and reckless as you were then. And until you get over that anger, everything else—the money, the company, your celebrity friends—it’s all just window dressing.”
Noah inched closer, compelled by a need to lash out at something, anything. “You’re right. I never got over the anger. I hope I never do. Because the day I stop being furious that my father was killed while the crooks responsible for it got rich is the day I stop breathing.”