Chapter 13
Lucas
Farrow’s motorcycle rumbles in her driveway, and I stand in the kitchen, frozen like my feet have sprouted roots into her floor.
Make her stay. It’s quiet here, just how she likes. It could be just the two of us without any overbearing older brothers or parents or curious eyes. We could make dinner and watch a movie, but…
I listen to her speed away, closing my eyes with my heart in my fucking stomach, because all I could think about with her in the room was her naked on my bed last night.
I can’t get the images out of my head and how much I loved finding out she dreams of me.
Can I be her friend now? Can I trust myself to be alone with her?
Fuck.
She’ll be moving soon. I’ll be close, but not too close. I need to keep myself under control, so she trusts me again. I don’t want her latching on to Noah or Farrow because they have rides.
My house was paid for in cash. Does Quinn really have access to that much money? Without a loan?
Then she can damn well afford a vehicle of her own. Two guys she barely knows, and who won’t be there the rest of her life, aren’t an excuse to put off the inevitable.
And…they’re not going to give her something for nothing.
The next morning, I step into Fallon’s workshop, a former chimney service business in a black brick house, far off the road with ivy climbing the wall on the right side of the door.
The creak of the screen door sounds like it’s from the fifties, and Quinn immediately enters my thoughts again.
She probably insisted Fallon keep the rusted, aluminum door because it’s louder than a doorbell, but better because anyone just entering your place doesn’t mean strangers.
She would say it means friends, and the sound would make us smile.
Or something weird like that. Everything makes Quinn feel, and so much of how she associates with the world is rooted in memory. Of which, I’m a part.
I want to laugh with her again. So badly. And I want Madoc and Fallon and everyone else back in my life. As my love of Dubai starts to sink to the back of my brain, and the Falls takes its place, I know that what I gave up here wasn’t worth any price.
“Who’s there?” Fallon calls out.
I round a glass partition adorned with plants and enter a large room with multiple desks, drafting tables, and a seating area in the corner. Emerald green subway tiles adorn the walls, and I look up, seeing a small conference room through the glass walls upstairs.
Fallon is the only one here. Madoc said she often mentored college students and took in interns, but for the most part, there was no staff.
Just her small passion projects. Technically, she’s on an extended leave from the company we both work for, which simply means she can have her job back any time.
I think the kids and Madoc’s building political aspirations were the excuse she was looking for to have some creative freedom again.
She stands in the middle of the room, a VR headset on as she swipes her hands to move through whatever world she’s in.
I chuckle quietly as I pull it off her head. “What’s this?”
She spins around, startled. “Lucas.”
I pull the headset on over my own eyes. A neighborhood spans before me, and I turn, taking in the new world.
“Madoc mentioned you stayed,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant when I know she just wants to grill me. “How long?”
“For a bit,” I muse, quickly changing the subject. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh.” I can tell she’s smiling by her tone. “It’s my marketing plan. You know I hate to type.”
She puts her gloves on me, and I wave my hands through the air to move the graphics and proceed to the next street.
We learned how to design models on a computer, but this really would be a selling point.
Being able to put a client into the future to see their skyscraper or home—explore the interiors—before it’s even built? Incredible.
But as I move around, past businesses and down streets, familiar landmarks show up. Jared’s shop, the gym, the statue of the sleeping fox that sits on a bench in front the tree at the middle school…
“Is this…” I turn in a circle, zoning in on other structures and accents I don’t recognize. “Shelburne Falls?”
“Yeah.”
But the streets aren’t the same. Some of the structures are new, variances in others.
“I don’t…” I pause, realization dawning.
“Oh, I see it.” My gaze flits from one thing to the other as I swipe my hands and move the image, taking me from High Street to Fall Away Lane and back to the downtown to City Hall, the police station, and Rivertown Bar and Grill.
Windows are bigger, overhangs extended. “Passive solar designs,” I say.
“Green roofs, rainwater harvesting, the outdoor green spaces…”
This image shows a renovated Shelburne Falls for energy efficiency.
“Walking and bike-friendly streets,” she adds.
I look down at the road, seeing that there is a bike lane added.
