Chapter Thirty-six
“That motherfucker,” I say for the tenth time since we hopped in Dallas’s Ford F-150 Raptor.
“Don’t say I didn’t tell you,” he grumbles.
I stare daggers into the side of his head. “Do you have no compassion? He just ruined Lissa’s life. Maybe his own. She was the best thing that ever happened to him. I get that you’ve been gone for the past few years and haven’t seen them together, but they’re fucking perfect. If he can’t marry her there’s zero hope for him.”
Stopped at an intersection, he turns toward me, eyes narrowed. “Are we talking about Lucas?”
“Of course we’re talking about Lucas,” I huff.
“Because I saw the way you were looking at Ellie.”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Uh huh. Blake, listen, I have to say I was thrown by your phone call that day. Not just because you’re a dad, but the way you talked about Ellie. And now, six weeks later, you still have a boner for her—that’s just not like you. And now it’s like you’re taking it personally that Lucas ditched.”
“Whatever,” I say as we pull up to Lucas’s building.
We ride up to the fifth floor where there are two penthouse apartments. Lucas’s is on the right. His spare key is still hidden under the ornate flower vase on the table between the two apartments where he stashed it back when I was in college so I could use his place for a sex den.
I shake my head at the thought. It seems like forever ago when I brought a girl here. But it’s not. Last fall I brought… ah, shit, I can’t even remember her name.
I don’t even knock. If he’s here, he’s probably balls-deep in a bottle of whiskey. I whip open the door, not even thinking that maybe Lissa could be here instead. After all, she’s lived here for over a year now.
“Lucas!” I shout, entering the place.
“Yo, Luke!” Dallas adds with much less gusto.
“Lissa? Are you here?” I ask.
We look through all five bedrooms. No one is here. The only trace of Lucas having been here is his discarded clothes he was wearing at the groom’s brunch at Mom and Dad’s house earlier.
“He hasn’t been here,” I say.
Dallas points to their huge walk-in closet. “But it looks like someone has.”
I run a hand through my hair when I see Lissa’s wedding dress in a pile on the closet floor. Drawers are half-opened, having been riffled through. Hangers are empty. Most of Lissa’s clothes are gone. And it looks like she did it in a hurry. Hell, the whole thing only went down less than an hour ago. She must have high-tailed it back here and moved her shit out.
“Jesus,” Dallas says. “She’s not fucking around. Looks like she means it.”
“Can you blame her? She probably moved back in with her folks.”
“Let’s head over to Mom and Dad’s house. Maybe he went there instead. And they’re probably stuck at the winery dealing with all the guests.”
We have to drive down McQuaid Circle and through a residential neighborhood to get to our childhood home. I jerk against my seatbelt when Dallas stops his truck in the middle of the road.
“Fuck!” he barks.
I look at Dallas. He’s staring down the street. In his haste to get to Mom and Dad’s, he turned down his old street. The street with the house Phoebe and DJ died in.
A car honks behind us, but Dallas doesn’t move.
I roll down the window and wave them by. Dallas doesn’t even notice when the teen driving an old Camero flips him the bird. I think it might have been a Calloway, one of Cooper’s cousins: Colt, Grey, or Storm.
“You could turn around,” I say, stating the obvious when he seems frozen in place.
He ignores the suggestion, staring without even blinking. After I wave a few more cars past, he finally asks, “Do you know who bought the place?”
Dallas took off right after the funeral. He had Dad handle the sale on his behalf. I gather this is the first time he’s driven down this street since.
“A retired couple I think. They moved from the city.”
I can almost see his relief that a young family didn’t move in and are living the life he was robbed of.
“When do you think you’ll move back?” I ask, seeing an opportunity.
He looks away from the house like I asked him when he was going to eat nails. “Never.”
“Come on. Never?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Dallas, it’s been—”
“Don’t fucking tell me how long it’s been. Because I already know. It’s been two years, one month, and twenty-six days. Do you think just because it’s been that long that I’ll magically get over it? Get over the fact that my twenty-six-year-old wife and six-month-old baby died in this town. In that house? That when I left for work that morning and kissed Phoebe goodbye it would be the last time I ever touched her? That when I held DJ, I had no way of knowing he’d never live to see his first birthday, crawl, or call me Daddy?”
His voice cracks at the last word, and I feel my heart breaking in a way it never would have before I became a father myself.
“What the hell don’t you understand? That DJ died first, alone in his crib, and Phoebe had no idea what had happened when she succumbed herself, crumpling to the kitchen floor in convulsions before she died? Don’t you get that every fucking day of my miserable life, I wonder what would have happened if I’d gotten home from work on time instead of staying late to earn brownie points from our father? That if I’d been there, I could have done something. Or at least died with them.”
I’m not sure I can even speak. That was a lot of shit to unpack.
“Jesus.” I scrub a hand across my face. “I’m sorry.”
He backs into a driveway, turns in the other direction, and drives five minutes out of the way to get to our parents’ house.
“His car isn’t here,” I say. “Let’s check anyway.”
