17. Luc
17
LUC
WHAT WAS THAT THING I SAID ABOUT SURPRISES?
“ Y ou’re a whole Doctor Phil mess,” Kane rumbles. Though his lips curl high with playfulness. “Your entire family is chaos. And that includes the woman I coerced into saying ‘ I do ’.”
“Yep.” I glance out the windows as the early morning sun finally, barely tickles the horizon and teases the start of a new day. Billy has slept damn near the whole way through, and yet, I’m not sure she spent any of it not touching me or Bish. “This is what happens when a group of dudes all have sisters, and all those guys and girls grow up together. Relationships get blurry and sibling protectiveness feels weird when people cross the line.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever had that problem,” he chuckles. “I only have one brother. And I sure as shit have no sisters.”
“Two.”
He frowns, a deep line etched into the middle of his forehead. “What?”
“You have two brothers.” I feel, for a moment at least, a little humor flittering into my heart. “You forgot Griff.”
“Oh, well…” He shrugs. “I guess. Though we didn’t meet till we were adults. So it kinda doesn’t feel like it counts.”
“It would count if he was a chick, and you slept together.”
At that, Kane throws his head back and laughs. “This is true. Though thank Christ, neither you and Britt, nor you and Kari, share parents. Shit gets messy real fast in small towns.”
“Yeah. It does. Especially when you and your entire friend group stay in the same town forever. We’re forced to watch our sisters date. We’re limited in who we can date. And shit, in this town, sometimes we end up dating people our friends have dated, simply because the pickings are slim.”
“Which is precisely why you sent Kari away.” He picks up his coffee mug and glances inside, though I know the contents will be cold. “You wanted her to see what existed outside of this place.”
“Fat load of good that did me. She ended up with a dude with a ten-inch wiener, and I had another giant secret to keep from a different friend. That’s two.” I bring my free hand up and present two fingers. “Four guys in the band, Kane. Three of us had sisters. I crossed the line twice, with two different friends’ sisters.”
“Which is precisely why I’m thrilled I don’t have a sister.” He flashes a playful smile. “Luca Lenaghan can’t be trusted, evidently.”
“The secrets were kept, for quite a few years. And Britt held her tongue for a long time. Until she didn’t, anyway.” I bring my hand up and run my fingers over my forehead in remembrance. “Everything was mostly calm after that night.”
“So you didn’t tell Kari?”
“I didn’t have to.”
“ W e just go home and act normal,” Britt presses. She walks with her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Kicking her feet out to send a rock rolling along the road. “We eat at the dinner table, and we say nothing. Sam isn’t really gonna care. But Alex will probably have a complete meltdown. So it’s best if he doesn’t know.” Then she glances across to me. “And if you decide to tell your lady friend, then that’s cool. Though it would be appreciated if you could ask her to be discreet. The last thing either of us needs right now is to have Alex coming after you with his police issued gun.” She raises a single, pointed brow. “We know he can get kinda heated sometimes.”
“Britt!” Laine’s playful voice carries along the street. Her excited yelp echoing as Britt and I come around the corner. But I groan as I bring my focus up and find Jess, too. “She’s returned!”
“Oh god.” Britt presses a hand to her stomach and silently burps, her cheeks filling with air in the world’s least attractive way. “Not a word, Lenaghan. Your sisters and I always talk sex. Like…” She widens her eyes. “Always. I do not want to discuss the size of your dick with them.”
“Please don’t.” I look up at the sky and shake my head as Britt’s footsteps speed up. “Not a damn word.”
“We have a surprise for you!” Laine calls out. We’re still a block away, which means everyone in our street gets a front-row seat to the girls’ reunion. Anyone would think they’d been apart for years. Potentially a whole world war, too.
“Kari?” Britt squeals. Jump-skipping as her fast trot turns to a scream and sprint. “Kari!”
I swing my head back down, my stomach hurdling when our eyes meet and her cheeks turn a pale, pale white. The three others all run toward Kari, crushing her in a group hug that brings Marc and Sam out of the house. But no matter the noise they make, no matter the strength they hug with, Kari’s eyes stay on mine.
Fuck. My. Life.
“I didn’t think you were coming home!” Britt wraps her arms around Kari’s neck and squeezes. “You said you were staying to spend time with Ten.”
Kari’s eyes trail over my face. Does she know what I did? Or is she more concerned about me knowing about Ten ? Does she love him? Does she not love me anymore?
“I changed my mind,” she gulps, pulling back from her friends and fixing her hair. “I missed you guys, so I drove over late last night.”
“Oh man!” Britt grumbles. “If I knew, I’d have been home.”
“Where were you, anyway?” Jess grabs Britt around the neck and turns, so the foursome gives me their backs. Then they head toward the Turners’ house. “You sure as hell didn’t sleep in your own bed,” Jess continues. “And I tried calling your phone.”
“I was out with friends.” She lifts her chin for Marc as they pass. “Women are allowed to have fun without constant brotherly supervision.”
