Seb bit his lip but forced himself to keep looking at his brother. Whatever Oliver was playing at, Seb wouldn’t let him win.
“I don’t think I have her number here.” Another lie. He’d had it memorized since he was a kid and called it more than once when he needed to get away from the endless tension at home.
“I’ll email it to you.” On Oliver’s side of the computer, there was a tapping of keys on a keyboard. Seb bit his lip. There was no way to protest without being the bad guy.
“Is she—” The question caught in his throat. “Is she okay?” The idea that their Nana, who had been such a solid constant figure in his childhood, might not be was impossible. Seb remembered her strong hands, showing him how to grip a paintbrush to get the texture he wanted on the canvas. Her lilac and sugar smell as she listened to Seb try to explain the image he had in his mind.
“Oh! No!” Oliver seemed to realize he’d said something wrong. He shook his head so hard his image blurred on the screen for a second before it settled back into place. “She’s fine. Fine.”
Guilt rumbled under Seb’s collarbones. As infrequently as he spoke to Oliver, he talked to his grandmother less. She was his biggest supporter, yes, but she was still his father’s mother, and there was a Philip Stevenson-sized gap in their relationship. Seb had no interest in filling it, never mind how hard it must be for her.
“Well, I’ve got to get some work done tonight,” he said, patience waning. “If you’re ever in town, let’s—”
“It’s her birthday.” Oliver’s voice was pained.
Seb’s eyes narrowed. “I know that.” He sent her flowers every year.
“There’s—” Now Oliver looked uncomfortable. He leaned back in his chair and loosened his tie. “There’s a party, alright?”
“What party?”
“A swingers party. What kind of party do you think, asshole? A birthday party.”
Oh. Oh no. That was bad. Seb would much rather hang out with a bunch of horny suburbanites than do what he was pretty sure Oliver was proposing.
“Where?”
“At the house, okay? Mom and Parker, they’re organizing a family dinner and then—”
“No.” If their sister, Parker, had any involvement in planning this, it would have all the pomp and circumstance of a military pageant, and Seb was not putting himself on parade.
“Seb.” Oliver leaned toward the screen.
“No!” Seb stood up so fast he knocked the laptop off the edge of the coffee table. He swore as it crashed to the floor.
“Come on,” Oliver was saying, even though he was tilted sideways.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“But Nana—”
“I don’t care. I’m not going to the house. You know that.”
“I told Parker you wouldn’t come to the dinner, but if you could—”
“No.”
“I promised Nana you’d be there.”
Angry words and years of hurt clogged Seb’s throat. Shaking his head, he picked up the laptop. Oliver’s face on the screen was miserable, but Seb could see it all. The spontaneous call. The way Oliver had tracked Seb down online, so they’d have this conversation face-to-face and turning his brother down would be harder. It was such a scummy lawyer thing to do, and Seb had fallen for it.
“No.”
This was why they never talked about family. Oliver should have stuck to the rules.
“Please.”
Seb shut the laptop.
