GRAVE
THE RINGING OF my phone has me opening my eyes to a dark room. I roll out of Lucy’s bed and hit the floor with a thud, then moan at the pain that shoots up my side. It rings again, and I see it lighting up on the floor at the end of the bed. Crawling to it, I answer. “Hello?”
“Where the fuck are you?” my brother demands.
I messaged the group text earlier, but after that, I never checked my phone again. I was too busy with Lucy to fucking care what they wanted.
“What time is it?” I ask roughly. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Feels like sandpaper.
“Are you high? Of course, you are,” he growls, answering his own question. “Are you at Kingdom?”
“No.” I run a hand through my hair and find my way back into the bed. In the darkness, I reach over to my right and feel Lucy lying next to me, naked and sound asleep. “What do you want?” I clear my throat. Fuck, I need a drink to wash down this taste.
Bones sighs heavily, his anger fading, and my body stiffens. “We’ve been trying to reach you. I got a call last night…” He trails off, and my grip on the phone tightens. “It’s Dad, he’s…”
I lie completely still, waiting for him to say the words that I already know are coming.
“I’m sorry, Kyle.” His use of my real name has my heart pounding in my chest. He never calls me that. I’m known as Grave, even to him. “Dad passed last night. Someone found him dead in his condo. They’re saying it was?—”
I hang up.
The motherfucker is dead.
I saw him at our friend Luca’s engagement party, but I avoided him. I haven’t spoken to him in over six months. Before that, it had been at least three. The last time we talked, he called to tell me how disappointed he was in the life I chose. That he didn’t approve of the drugs and women. As if I should settle down and get married—give him grandbabies.
I snort at that thought.
He never wanted to claim me as his anyway. He referred to me as my mother’s child. Dillan was his favorite. My father taught him everything he knows, grooming him for the familybusiness, determinedto make a man out of him. It never fucking mattered that Dillan and I do the same thing for a living. My brother may not do drugs, but he has his addictions. And my father knew them well. He just shared the same ones, so to him, they were the perfect father-and-son duo.
I get out of bed and use my phone as a light to make it out of Lucy’s room, down the hall, and to her kitchen. The early morning light streaming in from her floor-to-ceiling windows allows me to see better than the one on my phone. Grabbing a bottle of Jack, I remove the lid and toss the bottle back, trying to drown out any memory I have of my father. He doesn’t deserve my time.
“Grave?” I glance over to see Lucy standing at the island in the center of the kitchen. “Grave, what’s wrong?” She walks over to me and flips on the light.
Her blonde hair is wild, and she blinks several times, her eyes trying to focus on me.
My body shakes, and I take another gulp, the drink burning in my chest. She looks from the bottle to my face and places her hand on my bicep, but I shrug her off. “Not now,” I mutter.
“What happened?” she asks, fear lacing her words.
My phone rings in my hand andBoneslights up the screen. I turn it off and toss the fucker on the counter. I walk back to her bedroom, shove open the French doors to her bathroom, then slam them shut behind me. Placing my hands on her white marble counter, I bow my head, trying to ignore the fucking hole in my chest that’s growing by the second.
It’s going to be okay. I can turn it off like I did all those years ago after I lost the only woman I’ve ever loved. I’ll never forget what that fucker told me when we lost our mother. The only parent who loved me for me.
Seventeen years old
I stand at the front of the church. My brother stands next to me, staring down at our mother, not a single tear in his eyes. His face is a blank canvas. He’s like our father. Tears run down my cheeks, and my shoulders shake. I’m having trouble breathing, and my chest aches.
“Mr. Reed, we’re about to open the doors to friends and family who want to pay their respects before the service,” the woman says to my father.
He comes to stand on the other side of me and nods his head.
I can’t look away from our mother. She doesn’t look like herself. Her skin is yellow, and her face appears swollen. They didn’t do her makeup how she wore it. Her hair is teased at the top and fanned around her face. She never styled it like that, though. It was always curled.
My brother waits another beat, then turns and walks away, heading back down the aisle. Probably going to find his fuck outside so she can suck his dick in a back room somewhere. The only thing he allows himself to feel is her. Anything else is just background noise.
Placing my hands on the wooden casket, I clench the satin lining covering the sides. As I lean forward to kiss her cheek, a firm grip on my shoulder yanks me back, and I’m spun around.
My father leans down to put his face in front of mine, blue eyes glaring at me. “Pull yourself together,” he growls before roughly wiping my face of my tears. They just fall faster. “Death is a part of life, and you’re making a spectacle of your mother’s funeral. Turn it off.”
