Chapter Thirty-Eight
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
The turning signal clicked too loud. Hagan slammed his fist onto the center console. He didn’t like the rental car he’d picked up at the airport, but the idea of being without his own transportation and an exit plan made this day that much more hellacious.
The drive from the rental lot was a short one.
He sped onto the interstate, and just as fast, yanked the steering wheel to exit on Eastern Parkway.
Sometime during the flight from D.C. to Louisville, he’d managed to believe that going home would fix everything.
As soon as he hit the brakes at the stoplight, Hagan realized he was dead-ass wrong.
The light turned green. His head still pounded. Hagan drove through the familiar neighborhood. The road curved one way. Then the next. Everything was the same. Everything was always the same. A blessing and a curse. But it should’ve helped with the pain.
He slapped the turn signal and gnashed his teeth as he made one turn and then another until he could see his end goal. Three driveways until he was home. He eased off the gas pedal and wished to hell that the half-bottle of antacids he’d downed would do their job.
He pulled into the driveway, glared at a man in their small yard holding a rake, and threw the car door open hard enough to bend the hinges. Before either man could say a word, the front door flew open, and Roxana launched herself off the front porch.
“You’re home!” She tackled Hagan in a blunt-force hug he barely felt. “You should have called.”
“Will next time.” He wrapped his arms around his sister, waiting for the pain to go away, then lifted his chin to Roxana’s boyfriend, who was warily watching from the edge of their postage-stamp-sized yard.
Jason threw the rake to the side and approached with caution. “Good to see you, man.”
Hagan grunted.
Roxana tightened her hug, then abruptly let go. “Wait—why are you home?”
He forced his teeth to separate. “Felt like it.”
Knowing bullshit when she heard it, his sister scrutinized. “You’re hurt?”
“No.”
Her sharp assessment ran from his face to his limbs and back. “You certainly aren’t pleasant. What’s wrong?”
Hagan worked his jaw. “I had a job on the East Coast. I wanted to stop by home.”
Roxana clapped her hands on her hips. Jason wrapped his arm over her shoulder. “Give him a minute before you interrogate the poor guy.”
“Fine.”
Jason made a face that warned Hagan he was on his own after they got inside. “Can I get your bag?”
“I didn’t bring one.”
His answer didn’t offer a reason for Roxana to ease up. “Let’s go inside. Mom’s in the kitchen.”
“Give him some room, babe.” Jason cajoled Roxana toward the house.
Grumbling, Roxana let them up the front porch stairs. “Mom,” she called, “Hagan’s home.”
Hagan tossed his keys on the well-used entryway table and took a deep breath.
Home always smelled like dinner and laundry.
Today was no different. He guessed a roast was in the crock-pot.
The farther he walked into the long, narrow shotgun house, the more certain he was that what had happened with Amanda would be a distant memory.
Except, he stopped in the living room and felt sick. The walls on either side of the large picture window were blanketed with family photos. Dylan’s honors gleamed in the warm glow of fall’s afternoon light.
Maybe he shouldn’t have come home. Hagan turned for the kitchen. The dark hardwood floors creaked in the same spot. The same quilt was laid over the same couch. Why did Hagan think home would help him see his way through this level of hell?
His steps quieted on the worn hallway runner until he stepped into the kitchen. The linoleum creaked under his feet. His mom sat in her wheelchair at the kitchen table, and he found it near impossible to form words.
“Hey, Mom,” he managed and bent in front of her gaze. She’d never smile or say hello again, but part of Hagan believed she knew he was there. He kissed her cheek. “I was in the neighborhood.”
Roxana clucked from the counter, dicing carrots.
He ignored his sister and crouched next to Mom. Hagan laid a hand on top of hers, then straightened the gray-and-yellow crocheted blanket draped across her legs. “I like your shirt,” he added, touching the sleeve of the blue Kentucky Wildcats T-shirt layered loosely over another shirt.
“Blasphemy,” Jason called from the living room.
“This will always be a house divided,” Roxana reminded Hagan as if he’d been gone too long to recall that she’d attended the University of Kentucky like their mother. Jason had gone to the University of Louisville like their father had.
Hagan smoothed his mother’s shirt. “It was a big game this weekend, huh?”
Roxana dumped the carrots into the crock-pot. “Every game’s a big game.”
Football banter and family. This was what he needed. But his anger was only diluted. “That’s what you always say.”
Roxana placed the cutting board to the side and wiped her hands. “And they always are.”
“If you say so.” He found her rock-solid faith in the Wildcats endearing, especially when she was convinced everything would always go wrong for them—and maybe she was right. He hated Amanda Hearst.
Roxana took the handles of Mom’s wheelchair and led them from the kitchen. “Will you be around for the rest of the weekend?”
Hagan trailed. “I don’t know.”
“What’s your plan?” She parked Mom next to the coffee table and sat next to Jason on the couch.
Hagan sat on the stuffed chair next to their mother. He repositioned, unable to find a comfortable spot in a chair that had never been comfortable to begin with. “I don’t know. Just sort of found myself here.”
Roxana picked up a Big-Gulp-sized Wildcats tumbler, positioned the straw to Mom’s lips, and let her take a few sips. After a moment, she set the tumbler down and wiped a linen napkin over her chin. “You might as well start talking, Hagan, or I’m going to start asking.”