“The Falls is expanding at a higher rate,” I hear her say as I continue to explore. “And now the talk of a train for commuters to and from Chicago…”
I nod, understanding. “Madoc’s worried about urbanization. Would that necessarily be a bad thing, though?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” she concedes. “More people means more jobs and businesses. As long as it’s not a McDonald’s.”
I let out a laugh, removing the headset and handing it to her. “Fallon, the old-timers are never going to agree to this.”
“And I would never try to convince them. You know I hate to talk.”
She and Madoc prove the old saying that opposites attract. Madoc thrives in a crowd. Fallon detests anything but her small circle. I’m not her kid. But I could’ve been with the way I take after her.
She sets the VR headset down. “You change people by showing them, not telling them. We start renovating our houses next year.”
Renovating…
“You mean…the whole family?”
She nods once.
I can’t help but smirk a little. “Jared’s never going to agree to that.”
“Jared doesn’t like to upset his wife even more.”
True.
I drift a little, taking in her workshop with its open spaces and a place upstairs to meet with potential clients. All their houses, huh? Fallon’s, Juliet’s, and Tate’s. It’s a huge challenge to take on, and it makes me love them even more. That they embrace possibility and lead by example.
“Quinn will love the bike lanes,” I tell her.
“She’s who I thought of.” Fallon grins. “She’s always heard music that no one else does, and no matter how much her brothers get on her case about a car, I’m going to help her hold out for as long as possible.”
I drop my eyes, feeling guilty. Quinn needs more Fallons around her.
“It’s cool.” I point to the headset. “I’ll have to take that idea back to Dubai with me.”
Clients would be able to really see my vision.
“But I am still partial to your old school models,” I say. “I used to love staring at them—wishing I lived inside them.”
“Well, don’t forget your old school model.”
She tips her chin up the stairs to the landing. Following her gaze, I spot a few tables, before you get to the conference room, and I can just make out miniatures of homes, office buildings, and other constructions.
My model? And then it occurs to me. The ski resort I used to think I was going to build someday.
I hit her with a bemused look. “You don’t still have it.”
She beams.
Shaking my head, I can’t resist. I jog up the stairs and find it immediately, sitting on a table, the wood and paint and trees a little dusty, but otherwise in the same condition as when I left them.
I study it with more experienced eyes, seeing that the scale is way off. Chalets far too close to the slopes, not nearly enough dining options, and where’s the spa? There has to be one.
And for some reason, I thought every skier would be expert level, because I don’t see a single green or blue run.
“Well, thank God it was never built!” I shout out to her downstairs. “I think this design would’ve killed every skier on the mountain!”
I stare at it, hearing her voice. “The only flaw in a dream is if you never begin.”
She walks off, back to work, and I gaze at my first model, remembering how I used to picture myself walking through it someday. This was made back when everything was in front of me.
I remove my jacket, loosen my tie, and start pulling apart the model to start over.
Hours later, and I’m finally leaving the workshop. I can’t stop the feeling that I’m floating. When was the last time I lost hours like that, caught up in working on something that didn’t feel like work?
Fallon still has stuff to do, taking advantage that Hunter, Kade, and A.J. are busy at the summer camp all week. I climb in Jared’s Boss, the summer breeze filling my lungs in a way they haven’t felt filled in a long fucking time.
I’ll be back tomorrow.
I slip the key into the ignition, the engine rumbling to life so loudly that I don’t register the doors opening. In a moment, someone sits in the passenger seat. Another person behind me cocks a gun at my head.
I freeze; the nozzle of a pistol pressed into my skull as cologne fills the car. I glance at Fallon’s workshop door. Don’t come outside.
“You weren’t a problem for years,” the guy in the seat next to me says with a slight accent.
Hugo Navarre.
Head of Green Street. Reeves’ successor. Farrow Kelly’s boss. It can’t be anyone else.
I glance in the rearview mirror at the other guy, but all I catch is his shoulder-length, light brown hair.
“Not because you were banished,” he points out. “But because you wanted to leave.”
I lock my jaw together, one hand on the wheel and one still on the key.
“You know why you wanted to go?” he continues, elbow propped up on the door as he sits back, fully relaxed. “You couldn’t stand your ugly soul and the place where you grew into it. That’s the difference between doing bad things in order to eat and doing bad things because you’re a fucking coward.”