Penny: PROBLEM. Spider in the clean laundry basket and now it’s gone. I have to burn down the house.

Gray: No.

Penny: You’re not grasping the severity of this situation. The spider is huge and it’s going to eat the cat.

Gray: Then the spider will rightfully take our cat’s place and become our beloved spider cat.

Penny: This is on you. And remember that thing I said you could do to me tonight? It’s off the table.

Hudson grabbed Gray’s phone and executed a three-pointer into the trash.

“What the hell?” Gray said.

“We’re talking about finding Dad,” Hud said. “I want to and Aidan doesn’t. You’re the tiebreaker.”

Aidan gave Gray a long look that said, Side with me or I’ll kick your ass.

Gray ignored him to look at Hudson. “Shelve it.”

“But—”

“Shelve it,” Gray repeated. “For now.”

At this, Aidan relaxed marginally. Because Hud had different memories of their dad than he did. Hud had seen a different side of the man. He’d been too little to remember anything bad, he only knew him as Absent Dad. And apparently there’d been one early birthday memory that Hud had held on to, when Richard had brought Hud and Jacob bikes.

There was no way in hell that Aidan was going to ruin that memory with the reality that was their father.

Plus, the guy wasn’t just a deadbeat dad and an asshole, but also unpredictable, not to mention uncontrollable. If they got him here and he found Kenna, complete with all the buckets of money she’d earned in sponsorships and endorsements during her snowboarding years, he’d find a way to bleed her dry too—even though Gray had managed to convince Kenna to lock her money up in long-term investments. It’d been a hard sell, because Kenna had wanted to give them the money to put toward saving the resort. Gray had refused to use her hard-won money to save their asses, and Aidan agreed.

If they were going down, she wasn’t going down with them. “Subject closed,” he said now to Hud.

Hudson opened his mouth to argue the point to death, because that’s what annoying-as-shit little brothers did, so Aidan cut him off and shook his head. “No,” he said again.

“And what,” Hudson said, pissed. “You’re the end of the line?”

“On this, yeah.”

“That’s bullshit, A.”

“It’s the way it is,” Aidan said.

“Bullshit,” Hudson said again, and stormed out.

“Don’t say it,” Aidan said into the deafening silence.

“That went well,” Gray said anyway.

“You’re an ass,” Aidan said.

“No doubt,” Gray said. “And he’s not going to stop. You going to tell me what the real problem is?”