Love on the Lake (Lakeside 2)

After about two weeks I’ve exhausted all the interior projects, and still Aaron finds reasons to stop by. He needs to check the electrical panel. There’s a squeaky floorboard; he wants to tighten the screws on my bed frame. Usually whatever it is takes all of five minutes, and then we’re tearing each other’s clothes off.

He doesn’t stay the night, but he always makes time for pillow talk. Mostly it’s about the projects across the lake and funny stories about the families over there. At ten he gets dressed, gives me a long, lingering kiss, and tells me he’ll see me again soon.

It makes me anxious that I don’t know if soon is going to be a couple of days or the next night. But we’re having fun and I don’t want that to change, so I try to go with the flow, which I’m admittedly not very good at.

I realize fairly quickly that I need to find things to do with my time other than ogle Aaron and have mind-blowing sex with him. So a few weeks into our arrangement, I make myself unavailable and agree to go out with Dillion and her friends for drinks at the pub after my Wednesday shift at Harry’s.

As I’m getting ready, which looks very different from my old routine—I’m not used to leaving the house with a naked face, but I’ve toned it way down—my phone rings as I’m applying a coat of clear mascara. I automatically assume it’s Aaron. He favors phone calls over any other type of messaging, even if they’re only thirty seconds long. I hit the answer button without checking the number and nearly poke myself in the eye when I get a woman’s voice rather than Aaron’s telling me I have a collect call from Chicago Penitentiary and to press one if I’d like to accept the charges.

I take a deep breath, waiting for the call to connect.

“Hey, sis.” Bradley’s voice comes through the line.

“Hey, how are you hanging in there? You doing okay?” Bradley has reached out to me a number of times since his incarceration, but his calls always catch me off guard, since they’re unpredictable.

From what my dad has said, he talks to Bradley almost every week, and when I’m around, I’ll jump on the call too. Van is still struggling to get over what Bradley did and having a much harder time forgiving him, which I can understand.

“It’s boring as hell here and their library sucks the D, but I’ve made a friend named Moose in the kitchen, and he sneaks me extra bacon on Saturdays, so that’s a plus, right?”

“Can you get in trouble for that?” I ask, putting my mascara wand back in the holder.

“Only if someone finds out.”

I roll my eyes. Leave it to Bradley to try to game the system while in jail.

“How are things going for you? Any new gossip on your ex-asshole? Give me the dirt.”

“Um, there isn’t any dirt to dish, to be honest. Or if there is, I don’t know about it.”

Bradley sighs. “Well, that’s too bad. You know I’m living vicariously through you, since the only drama around here involves dudes shanking each other over dessert.”

“Are you serious?”

“The chocolate cake is pretty decent.”

I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. He’s always had a bit of a morbid sense of humor. And jail certainly isn’t going to make it better. “But shanking someone over dessert? How crazy are these guys? What if I call the lawyer and see if we can’t get you transferred to a different facility? One that’s safer.”

“It’s prison, Teagan, it’s never going to be safe. You don’t need to worry about me, though. I’ve got it under control.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Look, I’m dying for something decent to read, and I’ve already gone through everything you sent last time. Do you think you can restock me? I can give you a list, and you can mail them.”

The first time I sent him anything, I included nail clippers, thinking they’d be useful, only to have the entire package mailed back for having contraband. “I can do that. Give me a list, and I’ll hook you up with whatever you need. Have the restrictions changed at all?”

“I don’t think so, but you can check the website. They get the newspaper here, but never the Wall Street Journal, so if you can pick up a few of those, that’d be great.”

I take down the information and Bradley’s long list of books and magazines he’d like.

“Thanks, Teag, it means a lot that you’d do this for me. I know you and Van are close and it puts you in a weird position.”

“You’re still my brother, and I still love you,” I reassure him. And I do; even if I don’t love what he did to our family, I still care about him. It’s hard because I feel partly responsible for helping put him there, despite the fact that he broke the law and has to face the consequences. Bradley isn’t exactly built for prison life.