Chapter Four
Roman
Thought I might find you out here.
Go away, Roman.
No can do. Not gonna leave you when you’re crying.
I’m not crying. It’s the salt from the sea.
That’s too bad. I can’t beat up the sea.
- Conversation between Roman, age 21 and Lola, age 14
I screw my hand up into a fist as Lola storms out of the kitchen, the purple streaks in her chestnut hair flashing as she turns her back on us. That woman is going to be the death of me because every instinct I have is telling me to go to her. They always do.
Even before I found her in that barn, clothes torn and barely conscious, all I’ve ever wanted to do is keep Lola safe. But I failed that night and I’ve spent the last six years telling myself she’s better off without me.
“She needs to grow the fuck up,” Mase grumbles.
My jaw is clenched tight, the muscles in my back rock hard. I could punch him right now and if Pippa and Shaun weren’t better parents to me than my own, I’d be having words with them too.
Lola is full of light, and I hate how much it dims around her family.
I saw first-hand how she pushed against their protection, how every time they tried to rein her in, she bucked harder.
Ran further. It’s why I always tried to mediate.
Tried to fix things. I’d need more than ten fingers to count the number of times I picked her up from a party she shouldn’t have been at.
“Thanks for coming to get me, Ro-Ro.” Lola snuggles up against my car window like it’s her favorite pillow and I bite my cheek against the lecture I want to give because she won’t remember it in the morning.
“You’re pretty,” her drunk self murmurs.
“Go to sleep, Lola,” I reply.
“We should go after her,” Pippa says, worry wavering her voice.
Mase stabs a carrot. “Why? She’s not going to listen.”
I force a breath through my nose and work on not decapitating my best friend. He’s been in a bad headspace ever since his last mission went south and he was taken off active duty.
Pippa fiddles with her napkin. “She can’t move out. She’s not ready. I know she’s been traveling but that’s different.”
Shaun reaches across the table and squeezes her hand.
I know Lola’s better off without me, I know I’ve failed her too many times, but I can’t get those glistening brown eyes out of my head and I give up fighting my instincts. “I’ll go after her,” I say, pushing up from my chair.
“Thank you, son.” Shaun nods at me. “We didn’t mean to upset her, I just— opening a coffee shop?” He shakes his head. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”
I don’t tell Shaun I have no intention of talking sense into Lola but only because I know she’d kill me for fighting her battles for her. I just bite my tongue and leave the house.
Lola’s already making her escape. She’s struggling to haul a suitcase down the porch steps with a hiking backpack that’s more than half her size strapped to her back. She teeters and I swoop in before she can fall, lifting up the suitcase. She spins to face me. “I’m not going back in there.”
I hold up my free hand. “Wasn’t going to ask you to.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “So, you’re holding my bag hostage why?”
Other than the ice cream cart incident this morning, I haven’t spoken to Lola for months, but the rhythm we fall back into feels as natural as breathing. I tsk. “Such a drama queen.”
Her mouth drops open and the urge to bite that rosy bottom lip burns through me. She reaches for the suitcase. “You can go back inside, I’m managing just fine.”
I step back, moving the heavy case to my side and out of her grasp. “Uh huh, sure, and were you planning on managing just fine all the way into town?” She doesn’t have a car so that’s exactly what she’s planning but I’m not about to let her walk the three miles into town carrying all this shit.
“Come on,” I say, my boots kicking up dust as I stride over to my red pickup. I lift her suitcase into the bed of the truck.
“What are you doing?” she calls after me.
I look back at her. “Giving you a lift to your new coffee shop.”
Her hazel eyes widen and her chest hitches. “Really?”
I walk around the truck and pull open the driver’s door. “Come on Firebird, I ain’t got all day.”
Lola mutters something along the lines of “you set one barn on fire…” but she dumps her backpack in the truck and climbs her pretty little ass up into the passenger seat.
I suppress a smile as I take the book on plant life I’ve been reading out of my back pocket and let the engine rumble beneath me.
God, I love that feeling. My dad would shudder in horror if he saw what I drove nowadays.
It’s so far from the sleek Mercedes he’s chauffeured around in, but I guess when you send your kid halfway across the world to boarding school, the apple ends up falling pretty far from the tree.
My parents didn’t even want me home for the holidays, using the school’s host family program for international students to send me to live with the Fords instead.
I shouldn’t complain though, I fit in better with my former host family than I ever did back in England, even if I have had to contend with borderline inappropriate thoughts of my best friend’s little sister for the last six years.
Lola bends down to tie up the laces on her walking boots and I force myself to look at the road ahead and not the tempting dip of her cleavage. Yeah, scratch the borderline, my thoughts crossed over into inappropriate years ago and having Lola back in Pine Rock for good is only making things worse.
I clear my throat and grip the steering wheel. “So, where am I taking you?”
