Rebound: Prologue

Ilook out the window and watch the fireworks explode over the city. New York at night is always stunning, but the explosion of color flashing over the skyline takes the view up a notch. All the way to awe-inspiring.

I’ve loved fireworks for as long as I can remember, but tonight they only make me feel sad. They remind me of when we were kids. Of when she was still with us.

This now deathly quiet house was always so full of laughter and music, the happy sound of family and friends celebrating New Year’s together. My younger brothers and I would drive our mom crazy, five overexcited miscreants tugging at her party dress, demanding it was time for the fireworks—now, now, now!

Inevitably, she gave in. She loved us too much to say no, and we would end up setting them off before midnight. We’d whoop and holler as they shot up into the night sky, the grown-ups all laughing at our enthusiasm. That’s what I’m seeing out there tonight. Every bang and sparkle is being watched by young, excited eyes.

I rub my hand over my jaw and sigh. I need to shave, but I can’t be bothered to care. Hell, maybe I’ll grow a damn beard and be done with it. I’m only twenty-eight, but tonight I feel like an old man.

Remembering us as kids sucks. Remembering my mom sucks. Remembering being happy sucks. None of those things feel real anymore. She’s gone, and we’re a mess without her.

We’re all back here again tonight, along with our dad. Well, technically together. We’re all lost in our own thoughts. Nathan is staring out the window as intensely as I am. I have no idea what’s going on in his mind. The same is true for all my brothers. Then again, I don’t suppose they can tell from looking at me that my whole world is falling apart.

Dad pours generous measures of his precious fifty-year-old Macallan into tumblers. The sound of the ice clinking and fizzing is way too festive for the current mood. He hands them out to each of us, his face set in grim lines. Maddox, the baby at only sixteen, does a piss-poor impression of being surprised—as though he’s never touched alcohol before. I don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling.

“Does anyone else feel like it’s weird that it’s just us?” says Mason, breaking the silence. He’s right, of course. I see how much it cost him to put it into words, how much it cost all of us to hear them. I am the oldest, and although I have my own troubles, I try to think of a way to lift their spirits. Or at least fill in some goddamn time before this torture is over. “We could put the TV on,” I suggest half-heartedly. “Watch the ball drop?”

“Nah.” Drake immediately objects. “She used to hate that, remember? Was always convinced the time was off by a few seconds.” He smiles to take the sting out of the comment, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. No surprise there—I don’t think I’ve seen a real smile on Drake’s face since she died two months ago.

Laughing, Mason grabs onto the memory. “Remember how she’d always insist on using Great-Grandad’s old Navy diving watch to determine when it was midnight instead?”

It was one of her little quirks. One of a thousand little details about her that once seemed mundane but now feels precious.

“Where the hell is that thing?” Nathan asks, and Maddox pulls the watch out of his pocket. The tears in his eyes threaten to set me off.

Mason finishes his Scotch and gets up. “Jesus, it feels so weird without her here. Like this house has no fucking soul anymore. Let’s get the fuck out of here and go somewhere.”

Go somewhere? Like home, back to Amber? The woman I love and have committed my whole life to. The woman who lately feels like she’s closing herself off from me more every single day? I should go to her and fix whatever it is that’s going wrong. But I can’t. Not right now. Not when my dad and my brothers need me. There’ll be time to work on my marriage as soon as they’re all taken care of. Amber and I promised each other forever.

“Like where, jerkwad?” Ever the careful planner, Drake doesn’t bother hiding his disdain at Mason’s spontaneous suggestion.

“I dunno. A club or something. A place where there’s life.”

I try to imagine us all in a club right now. The mighty James brothers, weighed down by their loss, hitting the dance floor. More like hitting the bottle and blacking out in public. Drake’s right on this one. It’s a terrible idea.

“And what about me, dickface?” Maddox says. He’s built like an SUV, but he’s still very clearly under twenty-one.

As Mason opens his mouth to issue a retort, most likely a foul-mouthed one, Dad holds up his hand, and we all shut up. Diminished he may be by the loss of the wife he adored, our father is still not a man you mess with. He has the natural authority of a born leader and a rock-solid confidence that is based on a lifetime of achievement. He made his first billion by the time he was thirty-five, and although he is a loving father, he demands just as much respect from his sons as he does at work. When Dalton James has something to say, you’d better listen.

“Nobody is going anywhere,” he informs us firmly. “So quit your whining and drink your Scotch.”

“Sorry, Pop,” Mason says, returning to his seat.

Dad stands in front of the window and downs his Scotch, his gray eyes on us, but they seem to be staring at something beyond the physical. His pain is so thick, so heavy, you could almost reach out and touch it. It breaks me in two to see him like this.

“I have a piece of advice for all you boys,” he says, his deep voice grim. We all look at him, waiting. “You live by this, and I promise that you’ll never know a day’s heartache in your life.”

“And what’s that, Dad?” I ask.

He pauses and clears his throat. For the briefest moment, he squeezes his eyelids shut, and I know he’s clenching back tears. He composes himself and answers me. “Never fall in love.”

Well, fuck. That ship has well and truly sailed, Pop.