It takes a lot longer to go through Montana Manor than it did Lucas’s penthouse. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s empty as well.
“Should we check the bars?” I ask.
“He’s not going to go anywhere with people. Everyone in this town knew today was his wedding.” He looks out the back window in thought. “How about the back forty?”
“Right,” I say. “Let’s go.”
He looks at me strangely.
“What?” I ask.
“Are you aware you just did sign language?”
I replay the last five seconds in my head. Huh, I guess I did. Well, that’s never happened before.
We hop in his truck and head back to the winery. When we pass the main complex, there are still a few dozen cars there. I guess people stayed for free booze and food. And maybe to collect on bets they’d placed. I silently wonder if Ellie and Maisy are still inside.
Dallas drives to the far end of the property where there are a few acres of land Dad could never get vines to grow on. It became our playground when we were kids and came to work with our parents. We’d play tag out there. Kick the can. And when we got older, my brothers and I would have jousting fights on the ATVs used to drive through the vineyards. Mom and Dad would have killed us if they knew about that. It’s surprising the three of us survived with little more than bruises and scratches.
It’s the only place Lucas could go where no one would think to find him.
No one but us, that is.
“Christ, he’s here,” Dallas says, spotting his car in the distance.
Lucas drove right over the green space and may have even sideswiped some trees to park where he did.
I send a quick text to Mom to let her know we found him so she won’t worry. But I don’t disclose where. This is one of those times you just need your brothers.
It’s like Lucas doesn’t even notice when we walk up next to him. There’s a half empty bottle of whiskey sitting on a tree stump, and he’s smoking a cigarette—a habit he gave up in his early twenties. But I get now is not the time for a lecture.
He looks up, unhappy to have been found, and takes a long drag. Smoke comes out along with his words. “Don’t fucking start with me. I know what I did. I know I’m a lowlife prick.”
I hold out my hand for the bottle. “Can we join you?”
He shrugs. I take a pull then hand it to Dallas. We both left our jackets in the truck, and now we loosen our ties and take a seat on nearby stumps.
Neither Dallas nor I talk. We just take turns sipping whiskey. Lucas will talk when he’s ready. If we know anything about our oldest brother, we know that.
He smokes three more cigarettes, flicking the last one—half-smoked—across the grass, and winces. His face is a greenish hue. I guess when you haven’t smoked in a while it can make you ill. He takes a long swig of whiskey, then turns and vomits behind him. Then, he takes another drink and lights another cigarette as if punishing himself.
“I was going to go through with it,” he says between clenched teeth. “I swear to God I was. Then I heard the violin music, and you guys left to go walk the girls down the aisle and I just… Fuck!” He kicks the stump with the back of his heel, putting one hell of a scuff on his eight-hundred-dollar Allen Edmonds Cap-toe Oxfords. “What the hell is wrong with me?”
All Dallas and I can do is look at each other. Because there’s just no way to answer that.
The first time Lucas left a girl at the altar, it was almost understandable. They were young and they’d rushed into it far too soon. The second time surprised us all, especially considering Simone was one of his best friends. Was. Not anymore. He broke things off with his third fiancée just weeks before the wedding. He said it was because he knew he was going to bail and didn’t want to hurt her.
But with Lissa, we thought things were different. Even after they’d been engaged for over a year, and he insisted he was ready to finally get married, she wouldn’t do it. She just wanted to stay perpetually engaged. She agreed to move in with him, something he’d never done with the others. But she always told him she wasn’t about to be another casualty of Lucas Montana’s doomed love life. It took a long time, but after living together went so well, he finally wore her down and they set a date.
I, for one, am wishing she stood her ground. I could see them as one of those couples who never get married but who have a better relationship than most married couples.
And he went and screwed it all up.
“What the fuck do I do now?” he asks. When neither Dallas nor I speak, he says, “Seriously, what the fuck do I do?”
“That depends,” I say, figuring Dallas isn’t the one who’s going to offer advice about anyone’s love life. “Are you done with her?”
“No, I’m not done with her. I fucking love her.”
Dallas scoffs, looking like he has something to say, but Lucas shuts him up.
“Don’t start. I know I left her there and she probably hates me for it. She was fine with the way things were. She never wanted to get married. I promised her this time would be different. And she… she fucking believed me. And now I’ve gone and fucked up the best thing that ever happened to me.”
He empties the bottle, shaking every last drop into his mouth before tossing it across the grass to join his pile of cigarettes.
“How long do you think she’ll be mad at me? When do you think it’ll be safe for me to go home?”
Dallas and I share a look.
“What?” Lucas asks.
“We, uh… just came from your place,” I say. “It sort of looked like she moved out.”
His drunken eyes snap up in surprise. “Moved out? It’s barely been a few hours.”
“It looked like she was in a hurry.”
“Let’s go,” he says, fishing keys out of his pocket.
I take them from him. “Oh, no. You’re not driving. I’ll follow Dallas in your car. Neither of us had very much.”
