Page 8 of Screwed
He’d known about his friend screwing around with other women. At first he’d just suspected it, but then he’d caught Beau with a woman. Like Callie’s mother, Audrey Sutherland, apparently Beau hadn’t seen a problem with it and expected her to just carry on.
As for why Cash hadn’t told Callie… Christ.
He rubbed his face with one hand, the other still on the wheel.
There were about a million reasons he hadn’t told her, and they were all fucked up.
…
The next morning, Cash woke before eight even though he’d been out until nearly two in the morning. He just couldn’t sleep much later than that, even on weekends. He laced up his running shoes and went for his usual Saturday morning run before the temperature and humidity got too high. Running and football had become his way of dealing with crap. And sometimes, when he pushed until his muscles burned and his lungs strained, maybe even a way of punishing himself.
As his feet pounded the pavement, his thoughts went back to Callie. She was no doubt still in bed and probably wasn’t going to feel great when she did get up.
He was going to go check on her.
He blew out a particularly harsh breath. He could try to talk himself out of it, but it wasn’t going to do any good. He needed to make sure she was okay.
An hour later, he returned to his condo, dripping with sweat, some of the tension gone from his body. He showered, dressed in faded jeans and an old UT T-shirt, then made himself a bunch of toast and peanut butter, which he ate sitting at the kitchen island while scanning news on his smartphone.
He’d promised his mom he’d come by her condo to figure out why her thermostat wasn’t working, so he had to go there first. When he and Beau had started making serious money, he’d bought his mom a new condo not far from his place, where he could keep an eye on her. It was a huge step up from the crappy apartment she’d moved them to after his parents’ divorce.
“Hey, Mama.” He greeted her with a hug.
“Cash. Come in. Are you hungry? I can make you something to eat.”
“Just had breakfast.” He smiled at her. “So what’s new?”
“Hmm. Well, your sister has a new boyfriend.”
He frowned. “What? Who is it?” Ginnie was a junior at Texas A&M.
Mama smiled. “I only know his name—Kevin.”
“She’s graduating next year. She needs to focus on schoolwork.”
“Uh-huh. She’s also nearly twenty-two years old. Old enough to have a boyfriend.”
“I guess.”
Ginnie had been ten and he’d been sixteen when their father had decided he’d rather be married to the woman he was having an affair with than to their mother, and had left. He’d moved to Dallas, and they’d had minimal contact with him since then. At sixteen, Cash had been left with his brokenhearted, somewhat helpless mother and a younger sister who needed a father, so he was used to looking after both of them. And he was used to ignoring his own pain. He’d learned a hard lesson from his father leaving.
“What’s new with you?” Mama asked.
He talked about work, the bid they were putting together for a big project for Sutherland Industries, to build a new substation at one of their oil refineries. He knew Mama didn’t really understand a lot about what he did, but nonetheless pride beamed in her eyes as he talked and had a look at her thermostat. “New batteries,” he muttered.
“Oh. I didn’t know it used batteries.”
He repressed his smile. “Hey, your birthday is next month,” he said. “Isn’t this the big five-oh?”
Mama laughed. She didn’t have an issue with age. “Yes, it is.”
“What do you want to do to celebrate?”
“Oh, we don’t have to do anything.”
“Sure we do. This is a milestone birthday. We should have a party.”
“That might be fun.”
