Neanderthal by Avery Flynn
Chapter Forty-Five
Griff
Griff’s penthouse was booby-trapped.
Everywhere he looked were reminders of Kinsey. Her towel still on the hook on the back of his bathroom door. The cast-iron skillet sitting in the middle of his island because he couldn’t stop making corn bread now. The painting they’d done on their date hanging up in his Lego room. Each one was a little pipe bomb waiting to go off. Desperate to get the fuck out of there, he packed a bag and headed out to Grandma Betty’s house.
Gable House was a few hours outside of Harbor City and had a flock of attack geese guarding it. Grandma had been almost as much good chaos as Kinsey, knowing what she wanted and then just going for it. They would have loved each other.
Sitting out on the dock overlooking the lake and the island where he, Nash, and Dixon had spent summers competing to be the ultimate Beckett cousin, Griff took another swig off the bottle he’d grabbed from Grandma’s collection.
The Old Pulteney single-malt scotch with its spicy sweetness wasn’t his first choice, but it was getting the job done. Another few hours and his brain would be too scrambled to think about Kinsey.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
If he got fucking lucky.
“Aha,” Morgan shouted, her triumphant squawk bouncing off the lake like a skipping rock. “I should have looked for you here first.”
He sank down lower in the hot-pink Adirondack chair as if he could hide from his sister, the woman who’d been his shadow pretty much since she could walk. When their parents had fought, the two of them had gone down to the wine cellar to block out as much of the screaming as possible. After Mom died, he’d found Morgan down there asleep, wrapped up in a quilt Grandma Betty had given her. Eventually, it happened so often that he kept an extra sweatshirt down there to ward off the chill while he kept guard.
“What are you doing here?” he asked after another swig of scotch.
Morgan flopped down onto the deck and swiped the bottle from him. “Stopping you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”
It was far too late for that. If only Mac had thrown that punch thirty seconds earlier, Griff never would have heard Kinsey giving the “what for” to half the gym. He wouldn’t have fallen in love at first sound. He wouldn’t be sitting here like an asshole getting drunk like his old man to block out the fact that the only way to take care of the woman he loved was to let her go.
“Did Kinsey send you?” He tried—and failed—to squash the note of hope in his voice.
“No.” Morgan took a swig off the bottle and spent the next thirty seconds coughing while waving off Griff’s attempts to whack her on the back so she could catch her breath. “She’s as stubborn as you are.”
“Not stubborn.” He snagged the bottle back. “Right.”
Morgan rolled her eyes. “Now you sound like Dad.”
“Fuck you.” That was about as far from the truth as possible. He was nothing like his dad—current lack of sobriety aside.
They stared out at the lake in silence as the sky went from blue to a reddish orange and the moon became visible. The water lapped at the shore, a constant promise of change and a reminder that life kept moving no matter what, as Grandma Betty had told them when they were little. Gable House had been a refuge for all the Beckett kids when Grandma was around, a welcome respite from the complications at home. Here, things were simple, fun, peaceful. Even now, he felt at home here like he never had at the penthouse in Harbor City.
“Do you love her?” Morgan asked as the stars started twinkling above them.
Griff took a long drink, letting the scotch burn its way down his throat, wishing like hell it was enough to drown out the hurt in his chest. “I wouldn’t have broken up with her if I didn’t.”
“You are the dumbest smart man I know,” she said as she smacked his shin.
“Love you, too.” He flicked her on the back of the head as the solar lights ringing the dock came to life, washing them in a soft glow.
“Does she know?”
He shrugged. “I agreed with Nash and Dixon that the important part was to show, not to tell.”
“What in the world are you doing listening to those two about women?” Morgan tossed back her head and groaned, then shook her fist at the sky for good measure. “I mean, Dixon somehow miraculously found Fiona, but that really was a shock to the system. And Nash? Whew. I love the man, but if he keeps ‘well actually-ing’ women, he’s gonna end up with one less ball.”
“Is there a point you’re trying to make?”
“Hello.” She jumped up from the deck and whirled around to glare at him. “You have me! Your sister. Who is a woman and understands women.”
“You aren’t part of the bet,” he grumbled.
