The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet 2)

Or maybe some combination that can never come true.

Sutton helps me wake up Mom, who says she hadn’t actually slept for an hour of the movie. She insists on playing cards with Sutton, who agrees with an easy smile. I make hot cocoa for everyone—extra marshmallows for Sutton—while my mother wins three rounds of gin.

It’s almost possible to believe she isn’t sick until it’s time for her to go to sleep. Then I help her walk up the stairs because she’s too weak to climb them herself. I tuck her into bed like she’s a child, because it’s one of the only things I can do.

There is an assortment of herbal medicines I hand her, one after the other. The only prescription medicine she allows is something that helps her sleep.

“That Sutton is a nice man,” she says, her voice soft. “Not like your daddy.”

Acid burns my throat because I think she’s right.

And because I think she’s wrong.

He’s not mean like Daddy, but even Daddy was nice once. He had been in love with the woman who now looks so frail beneath the pin-tuck comforter. It was his own ambition that made everything terrible, and both Sutton and Christopher have plenty of ambition.

A feeling of melancholy settles over me like falling leaves on the front lawn.

Downstairs I find Sutton with a bottle of wine and two glasses. That’s how we end up in front of the fireplace, my toes warm from the gas fire. The scent of pine cones fills the air—an affectation from the expensive fake log. It’s not exactly a rustic scene, but it pretends to be one.

“So what’s the deal with your not-sister?” I ask, taking a sip of wine.

“My what?”

“The woman I met at your ranch earlier this year.”

“Ah.” He stares into the fire, his jaw square and shadowed. “I already told you I worked on a ranch. My daddy was a drunk and a bastard, but he had a way with horses, which is why they kept him around as long as they did.”

How many frat boys have I sat with, taking confessions from them like I’m some kind of female priest? Never has it been as important to me as now, never have I strained forward, hungry for every word out of his mouth.

“He had a way with women, too. Slept with most every woman in a hundred miles, despite the fact that he had no money and not a speck of kindness.”

If he had half his son’s good looks, it didn’t exactly surprise me. Those blue eyes could charm anyone into anything… in my case, they charmed a virgin into a threesome. “You hated him.”

“Everyone hated him, but no one more than me. There were all these blue-eyed kids. People whispered about it. But in the end they got to live somewhere else. I was the only one stuck with him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hell… I don’t… It’s old news around here. Everyone knew about it. Except maybe Whitney. She was younger than me. Maybe people were more careful about what they said around her.”

“And she had a crush on you?” It’s disturbing enough to have a crush on my stepbrother; I know what that’s like. But it would be way more disturbing to have had a crush on an actual blood relative. That would be hard to live down.

“I tried to discourage her without telling her. In the end it was some kid at school who gave her the bad news, and by then she was humiliated. Didn’t speak to me for a year. She forgave me in the end, but it was unfortunate.”

“You probably just… made her feel safe. When you’re young, that feels like love.”

“The ranch was worn at the edges when I worked there. By the time I grew up, her daddy had died and the place was in debt. It was the first property I ever bought.”

“Not the last.”

He comes to stand in front of me. “The library was the last.”

Only a foot of air separates us now. I have to look up to meet his gaze. “Christopher has a way of ruining a person, doesn’t he? You meet him and boom, it’s all over.”

That earns me a faint smile. “You’re pretty destructive yourself.”

I place my palm on his chest, feeling the steady rise of his breath, the beat of his heart. “You feel nice and solid. Put together. Not broken at all.”

“A trick of the light,” he says softly, blue eyes intent on mine.