Everything for Us (A Bad Boys Novel) by M. Leighton Read Free Book Online

him angry, too.
    “How the hell do you think it was? It was awful.”
    “I know that,” I say, exercising my patience. “I meant, how was it
for you
? You were kind of a loose cannon. I can’t imagine that you took it well. Did you go ballistic on some poor bastard you met at the bar?”
    I see the muscle in his jaw clench as he thinks back. “Surprisingly, I didn’t. With all the buzz about Dad, it was like a circus for a while. It was like losing one parent and then watching the other one slowly dying. Then there were the accounting books, of course. I felt like I was holding plutonium for the first few weeks. And then there was your supposed death. I guess it was sort of a good thing that I had to pretend to be you. It kept me busy with . . . life until the trial was over and Dad was in prison. By then, I knew what I had to do and I focused on getting through school. And researching. I did lots and lots of research. Any big blowup I was going to have was just . . . over.” He falls quiet, and so do I. I’m trying to imagine what he went through, how it felt to lose almost everything. Put myself in his shoes. It’s not all that hard. In a way, I lost more than he did.
    “You know, Nash, I never enjoyed pretending to be you, pretending to be the brother I could never compare to, never live up to. The person I missed like a . . . a . . . like my damn arm. Despite the accomplishments, I never once got any peace or pleasure from being you. Not once.”
    “I’m not surprised. You were always the cool one, the one who got to have all the fun. I’d say pretending to be me was a lot like being in prison.”
    “I didn’t say that,” he snaps. “I didn’t mean it like that. Look, man, I’m just saying that it wasn’t the picnic out here that you seem to think it was.”
    “I don’t doubt it,” I say, deadpan. Cash’s head whips toward me, like he’s expecting to see sarcasm or bitterness on my face. And he’s ready for it. When he sees that I’m serious, that I’m sincere, he looks at first confused, then deflated.
    After a few miles of silence, during which we both have time to think and calm down, to get our bearings again, he asks me the same question. I’m sure he’s curious and I’m sure he’s wanted to ask before now, but considering how mad I was at first, he probably didn’t want to stir up that shit and make it stink any worse.
    “What about you? How was it for you after the accident?”
    “A lot like it was for you, I guess. When I woke up, I was floating under the dock with my head banging up against one of the pilings. I doubt anyone even saw me. The cavalry was just on their way by the time I got out of the water.
    “I had no idea what the hell had happened, so I called Dad. Took me a few minutes to find my phone. I guess it flew out of my hand when the bomb went off and knocked me into the water. It was lying on the dock a few dozen feet from where I was standing. Thank God it didn’t go in the water with me or we’d be screwed. Without those books, that video is all the leverage we’ve got to get Dad out of prison.”
    Cash nods in agreement. “No shit.”
    “Anyway, I took off to call Dad. I was the lucky one who got to tell him his wife had been killed.” There’s no keeping the bitterness from my voice on that point. “But the upside was that it gave him time to think. And to prepare a little, I guess. I told him about the video. That’s when he told me I had to leave, that it wasn’t safe for any of us anymore, especially me since I had the video. Too many unknowns. And I was the only witness. Well, you get the idea. So he told me where he’d stashed his getaway . . . stuff, had me go there to get the money and the passports, and told me to disappear.”
    “How’d you end up on a smuggler’s ship, then?”
    “I told you before that he sent me to his contact. Are you gonna let me finish?”
    Cash nods, but says nothing. Makes me feel like a piece of