27 #2
Valerie hesitates behind her aunt, her eyes wide, her body moving like weights hold down every muscle.
“Valerie—” He tries to approach, but Bethany blocks his path.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?”
He looks Bethany up and down in a way that makes me inch closer to them. “I was invited.”
“The hell you were,” Bethany says.
Valerie finally moves at a normal speed, grabbing Bethany and pushing her to the side. Her expression is unreadable as she looks up at him. “You brought flowers,” she points out. “I’m getting married soon. This is my Jack and Jill. What are you trying to do here?”
“I want you back,” he says. “I don’t care that you’re getting married. I don’t care about the age difference. I don’t care what your family thinks. We should have never broken up.”
A hush settles in the room as every single person stops what they’re doing to watch.
I cannot help but insert myself. “How old are you?”
He glares at me, probably wondering who the hell I am and why I would ask that during his confession, then brings his attention back to Valerie.
Jennifer whispers beside me. “He’s pushing fifty.”
“Fifty.” I’ve lost all sense of control. “Isn’t he in his twenties?”
Jennifer frowns at me. “Do you mean his son? They have the same name. Are you confused?”
There’s a sudden pounding behind my eyes.
A hammering of different bundles of information bouncing around in my head, trying to make sense of things, but the nails loosen as soon as they are pounded into a board.
Taina is so thorough when checking someone’s info; I’m not sure how she could have messed this up.
She must have seen the younger Nick and assumed that was Valerie’s ex. Not the man who could have been her father. Daddy issues or not, that age gap is something I’m not entirely sure I can get behind.
This is who Valerie keeps thinking about?
“Get out”—Valerie shoves him—“and don’t ever show your face here again.”
Olive, who apparently has a sixth sense for too-adult conversations, appears dragging something behind her. When she tries to pass Valerie, I see she’s holding a bat.
“Jesus.” I hurry over and snatch it before she takes one of us out.
“Yeah, you’re stronger,” Olive notes. “You hit him.”
I pry the bat from her and toss it away from anyone’s reach. “I think we all need to regroup here.”
Nick steps forward. “How are you going to invite me, then take it back now that I’m here?”
“I didn’t invite you,” Valerie snaps, looking back at Bethany with wide eyes. “I swear I didn’t!”
Nick snatches his phone from his pocket and holds out the screen, showing the messages Taina and I sent back and forth with him.
My cheeks burn. This is not at all how I envisioned this happening.
This was supposed to be a warm reunion between two age-appropriate adults who were meant to find their way back to each other.
Valerie jerks back. “That is not me.”
“What?” he stammers, then he types into the phone and holds it to his ear.
I take a step back, ready to leave. I’m too slow to realize before it’s too late. Before Olive pulls my phone from her pocket, the screen lit up with Nick’s phone call.
“Olive?” Valerie shouts.
“It’s not my phone.” She drops it from her hand like it shocked her.
I hurriedly bend for it, snatch it, and back away. All eyes are on me now. More importantly, Valerie’s are. I see it on her face, the rapid calculating, trying to understand what’s happening. Sorting through bits and pieces of information that don’t make sense, no matter where they’re placed.
“Lucy?” she says my name like a question, like it’s the only one she can think of at the moment.
I haven’t had a chance to figure out what to do, what to say, when this moment happened, if it happened, and I’d really hoped it wouldn’t.
My first scenario is that I would simply go back to New York, and everyone I met here would be a memory.
Then, after Anders, after our promises, I thought I could have Valerie end the wedding herself, and there wouldn’t be any fingers pointing my way, and anger, or questions at all.
I was foolishly wrong.
Bethany manages a full question. “Why is Nick calling you?”
Olive looks up at me with wide eyes. “What’s going on, Lucy?”
I want to shrink myself into a size so insignificant that I can hide between one of the cracks of the floorboards.
At least until I can formulate a response that will explain myself while managing to keep Anders’s family from hating me, while not throwing Anders under the bus, but also explaining my reasoning for all I’ve done.
