13. Luc
13
LUC
FAREWELLS FUCKING SUCK
“ I think someone should make a toast.” Alex is already three beers in to his evening and half a pizza down. So while I do my utmost fucking best to sit in the corner of Marc’s kitchen and take up as little room as possible, X is out here, standing on the coffee table Marc carved by hand from a single tree stump. “Kari.” He lifts his beer and grins, foolish as he always gets after a couple of drinks. “You became my little sister way back in…” He blinks once. Twice. “Shit. Forever ago. Long time. And though I already had a sister, I was happy to make room for another one.”
“Aw shucks,” Britt drawls. “So glad you had that room in your heart, X.”
“Shush!” He smacks a silencing finger to his lips. Though he smiles for his actual, biological sister and winks. “Brat was enough for us. And we didn’t even know we’d need more kids in our family. But then you and Marc came along. You slipped in and just… became part of the family.”
Kari’s eyes mist. Her cheeks warm. She’s embarrassed, and yet, completely enamored by the love Alex pours her way.
“I’m really sad about how things happened,” he continues. “About the things that hurt your family and led you to ours. But I’m thrilled I got to have you in my life. And I assure you, I’m driving over to the city five nights a week to make sure you’re behaving yourself.”
“She’s gonna be fine.” Jess jumps up from her chair, extending a long flute of soda water. Since drinking, in front of the older brothers , isn’t gonna go down well .
Even though, deep down, we know the girls enjoy a sneaky beverage here and there.
“Kari is our trailblazer,” Britt announces, long black hair dangling from a high ponytail and tickling the middle of her back. “She’s always been ahead of the rest of us. The bravest. The smartest. The nicest.” She looks at Kari and smiles, though it’s shaky. “I’m counting down the seconds from now until the rest of us get to join you next year. You take this year to be a badass. We’ll do our best to turn up to class and get our diploma. Then it’s on.”
“Or!” Marc declares, drawing everyone’s eyes. “Kari can study remotely for this year. Stay here. Be with us.” He presses his hands together, pleading. “Wait for the others, so you can be with your squad and not all alone in the fucking city with no one to have your back.”
“I have my own back.” Finally, Kari speaks up. Her voice trembles, but her shoulders broaden. They hold the weight of the world and show no weakness. “I will take care of myself, and in the moments that I feel like I need home, I’ll come back here.” She meets Marcus’ eyes. “I know where you live. I know how to get here. And I know it would only take a phone call to have you in your truck and coming to me.” She looks at Alex. “Get off the table before you fall. I’m not a nurse yet.” Then to the cluster of girls in the middle. “Jess. Britt. Laine. I love you all, and I’m excited for you to join me. But in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy being alone. I’m going to thrill in my independence because this will be the only year in my entire life I get to just… be . Alone. I had my family, and then I had your family.”
She casts a glance at the rest of us. Angelo. Scotch. Oz. Then she stops on me and narrows her gaze. “I’m immensely appreciative of the family Marc and I were swallowed into when we needed somewhere to call home. It was never a them and us situation. There was never a moment I felt excluded or other .” She drags her eyes to Scotch and smiles. “You guys were already a family. Completely and totally whole without us. But when these kids turned up on your doorstep with nothing to their names except a fluffy blanket and a metric ton of trauma, you didn’t hesitate to step up and welcome us in.”
“You were too cute,” Scotch smirks. “Too little to send to the forest.” Then he peers Marc’s way. “And we needed a fourth member for the band.”
“Which has still not been named,” Marc chuckles. “I mean… not officially. Not really.”
“We love you,” Scotch finishes. “You were never other in my eyes. And even though you’re leaving, you’re still ours. You’ll always have a home with me. With Oz.”
Oz nods.
“With Alex.”
Alex grins.
“With Luc.”
I gulp.
Because Kari’s blazing eyes swing back to mine.
“Is there anything you’d like to say, Luca?” She lifts a challenging brow the way an archer prepares his bow. “Alex has spoken. Marc. Britt and Jess. Scotch, too.” She flattens her lips and takes a step closer. Then another. “Anything you’d like to declare in front of all our favorite people?”
Oh god. Oh fuck.
Swallowing, I look at Marcus and shake my head, instant, jerky, and cowardly.
“Um…” I bring my focus back to Bear and clear my throat. “Just I’m gonna miss you. With my whole soul. I hope you visit us often, and I pray the next four years fly.”
She takes another step closer, somehow closing the walls in with each movement she makes. “That’s it? After all these years?”
