Chapter 4
Lucas
She’s laughing. Why does it bug me?
He smiles, she blushes, they talk, and I run a little faster, so they don’t pass me. And they smile some more. And talk and talk and talk.
I thought I might see her here tonight, but I don’t know why I assumed she’d be alone if I did.
I guess it’s just a reminder of how the world keeps moving without you. Quinn used to want me around.
She has other people’s attention now.
I jerk my head to the side, cracking my neck.
It’s good that she has people around her.
He has a kind way about him, at least. Easy eyes that look at her like he’s seven and she’s carrying a plate of cookies.
Not like the other one who looks at her like he already knows how this night will go, and it will end entirely in his favor.
I exit the track, swipe my hand towel and water bottle off a bench, and wipe the sweat on my forehead that isn’t really there. I’d only been jogging for a few minutes, trying not to think about how I timed my arrival when I thought she might show up.
Madoc was here last night too. I just wanted to catch up with them both some more before I leave. I haven’t seen him yet, though.
I head for the bottle filler and see them jog past, her running partner trailing her just a couple of inches, his eyes dropping to her ass.
Noah Van der Berg.
Madoc told me about him today at the track—the family’s new honorary addition. He’s on Jared’s racing team, lives with him and Tate, and acts as a pseudo-older brother to their son, James. Good friends with Dylan too.
Actually, all of them, I hear.
Saw him for a beat at the Loop, straddling his bike and talking up some girls. I can spot a young guy, new to town, and enjoying a playing field of fresh new faces a mile away. They don’t mind him having fun, but they will mind when he’s having fun with Quinn. I guarantee it.
Tipping up my bottle, I take a drink.
“Is he coming tonight?” I hear a voice ask.
I swallow a little more water and then stop. I think it’s the other kid Quinn was with.
“What time?” he asks.
He’s on the phone.
“What time?” Again, but sterner.
I take a step, then two, and spot the other blond around the corner, his back to the towel station. He holds a phone in his hand, an ear piece is in his ear.
“You think I want his job?” He grins. “I’ll be taking yours first.”
He slides a hand up under his black T-shirt and rubs his stomach.
“And then Reeves will fucking find out how short-lived power is when you have no people.”
I pull back just behind the wall again.
Reeves.
Drew Reeves?
“I won’t be late,” I hear him say. But then his voice softens. “Well, I might be late. Kind of like what I’m looking at right now.”
I take another step, seeing him follow Quinn with his eyes as she runs with Noah.
“Don’t wait for me.”
He ends the call, tucks the phone into the pocket of fitted gray sweatpants, and then he turns.
And that’s when I see it.
RIVER inked vertically down the side of his neck, a line stricken through the word.
My chest caves. Fuck.
I stand there, watching him walk back to Noah and Quinn as they stop running and move to the machines. Something coils in my stomach as I clench my teeth.
The tattoo. The fucking tat.
Green Street.
He had said “and then Reeves will find out…”
…will.
As if he’s still here.
But he’s gone. I checked. He was driven away two years ago. The crooked Shelburne Falls cop who ran the Weston Green Street gang and was caught siphoning confiscated goods for his own benefit and conning a bunch of kids into doing his dirty work. He fled, and an underling took over.
But eight years ago, Drew wasn’t a cop. And he wasn’t alone.
I’m not welcome here anymore, under any condition, but I couldn’t exactly tell my mother that when she forced me home. Even Lance doesn’t know what happened.
And Madoc will never know.
Does Green Street cause him any trouble? If I’m seeing someone with a tattoo after only two days here, the group has to be thriving.
Neither of these fucking guys should be around Quinn.
Lance sidles up to my side, done with the treadmill. “Legs?” he asks.
I’d forgotten he was here.
I watch Quinn move to the shoulder press as her friends circle her.
“Upper body.” And I shoot off.
“But we did that yesterday.”
I don’t stop, and he doesn’t argue.
Climbing on to the lat machine, I glance at Quinn in the mirror, seeing her about twenty feet behind me with the guys. She starts her reps, Noah next to her on a weight bench while the other one lingers behind her. What’s his name?
Quinn doesn’t look at me, her chin down.
But then…she lifts her head and locks on my gaze in the mirror. She flashes a small smile, my heart jolting.
I’d forgotten how her whole face brightens when she does that.
“So, what did you think of Fallstown?” Lance hangs in front of me, his hands gripping a bar over his head.
I shake my mind clear, trying to hide the pounding in my chest. “It was fun.” I let the bar rise and then pull down again. “Nice tracks.”
