The First to Know by Abigail Johnson

Author:Abigail Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

“Ready?”

In answer to Chase’s question the following afternoon, I knelt down and grabbed the handle to lift up the door to his garage. Fading sunlight spilled into the space, although space was an inaccurate word. There wasn’t any actual space, just stuff, more stuff, and stuff that hid behind and underneath yet more stuff.

“Whoa,” I said. “You can’t even walk in here.”

Chase wrapped a hand around my hip and pulled me until I was standing in front of him, my back to his chest. A fire kindled to life, heat spreading through me until I burned all over. The more time we spent together, the more he’d started touching me. Not like he was looking for opportunities to put his hands on me, but like he was growing comfortable enough with me that he could reach out without having to think about it. And even though I still felt a startling burst of warmth every time we made contact, I was growing more comfortable with him too, when the opposite should have been true.

Ahead of me was a sliver of a path to the back of the garage, but it was so narrow that I couldn’t imagine Chase fitting through it. I might not fit. I could feel him dwarfing me from behind, taller, wider. The hand he still rested on my hip could have spanned my entire side if he moved it up an inch. That thought sent another pulse of heat through my body, and I spun away.

“So when you said your mom was a bit of a hoarder, you meant she was the queen of all hoarders?”

Chase didn’t smile.

“Oh, bad joke.”

“A little, yeah.” He was staring into the open garage. “Inside the house isn’t this bad, but it’s not that good either.”

If it was a fraction of what the garage looked like, it was far from not good.

“She wasn’t like this even a year ago, or I would never have moved out, you know?”

I nodded. Chase was finishing his freshman year of college, something that was taking him longer than I knew he would have liked because he was managing Jungle Juice full-time to pay for school.

“My uncle thinks it’s empty-nest syndrome, that she’s hanging on to everything she can because she knows she won’t be able to hold on to me much longer. Plus, once Brandon leaves for college, my uncle is planning on moving out of state, and I know losing them is going to be hard on her.”

There I was, listening to him talk about sad stuff with his mom, and the first thing I asked about was Brandon. I was not a good person.

“When is he going to college?”

“In the fall.”

Four months. Panic scratched over my skin at that timeline. What if I didn’t know the truth about my dad by then? What if I did? What if Brandon left before we ever got to know him, or he us?

“Hey, you don’t have to do this.” Before I could respond, Chase was stretching up beside me to pull the handle down.

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