Marc’s stare is like a red-hot poker on the side of my face. So I gulp again and nod. “Hurry back to us. Things won’t be the same while you’re gone.”
She stops and firms her lips. Her eyes blaze with a million questions and demands. But I can’t say shit without ruining everything. I can’t ask her to stay without destroying her future. And I can’t announce how I really feel in front of our family without, well… chaos.
So I reaffirm my stance and nod. “That’s it.”
Disappointed, she turns on her heels, sighing but faking a smile. “I’m so thankful you guys wanted to do this tonight. You’ve humbled me.”
“Anything for you, Kar.” Alex stumbles off the coffee table and snickers when he sticks the landing. “Who wants to watch the fights on TV tonight? They got some title bout going on.”
“Sounds good to me.” Kari bends by the television and snatches up the remote, then flicking it on, she flops onto the single recliner and drapes her legs over the arm. “Watching guys beat the shit out of each other in high definition is exactly what I want to see right now. Allegedly. ”
“It’s a bit like a textbook for you.” Oblivious, Britt snatches up half a slice of pizza and drops on the other arm of Kari’s chair. “You get to see all their cuts and shit.” She points toward the fighter on the screen and nods. “Why do you think they put the goopy stuff on their face?”
“To stop their skin from tearing.” Kari stares at the television and does a fan-fucking-tastic job of ignoring me. “They’re there for sport. Not to disfigure each other.”
“Fighters are kinda sexy, right?” Britt tilts her head, smirking as she watches the ones on the screen. “They’ve got that primitive, gonna protect the women-folk with my fists kind of energy.”
“You’re not allowed.” Alex saunters across and steals his sister’s slice. “No fighters for you, Brat. They’re not even in the same fuckin’ stratosphere as you.”
“You think I should date a banker?”
“I think you should join a nunnery. But if you insist on living in the outside world, then yeah, date a banker. You’re gonna be a teacher. Teachers don’t date fighters. Silly women date fighters, and then they become a victim behind closed doors.”
“Wow.” Britt pushes forward and swings out to smack her brother’s thigh. “ Wildly inappropriate and judgmental comment. People are people, X. Pretty sure the statistics say cops are at the top of the charts as far as domestic violence goes.” She purses her lips in dare. “Wanna make a comment on that?” Then she leans around him and looks to Oz. “Deputy? Have something to say?”
Oz lifts his hands in instant surrender. “I’m just gonna watch TV and mind my business if that’s cool with you.” He reaches around and grabs his beer. “The chick fighters are hot, and so, I’m just gonna appreciate them in silence.”
I’m done. I push off my stool and leave my singular, barely touched beer behind. Making a beeline for the backdoor, I move in complete silence. I’m not here to make an announcement. I’m not looking for a goodbye. And I sure as fuck don’t want Kari to notice and follow me.
Slipping through the doorway and onto the wooden porch out back, I close the glass door behind me and look up at the stars above. The moon is out and almost completely full. The summer breeze, cooling despite today’s filthy temperatures.
I wear jeans tonight, and a shirt that hugs my chest. But nothing sticks uncomfortably, because the humidity, for today at least, has backed off.
“You’re such a coward, you know that?”
I spin to the back door, my hand pressed to my heart and my brain sputtering when I find the glass still closed. Then I turn again and find Kari at the corner of her brother’s house. Her eyes drawn and sad. Her shoulders slumped in a way she wouldn’t allow them to be inside.
“You couldn’t even say anything nice about me?” She wanders closer, her hands in her pockets. Though she remains in the shadows. Forcing me to go to her… or stay away. “After all these years of being family. Of being friends. It all comes undone now and right before I leave, you can’t even set aside the new stuff for the old?”
“You want us to be together, Bear.” I stalk off the back of the porch and meet her in the dark. Fuck knows, no one else has to hear this conversation. Worse, they shouldn’t see it. So I grab her hand as I pass and continue toward the barn at the back of the yard.
“Luc!”
“You’re asking me for something I want to give you.” I drag her around the side of the barn and shove her against the splintered wooden wall. Instantly, her eyes pop wide and her pulse thunders in her throat. “I want you, Kari. I want to give you the things you’re asking for.”
“So what’s the pr?—”
“Sometimes, people don’t realize the thing they’re asking for isn’t in their best interest. You’re still so young! You need to experience college and everything that comes with that. Sending you away, but tethering you to me back here, is unfair.”
“Unfair to me?” she snarls. “Or to you?”
“To you! You’re not seeing the bigger picture here! You’re not seeing the long-term gain because you’re so fuckin’ focused on the now . You want what you want, and it’s entirely in character for someone your age to not consider anything outside of that thing.”
