22. Luc
22
LUC
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
“ Y ou’re such an ass,” Jess sniggers. She plops a fresh coffee on the table by my hand and claps the back of my head. Barely. Gently. But it’s a statement, regardless. “You screwed up. She was trying to live her life with her fake boyfriend. And you’re aggressively accosting her in the stairwell! What the hell is the matter with you?”
Kane sits forward at the table, fist extended, and a goofy grin on his face. “Aggressively accosting my girl is my favorite thing to do.”
“Your girl is my sister. Shut up.” I slap his hand away and shake my head. “I don’t want to hear about you and her, ever.”
“We had no clue any of that was going on.” Jess drops onto Kane’s lap and wraps her arm around his neck. “No clue! She never even hinted about you and Britt. And she sure as hell didn’t mention the stairwell stuff once she got down to the truck.”
“She’s too private for her own good. She could have taken back her power that day by snitching on me.” I pick my coffee up and carefully, so fucking carefully, hover it over Billy’s head so I can take a sip. “If she had screamed at the top of her lungs and threw me into the fire, Marcus would have beat my ass that day and tossed my body into the lake.”
“But she doesn’t like to make a scene,” Jess concludes. “Instead of speaking up, she locked everything down and dealt with it in private.”
“Which is what I knew she would do.” I set my coffee back on the table and grin. “I knew she’d rather deal with this situation in silence, when she could have just blown the lid off and had me whacked in three seconds flat.”
“And by this situation ,” Kane sniggers, “you mean you and your dick?”
Jess wrinkles her nose in disgust.
“Me and my heart,” I amend. Though we’re all aware my dick was totally invested, too. “She said she didn’t want anything to do with me. But the fact that she stopped to argue implied she was lying. She could have simply ignored me. That would have hurt so much more than a little verbal sparring.”
“So your plan was to annoy the shit out of her.” Kane rolls his eyes. But then he looks up and studies Jess with a smile. “No, I see the legitimacy in that plan. It works for me.”
“ I ’m heading to Jonah’s store,” Kari announces a couple of days after moving back home. She wanders through the little apartment she shares with the girls, ignoring my existence completely, and heads toward the door. It’s not even like she can demand I leave. Jess and Laine are allowed to have guests. And until Kari announces to the world why she wants me gone, she’s stuck.
Make a scene, or tolerate the things that irritate you? Those are her options.
“I’m gonna grab some things for dinner, too.” She slips into a pair of sneakers, bending at the doorway in a pair of cutoffs I’ve come to appreciate this past week. “Any requests?”
“Steak.” Britt flops onto the long, secondhand couch we procured from someone’s online post, draping her legs in every direction simply to get respite from the summer heat. “I wanna grill outside tonight. No way we’re turning the oven on and heating this place up any more than it already is.”
“We should go to X’s place,” Jess announces. “He has air conditioning and an incessant need to spend time with us. It’s win-win.”
“You guys call him and ask.” Kari pushes up straight and slips her phone into her tight back pocket. “I’ll get supplies. Someone text me if he asks for anything specific.”
“I’ll call him,” Britt drones. Too hot. Too uncomfortable. But she half-rolls on the couch and snags the device crushed between cushion and chair frame. “He’s been texting me non-stop anyway. ”
“God forbid your big brother miss you, Brat.” I grunt and peel my back from the couch cushion. But of course, the fact that I even speak to Britt has Kari’s emerald eyes flashing with rage. “I’m heading back to my place. I’ve got some shit to do before we head to X’s.”
“You don’t have to come.” Kari, oh so sweetly, smiles from the front door. “I bet he’d just like to see the girls, since we’ve been away.”
“Yeah, but I miss him.” I dig a hand into my pocket and fish out the key for my bike. Dangling the set off my finger, I pass my sisters and drop a kiss on the top of their blonde heads as they go. “I’ll head over to X’s in a few hours.”
“Yep.” Laine pores over application forms. She has a teaching degree now, and a plan to get a job. “See ya. Don’t melt into the road. It’s stifling out there.”