Where to begin? He could share that he’d slept with the woman who’d ruined their lives. That he’d jumped through hoops that only Mandy Hearst could’ve thought up and let his guard down. Hagan rubbed a hand into his hair.
“Does this have anything to do with the gorgeous woman you mentioned last time we talked?” Roxana casually asked. “What? Did mediocre sex send you running for home?”
Hagan choked and stole a glance at his mother like he was a teenager busted with condoms in his wallet.
Roxana rolled her eyes. “If that’s it, I’m going to—”
“Give me a break,” he snapped.
“Did she hurt your feelings?”
Hurt his feelings? He had to laugh because, with one revelation, Amanda had obliterated everything he thought he’d had. “It’s not that simple.”
Roxana clenched her fist. “I’m not above—”
“I know. I get it. You’re the product of two older brothers.” Hell, it was probably against the law for Roxana to joke like that. “Let’s move on from bodily harm.” He steered the conversation with a safer answer that wouldn’t send his sister to jail. “Things became complicated.”
“Complicated?” She turned to Jason. “Is that manly, macho-guy talk for feeling butt hurt?”
“All right.” Hagan rubbed his temples. “This might’ve been a bad idea.”
“Coming home?” Roxana pouted. “I’m—”
“Listening,” Jason suggested.
Hagan appreciated the help, but he didn’t know where to begin. The stairwell pat-down? The President of the United States knocking on the door?
“Earth to Hagan,” Roxana snapped. “Are you sick?”
No, but he might get sick. Nothing good would come from the truth. But it would be worse the longer he waited. “I slept with Mandy Hearst.”
“I don’t understand.” Roxana jumped to her feet and waved her hands in front of her face. “Wait. What did you just say?”
Hagan had never been the type of guy to kiss and tell. But in this parallel universe, he had to call a spade a spade. He’d thought he’d fallen for that woman, but she’d been a wolf cloaked in lambswool.
Roxana fell back to the couch. Her arms hung as limp as their mother’s. Jason put his hand on Roxana’s back. Hagan didn’t know how much the guy knew, but he could tell it wasn’t good.
There wasn’t enough oxygen in the living room. Hagan bound toward the window like he might throw it open.
“I don’t understand.” Roxana’s eyes welled, and she pressed a hand over her mouth.
He didn’t either. He rubbed the back of his neck.
Roxana stormed to her feet. “How could you?”
“I didn’t know.”
“That’s insane,” she cried.
Jason reached for her arm. “Babe.”
“Don’t babe me!” She swatted him away, turning her wrath back to Hagan. “Lie to me again.”
Looking back, he saw what he had missed—the differences in her hair, no makeup.
Mandy Hearst hadn’t spent as much time in the news during college as she had during high school.
They’d always worried about Dylan. He’d always said they didn’t understand.
Mandy wasn’t the teenager gossip hounds made her out to be.
But that was no excuse for missing Amanda as Mandy.
Roxana’s eyes brimmed with explosive tears. “You fucked her, or you fell for her?”
“Roxana,” Jason snapped.
That time, she let him pull her to his side.
The truth hit Hagan like sniper fire. “Both.”
“You’re disgusting.” She pulled from Jason and rushed for their mother and wheeled her to the kitchen.
Hagan paced the living room, then dropped into the uncomfortable chair again.
Roxana returned, fists curled at her sides, eyes welling with tears. “Of all the dick things you could do.” The tears spilled. “If Mom could understand a single thing you just said, you would’ve killed her.”
Another sniper round lodged in his chest.
Jason walked to her side. “You need to take five.”
“No,” Roxana snapped. “You show up here, angry or sad or whatever you are, and she’s the reason?”
A swell of cold anger prickled down his neck. “Ease up, Rox.”
“Are you kidding me?” Roxana demanded.
He closed his eyes and pictured Amanda. Her smile. Her laughter. He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t seen the truth, and now listening to his sister rage the same way he had…he missed Amanda. “You’re not even listening.”
“You haven’t said anything worth listening to.”
His throat tightened. One second, he understood Roxana’s disgust and condemnation, and the next, he recalled the pain in Amanda’s face when she connected him to Dylan.
The image vibrated with as much pain as he felt—which was impossible.
Amanda Hearst wasn’t allowed to act shocked and hurt because she had known from the day they met: Mandy Hearst was responsible for his brother’s death.
“Hagan,” Roxana pleaded. “We hate her.”
“I know.” Except he didn’t hate Amanda. He hated the gothy, glorified party girl who the press loved to track as much as she loved to taunt. Dylan’s reminders struggled to find their footing. He’d always said not to believe what they saw.
He scrubbed his hand over his face and met Roxana’s fury. “Mandy’s the reason I flew home. But Amanda…I don’t know what to think right now.”
“I’ll tell you what to think.” Roxana jabbed her finger, then threw her arm toward the kitchen. “If it wasn’t for a headline-addicted twit, then Mom wouldn’t be living a life like that.”
Jason seemed confused but knew better than to confirm Mom had had a stroke. Clearly, Roxana hadn’t given the guy the nitty-gritty details. Just like Hagan hadn’t with Amanda. He’d called Dylan’s death an accident at work. What did that say about his problem with her secrets and omissions?
Roxana curled into Jason’s arms and cried.
Hagan’s head pounded. He laid a hand on his sister’s trembling shoulder and listened to her sob as though it might serve as penance. That atonement wasn’t nearly enough.