“Oh good! So you’re like Marcus, then? Another quasi-dad to tell me what I should think and feel?”
“Dammit, Kari! You’re not—” But I stop. I shake my head and cast a look over at the house bursting with people who love us both. We’re one family. And falling in love with someone in that tight knit group of friends is not what someone who cares about the collective should do.
It’s selfish and wrong.
Shortsighted and stupid.
“Luca,” she groans. Dragging her hand along my chest and up to rest over my heart, Kari stands on her toes and waits for me to bring my gaze back around. “You’re sending yourself crazy over this. And it doesn’t have to be so complicated.”
“It was wrong.”
“Wh—” She frowns and drops her head back to stare up at the sky. “They say the stars already know. They’re millions of years old, so they’ve already seen our past. They’ve seen our future. Whatever is coming, they already know about it.”
“We shouldn’t have kissed.” My words are like acid on my tongue. Like razor-blades in my throat. Because she’s not going to listen to the I’m trying to protect you spiel. She’s heard it her whole life from a brother who took his duties too far, smothering her in love until that love felt like a straitjacket.
Kari Macchio is not looking for a guard at her door.
She wants a white knight to slay the dragon and take her on an adventure.
A role I would love to fulfill for her. If that’s all I got to do with my life, then it would be a life well lived.
But it’s not my time yet. The knight still has to wait. Because she’s eighteen years old and still so na?ve to the world.
“Luca—”
“What we did was bad, Kari.” I swallow the poison in my throat and study her lips instead of her eyes. The way the former tremble and not how the latter glitter. “It was wrong.”
“It wasn’t wrong! It can’t be wrong when there’s love.”
“It was a mistake.” Lie. Lie. Lie ! “I was opportunistic and took what you were offering because it was right there for me to grab on to, and I’m the asshole who will take advantage of a girl throwing herself at me.”
“Stop it!”
“I wanted your first kiss,” I sneer. “Fuck, Kari, I’m a greedy man who likes to collect that sort of stuff.”
“You’re being a dick. You’re doing this on purpose.”
“Go to school.” I pull back and drop my hands. Because if I don’t create space between us, I’m not sure I’ll ever let go. “Go find some other dude to lust over. Because this isn’t how things are gonna end up for us.”
“You’re setting things on fire,” she moans. “You’re overreacting because you think it’s the noble thing to do. I’m not asking for a friggin’ marriage proposal! I’m not even asking for a boyfriend. I just…” She reaches up and swipes beneath her eyes. “I’m asking you to admit you want this, too.”
“No—”
“Luc!”
“I. Don’t. Want. You.” I take a step back, looking down at the woman who was a girl too few months ago. The child I practically helped raise. I try to place her back in that little sister column she’s been in for well over a decade. But she insists on jumping out. She demands to be treated the way I treat the others. “I got my taste. And now I’m done.” I bring my hand up and wipe my lips, as though I got to taste her tonight. As though I could handle this goodbye differently—better—and enjoy another before she climbs into her car and leaves.
Because that’s how things could have gone. If I was more of a man and better with my words, and if she was less interested in something more.
But I’m not. And she’s too brave for her own good.
“Be safe while you’re away, Bear.” I pause and swallow the ache in my throat, then I glance across the yard to Marc’s A-frame, lit up on the inside and illuminating all the people I’ll hurt by hurting Kari. It’s inevitable, really. She has to feel the pain; better today, when so little is on the line, than ten years down the track, twenty years, when she realizes she rushed to claim the only can of beans she ever knew. “I hope to see you when you come back for break.”
“Screw you.” She shivers against the barn wall, her hands balling into fists and her chest heaving for fresh air. “You’re making a horrible mistake, Luc. The stars already know.”
I cast a look up to the sky and curse every single star that dares give a beautiful woman false hope. Then I look down again and shrug. “There’s a saying, isn’t there? About loving somebody and setting them free.”
“There’s also a saying,” she snaps right back, “about being careful with the hearts you break. Because you may not have time to make it right again.”
“So, go.” I turn on my heels, though I’m the one telling her to leave. Then I dig my hands into my jeans pockets and find the keys to my bike. “Live your life, Bear. Get out of this town and do something amazing. If you come back, I’ll be the first one here waiting for you.”
“And if I don’t?”
I skid to a stop on the gravel path laid between the house and the barn. Shoots of grass try to grow through, and little, incessant weeds pop up like pimples on a teenager’s chin. Then I peer over my shoulder and take one last look. One last study of the most beautiful woman I have ever known. “Then I hope you’re happy. Truly, with all my soul, I hope whoever you give your heart to treats you the way you deserve.”