Thirty minutes later, Lucas is standing in his bedroom, staring into his closet, his face devoid of color. “She took almost everything.” He picks up a few of her shirts off the floor. “Except these.” He holds out the Donovan’s Pub work shirts. “Why wouldn’t she take these?”
He goes to the bathroom where half the vanity has been cleared off. Back in the bedroom, he sits on the end of the bed, looking over at Lissa’s side. “She took her family photos.” He shakes his head, staring at the one photo she didn’t take. The one of the two of them taken on the day of their engagement. The one with the cracked glass I can only assume wasn’t cracked this morning. “Fuck,” he says, scooting across the bed and gathering it in his hands. “Do you think she’s done with me?”
“I think you need to give her some time, Lucas. She needs to decide if she can be with a guy who doesn’t want to be married to her.”
“What do you think she’ll do?” He looks from Dallas to me as if we have all the answers.
“I don’t know. But she was willing to be in a relationship with you knowing your past. And she was the one who didn’t want to get married. Maybe when she thinks about it, she’ll come around. But what I do know is that you have to let her know you still love her. That you want to go back to the way things were before you talked her into all this.”
“Yeah, okay. I can do that. She’s probably at her parents’ house. How long do you think I should wait?” He looks at his watch as if he’s asking how many minutes or hours.
“I’d say at least a day or two. She’s probably still pretty miffed. Let her cool off.”
He walks out of the bedroom straight to his bar, bypassing the whiskey and going for a beer. “Might as well get shitfaced then. It is my wedding night after all.”
Three hours later, Dallas and I carry our passed-out brother to bed.
We turn out the lights and let him sleep it off, vowing to meet back here in the morning.
On our way out the door, we run into Craig Monroe, Lissa’s father.
“Ah, hey, Mr. Monroe.”
“Dallas,” he says. “Nice to see you back in town. You doing okay?”
Dallas shrugs.
“Is your brother here?” Craig asks.
“Passed out,” I say. “After the bottle of whiskey he drank earlier, I doubt a nuclear explosion could wake him. Listen, if it means anything, he’s feeling all kinds of stupid. He loves Lissa. He wants to work things out. He just doesn’t want to be married is all. We told him to give Lissa some space.”
“Is that so?” He crosses his arms. “Well, too little too late. He hurt my daughter. For years she was afraid of this happening. After they moved in together, she changed her tune. She felt he had changed his. I think we all did. And I’m not going to sugarcoat things and tell you I don’t want to thwap some sense into him for doing this to my baby.”
I chuckle. “You’d have to get in line.”
“Yeah, well, as much as I want to see him in as much pain as she is, I’m not here to stir up a fight. I’m here to deliver a message.”
“I’m afraid it’ll have to wait. We can deliver it for you if you want.”
He nods. “Okay then. Be sure to tell him all of it. Every word. Lissa is done with him. He humiliated her. She said he will never change, and after all the chances he’s had to show what a real man he is, he failed her. She wants nothing to do with him. No contact whatsoever. She never wants to see or speak to him again.”
“But…” I look at Dallas before I state the obvious. “This is a small town. How will that work?”
“Thanks to your brother, my daughter has decided not to live in Calloway Creek anymore.” His hands ball up into fists. “Just another reason I’d like to thump him. He robbed me of my own goddamn daughter. You should tell him he might want to steer clear of me for a while.”
“She’s moving?” I ask. “Where? When?”
“She’s already gone. As to the where, well, that’s between Lissa, her mother, and me. And calling her will do no good. She left her cell phone. We helped her load her car. She pulled out of town about an hour ago.”
“Wait, so she isn’t going to give him a chance to make things right?”
“Son, your brother has left how many women now? There’s no making things right. He used up all his chances. And now he has to live with his decision. You go ahead and pass that on.”
“Yes, sir. And on behalf of Lucas, I’m really sorry.”
“Hopefully you can prove you are by not following suit.”
I nod. Because there’s really nothing more to say. To him anyway. There’s a hell of a lot I want to say to someone else, however.
Mr. Monroe turns and gets back on the elevator. Dallas and I watch the doors close then give each other a look as if asking what now?
Dallas drops his keys on the entry table and moves to park himself on the couch.
“Dude, he’s not waking up anytime soon,” I say, walking in after him.
“Yeah, but someone has to tell him when he does. I’ll do it. You have a kid to go home to.”
“How long are you going to stay in town?”
“Long enough to tell him. Then I’m gone.”
I know it’s pointless to ask him to reconsider. He’s more stubborn than anyone I’ve ever known. He started asking Phoebe out when they were thirteen years old. He never even noticed other girls. Finally, when they were seventeen, she said yes. They were inseparable after that.
I sigh. Dallas had everything and lost it. Lucas had everything and fucked it up.
Knowing how it could end up, I’m not going to waste another minute without going after what I want. I reach out, shake his hand, then give him a hug. “I’m here if you ever need anything.”
“I know, brother.” He crosses his legs at the ankles and picks up the remote. “I know.”