Chapter 9 #2
They didn’t. If anything, they deepened, knowing that Lucas was more than just a gorgeous guy who was stepping up with his little brother. He had lived, and changed, much like I had suspected Syd had.
“Go on,” I said.
His shoulders lowered a bit and he licked his lips. I squeezed his hand. “Go on, Lucas. I’m still here. I’m staying here.”
“Jesus, Lily,” he said in a mere whisper. “I think I just fell a little bit in love with you.” His eyes didn’t leave mine, and I tried to convey what I could not say.
I was already more than a little bit in love with Lucas Kade.
“Anyway. Word got out. I suppose it wouldn’t have looked good for a player—former player—to become hooked on painkillers. They agreed to keep it quiet if I just left school quietly and relinquished my scholarship. I was done with football, anyway. The shoulder wouldn’t hold up.”
“Could you have at least stayed to get your degree? Could you have—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “No. By that time I wanted to come home. I knew I could…”
“Get drugs here,” I finished when he didn’t.
He nodded, breaking eye contact, but still stayed turned toward me, still let me hold his hand.
“Oh yeah, the Oxy was easy to get here. I could have called a dozen guys and they’d be on my doorstep in an hour, happy to hand me those awesome pills.”
“But you had to pay for them,” I said, leading him to the inevitable.
“Yep. And I did…for a while. It was just a matter of time before I got caught or died, or needed something stronger and jumped to heroin or something.”
I’d been around drugs in high school. But that was more like pot and the occasional line of cocaine that was rumored to be snorted in the bathroom at a party.
Sometimes you’d hear about a kid raiding their parents’ medicine cabinet and having a mystery pill-swap party.
Ecstasy in clubs, stuff like that. Party drugs.
Nothing that was going to derail the oh-so-promising progeny of the political world.
Certainly not heroin.
“But then something happened. My mom…she’d always had…problems with drugs.”
“I only saw her a few times at Andy’s lessons. And I never even spoke with her.”
“Yeah, she got him there, which was about the last thing she was able to handle. She went into rehab a couple of days later and I moved in here.”
“So, you’ve only been…clean five weeks?” I had no idea if “clean” was the word I was looking for. I knew the first time I saw him that I was out of my depth with Lucas Kade, but I now knew I was in way over my head.
No lifeguarding experience was going to save me this time.
“No. Six months. I haven’t used in six months. About the same time I realized my mom had started using again. And about the same time I…”
“Yes?”
He shook his head, and I knew I wasn’t going to hear about all the things Lucas did to get money for his habit. Or to buy huge flat-screens.
“It doesn’t matter. I knew I had to get my shit together. I didn’t do it for me, but I could do it for Andy. That poor kid had it worse than I did at that age, and I just wanted to, I don’t know, give him a chance, I guess.”
“So you quit the Oxy? Just like that?”
He chuckled. The sound seemed foreign and jarring in the quiet room with such a heavy topic. “Well, not ‘just like that,’ no. It was pretty shitty for a while. But I made it out the other side. Eventually.”
“And…the other stuff? The stuff to get the money?”
“Well, that wasn’t as easy to quit because it didn’t affect just me. I had interested parties in me still needing money, and they weren’t happy.”
“Stick.”
He shrugged. “Stick’s okay. He stood behind me, still does. It was more of the people Stick works for.”
Visions of every mafia movie I’d ever watched with my father played in my mind. “Just how…deep are you in?”
“I’m not. I’m out. I was never ‘in’ much, anyway, just a…runner, an information gatherer, a cog. There was another guy who needed money right behind me. Shit, there were thirty guys behind me. There are always young guys who need money that are willing to do anything to get it.”
“Anything?”
He waved a hand. “No, it wasn’t anything heavy. I don’t mean to scare you, Lily. It was kid stuff in the scheme of things.”
“So…” I needed him to say it, even if I couldn’t ask it.
“Nothing that hurt anyone. Cars, money, some property. Everything was insured. And it was from people who could afford it.”
“My family are people like that,” I said. “My family works very hard for their car, property and money.”
“I know,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean it like that. It was wrong. Of course I know it was wrong. I just didn’t want you to think I was out whacking people or anything.”
I nodded. I knew the difference. And I also knew that Lucas didn’t need to tell me any of this, didn’t have to be so honest. He was either telling this all to me to scare me away, or…or…because he was in as deep as I was and didn’t want anything between us.
“And you’re completely done with it? With all of it?”
“Yes.” I could hear the conviction in his voice. It was the truth, or at least he desperately wanted it to be.
So did I.
“Over. Done. When I saw my mom was back using, I started hanging around here more, making sure she got to work, and that Andy was taken care of.
