Chapter 6 Lance
Lance
Six Years Ago
Lovers’ Alcove.
Fitting name for a hidden waterfall in the forest of Verona County Park, but I guess I’m biased.
The one time I got caught with my pants down, I had taken Elaine Astolaire up to the spot in my car and fogged up the windows, and then other people followed suit.
What can I say, I’m a trendsetter.
It also helps that my father paid off the police to keep them from the area.
“If you’re going to be an embarrassment, I’d rather give you a place to do it without bringing shame to the entire family.”
Tonight, though, we might be pushing our luck.
The bonfire is roaring, flames licking up toward the sky and casting everything in shades of orange and gold.
My cousin Tyler’s truck is backed up to the water’s edge, tailgate down, speakers blasting some song I don’t recognize but everyone else seems to know the words to, and his sister Rosalie is sitting on the back of it with a bottle of Fireball in her hand.
There’s a keg off to the left that I bribed my older brother to buy, and there are girls. Lots of them, scattered around the rocks like decorations at a party thrown specifically for me.
Which, technically, it is.
It’s my eighteenth birthday, after all.
“Calloway!”
I turn just in time to catch a red Solo cup to the chest, beer sloshing over my fingers. Tyler’s grinning at me, his arm slung around a girl I partnered with in chemistry sophomore year.
“You’re late to your own party, asshole.”
“Fashionably late,” I correct, raising the cup. “There’s a difference.”
Someone cranks the music louder, and Elaine catches my eye from where she’s stripping off her shirt in front of the bonfire.
I file that away for later. The night is young.
The air smells like smoke, cheap beer, and summer, and for a few hours, I don’t have to think about my father’s disappointed sighs or my mother’s tight-lipped silence or the fact that I’m eighteen years old and already the family fuckup.
Here, I’m not a disappointment.
I’m the main event. At least until Art shows up and becomes the most adored guy at the party.
Homecoming and prom king, the greedy asshole.
I make my way through the crowd, slapping hands and trading insults, stopping to talk with guys from Rosebrook Prep and flirt with girls from Verona County High who look at me like I’m something worth having. It’s easy. Natural.
This is who I am: the Calloway who parties too hard, fights too much, and doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
The truth is messier. The truth is, every time I see my father’s face, I choke on my own inadequacy.
My brother Paxton is the poster Calloway child, graduated summa cum laude from Verona University and already being groomed to take over the family empire.
But me?
I’m the one who came out wrong. The one who’s been getting arrested since I was fourteen, who’s been in more fights than I can count, and splashed across The Rosebrook Rag more times than my father can stomach.
“Wild Child or Family Embarrassment?” #CallowayThrowaway.
My father’s solution is always the same: pour money on it, make it go away, then look at me like I’m something he stepped in.
So yeah. I party. I fight. I fuck. Because at least when I’m doing those things, I feel something other than the hollow ache of being a disappointment to everyone who’s supposed to love me.
The only people at home who ever made me feel like I was worth a damn are Juliette and Beverly.
Jules, because she looks at me like I hung the moon. My father would scream at me until he was purple in the face, sometimes backhanding me if I embarrassed him enough, and she’d curl up on the end of my bed, and tell me made-up stories, just to give me an escape.
And Beverly… She’s something else entirely.
The woman raised me, and to this day, she’s the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had. At least, privately.
In public, the Calloways are an unshakable force.
A cheer erupts near the bonfire, and I look over to see Art arriving.
He’s late, later than me even, but nobody gives him shit for it. Instead, they part for him like he’s royalty, hands reaching out to clap his shoulder, voices calling his name with the kind of easy affection that makes my chest ache if I think about it for long enough.
“Art! About time, man.”
“Yo, Art, tell everyone the story about the VU admissions office the other day.”
“Saved you a beer, my guy.”
He moves through the crowd like he was born to it, that easy grin on his face, his auburn hair catching the firelight. Girls gravitate toward him. Not throwing themselves at him the way they do with me when they want one night, but drifting closer, laughing louder, hoping he’ll notice.
And he does notice. He notices everyone. That’s the thing about Art, he makes people feel seen. Important. Like they matter.
It’s his superpower.
Where I’m a wildfire, burning everything I touch, Art is the sun. He’s warm and steady, the kind of person people want to orbit.
The people’s prince.
Franklin Penngrove might be an asshole of a father, but he raised Art to be a politician’s dream.
Art never meets a stranger. Never forgets a name. Never makes anyone feel like they’re less than.
Including me.
Especially me.
“Lance.” He spots me across the fire and his face lights up, his grin widening. “You fucker, I thought you were gonna let me show up first and look good.”
A few people snicker, but I pretend I don’t hear them. He reaches me and throws an arm around my shoulders, pulling me in.
“And you started without me,” he says, nodding at the Solo cup in my hand.
I shrug. “You’re late.”
He steals my beer and takes a long swig and then tugs me in closer, pressing a big kiss to the side of my head.
I laugh, pushing him away. “Get the fuck off me, you dipshit.”
“Happy birthday, man.” He lifts his fist and I bump it then slide our palms together for our secret handshake. “Silver Spoon Survivors’ Club?”
“Founding members.”