“Yeah?” He smiles at least, too fucking happy to have Kari home to care that someone else’s sister was out all night. And he’s so blind to the possibility it was me she was with, he doesn’t even give me a second thought. “You wanna go tell X where you were, Brat? He’s on duty down at the station. Bet he’d love to know where you slept.”
She scoffs and trudges up the porch steps with her girlfriends. “No thanks. I’m not really interested in that right now.” She turns and presses a noisy kiss to Kari’s cheek. “Welcome home, Kar! We’ve missed you. ”
“I saw you yesterday,” Kari drawls. “Literally, less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t seen you here in forever.”
“ Y ou pussed out.” Kane pushes away from the table, the legs of his chair scraping along the tile floor and makes his way to the coffeepot. He passes me and Billy by, unable to help himself as he drapes his fingers over her cheek and strokes as he goes. “She came home to check up on you, huh? Because she saw you the night before in the city. She knew you saw her with Biff, so she came running home to ask for forgiveness. Which could have been a cute romance movie thing, where she runs into your arms and three years of heart ache washes away with happy music and noisy kisses.”
I firm my lips and let him waffle on with his version of my story.
“She never wanted Biff. She just wanted companionship. So when she saw you’d come for her, she tossed him on his ass and chased you home. Except.” He places his mug under the coffee spout and hits the button to get the machine started. “You weren’t home when she came looking. Her romantic movie montage came tumbling down because you weren’t where you were supposed to be.”
I turn in my chair, twisting my neck to search his eyes. “You finished embellishing my life story yet?”
He only shrugs. “Does your version get interesting soon? Because apart from Biff’s ten-inch cock, I can’t say anything has been entertaining so far.”
I turn back and look down at Billy’s sweet face. “I hope to god you can’t hear or understand what he’s saying, Bill. This is completely inappropriate for baby ears.”
“She’s fine. We had two girls to test inappropriate discussions in front of. Chicken and Nugget are totally normal.”
“Says you. The rest of town knows to steer clear of the Bishop babies.” I bring my hand up and stroke the bridge of Billy’s nose, while outside, the sun rises in the sky until the world turns less black and more pink. “So I guess she came home looking for me,” I agree. “Maybe it’s because she knew I saw her with Biff.”
“Ten?”
“Yeah, we’re not calling him that anymore. ”
Kane chuckles and heads to the fridge for creamer. “But Ten is just so… descriptive. And to the point.”
G uilt slashes through my stomach, burning me up and tearing at my heart as I sit in the Turners’ backyard and all my friends hang out. It’s like we’re in high school again. The skateboards are out. Jess is zooming along the halfpipe in her blades. Britt, no worse for wear after our night together, laughs and plays and ollies on the halfpipe, barely avoiding a collision with Jess every time they pass one another.
Scotch sits with his guitar, plucking away at the strings, and Ang tinkers with his car. Marc watches his sister, and Kari watches everyone else.
It’s like the old days where we had nothing to worry about except school on Monday and whatever fears Marc was working through in his mind.
But while everyone else is chill, I keep Kari in my peripherals and sit in my pool of shame. My horror and guilt. I baste in the hatred I hold for myself. And every now and then, I get caught staring because she cuts a look through the corner of her eyes and catches me.
How the fuck am I supposed to tell her I spent the night with her best friend? With her foster sister! How am I supposed to admit to what I did, when my spiel all along was for her to get out of this town and experience what everyone has to offer?
She did.
She literally did what I told her to do, and when I found out about it, I drank and made horrible choices.
“You look like you’re gonna be sick.” Scotch comes to a stop on my left, his frayed jeans in my peripherals and the myriad of leather bands he keeps on his wrists stop by his thighs when he drops his hands. He sets an old acoustic guitar on the concrete beside the porch, leaning it against the house. Then he drops down to sit beside me, his shoulder touching mine, and his feet coming up to perch on the porch step. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Are you still in love with Sammy?” I peel my eyes away from Kari and look at my friend instead. Though my question was cruel and uncalled for, Scotch’s eyes darken the moment my words register in his mind. “She was it for you, right? She was your everything.”
“So you’re going through an existential crisis of some sort, and instead of dealing with that in a healthy way, you thought it would be fun to toss me under the bus? Did it make you feel better?”
“No. Shit.” I lower my head and press the heels of my hands to my eyes. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just…”
“You’re having a crisis,” he repeats. “Fucked if I know what it is, Luca. Or who it’s about. But I see it in your eyes. You’re hurting.”
“Sammy’s been gone a few years now.” I turn my head and study the side of his angular face. “You married her, dude. You were expecting a baby. And then she just…”
“Left,” he nods. Then he sighs. “Yep.”
“I haven’t seen you with another woman since.” I swallow the ache in my throat and probe my temple with the pad of my thumb. Anything to combat the headache pulsing just below the skin. “I haven’t made it a mission to keep tabs on you or anything, but I’ve noticed. You aren’t bringing anyone else around.”