But I just don’t have the time.
I’m so sorry is all I can think to say. I gesture to Nick. “He isn’t who I thought. This isn’t what I thought—what I wanted. I’m so sorry.”
“What is happening?” Bethany snaps. “Explain yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, and run as fast as possible to Anders’s car. I throw myself in, lock the door, and rush back to Anders before I can face the fire of questions I’m not equipped to defend myself from.
This wasn’t supposed to happen like this. This wasn’t supposed to happen at all.
When I pull up to the house, an unfamiliar car is parked in the driveway behind Taina’s rental. Not an Uber, since there’s nobody in the car. I’d think it’s Anders, but he wouldn’t get a rental just to get back home.
Then I get out, spot a man talking with his hands on the porch, and my sister in front of the door, shouting.
My stomach free-falls.
I rush over and call out her name. Then he turns—Mathew. I stop so fast my knees can’t keep up, and I trip on the stairs. Pain ricochets up my body as I grip the railing for support.
“I knew it,” Mathew spits out. “Of course you’re here. Bailing your sister out of whatever trouble she’s gotten into. Again. Always.”
“What trouble?” Taina rushes over to my side, still in her sweats. “Sorry, I came unannounced again. I wanted to finish our fight.” Then, she faces Mathew. “We’re having a little vacation together. I told you I was coming here.”
“This isn’t the address of the rental you booked,” Mathew says. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you tracking my exact location? What have I ever done to warrant that?”
“You’re helping out with one of her ridiculous jobs, aren’t you?” He looks to me. “You really can’t do anything on your own.”
I look down as Taina says, “Who the hell are you speaking to like that?”
“I told you I was sick of this!” he tells Taina. “I told you to let your sister clean up her own messes for once. You said this was a vacation. I knew you lied.”
“And you didn’t?” Taina shoots back as I try to step away, but she tightens her hold on my waist. “You’re supposed to be on a work trip, not stalking me.”
“You’re my wife.”
“And she’s my sister.”
“I’m your husband.”
“I should go.” I pry Taina’s fingers off me. To fling myself into the ocean, if it meant getting away from anyone and everything right now. It’s all too much.
“You should have gone a long time ago,” Mathew says. “Your time limit is almost up. I warned you. I don’t care if you don’t have the money. You promised you’d leave my house.”
Taina grips my shoulder with her nails. I’m sure she’ll draw blood. She pins me in place, looks up at Mathew with a flat expression, her voice a single, leveled tone. “Excuse me? What time limit?” Then she turns to me. “What promise?”
“You coddle your sister,” Mathew says, “and it’s exactly why she doesn’t grow up. So, I stepped in.”
Taina takes a measured breath, looks to me. “And you didn’t tell me about this conversation?”
My brows pull together. “I don’t want to ruin your relationship.”
“Yet you do an amazing job at it,” Mathew shoots out.
Taina lets me go. I see it in her, the lack of emotion, the fists at her sides, the straightening of her shoulders. I wrap my arms around her. “Taina, no.”
“Wife?” Taina struggles to free herself from my grasp. “I’ll be a widow from this point on.”
“Taina!”
“I’ll kill you,” she says to Mathew. She turns and elbows me. “You, too, for keeping this from me.” She nearly slips out of my grasp, but the extra weight I have on her helps me yank her down the steps.
Instead of using the space as a barrier, Mathew storms down to us.
Before he reaches the center of the stairs, someone bullets past us. Anders grabs a fistful of Mathew’s shirt and throws him down with force.
Anders is larger, but barely. Mathew doesn’t roll down the stairs, but the impact sends him stumbling down, gripping the railing to keep from hitting the pavement.
Anders is in an all-black sweatsuit, his hair a windswept mess, and his brows are knitted together; a long wrinkle dents the center of his forehead. When he approaches us, reaches out to touch a hand to my face, his hand is a gentle contrast to the anger radiating off his body.