Lola finishes with her laces and sits up. She twists in her seat to look at me, a slight tilt to her head.
I glance over at her. “What?”
She shrugs, the thin straps of her top shifting on her delicate shoulders. “You’re not going to try and talk me out of it? Tell me it’s a great idea but I should take things slow? Remind me that my parents love me, and they only want what’s best?”
I’m still fuming at her family for reacting the way they did but admitting that feels like too much.
I’ve hidden how I feel about Lola for six years, telling her that the way her family treats her makes me vibrate with anger would be a dead giveaway.
So, I just say, “Your parents do love you, but they also underestimate you.”
The slender lines of Lola’s neck bob as she studies the worn spine of my book lying on the center console. “Gregor’s old place,” she whispers.
“The hardware store?” I let out a low whistle. “That’s a great location.” Real estate on Pine Rock’s Main Street is in high demand thanks to the summer tourist trade, but old man Gregor’s place has been boarded up since he retired last season.
“He gave me a good deal because I’m not ‘one of them god darn smarmy city chains’.” She uses air quotes, an amused quirk to her lips. Gregor might be the only man in Canada not obsessed with Tim Horton.
I want to laugh along with her but the business owner in me hears alarm bells.
“Still, that can’t have been cheap.” I wince, regretting the words as soon as they’re out.
The last thing Lola needs is another person doubting her.
I take one hand off the steering wheel like I can somehow grab the words back out of the air, but Lola just shrugs again.
“Yeah, well, I also let him see my tits.”
I slam on the breaks in the middle of the country road and thank my lucky stars it’s empty. I yank on the hand break and turn to face Lola, bracing my forearm against the steering wheel. “You did what?” I bite the words out, my teeth gritted so hard I’m surprised they’re not turning to dust.
Lola grips the edges of her seat, a precarious smile that screams I misjudged this frozen on her lips. “Kidding,” she says.
My nostrils flare as I breathe in deep, trying to gauge whether I need to pay a less than friendly visit to an old man.
“Seriously, Roman?” Fire burns out any regret Lola has for getting herself in too deep. “I saved up,” she says. “Working in bars in touristy spots gets you good tips and the backpacker life doesn’t exactly have many expenses so yeah, I saved up.”
Some of the tension in my body falls away but I keep my gaze firmly set on Lola. “Just so we’re one hundred percent clear, do I need to kill old man Gregor or not?”
Lola’s mouth parts. “Not,” she says, bright hazel eyes glaring back at me.
I nod and purse my lips, my gaze dropping to her open mouth. I swear this girl is going to be the death of me. I lift my hand and place the pad of my thumb on her plump bottom lip, tugging it down. “Such a reckless mouth, you should be careful how you use it.”
Lola’s breath skates over the sun-tanned skin on the back of my hand. Her eyes flare and my gaze drops low as her thighs squeeze together.
I swallow. Best friend’s little sister. Seven years younger. She doesn’t like you that way, Roman.
I pull back, burying my thumb inside my fist before I use it to do something stupid, like slide it into her mouth and order her to suck.
I flick on the indicator and put the truck in gear before carrying on down the quiet road.
My thumb burns, the warmth her lip left behind spreading through my body. I’ve spent five years worth of fleeting visits restraining from touching Lola like that but one tumultuous family dinner, one glimpse of her heart breaking, met with her stubborn fire, and all my reserves are down.
This girl doesn’t even know what she does to me.
I doubt I feature in her mind half as much as she does mine. I’m just the private school kid her parents played host to in the holidays, the interloper who meant she had to share a bathroom with one more person.
The boy she doesn’t even remember kissing.
No, my feelings for Lola are not reciprocated.
Except the traitorous, hopeful part of my brain can’t help but notice that she looks a little flustered—the apple of her cheeks flushed pink.
She doesn’t even know she’s playing with fire as she stares straight ahead and says, “Don’t worry, I’ve had a lot of experience using my mouth to get me out of tricky situations.”
My knuckles whiten around the steering wheel, and I swear my jaw pops. “Lola,” I warn, her name little more than a growl.
I catch the corner of the little brat’s lip curling up before she rests her elbow on the door and turns to face the window.
I shake my head and focus on the road ahead hard enough to drown out the images her words conjured. Images of her on her knees making use of that sassy mouth. Of my fingers threaded through her hair, those purple streaks soft on my skin. Of my dic—
My phone buzzes from its perch in the center console, Mase’s name flashing on screen.
Lola turns away from the window. She looks down at the phone then up at me. Waiting. The space between her eyebrows crinkles. I want to reach over and smooth it out.
Instead, I hold her gaze and click the side button on the phone, sending the call to voicemail.
She lets out a shaky breath and goes back to watching the white pine trees our town is known for pass by. “Thank you,” she says, and her soft voice undoes me.
I don’t answer her, but I think I’d do anything to protect Lola from feeling like that again.