“Jess,” Nate starts with a sigh.
Rage flashes over Jesse’s face and he storms forward. “No,” he demands, getting right up in Nate’s face. “Don’t give me that bullshit. Be fucking real with me for once. I’m not a kid you need to protect anymore. What the fuck is going on?”
Nate looks across at me, but I stay silent. This has nothing to do with me. This is completely his call. “Nate,” Jesse demands when Nate doesn’t respond fast enough. “The second you left, Mom lost it. She was screaming at dad saying it was all his fault and it’s time to come clean. It’s like they forgot I was even in the room.”
“Shit,” Nate grunts. “I’m sorry.” He walks back and sits on the edge of my bed, looking down at the floor as Jesse tries his hardest to calm himself down. Nate lets out another breath and looks up at his brother. “Tora and I overheard mom talking the other day,” he starts. “She was telling Alyson that she and dad have been having issues for the past year. There’s some big secret that she found out and it’s destroying their marriage. They’ve been going to therapy every Monday night.”
“What?” Jesse grunts. “No. They go on their stupid date night.”
“Yeah,” Nate scoffs. “They’ve been lying about that. There is no date night. Mom’s been trying to keep things cordial for us, but she’s hurting.”
“Shit,” Jess groans as he falls back against the wall with his eyes cast down, looking absolutely torn and lost. “Are you sure? Maybe you misheard.”
Nate shakes his head. “Nah, man. I’m sure.”
“Well,” Jesse says, looking around, deep in thought. “What’s this big secret? What did dad do?”
I watch both the boys, absolutely hating this. I mean, both of them are always so strong, but right now, they both look lost and they’re hurting in a way I never thought possible for these two. They’re larger than life. Superhuman. Nothing is supposed to bring them down, yet here they are and all I can think about is how much I hate Caden Ryder for bringing this upon them.
A brief thought hits me that maybe my dad knows something about this. I mean, they have been best friends for over twenty years, surely he might know bits and pieces if not the whole story, but then, he’s in London and probably wouldn’t tell me anyway.
Nate shakes his head. “I honestly don’t know,” he tells his brother. “I wish I knew just so I had some answers, but I got nothing. I spent Saturday night going through dad’s office. It’s squeaky clean.”
Jess leans back against the wall and slides down until he’s sitting with his arms resting on his knees. Both boys remain quiet for a while and I wonder what kinds of things are going through their minds right now. “He’s not going to tell us,” Jesse finally says.
“No,” Nate agrees. “Mom wouldn’t either. We have to find out for ourselves.”
“How? We wouldn’t even know where to start,” Jesse says. “And your usual techniques of getting information probably isn’t the best way to go,” he adds, referring to how Nate likes to skip the whole talking things through part and skip right to beating the information out of people.
Nate goes silent again and presses his lips together. “I’d dare say he’s right,” I tell him, trying to lighten the mood. “Why don’t we wait until he’s gone to work tomorrow? Your mom will probably be at the Country Club with mine. We can come home early from school and do some digging.”
Nate raises his eyes to mine, still very deep in thought. “I guess,” he says. “But I’m not sure we’ll find anything. I tore his office apart. If he had something at home, it would have been in there.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to look again,” Jesse says.
“Fine,” Nate groans. “But you’re not coming,” he tells me. “You’ve had too much time off school.”
“What?” I scoff. “No way. We are not having this argument again.”
“Exactly,” he says. “I won the last one and I’ll win this one. You are not risking your future on this shit.”
“I’d hardly call it risking my future,” I grumble.
“I would,” he scoffs. “I doubt you’ll be studying law with a shitty attendance record.” My eyes widen for a fraction of a second. I’ve never told him I wanted to be a lawyer. In fact, I hardly know it myself. I’ve been umming and ahhing over it for the past year. Either become a criminal lawyer or study marine biology. I still haven’t made up my mind, but lately, I’ve been leaning more towards being a hotshot lawyer. A smugness seeps into his voice. “That’s right,” he says. “Don’t act like I don’t know.”
“How’d you know?” I question, narrowing my eyes on him.
He raises an eyebrow, adding another whole level to his smug asshole look before he leans forward and feels around under my bed, a moment later, he pulls out the textbook I’ve been studying for the past three months. I gasp as I look at it. “How’d you know that was there?”