Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
“Not like Dad, right?” Jacob asked, oozing sarcasm. “Fuck, you’ve barely even changed this office. It all looks the same to me.”
Then, he glanced Lucas’ way. Sometimes, when Jacob got that mean gleam twist to his mouth, Lucas found himself thrown back to harder times with his younger brother. When Jacob had been all too willing—and quick, without even a thought—to hurt the one person who cared the most about him just to hide the demons in his own life.
Those moments scared Lucas.
That meanness in Jacob’s expression worried him even more.
“What?” he asked Jacob.
“Not much about you looks different, either,” he brother muttered, moving in for the kill.
“Shut up.” Lucas knew good and well he sounded like a child, but sometimes, things couldn’t be helped. He forced his tone to be playful because despite the tense situation with his brother, Lucas didn’t want to set Jacob off by saying something that might cross the lines. His brother learned early on from their parents’ behavior that the quickest way out of anything was to run—and fast. “It’s been a long few days, okay?”
Jacob scoffed, shoving his fisted hands into the pockets of his white hoodie with the maple leaf logo of his favorite hockey team. The two of them couldn’t be more different with Jacob in distressed, acid-wash denim and laced up Doc Martens while Lucas wished he could breathe a little easier in his three-piece suit. One of them had the chance to live a little and take time to grow up while the other one never gave himself the opportunity to do the same—Lucas tried to keep that in mind when his baby brother was concerned.
After their pappy died, they only really had each other. The boys learned young not to expect comfort or help from their father who thought showing even conditional love for his child was the same as a handout to a beggar on the street. He’d been lucky enough to be the first grandchild of his grandfather, a man he’d been named after, and he’d doted on Lucas accordingly, and earned him shares in the brewery that had been held in trust. Something his father couldn’t stand, and didn’t share with Lucas until after his grandfather was dead and the will came to light.
Jealousy was a terrible monster.
Lucas did exactly what he had to so that Jacob didn’t have to when it came to the family business. Including the family bit. Neither of the Dalton sons were particularly liked or needed by their father, and once they reached adult age, got cut off financially. Lucas chose to step up and help Jacob, so he didn’t have to lower his morals to lose dignity crawling back to their father.
Besides, Lucas had to do that bullshit once a month—at least—whenever Dalton Brewery’s CEO decided to leave his office downtown and came over to the east side to play boss now that he had returned to the city a few weeks earlier to spend the winter. A tyrant on the warpath, Ronald could leave real devastation in his wake.
Thankfully, that happened less and less with his father handling the company’s business on the other side of Canada. Well, when the bastard stayed there.
“It’s January,” Lucas said, trying to keep the parental tone to a minimum because that never went off well with Jacob, “don’t you have anything warm to wear other than that hoodie?”
Jacob rolled his eyes behind the rectangle-rimless prescription sunglasses his brother liked to wear in the winter months when the overwhelming white made everything seem brighter. Despite not being totally opaque indoors, Lucas couldn’t get a good look at Jacob’s eyes beyond their movement. Specifically, his pupils and their size. It bothered Lucas. Both that he couldn’t see them, and that he wanted to at all. Not to mention, that he’s already noticed the hoodie seemed looser on Jacob’s tall frame. Lucas didn’t want his mind to go to that bad place with his brother at all, but given the lack of quality time he had to spend with Jacob lately, he had to trust that everything was fine.
Especially when Jacob said so.
“Now, you sound like Mom,” his brother muttered.
Not fucking likely.
“Get real. Mom was too drunk to care if you had something warm to wear.”
That was their nanny’s job.
The drinking got worse for their mother after Jacob came along although, at the time, Lucas was too young to understand why. Back before he knew what sex was and how babies got made, he couldn’t put together why his mother’s stomach grew and grew into a balloon. Overnight, he became the caretaker for a little brother he didn’t even know existed until the day his parents brought the baby home. At least then, he finally had something to love him back.
“The sweater’s fine,” Jacob said after a minute of stillness between the two. “But seriously, bro, what crawled up your ass? It was like walking in on Dad for a sec—”