“I’m off to work.” He pulls me into a firm embrace just as an old truck comes sputtering into the parking lot, burping and farting like a seventy-year-old geezer who downed a keg of beer last night. And I’m right on everyaccount.
Liam jumps out of his latest junk pile revival and struts onover.
“So, this is it?” He squints at the bowling alley as if the sun actually bothered to show uptoday.
“This is it.” I welcome my brother with an open arm on the other side of me. “I had the appliances gutted from the kitchen last week. The construction company took the ones I could use in the new place and put them into storage forme.”
Liam winces as he looks out at it. “Everything approved through thecity?”
“You should know.” The guys at Townsend Construction are letting Liam hang out and glean what he can. I know he’s eager to open up shop on Paragon himself. This should be a great way to learn the ropes, not to mention the contractors state board he’s working topass.
Liam grunts as he shakes his head at the place. “It’s going to hurt like a motherfucker watching this place godown.”
Both Barron and I give a sober nod ofagreement.
“The party starts at noon if you want front row seats. I’ll be out on the lawn.” I’ve envisioned what it would feel like when the first blow struck, and it hurt each and every time just the way Liamsaid.
“Goodbye, friend.” Barron salutes the old place, and Liam and I follow hiscue.
“Goodbye, friend,” my lips whisper, but my heart says it’s never going to saygoodbye.
At about eleven thirty, the front lawn at Whitehorse begins to fill in with bodies. Laken and Coop, Drake and Bree, Ellis and Giselle, Michelle and Liam, Nat and Pierce, Kate, Ezrina and Nev, Dudley, Lexy and even Chloe, and, of course, Skyla and Gage. They’ve left the boys with Emma—a good move, considering there will be dust and debris floating throughout the next few miles in radius to the bowlingalley.
Skyla settles between Gage and me in lawn chairs as the construction crew brings in the heavy equipment. The crane that hoists that magnificent wrecking ball stands foreign in the air like a skyscraper. This is the city encroaching on Paragon’s country charm, stealing the tranquility right out of theair.
A horn sounds and that ball begins to sway, slow and smooth as if it were trying to hypnotize the building in an effort not to hurtit.
Skyla takes my hand and gives it asqueeze.
Stay strong.She sets her nose to the sky as that menace across the street swings wide.I love you. We alldo.
The first strike hits and blows a hole right through the side of the building, and a gasp comes from those aroundme.
“Yes!” Ellis howls, and Giselle is the first to silence him on mybehalf.
“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “This isprogress.”
“To progress!” Lexy shouts as that wrecking ball goes at it one moretime.
“To progress!” the small crowd echoes, but Skyla, Gage, and I remain silent on the subject. It feels like a lot of things. At the moment, progress isn’t one ofthem.
Like a dream in slow motion, like a nightmare at the right speed, we watch in horror, in delight, as the entire building folds like a house of cards. Arcade Heaven, the stinky pile of shoes, the defunct electrical system, the tiny thimble of an office, that kitchen where we had so much history, all of it gone and all but forgotten. All that remains is a pile of smoking rubble. The cleanup crew starts in right away with the effort to haul my father’s dream away like waste. At the end of the earthly day, all of our material desires rot away like refuse. And upon closer inspection, they might have been that all along. It’s the people, the flesh and blood you surround yourself with, that are the real treasure—the irreplaceable, indispensable monuments of our love that have the ability to define the sum total of ourexistence.
One by one the bodies drift from the lawn. After one lingering embrace after the other, they all scatter and disappear just like the bowlingalley.
I head over to the oak I had planted in the center of the lawn so many years ago when I had this place built for Skyla. I lean against its sturdy trunk and stare out at the gaping, toothless smile of the forest that is also mine along with the pile of rubble that once belonged to my father. Technically, the land is Liam’s and Barron’s as well, but Barron made it clear years ago that my father would have wanted me to have it as something solid I can hold on to—and, as it were,destroy. If I ever make more than a dime off the new infrastructure, or the farm I plant behind it, I’ll make sure to include my brothers in the spoils of my riches. A laughable idea at best, but a nice theorynonetheless.
Gage grunts as he heads on over. Skyla went inside with Lex. “I’ll talk to my brother, see where his head is concerning the girl who looks likeLaken.”
“Sounds good, man.” I know what he’s trying to do—divert my attention. If only it couldwork.
Shockingly, it doesn’t even bother me anymore when Gage references Wes as his brother. It comes so easily from his lips and sounds so normal, so very real. At this point in our lives, it’s nothing more than a fact. They share a father. Gage and I aren’t even related by blood anymore. We’ve had our identities, our lives, our souls ripped from our bodies and stolen by wickedness, and yet here we are standing a foot apart as if nothing ever happened. At the end of the day, it couldn’t change where our hearts lie. Gage is my brother. He is my family. Our lives are interwoven in every intricate way, so much so that if one of us should bend, it moves the other. Our minds, our souls, our hearts are sewn together. There is no barrier of blood that defines what we mean to each other. At least not with Gage in thisstate.
A horrible agony comes over me as I look at those big sky blue eyes. Not even Paragon and all of her brooding can erase that heavenly hue. It kills me to think that Demetri alone has the power to tamp down Gage Oliver’s heart to a pile of rubble just the way I did with the bowlingalley.
“Dude”—he grimaces as he pulls me in—“let it out. I know this is tough on you. You don’t have to pretend around me. I’m the one person you never have to do thatwith.”
Skyla pops up, breathless from the run over. “And I’m the second.” Her arms find their way around me, and Gage closes his big mitts over the two of us until we form a warm huddle of perfect love. And the tears come, hers, mine, his, they are all there and accounted for. I was right. It’s the people who are the treasures. My tears weren’t for the lumber I’m soon to replace across the street. They’re for Gage, Skyla, and me—three determined beings moving through time and space at lightning speeds on our way to our destinies, barreling toward that place that was determined so long ago for each of us as fate cinches the leash around our necks that much tighter. It’s choking out the oxygen, making it harder to resist the inevitable slide, the momentum picking up at an unimaginable clip. We are unstoppable in our velocity. We will arrive on time, in the manner determined for us long ago, each of us on our way to complete the mission set out before us. Three minds, three hearts, and not one of us on the same page, no, not really. Gage has his role to fulfill in order to spare the boys of a darker fate. Skyla has welded a demon to her side—that would be Chloe. And as for me, I’m inching my way closer to what my flesh has wanted all along, Skyla as my own. And in an irony too big for fate to handle, I’m fighting tooth and nail for that never to happen. Even more grievous than that, I know deep in my spirit that I will battle Gage himself in an effort to stop him from self-destructing. Maybe the real irony is that we each self-destruct.
