“You’re not going to let me forget I said that, are you?” Not that she could forget. She loved him. She loved Lucas Danby and she had no idea what to do with that.
“I’m just saying, as long as you’re in baring-your-heart-and-soul mode, maybe consider telling him.”
Lucas poked the last of the brushed nickel solar lights in the ground just as the approaching shadow overtook him. “Where’ve you been?”
He rose to face Noah, wishing the question hadn’t come out so gruff. Wishing he knew how to bridge the tense distance between them. They were headed toward a confrontation one of these days, but with every day that passed, setting his world to rights felt more and more unlikely.
Between Noah and the phone calls from his father he continued to ignore and the ache in his gut when he thought of the Hollis kids, he was tangled in so many knots he didn’t know which one to focus on first.
And threaded through the whole mess was what that social worker had said. He couldn’t get her words out of his head. “I can tell you that any sort of longer-term custody arrangement would come with many more complications and requirements than a temporary emergency situation.”
He was the complication. He knew it. And the requirement? Probably that if Jenessa were to have a partner in raising the children, it would need to be someone without a prison record. Without dishonor literally attached to his name.
He shouldn’t let it bother him so much. The kids were gone. The chances of them returning were slim anyway.
But even without the kids in the equation, what did he really have to offer Jen? Look at how Herman Ferris had reacted when the mayor had mentioned that city job. What if Lucas never could find actual steady employment?
Sure, he’d always had a job waiting for him at the orchard, but it’d only ever been part-time and seasonal. He had no doubt Kit would stretch it to a year-round, full-time position if he asked, but no way would he do that—not when she and Beckett had a baby on the way.
He had plenty of savings from his time at Bridgewell, but it wasn’t the money or income or job that bothered him. It was that feeling he couldn’t shake that Jen deserved more. That even if his ugly past didn’t faze her, his unpromising future might eventually become a drain on their relationship.
Or maybe just a drain on him. Which would, in turn, affect her.
“You’re doing that la-la land thing again.” Noah broke into his reverie.
He bent down to straighten the solar light he’d just placed. “You never answered my question. Where were you?”
“Running an errand.”
It’d been like this for days—stilted questions and vague answers. Maybe he should just bite the bullet like he’d finally done with Dad. Except look where that had gotten him. More confused than ever. Dad wanted him back in D.C. in November. He assumed he was still going back to Bridgewell.
Flagg assumed the same, and he’d apparently talked to Dad. This, he knew, from a voicemail the man had left just yesterday. Lucas had been nearly as reluctant to talk to Flagg as he was his father. After all, the man had kept his acquaintance with Dad a secret for ten years now.
Was anyone not keeping secrets?
He leveled Noah with a look. “Should we just do this? Right now?”
Noah didn’t have to ask what. “Go ahead. You gonna throw a punch or—”
“Why didn’t you say something when you first realized who I was? Why lie for two weeks? What ulterior motive could you have possibly had?”
Noah stepped onto the stone path they’d laid last week. “An ulterior motive? Dude, you do remember that I was basically sent here against my will, right? Unlike you, I knew Dad had pulled strings to get me a meeting with Flagg but—”
“Right. Because you actually have a relationship with him. Because he did things like wheelbarrow races with you. He—gasp—lived in the same house with you most of the time.”
“That’s not my fault.” Noah paced the path. “I have no clue why he did what he did. I have no clue why we’re the family he picked. But what’s the point in taking it out on me?”
Lucas reached for another solar light, knelt to the ground, and stabbed it into the dirt. Too deep. “I’m not blaming you for his choices. I’m blaming you for your choice to not tell me the truth of who you are.”
“You’re really one to talk. How many years did you spend lying to all your friends about Mexico?” He made air quotes with his fingers on the last word. “Have you told more than one or two people how you got those scars? How about your court-martial? You weren’t exactly shining rays of truth during that.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Knees still pressed to the ground, he avoided looking up.
Noah stopped in front of him. “If you get a pass for taking years to spill your secrets to the people who know you best, maybe I should get one for not knowing how to tell a stranger a secret I’d only just discovered myself.” He kicked a light Lucas had just placed. “And you know what? I’m sick of hearing you complain about Dad not being around. It wasn’t exactly easy with him around either.”
He veered from the path and stalked to the edge of the garden.
“Noah—”
“Maybe Jen can talk some sense into you.”
Lucas jerked to his feet “What?”
“Yeah, I stopped at her office. Go ahead and be mad at me for that, too. But she knows about the review board now. Maybe you’ll listen to her.” He marched away.
For a few hours, she’d almost been able to forget the hole in her heart.
The laughter with her friends, the coziness of the Everwood, Mara and Marshall’s honeymoon pictures and stories . . . all of it was warmth to comfort the cold, empty spaces inside her. The spaces that should’ve been filled with the kids.
With Lucas.
She slid him a glance from the passenger seat of his truck. He’d let a hint of a beard shadow his face again and the dark green shirt he wore under an open flannel button-down was one of her favorites. Under the low lights of the Everwood’s den, the color had brought out the olive specks in his eyes.
But here in the truck, it was too dim to make out his mood by the shifting hues in his eyes. Still, she knew there was a storm brewing under his silence. She’d seen it so many times over the years. But she’d thought they were past the secrets.
Until Noah had come to the newspaper office today and spilled a new secret.
“I just think he should at least consider talking to my—our—father,” he’d said. “I know how much that discharge bothers him. It’s okay if he’s still ticked at Dad—believe me, I get it. But to not jump at that kind of chance just because it’s Dad who’s pulling the strings?”
Noah had asked her to talk to Lucas about it.
But why hadn’t Lucas told her what his father was trying to do for him? Did he think she’d try to talk him out of going to D.C.? Or into it?
Was this just Lucas Danby doing his normal Lucas Danby thing? Quietly processing his thoughts until he was ready to share? Or did the fact that he hadn’t mentioned this mean something more?
Stop. Lucas was about to show off his work in her backyard. He deserved her smiles and appreciation, not questions and overwrought emotion.