A girl appears at Art’s elbow. Stephanie something. Actually, I’m pretty sure I fucked her junior year in the janitor’s closet, but I can’t remember for sure. She touches his arm like she’s staking a claim. “Art, we’re doing shots by the water. You should come.”
Her eyes slide to me for half a second, then away.
“Nah, I’m good here. Maybe later.”
Stephanie’s grin falters, but she recovers fast. “Okay. Find me when you’re ready.”
She disappears back into the crowd, and Art turns to me, rolling his eyes. “She’s been on me all week. I think her dad wants to merge families or some shit.”
“Could be worse.” I say. “She’s hot.”
“She’s boring.”
“The sacrifices of being a nice guy.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” He turns to me with a smile. “But at least my girls pretend to be interested in conversation first.”
“That’s because they want to marry you. They just want to fuck me.”
“And you’re complaining?”
“Did I say I was complaining?”
He laughs, shoving me, and I shove him back, and for a minute it’s just us. The way it’s always been. The mayor’s perfect son and the Calloway fuckup, best friends since birth, brothers by choice if not by blood.
People don’t understand it. I don’t fully understand it, either.
Art could have anyone. He could run with the golden crowd, the future politicians and CEOs and country club kids who would help his image instead of hurting it.
Hell, literally any of my siblings would fit that mold.
But for some reason, he chose me, and he keeps choosing me, even when I make it hard.
“Hey.” He nudges me. “You good? You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one that tells me you’ll end the night either fighting or fucking.”
“Night’s young, haven’t picked yet.”
“Just don’t get arrested again. Last time, I had to listen to a thirty-minute lecture about ‘the company I keep’,” he says.
“What’d you tell him?”
“That you’re a bad influence and I’m trying to save your soul.”
“How noble of you.”
“I’m basically a saint.” He throws an arm around my shoulders again, steering me toward the keg. “Listen, I’ve gotta talk to you later, but right now, I want to be drunk enough that your bad decisions rub off on me.”
I don’t tell him that hanging out with him is the only time I feel like I’m not drowning. I don’t tell him his friendship is the one thing keeping me tethered to something good. I don’t tell him that I’d do anything for him.
But I would.
Anything.
And I think he’d say the same.
The party winds down a little after two in the morning, and Art’s too wasted to find his keys, let alone his car, so I drive us both to my family’s estate.
We take the back roads, windows down, the bonfire smoke clinging to our clothes. Art’s got some old rock song playing on the speakers, and he’s slurring the words into his hand like it’s a microphone.
“Jesus, you’re wasted.”
“Not wasted,” he says, pointing at me with an unsteady finger. “I’m celebrating you, since you’re a wet fucking blanket tonight.”
He drops his head back against the seat and grins at me. “You’re my best friend. Like my best friend. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Probably crash into a ditch,” I reply, swerving to avoid a pothole.
By the time we pull up to my family’s estate, Art’s half asleep, mumbling about how my car smells like the living embodiment of a teenage dirtbag.
“Out,” I tell him, shoving his back. “I’m not carrying your ass.”
“You would if you loved me.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve all got our limits.”
We stumble through the side entrance, the one that leads through the main kitchen, and I’m expecting what normally happens: a note from Beverly about leftovers in the fridge and a passive-aggressive reminder to take off my shoes before I track dirt through the house.
But instead, she’s there with her hands on her hips.
“You two smell like a brewery,” she says.
“Happy birthday to me.” I grin, pressing a kiss to her cheek.
“Mmhm.” She crosses to the counter, pulling out a plate covered in foil. “I saved you both some cake. Figured you’d come back hungry.”
Art’s already reaching for it. “Bevie, you’re a goddamn angel.”
“You won’t think that when I tell you why you need to sober up.”
I groan. “Don’t say it.”
“Your fath—”
“La-La-La-La,” Art cuts in, mouth full of icing, and fingers in his ears. “Bevie, we can’t be disappointments if we can’t hear them saying we’re disappointments, right?”
She presses her lips together, and for a second she looks older than I’ve ever seen her. “Your father’s in his study,” she says. “He’s been waiting for both of you.”
Art’s hand freezes over the cake. “Both of us?”
“He’s not alone.” She doesn’t elaborate, but her eyes flick to Art and something passes over her face. “You need to do whatever they say, you hear me?”
“Bevie… What are you talking about?”
“Go.” She reaches out and squeezes my arm, her grip firm. “You’re a good friend, Lance. He’ll need you to be that for him.”
I don’t know what that means, but suddenly, I think back over the night and my memories fall apart and then re-slot together again.
Art showing up late, which is unlike him.
Art, not wanting to talk about anything but me.
Art, getting so wasted he can’t see straight and me being the responsible one.
We walk down the long hallway toward my father’s study, our footsteps echoing off the marble, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m walking toward something I won’t be able to come back from.
“You know what this is about?” I ask.
“Potentially.”
“What the fuck, dude, and you didn’t think to warn me?”
His cheeks flush. “I said I had something to talk to you about.”
“You think this is about something you did?”
He nods and then shakes his head like he’s unsure. “I don’t know. Hope not.”
But when we get to my father’s office and the door is already open, I realize this is more serious than even Beverly let on.
“What the hell did you do?”