“I’m leaving.” Kari grabs a wide-brimmed hat from a stack of boxes not yet unpacked or put away, and plops it on her head. “We should also pool our money and consider air conditioning for this place. Otherwise, I’m considering sleeping in the lake.”
“We should call someone.” Listlessly, Britt sighs. “Like… one of the someones we know. Bet one of them has an air conditioner they’d loan us.”
As triple clones, Britt, Jess, and Laine all turn their heads and look at me in expectation.
“I don’t have an air conditioner to give you.” I lift my hands in surrender and back up. “But I’ll ask around and find something. Promise.”
“Maybe ask Marc,” Jess suggests lazily. “He has that whole barn filled with stuff. Maybe he’ll have a spare. And he’s obsessed with Kari. He would be devastated to learn she’s in any way uncomfortable.”
Kari rolls her eyes and heads outside. “Stop using my brother to get what you want. He worked hard for the things he has. He didn’t do it to buy us things, too.”
“Yes, he did!” Laine calls out. “He did it purely to make us happy. Make the call, Macchio!”
“I’m melting…” Jess runs her hands over her face. “Melting!”
“You’re being really fucking dramatic.” But my heart just walked out the door, so I spin on my heels and follow. All nonchalant and shit. Kari is fast—she knows I’m on her trail, so somehow, she’s already down the steps and across the shitty yard made up of dirt and weeds. She doesn’t have a car yet, and though Marc is doing okay for himself, he doesn’t have a spare to give her, so she’s already on the road, heading toward town using the shoes express.
I’ll give her a minute. Enough time to work through her anger and feel a little of the summer breeze on her skin. And in the meantime, I wander down the steps in front of the girls’ place and move toward my bike.
I’m still a little lazy on the helmet situation. Since our town is so small, speed limits are insanely monitored, and X is the new chief. So I grab my bike by the handles and drape my leg over the seat. Kicking the stand up and slipping the key into the ignition, I cast a glance along the road to a too-pale Kari wandering into the heat. Her long hair, smooshed under a wide hat. Her Irish skin, reddening under the sun, whereas mine and the twins’ tends toward brown after a long summer.
I start the bike, the loud engine roaring into the street so Kari’s shoulders come up in defense— she knows I’m coming. She knows! —but she doesn’t turn. Doesn’t dare peek over her shoulder and meet my eyes. Using my feet, I walk the bike across the girls’ lawn and onto the road, then I set my boots on the pegs and slowly potter along behind the girl who wants nothing more than to be left the hell alone.
I keep pace with her for a minute or two. Walking my feet along the road more often than not or risk tipping over. Then I creep a little closer. Closer as we leave her street and enter another.
“Leave me alone, Luca.”
Grinning, I speed up a little more until I come up on her right, sandwiching her body between my bike and the curb. Then I simply… roll. “I’d rather offer you a ride, Bear.” I twist and tap the leather seat behind me. “You asked for this once upon a time. You told me you wanted me to take you for a ride.”
“I was eighteen and immature back then.” She folds her arms, despite the oppressive heat, and lifts her stubborn chin. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“When does Blake move to town?”
Snarling, she wrinkles her nose and looks across to meet my stare. “On the third day of Mind Your Business . Why are you following me?”
“Because I’m in love with you.” Fuck it. I waited six years for her. I’m done wasting time. “Because I’d like to spend time with you.”
“I heard we’re rostered on for the same shifts next week. Surely that’s plenty of time spent together.”
“Fun coincidence.” I cut the engine, so we don’t have to speak louder than necessary, but I remain on my bike and continue to roll it. “The fact is, you’ll be working the ER floor, and I’ll be in the bus. So even if we get to flirt during handover, our time will be limited.”
“Such tragic news.” She cuts across in front of my bike, so I brake, or risk running her down. Then she crosses the street and forces me to do the same. “I don’t want to do this with you, Luc. I don’t want the push and pull drama. This isn’t my attempt to convince you to chase me. Hell,” she glances back and seethes when she finds me on her heels again, my bike positioned so she’s sandwiched between it and the curb. “I’m not playing a game. I’m not asking for attention. I just want to be left alone.”