“Withering” didn’t begin to describe the look his sister gave him. Somehow she managed to express annoyance, disappointment, and disbelief all with one lift of an eyebrow and tilt of her head. “Again, because I am not Nash or Dixon. Oh my God, what were you guys thinking with that ridiculous bet?”
“Nash is up to something.” There was a reason why he’d suggested the bet. Beyond everything else, Nash never did anything without a very specific end goal in mind. That Griff still hadn’t figured out what it was just went to show the impact Kinsey coming into his life had had. “Why are you here, Morgan?”
She crossed her arms and stuck out her hip, dialing up the withering to ten. “To smack some sense into you before you go down the Holden Beckett path of lubricated assholery.”
He flinched. “I’m nothing like our dad.”
“Are you shitting me?” She laughed so hard, she had to wipe away tears after she got ahold of herself. “You’re not a narcissist, but you sure did play the testosterone control-freak He-Man like Dad does with Kinsey, making decisions for her life without her input.”
That was utter bullshit. He was nothing like his dad. The old man was controlling, snide, and telling everyone that he knew exactly what they were doing wrong and how to fix it. The perfect example of which popped into Griff’s head without him even having to think about it.
“Like when he picked your college major for you and scheduled all your classes your freshman year?” he asked.
“Or when you decided that you’d break up with Kinsey to fix things at her work rather than ask her how you guys could handle it together?” she shot back without hesitation.
He ground his molars together, pulverizing the enamel. No. That wasn’t fair. “Her job makes her happy, and I just want her to be happy.”
“No. You thought you knew what was best for her without asking,” Morgan said, the sympathy in her tone doing nothing to lessen the one-two punch of her words that made a roundhouse from Mac in the ring seem like a love tap. “You’re just as bad as the assholes who take one look at her, see a cute blonde with big boobs, and decide she’s gotta have a box of rocks in her head.”
Griff curled his hands around the ends of the arm of the Adirondack chair, his frustration making his grip tight enough that the wood bit into his palms. “I’m nothing like them.”
“Yeah, well, maybe she should be the one to decide what makes her happy. And if you’re lucky enough to have that be you in her life, don’t fuck it up again by trying to make her decisions for her.”
“I did what I did because Dad gave me a heads up what was going to happen to her at work if I didn’t let her go.”
“Oh my God, Griff. Why do you ever listen to that bitter old man?” She sighed and looked up at the stars that were so much brighter out here than in Harbor City. “Kinsey was wrongly accused of industrial espionage and fired, and it had absolutely nothing to do with you. Her boss was shady as fuck all on his own. Regardless, though, you broke up with her to prevent her from being fired and she got fired anyway, so how smart was that plan?”
Griff froze, his heart pounding in his chest. Kinsey must be devastated to lose her dream job. And then another thought slammed into him. “That asshole isn’t threatening to have her arrested, is he?”
“No, he told her if she went away quietly, he would ‘spare her the embarrassment.’” She added air quotes around the last bit with sarcasm, but Griff’s mind was already running through possible scenarios.
If her boss had any real proof, he would most assuredly press charges. Which meant there was nothing irrefutable connecting her to the leak. Her boss was likely counting on Kinsey tucking her tail and running. Well, the guy didn’t know his Kinsey if he thought that woman would ever back down from a fight. “I hope Kinsey gives him hell and sues him for wrongful termination and slander.”
“Griff, I love you. I will always love you and be here for you, but I will never forgive you if you let my best friend go through all of this alone. You made matters worse, not better, when you decided to break it off with her. You left her to fight this trumped-up accusation alone, her support from you gone, and dealing with a broken heart on top of this shitty job. And now she feels she has no choice but to go back home, surround herself with people who love her and believe in her.” She laid her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Believe me, all of this hurts now, but it’s going to be so much worse when you wake up one morning and realize it’s too late to fix any of it.”
Morgan dropped a kiss on the top of his head, then turned and walked back toward Gable House, the motion-sensor lights turning on as she made her way back to their grandmother’s home. Griff watched until the light closest to the back door went on and then clicked off, letting out the breath he always held until he knew someone he loved was safe.
Morgan was wrong. His dad hadn’t given him bad advice. What had happened with Kinsey was for the best for her.
It had to be, or he’d made the worst mistake of his life by making her go.