Fallstown. Thank goodness I’m not going to be here long enough to learn that new title.
Madoc let me do a few turns in his car. And then showed me how I was supposed to do it. Amusement pulls at the corners of my mouth, remembering how it felt when he taught me to drive when I was fifteen.
Actually, thirteen, but I’m not supposed to tell anyone that.
“It was fun, and…” he teases.
I almost chuckle. My friend knows me. “And I’m glad they changed the name because it’s not the Loop anymore.
” Quinn glances at me, followed by Van der Berg, no doubt overhearing.
“Clean, scheduled, and corporate.” Instead of wild, chaotic, and exciting.
“The Loop is gone,” I say a little louder than necessary. “It’s a shame.”
My ego takes over, and for some reason, things that never even occurred to me are now pissing me off.
Like how she has people in her life who don’t even know who I am.
And how I know more than they do about everything in this town, and I don’t like how they’re just fucking walking around without permission.
“Yeah, nothing like it used to be,” Lance offers.
I know I’m not thinking clearly. I’m being stupid. It’s just me feeling threatened and possessive of a life I no longer have, but I can’t shake it.
And I don’t care. Not really. It’s just possessiveness of my history here, which isn’t nearly as good as my life is now overseas. Things just always seem better than they were, in retrospect.
Quinn moves off the shoulder press and takes Noah’s place at the weight bench, Van der Berg and the other one helping adjust her weights.
“But we do have other things to offer,” Lance adds.
Noah moves behind her. “I’ll spot you.”
“Oh, I remember,” I reply, tipping my eyes up at my friend. “Small-town privacy, speed traps, and pancake suppers.”
Hard to avoid the interest of such a close-knit community.
“No, I can hear you,” Quinn says, and I watch the boys smile down at her as she listens to them over her ear piece.
“We have mystery.” Lance moves in, lowering his voice. “Every appetite can be satiated in a city, and no one cares. A small town is where you’re afraid to get caught. That’s where the fun is. Who’s having an affair with who? Who’s the secret love-child of the police chief?”
Who’s hiding a body…?
Yeah, I get the picture. I shake off the aggravation weighing on my shoulders.
“It’s the relationships in a small town that make everything messy…” he trails off.
“Thank you,” Quinn says, and I glance over, watching Van der Berg take the bar as she sits up.
“It’s the people you see every day that make your secrets more dangerous,” Lance tells me. “And more worthwhile.”
An earbud tumbles to the floor. Quinn sees it but continues her set.
I release my bar, replying, “Maybe I would’ve thought so before I came back and saw how developed the town is now.”
It’s not quiet anymore.
Bending down, I swipe up the ear piece and blow off any dirt or dust.
Approaching, I gently take Quinn’s ear and slide it back in. My fingers tremble at the feel of her soft skin and the strands of hair caught behind her lobe. I don’t touch too hard, almost like she’s fine china.
“The Loop used to be wet and dirty,” I tell Lance as I ignore the boys and feel Quinn go still as she clutches the bars in her hands. “Illegal and dangerous. What made it fun was that we were doing something we weren’t supposed to.”
She lifts her eyes to mine, the young men with her like statues in the corner of my eye.
I can feel them watching us, and I hold her for another second—and then another—amplifying every moment she doesn’t shove me away, showing them that she knows me.
Showing her that I’m still the closest man to her outside of blood.
“But the more the town grows, the more people fear losing what they have. The mystery dissipates in favor of shared preservation.”
Backing away, I have a seat at the machine next to her and start pumping, despite my heart racing more as the seconds pass. Lance takes the rope on my other side and pulls down again and again, exercising his triceps.
I don’t check Quinn, breathing slowly and calmly as if nothing happened.
“So,” I ask Lance, swallowing. “Am I going to meet your wife?”
Quinn resumes her arm curls, and I exhale slowly.
“Sure.” He nods. “When you get one for yourself. I’m not letting her around you when you’re unattached.”
I force a laugh, trying to act like Quinn isn’t the only thing I’m aware of. “Like I would ever…” I joke.
“But she might.”
I shake my head. “Bring her on Saturday. The more the merrier to the Caruthers.”
I didn’t want a party. But I can give Madoc one night.
“Will she be there?” he murmurs in a low voice, gesturing to Quinn.
I was hoping he wouldn’t notice her or how she was the same young woman who worked out next to us last night.
Gripping the bar, I climb off the shoulder press, keeping my voice down, “As she’s Madoc’s sister, I’m sure she will be.”