“I believe you when you say you’re not playing a game.” I press my feet to the ground and roll the bike a little faster, then cutting her off and turning my front wheel to trap her, I grab her arm and bring her around until our eyes meet. “I understand that I hurt you, Bear. More than once.”
“Too much time has passed.” Her eyes glitter and dance, not with glee, but with the kind of heartache that makes my stomach hurt. “We’re completely different people now.”
“Which makes this better.” I tug her closer, her knee hitting my thigh and her breath bathing my lips. “We’re different now, Bear. We’re older. Wiser. Braver.”
“I’m not braver. I used up all my bravery when I was eighteen and begged my brother’s best friend to kiss me. Then I scraped a little more together over the next three years and followed you back to town that one Thanksgiving. All I got for my time was the realization that you didn’t love me at all.”
“Bear, I?—”
“A man who loves a woman doesn’t sleep with someone else.”
“I thought you were dating that other fucker!” I squeeze her arm and feel that mild stab of guilt because I know I hurt her. “I hadn’t seen you in three fucking years, Kari! Three. I didn’t touch a single woman in all that time. Then I do see you, and from where I was sitting, it looked like you were cozied up with that other dude.”
“So you slept with my best friend!? Who does that, Luc? Who the hell acts that way and calls it love?”
“It was a mistake.” I swap hands, taking hers in my left, and bringing my right up to cup her delicate neck. “It was something that happened after a fuck ton of liquor and a heart filled with pain. It doesn’t make it better,” I push on when she opens her mouth to speak, “I know it doesn’t excuse it. I feel like shit, and there isn’t a single second of any day I don’t wish I could go back and make different choices. But you have to allow us room for the fact you and I were not together. We had not been in the same fucking room for three years. And I was under the impression you were in a relationship with someone else. You can consider me a bastard, Bear. But you don’t get to call me a cheat or a liar.”
“You broke my heart.” She brings her free hand up, sliding her palm over my arm until goosebumps sprint along my skin and pebble my flesh. “Twice.”
“I know.”
“You sent me away. And then you went to bed with my sister.”
I nod in acknowledgment. “I know.”
“There’s nothing left for me and you,” she whimpers, her voice crackling with pain. “Even if I want there to be. Even if I wish things could be different. Even if,” she drags my hand off her neck, bringing it down to rest over her pounding chest. “Even if my heart still beats for yours. There’s nothing left. Because there isn’t a single moment where I can look into your eyes and not think of you and Britt together.” She drops my hands and takes a step back. “It takes everything I have to not let Britt know that I know. By the time I’m done salvaging that relationship, there’s nothing left for you.”
“Kari—”
“Please don’t make things worse. I’m seeing Blake now, and it’s taken me years to reach a point where I don’t feel like I’ll fold over and die when I think of you.”
“I know you’re not actually dating him, Bear. I know it’s a front, so you can protect yourself.”
“So let me.” She moves onto a corner block, to cut around and shave off a minute from her walk. “Let me protect myself. It’s the least you could do.”
“Hey Kari?” I sit tall on my bike, swallowing as I watch her back and wait for her to decide: stop and turn, or walk away and leave me behind. “Babe? Look at me.”
She pauses in the dirt, shaking her head. But she doesn’t turn. She doesn’t give me that gift.
“Then look at the ground beneath your feet. It’s September, so the season is wrong, and the summer is too damn hot. But come back here in May, and you’ll be standing in a field of tulips.”
Stunned, her head comes up again and around, her glistening green eyes destroying my heart and yet, restoring hope. Slowly. Painfully.
“What?”
“Maybe what we need is more time.” I gulp the dust from my mouth, swallowing my spit and lubricating my dry throat. “And tulips.”
“What we need is a time machine,” she sighs. “We need to go back and choose differently. Because we picked wrong back then. And now we can’t fix this.”