He places his hands together, twining his fingers and studying them like they hold the world’s secrets. “I suppose it’s one of those things. When you’ve loved the very best…”
“No one else will do.” I sigh. “Yeah. That’s what I figured.”
“I try. When we’re playing a set or whatever, and girls are looking up at us. It’s not so hard to pick up women when you’re the lead singer in a band,” he chuckles, though the sound is sad and weak at best. “I try to see them for who they are. I try to look into their eyes and not see Sammy.”
“But it doesn’t work? You can’t see past her?”
“I wish I could.” He glances down at his hands again and massages the center of his palm with the opposite thumb. “I seriously fucking wish I could.”
“Would you tell her?” I cast a look out at our friends, though I’m careful not to stop on Kari. Hell. I’m careful not to stop on Britt, too. “You’re not, like, together right now. It’s been years. So if you went to bed with someone else, would you feel you needed to tell her?”
He considers me for a long beat. Rolling his bottom lip between his teeth and humming something in the back of his throat. “I’m actually not sure. Assuming I knew where she was, and assuming we had a way to communicate, then… sure, I guess. I wouldn’t hide it from her. She left me, Luc. She ran away. So I don’t know that I’d feel guilty about it, if that’s what you mean.” Finally, he drags his gaze away from his hands and studies me. “Have you done something you probably shouldn’t have? ”
“I mean…” I shrug. “Sort of. And not really. There’s this woman I’ve had feelings for, for a really long time.”
At that, his brow pops high on his forehead. “You?”
I choke out a soft, almost silent laugh. “Me. But this person and I aren’t really suited for each other. She has a life elsewhere. She even has a boyfriend, and that guy isn’t me.”
“I see.” He goes back to studying his hands. “Your heart wants what your heart wants. But your body, sometimes, does something else.”
“In a way. I guess.”
“So you hooked up with someone, and this someone isn’t the same someone your heart hurts for. And now you’re feeling guilty, even though, technically, you and the chick you have feelings for aren’t together.”
“In a nutshell.” I drag my head up and make a point of watching my sisters. Totally safe. Totally normal, protective, older brother stuff. “There’s a whole lot more between the lines. But that’s the gist of things.”
“Well…” He gives my situation more thought, rolling his bottom lip. “I don’t know if there’s a right or a wrong answer here. You’re not together, so neither of you are betraying the other by dating other people.”
“But in the spirit of honesty and integrity? Would you tell?”
“Would telling her help her ? Or would it help you? Her hurt feelings, in exchange for you offloading your guilt?”
“You make it sound like being honest, in this case, would be the wrong choice.”
He scoffs, low and subtle. “I don’t have any fucking clue what the wrong choice is. Clearly, I’m not the guy to ask. I got married when I was eighteen. And she left me before the ink was dry. I’ve been a fucking eunuch since, and I’m the frontman of a band. Pretty sure that makes me pathetic.”
“Makes you loyal.” I bring my hand up and clap his shoulder. “Makes you a good man, and her, not who we thought she was back in high school. The Sammy we thought we knew wouldn’t have done what she did.”
“I’m still loyal to the Sammy we thought we knew.” He shrugs my hand off, but he looks my way and meets my eyes. “I try every day to convince myself she doesn’t exist. That she was a liar. But hearts can be nasty, finicky fucking things. Which…” he turns to survey the yard, “it seems, you know about. Considering your current predicament.”
He stands, but luckily for me, he’s a discreet man. Softly spoken. So he turns his back on our friends and murmurs, “Do whatever you think is best for you and the other person. You have to be able to live with your choices. But you should also be mindful of what the truth will do to the woman who is currently squeezing your heart. You didn’t technically do anything wrong, since you and her are not together. So just… I dunno, man. It’s on you to decide your next move. I’m around if you ever want to talk about it. Or, ya know, if you get married and she leaves you anyway. I can relate to that.”
“ S ammy’s back now though.” Kane drops into his chair, setting his coffee down and frowning as he studies my eyes. “I know she is. I fucking own this town, so I know Sam Turner and Sam Turner remain married now. They even have a kid.”
“They sure do. And he deserves every single second of happiness he has with his girls. Took her thirteen years to come back. Thirteen,” I repeat, shaking my head when I think of Kari. I’ve been without her for approximately fifteen hours, and already, it feels like my skin is on fire. “Sammy eventually came home. And in all those thirteen years, he didn’t touch another woman.”
I mean. He kissed one, one time. Literally the same night Sammy came back to him.
The universe’s timing was cruel, as is often the case.
“So Kari had come back for the first time in, what?” Kane mentally tracks back through my stories. “Like, three years? And you’d just spent the night with Britt.”
A long, pained groan works along my throat. “Nice reminder, jackass.”
“ Jackass ?” He laughs. “Dude! Tell the fucking story. Did you tell her, or did you keep the Britt thing to yourself? Did you choose her feelings, or your guilt?”