40. Rafe
40
RAFE
I waited in the Jeep while Lilah went into Moran’s — a squat little auto repair shop on the outskirts of town — to drop off her keys. The grinding in the Honda’s steering column was getting worse and there was a new sound under the hood that made me think she needed a new engine.
The car was shot.
She’d put off taking it in even when we said we'd pay for any repairs — probably because we said we’d pay for any repairs — but it was getting to the point where even she was worried about driving to work and getting stranded on the mountain. Plus, now she was driving Matt around and I knew she took that responsibility seriously.
I could tell she’d been thrown when Nolan and Jude told her I’d have to drive her on the way to pick Matt up from school because they were meeting a source about an upcoming job. I was thrown too. I’d replayed the moment between us a hundred times since the night before when I’d woken up from my nightmare to find her sitting on the edge of my bed. I couldn’t get over how fucking nice she was to me in spite of everything. It almost made me mad, took me back to the reason I’d done what I’d done in high school.
But I pushed that down, because I’d been fucked in high school and no matter what I'd been trying to prove — no matter what I’d wanted Lilah to prove to herself — all I’d done was cause more damage.
I’d done a lot of hard things in the military, during SEAL training and after. I’d survived on less than four hours sleep during Hell Week. I’d run four miles with boots and gear in under half an hour. I’d undergone seven weeks of combat dive training, including carrying gear underwater from one point to the other in the dark of night. I’d carried a 150-pound log up a fifteen-foot-high sand berm only to be told to pick it up, lift it over my head, and carry it back to its original resting place.
But none of those things — not one of them — had been as hard as keeping my hands off Lilah last night.
I’d done it not out of a sense of honor but because I’d known she would reject me unless I said those two little words she was determined to hear. And fuck me if I still couldn’t bring myself to say them, even though every second she’d been gone in Greece I’d promised myself I would tell her everything if we got her back.
I’d meant everything and so far I’d told her nothing.
The door to the mechanic’s office opened and she came out digging through her bag. For a few seconds, I saw her unguarded, without the wariness she wore like a shield. Her features were soft, her skin glowing in the afternoon sun, her ponytail draped over one shoulder.
My god she was beautiful. She was so fucking beautiful and she had no idea.
She looked up and saw me watching, but instead of hardening, her features stayed soft, the way they were when she looked at Nolan or Jude.
Or maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.
“Thanks,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat. “He said he’d call by noon tomorrow.”
I heard the worry in her voice, wished by all that was holy she’d allow us to take it away from her.
We didn’t talk much on the way to the high school. To be fair, we never talked much when we were alone, but this time felt different. In the past we’d been tense around each other. I hadn’t wanted to show her any warmth, hadn’t wanted to let myself get close to her.
She’d just hated my guts.
And maybe she still did, but now there was something else in the air, something soft I couldn’t put my finger on, like the granite wall between us had started to crumble.
There was a ton of traffic around the high school: parents picking up their kids and dumbfuck new drivers revving the engines on their shitty cars, feeling cool and grown-up because they had their own wheels. Kids streamed out of the front of the building, talking and laughing, carrying backpacks and tote bags, looking equal parts unencumbered and burdened by their youth.
I scanned the sea of kids for Matt’s slumped figure but didn’t see him.
“There he is,” Lilah said.
I followed her gaze to the front of the building and watched as he loped down the stairs, avoiding the gazes of everyone around him.
He looked up briefly, gaze scanning the line of cars out front until he saw the Jeep. Lilah rolled her window down, preparing to greet him.
Except he didn’t come toward the Jeep. Instead his stare hardened into something cold, and he turned away, heading for the sidewalk leading to the neighborhood around the school.
Lilah looked at me. “What… Where is he going?” She leaned out the window. “Matt! Over here!”
He walked faster, like he was in a real hurry to get away from us.
I put the car in gear and pulled out of line, then navigated toward the exit leading to the side street where Matt had been heading.
“What are you doing, Matt?” she said under her breath. And then to me, “Pull around the corner here.”
I turned right, off of Main Street, and slowed down when I spotted Matt up ahead, backpack on his back, his long legs carrying him quickly away from us.
“Pull over,” Lilah said.
She was out of the car before I’d even come to a complete stop.
I watched her head toward Matt, then slowly got out of the car and started toward them, careful to keep some distance between us.
“Matt, wait!” she called out, running after him. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”
He spun on her so fast I had to stop myself from rushing them, every instinct in my body on alert to protect Lilah even though I knew there was no way Matt would hurt her.
“What am I doing?!” he shouted at her, his face red. “What are you doing, Lilah?”
She froze, and I edged closer.
“I’m picking you up from school,” she said. “Why are you running away from me?”
Matt’s gaze slid to me, a few feet behind Lilah. He pointed at me. “ You get away from me.”
Lilah turned, confusion written on her face, and realized Matt was talking to me.
“I don’t understand,” Lilah said, turning back to Matt. “You’re scaring me. Just… talk to me! Tell me what’s going on.”
His eyes were hard as flint. “I guess I don’t have to ask why you didn’t tell me you were living with them . But what I don’t get is why you’d do it after what they did to you. What they did to us.”
Lilah’s shoulders sagged as the truth hit: Matt knew. He knew Nolan, Jude and I were the ones who’d leaked Lilah’s nudes.
“How did you… How did you find out?” she asked softly.
“That part was real fun,” he said sarcastically. “Jake Silvestri, one of the kids who gets his rocks off tormenting me every day, told me after he saw them pick me up yesterday. Apparently, he has two older brothers. Look at that, you’re famous, Lilah!”
She looked at the ground. “I wanted to tell you.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
She shook her head. “It just… it just didn’t seem to matter.”
“It didn’t matter ?” He threw his backpack on the ground like the burden was suddenly too much to bear, paced a few feet away from her, then paced back until he was a couple feet in front of her. Across the street, a group of kids didn’t bother trying not to stare as they walked home from school. “Why wouldn’t it matter?”
She took a deep breath. “Because it doesn’t. It’s a complicated situation, okay? But I needed somewhere to go and they gave me that.”
Matt glared. “Oh, I bet they did.”
I squeezed my fists at my sides. Matt was a good kid, a nice kid. He was just upset. But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel like punching something — even if it wasn’t his face — at his disrespect toward Lilah.
Lilah’s cheeks flamed. “Stop it. Just… stop it.”
“So you’re not sleeping with one of them?” Matt threw the question down like a gauntlet.
Lilah’s cheeks turned pinker. Matt was so naive it wouldn’t even occur to him that his sister was sleeping with two of us, that the only reason I wasn’t lucky enough to be included was because I was a fucking asshole who couldn’t manage to say two simple words.
“That’s none of your business,” Lilah said. “Just… please… come back to the house so we can talk.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Matt said. “Mom’s right. You’re lost to the devil. You disgust me.”
“Hey!” I marched toward him without thinking. “You’re allowed to be pissed, but be pissed at me. At us. Your sister doesn’t deserve this shit. What happened in high school — what we did — happened to her. I don’t want to overstep, but I can’t let you talk to her like that in front of me.”
I didn’t say the rest of it: that I was seeing red, that I was in danger of losing my shit on this kid who didn’t really deserve it, who was understandably confused.
“Whatever,” Matt said, picking up his bag. He stared at Lilah. “God still loves you. You can still come home to him. I’ll be praying for you.”
She stood there, watching him walk away. He was almost to the end of the block when she called after him.
“I’ll still come, Matt! I’ll always come if you call!”
He disappeared around the corner.
I put my hand on her shoulder, but she shook me off and started back toward the car.