Forcing myself to turn again, I continue toward my bike and take out my phone to toss together a fast text to Marc. Something about being called in to work. An excuse for my sudden departure from the evening that honors the most important person in his life.
Because despite what I’ve done behind his back, falling in love with his sister and touching, when I should never have touched in the first place, I love my friend, too. He’s as much my brother as Scotch and Ang. And if I can’t have Kari in my life, I’d like to keep, at the very minimum, Marcus.
He can be my connection to her.
Yeah. I’m an asshole.
I hit send on my text and drop my phone into my pocket. Then climbing onto my beat up dirt bike, I kick the old thing to life, revving the engine and pretending like I don’t hear the devastated sniffles of a heart I’ve fractured.
Tulips, I remember . The flowers I hope to someday hand over, to begin mending what I broke.
But until then… time.
Time is what we need.
“ Y ou know, nobody ever liked a fuckin’ martyr.” Kane leans back in his chair, kicking one foot over the other and digging his hands into his pockets. He shakes his head, completely and totally disappointed in the things I’ve done in my past. “You were pretending to be some kind of saint, allowing the na?ve little damsel to run off and live a life of fucking around. Like that somehow made you… what? Superior?”
“I wasn’t trying to be superior.” I exhale until my lungs ache and press a gentle kiss to Billy’s sweet head. “I was trying to do the right thing.”
“By making her feel like she meant nothing to you?”
“I don’t think you realize the situation we were in, Bish! She’s my wife now. The mother of my children. And Marc’s eye still twitches when he looks at us.”
“So you sabotage your relationship with her, for the friendship you had with him?”
“No! I…” I roll my eyes and swear I thought I was done explaining all this years ago. I thought I’d told this story for the final time when all our friends became aware of what me and Kari were. But I guess Kane wasn’t around back then. He didn’t get the details when they were fresh.
And now that I’m explaining it all to new ears, I realize how utterly close I came to complete devastation.
“You heard the thing about beans and steak, right?”
“Yeah,” he scoffs. “You explained it like seven different ways. ”
“And you heard my intentions. How I didn’t want her to settle in this tiny town and not even see what exists on the other side of the train tracks? I wanted her, Kane, and I intended to keep her. But she deserved a chance to see what else was out there.”
“And to achieve that, you told her she meant nothing to you.” He brushes his hands together in an almost silent, mocking clap. “Bravo, dipshit. That would have left a scar.”
“Shut up.” I rock my sweet baby and work to swallow down the stomach acid rolling along my throat. “I don’t know if you realize it, but right now, I’m feeling a little fuckin’ sensitive about my wife and the ways I’ve hurt her in the past. So if you could gentle the f?—”
“Nah.” He sits forward at the table and rests his elbows on top. “Tell me she went off to college and ate all the steak, dickhead. And then tell me you stayed here and cried about it.”
“Well—”
“No tears?”
I roll my eyes and consider, briefly, taking Billy back upstairs and putting her in her crib. That’s what good, responsible parents do, right? They put their infant to bed when it’s—I look to the clock on the microwave and groan—two fifty-five a.m. But I’m not ready to let her go yet. And I’m not ready to sleep now that I’m up.
So I snuggle her in closer and take comfort in knowing she’d rather be right here with me, pressed to my chest, than upstairs alone, flat out on a brand new crib mattress that would no doubt feel like concrete.
“Kari went off to college that next morning. Everyone was out for the goodbye. The street was basically packed, and Marc was losing his mind about it all.”
“And you?”
“Sat on the Turners’ front porch in their swing chair and watched.”
“Like a pussy,” he coughs out. “Total fucking pussy.”
“She saw me there,” I sigh. I remember sitting forward in the chair, my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. My heart pounded until it felt like I might die. And my brain swung violently from side to side. Let her go and live a life of freedom. Or keep her for myself and trick her into thinking I was the best steak on offer. “Our eyes met a couple times,” I murmur. “But she was furious by that point. Even if I wanted to change my mind and beg her to stay, she was way beyond the point of discussing it.”
Slowly, I bring my eyes up and stop on Kane’s. “I don’t know what you think you know about her, Bish. But Kari is the sweet and quiet kind, until she’s not. Then she’s gonna set shit on fire and watch the world burn.”
His lips quiver with the shadow of a smile. “My kind of girl. I always liked her.”
“Yeah, well…” I shrug. “She was at the setting things on fire phase in her life. And I was the idiot who refused to step out of the flames.”