Chapter Thirty-Four Luke #2
Luke shook his head, trying to process it all. “So she ran,” he said eventually. “Just…ran away.”
Abbey shook her head. “It’s not as simple as that, Luke. She broke. Mom said she truly thought you were better off without her. She—”
The phone rang. “They can call back,” Abbey said.
“No, take it,” Luke said, trying to control his breathing, his thoughts.
Abbey took the call, watching him as she did. When she put it down, she looked at Luke. “Well, good news, your next booking’s been canceled. Wouldn’t want you going out there with the storm coming, anyway. Luke, I—”
“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Luke said, pushing away from the table and standing up. He paced the room, trying to grapple with all he’d just learned.
“I know it’s a shock,” Abbey said, looking pained. “I just felt you needed to know. That maybe it’ll help put things in perspective with Sophie.”
Luke gazed up at the darkening sky. The storm was building faster than he’d thought. The wind had picked up, whipping through the cherry blossom trees along the shore, bending their fragile branches. “I’m heading out.”
She looked at him in shock. “Luke, come on! It’s going to be crazy out there!”
“Need to clear my head.”
He grabbed his boat keys. Abbey rushed to the door, blocking his way. “Luke, don’t. Not alone. It’s too dangerous. You’re not thinking straight.”
He drew up to his full length and looked down at her. “Abbey, let me through.”
“Luke—”
“LET ME THROUGH!”
She flinched and he felt like shit. But she moved out of the way all the same and he took his chance, storming outside.
Ten minutes later, he was cutting across the lake, the boat slicing through water that was still relatively calm.
He thought about what Abbey had told him.
The months before she left, his mother had grown quieter, wearing those loose, flowing dresses instead of her usual fitted clothes.
Then Luke’s dad had taken him away on a week-long fishing trip.
When he returned, his mom was different: hollow-eyed, like someone had scooped out everything that made her his mother.
The summer had dragged on with her moving through their house like a sleepwalker, staring out at the lake with tears sliding down her cheeks when she thought no one was looking.
Then one August morning, she was just…gone.
Christ. All these years, he’d painted her as selfish, weak. But she’d been drowning, and neither he nor his father had known how to throw her a rope.
Lightning flickered on the horizon, illuminating the angry clouds.
The rain began to come down harder, each drop like a small accusation against Luke’s skin.
The anger hit him again, swift and brutal.
But why couldn’t she have just told him?
He’d been thirteen, not three. Old enough to understand that people made mistakes.
Instead, she’d left him to wonder what he’d done wrong.
And his father. His father had known. Had watched Luke blame himself for years and had never said a goddamn word.
Luke shook his head. Somewhere out there, he had a half-sibling who didn’t even know Solace Springs existed. A brother or sister his mother had given away while Luke slept down the hall, oblivious.
The wind shifted, now coming from the west in uneven gusts that rippled across the water’s surface. Luke focused on adjusting his course slightly to account for the strengthening crosswind.
If his pa—the most honest man Luke had ever known—could look him in the eye every day while hiding something this massive, then what the hell did that say about the dangers of getting close to people?
His gut had been right about Sophie from the start.
All that hesitation, that voice telling him to keep his distance: this was why.
People lied. People kept secrets. People left.
And there he’d been, ready to ignore every hard-learned lesson because of a pretty smile and the way she felt in his arms. Christ, he’d been a fool.
The ache in his chest felt familiar now, like an old wound splitting open to remind him why he’d built those walls in the first place.
The boat carved through increasingly choppy water, spray starting to mist over the sides. Luke’s neck prickled with unease. Maybe he should head back? He was still a good three miles from the marina: maybe eight minutes at full throttle if the water cooperated.
As he thought that, a wave hit him broadside, lifting the boat and dropping it with a teeth-rattling slam.
Yep, time to head back. He’d been so deep in thought, he hadn’t even noticed how the clouds had transformed in minutes, piling up like mountains, dark and heavy with rain. Lightning flashed in the distance, followed by a rumble of thunder that Luke felt in his chest.
“Hang on,” Luke told his boat, opening up the throttle. “Going to get rough.”
That was an understatement. Solace Lake, usually as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror, had transformed into something wild and vengeful. White-capped waves rose from nowhere, spray stinging his eyes as he fought to keep them on course.
Rain was coming down in sheets now, cutting visibility to nearly nothing. He navigated by instinct, by the patterns etched into his brain after a lifetime on this water.
The sky turned an unnatural shade of greenish-black, a color Luke had only seen once before, during the microburst of ’98 that had taken out half the docks on the eastern shore.
Another wave crashed over the bow, soaking him now. He ignored the rising panic, focused instead on the task at hand: getting the hell away from this storm.
He was maybe five minutes out from the marina when Luke saw it: a wall of water rising ahead of him, taller than any wave had a right to be on an inland lake. Behind it, the sky had gone pitch black, as if someone had drawn a curtain across the world.
Luke jammed the throttle forward, hoping to crest the wave before it broke.
But the lake had other plans. The water rose higher than Luke thought possible, blocking out everything as it loomed over their small craft.
Luke had just enough time to think of Sophie before the wave crashed down and the world dissolved into chaos.