They found out about it where she worked and she was given the choice of going to rehab or being fired.
Which probably saved her life. I had some money from…
before, and was able to help out for a while.
“Then I got on at Bribury. I was able to do third shift ’cause it pays more. It sucks, but it’s honest work and the benefits are good.” He smiled. “Shit, listen to me talking about benefits. I sound like an old man.”
“No,” I said, running my hand up and down his arm. “You sound like someone who has responsibilities.”
He took my hand, raised it to his mouth, and turned it to kiss my palm.
“How’s your mom doing?”
A shadow crossed his face. “I’m not really sure. They’re still in the no-contact phase.” He said this like I knew the phases of rehab. “I’ll get to see her in a week. She wasn’t happy about going, but it was the only way to keep her job. And I was moving in to take care of Andy.
“That was another reason I wanted third shift; it was great hours for Andy’s schedule.
I can take him to school, sleep while he’s there, then pick him up.
Some days he does the swim lessons, others we just come home.
I get him dinner and to bed. When I have to go to work, my neighbor, Mrs. Jankowski, comes and sleeps here. ”
“Wow, that’s nice of her.”
He shrugged. “We have a deal. I do some repairs for her and do her grocery shopping and errands and shit like that. She’s not big on leaving the building.”
“That’s really great of you to move back in here to help out.”
“The truth is, it’s probably saving my life. I knew this was coming as soon as I saw my mom was in trouble. She’s been fighting it, on and off, most of my life.
“I was either going to go down the same path, or turn it around right then. Andy made me take a good look at where I was headed.”
“And your father? And Andy’s?”
“My dad died when I was twelve. Gunshot. Andy’s dad is out of the picture. Has been since the married asshole ran out on my mom once he knocked her up.”
“Oh,” I said. “That sucks.”
He put both his hands on my face, cradling it. “I want you to know, Lily, that I would never do something like that. We’ll be careful and shit, but if you ever…if we ever…I would never leave you high and dry.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” I said, looking into his pleading eyes. “I know you wouldn’t, Lucas.”
Although the last thing I wanted to think about as a freshman in college was an unwanted pregnancy, I knew that if I was pregnant with his child that Lucas would step up like he had for Andy.
“And thank you for telling me all this. You didn’t have to.”
He rested his forehead on mine, still holding on to my face with strong, callused hands. “Yes, I did, Lily. Yes, I did.”
He kissed me, so, so sweetly. It was a kiss full of thanks and acceptance, and I returned it with all the emotions that swirled inside me. I placed my hands on his soft T-shirt, on his chest and abs, feeling his body tense and jump under my touch.
“Lily,” he whispered, breaking the kiss, then resuming it with a deeper, probing, devouring melding of mouths and lips. “God, Lily.”
I slid my hands under his tee, needing to feel his skin. “How deeply does Andy sleep?” I murmured when Lucas left my mouth and began kissing down my neck.
“Not deeply enough. Not for all the things I want to do to you. Not for how much I want to make you scream my name.” As if to prove his point, he nipped at my neck and I let out a moan. A none-too-soft moan at that.
“See?” he said, chuckling, then returned to my neck, his hands sliding from my face down my body, stopping at my waist, where he tugged me toward him.
I swung a leg over and straddled him, finally in the position I’d wanted to be in that night in the back seat of Stick’s car.
He sank into the back of the couch, only leaning forward when I tugged at his shirt.
He lifted his arms and I peeled the offending cotton off of him, again marveling at the sheer perfection of him.
And now, I could see the tiny scar at his shoulder.
I leaned forward and placed a kiss on it, then continued to strew kisses along his amazing chest, swirling my tongue around his nipples.
He smelled faintly of chlorine and the soap they have in dispensers in the showers at the IM building.
“Christ, Lily, you’re killing me. We really can’t.”
“I know. We’ll stop,” I said, not wanting to.
“Not yet…not yet,” he whispered, his hands now leaving my waist and anchoring in my hair. “God, I knew it would be fucking amazing,” he said, wrapping his hands deep in it, tugging gently.
I raised my head from his chest, sat up tall. He dropped his hands still holding my hair, causing me to tilt my chin up.
“Christ, you’re beautiful,” he whispered.
I looked down at him. “So are you,” I said, then ducked my head, needing to kiss him again.
And cursing that cute little boy sleeping in the next room.
It wasn’t the little boy that drew our session to a swift conclusion, but the noise of a key in the lock and the front door opening.
Before I had even registered what was happening, Lucas had me off his lap and was placing his body in front of mine, even though I had all my clothes on and he was the one naked from the waist up.
It had me wondering who—or what—would walk in Lucas’s front door that he felt he needed to protect me from.