“Sorry. It’s over.” Or she thought they were. Blaze sent two texts before she woke this morning. She deleted them without reading. After the way he left last night and what he said to her, what more could he want?
“Huh. I liked you guys together. Well, good luck with Ethan.” He claps her shoulder.
“Go to hell.”
The door shuts on his laughter.
CHAPTER 8
LUCAS
Lucas settles onto the porch step beside the kid. Josh scoots over, making room, and, face averted, he roughly drags his sweatshirt sleeves across his eyes and under his nose. His jaw tightens and lips thin as he pretends not to cry.
I get it, kid.
There were many nights as a teen when Lucas had to fake a smile so his parents could feign life was good. That their underage son hadn’t been sentenced for stealing beer with the handgun his friend had brought to the scene of the crime. Or that the other crime committed behind bars never took place. Well, hate to break it to them. What the Carsons let people see was fake news. His upbringing was not a fucking Hallmark movie as his parents wanted everyone to believe.
Josh takes one of those deep post-cry inhales where the lungs sputter like a tailpipe. Lucas starts talking because he doesn’t know what else to do to put the kid at ease. He yammers on about Lily and Olivia and growing up on the water in Seaside Cove, which was cool. He kayaked and surfed after school. He still hits the water when he can.
He has no idea if Josh understands. He’s rambling. But the kid seems to be listening. He likes the pictures on his phone when Lucas shows him. He laughs at some of Lucas’s stupid stories from when he played Pee Wee football and he and his teammates ran around the field like bobbleheads with their enormous helmets. And when Lucas tires of his own stories, he prompts Josh to return to the house, hating what the kid must be going through, his emotions close to what Lucas experienced. Fear recognizes fear.
“Check on your aunt. She won’t admit it, but she’s worried about you.”
He gives Josh a fist bump and waits until he returns to the house. The instant the door closes, the smile he Gorilla-Glued to his face vanishes. He ambles to his truck, settles in the seat, not bothering to clip the belt, and drives off. He makes it two blocks. He jerks the truck to the side of the road and kicks open his door. He walks round the front and vomits in the gutter.
“Fuck.”
Lily.
Her son looks so much like her at that age it hurt to look at him. Lily shadowed Lucas everywhere. She’d wait for him after school and he’d walk home with her. She sat on the floor at his feet doing homework while he watched TV. She’d wait for him at the dock until he returned from his morning row.
Lucas swipes the back of his hand across his mouth and looks up. An elderly woman watering her lawn, the green hose hanging like a limp dick from her hand, glares at him, her mouth pinched like a wrinkly asshole. Oh, yeah. He isn’t hitting approval ratings with her anytime soon.
A toddler on a trike has stopped nearby. Her little feet push against the sidewalk, rolling the trike back and forth. She points at him. “Mommy, that man’s sick.”
“What have I told you, honey? It’s not nice to point.” Her expression wary, the mother shoots him a look of warning not to mess with her or her child. She moves to stand between him and the squirt in a skirt as if he’s a predator.
He scowls, returning to his truck, and searches through the center console for his bottle of clonazepam. He pops the chill pill and washes it down with a mouthful of tepid water from a plastic bottle the experts say will give him cancer. Like he gives a shit.
The toddler watches him through the window. He guns the engine, stopping short of laying on the horn. The toddler clamps her hands over her ears and screams, rattling his own ears. Holy hell, she’s got lungs. The mother’s face turns as red as his grandmother’s cooked beets and she yells at him. He can’t hear what she’s saying over the noise of his truck and her daughter’s shrieks, but he’s sure it isn’t nice.
Shifting into gear, he yanks the truck away from the curb and heads back to work.
CHAPTER 9
Olivia watches Lucas and Josh with interest through the living room window. When Lily ran away, Olivia called Lucas. Had he seen Lily with Ethan? Did Ethan ever come by the house? Did he know he was seeing Lily? And what happened the night she ran away? Had she been planning to run? Did Ethan sway her to leave when their parents forced Lily to choose between an abortion or adoption?
Lucas hadn’t seen them together. Ethan never visited. He wasn’t there the night Lily left, and he didn’t know if she’d been planning to run. He’s not a mind reader. He also didn’t know where she went and he didn’t care.
Olivia told herself she didn’t care either. Dwight blindsided her with the news, that was all. How did she not see this coming? But what equally baffled her was Lucas’s indifference. He wouldn’t agree to keep her posted on what was happening at home, or the leads Dwight and Charlotte had on Lily’s whereabouts. Lily wanted to keep the baby. Let her.
She chews a hangnail on her thumb. What are they talking about that’s keeping Josh rooted to the porch? He’d been ready to bolt. She saw the wild look in his eyes when he fled the kitchen. If it weren’t for Lucas, Josh would have been around the corner by now, swallowed up by traffic, trees, and retail stores. They would have lost him before she could get her keys and start the car, which would make everything about this situation easier. It would be like he was never here.
But then she’d never find out why he came. They might not find Lily without him.
If she’s still alive.
Lucas holds his phone so Josh can see the screen. The living room window is open, and she hears Josh’s occasional laugh, a name drop from Lucas, and a description of a project he’s been working on. He even smiles at one point, though on him it’s more of a sneer.
Lucas has rarely smiled since his junior year in high school. Seeing a hint of the one he gives Josh is monumental. Flashes of the vibrant, talented little brother always pranking them and looking for laughs come into focus. He taped Blaze’s hand to his forehead while he slept, keeping her in giggles for most of the morning. The tape left a red mark just under Blaze’s hairline. Lucas stuck a rubber snake in Tyler’s shoes left outside. Olivia can still hear Tyler’s scream when he stuck his foot in his shoe and Lily’s laughter when they realized it was fake.
Lily was the only one who escaped Lucas’s pranks. He protected that girl better than a left tackle protected his quarterback’s blind side.
Longing tweaks the muscles in her chest, tightens the skin around her eyes.
She wants that little brother back, unburdened of the hand life dealt him. He should have been an architect. He should have played football at a PAC 12 university. He should have completed high school magna cum laude as a first-string tight end. And Lily should have completed high school and gone off to college. She would have studied art and design and competed on the swim team. Olivia is sure she would have earned a full-ride scholarship, she was that good. But at some point near the holidays, Lily’s life intersected with Ethan’s, and Olivia’s twenty-one-year-old boyfriend slept with her sixteen-year-old sister, and she took off with their baby.