But what else could I do? Leave her like that?
“You alright?” I asked tightly.
She swallowed, and I thought she was going to start crying. That pressure in my chest again, like it was me who was in pain. Then she said, “You ever feel like the future’s just...bearing down on you and there’s nothing you can do to change it?”
I thought about it. It was rare enough that I spoke to anyone, let alone have someone ask me something deep. Eventually, I said, “No.”
It can’t have been the answer she was expecting, because she snapped her head around to look at me.Ah, fuck. In the moonlight,her skin was so pale it almost glowed and with those lush green eyes looking up at me...she was just the prettiest fucking thing I’d ever seen.
I turned and nodded towards where my hammer was leaning against a wall. “Most of the stuff I have to deal with gets out of the way,” I told her. “Or I smash it out of the way.” I paused. “I get the feeling your shit’s more complicated.”
She swallowed again and nodded a couple of times, then turned to the city and sniffed back a tear. She took a deep breath and what I normally would have been doing was watching that fantastic chest rise and swell under her t-shirt. Instead, all I could think was,she’s about to tell me. She’s about to tell me what’s going on with her.We were connecting. I reached out to put a hand on her back to comfort her—slowly, so as not to spook her—
“I wish I was more like you,” she said.
And reality slammed up to meet me. My hand froze an inch from her back.
The last thing she needed was to be around someone like me. Everything I touched turned to shit. I knew that. Why had I forgotten it?
“You don’t want to be like me,” I told her. And I turned and marched away. I didn’t even stop to retrieve my guitar or amp before I hit the stairs. All I grabbed was my hammer. That was all I needed in my life.
Just before the stairwell door closed behind me, I heard her intake of breath—she’d turned around and realized I’d gone. She was probably amazed at what an asshole I was. She didn’t realize she’d just had a lucky escape.
Whatever problems she had, they were nothing compared to the shit she’d get into if she came near my world. For her sake, I had to stay as far away from her as possible.
I had no idea that our lives were already on a collision course.
7
LOUISE
Early the next morning,I called Stacey. I didn’t know what else to do.
Stacey is the anti-me. Confident. Successful. Smartly-dressed. We were at college together: she majored in business while I did botany...except she actually graduated. Even if my folks hadn’t died, I don’t think we would have been on remotely similar paths. I was heading for a quiet lab where I could be around plants, not people; Stacey was born to be in business.
That’s why I’d called her. She was the only person in my life who I could even imagine using the phrase “half a million dollars.”
I hadn’t told her on the phone why I needed to see her, so she arrived all smiles, carrying two takeout coffees. I knew what she was thinking: I’d finally changed my mind and wanted to take her up on her offer of a job at the cupcake store. She was one of the franchise’s star achievers: in the short time since graduating, she’d already made manager. I gave it five years before she was running the company.
Her smile faltered when she saw my face. I sat her down and laid it out for her: Kayley, the hospital, the Swiss treatment. Her tears made little dark spots on her perfect gray skirt. Hearing myself tell the story made it all real again and, when Stacey looked up at mewith her face pale, I very nearly lost it myself. I was relying on her. If she didn’t know what to do, who would?
After a few agonizing minutes, though, Stacey sniffed back her tears. “Right,” she said, half to herself. She fixed her hair and smoothed down her blouse. “Okay,” she said, still sounding shaken. She adjusted her skirt, stood up and took a deep breath. “Don’t panic,” she said in a steadier voice. “We’re going to fight this.”
And I knew I’d called the right person.
“First of all, you know that I’ll give you all the money I can—you know that, right?” she asked urgently.
I nodded.
“But that’s not going to be nearly enough. Let’s attack this thing.” And she pulled a notebook and pen from her briefcase and wrote “$500,000” at the top. “We’re going to add up everything we can lay our hands on,” she told me. “Let’s start with the apartment.” She held her pen poised.
“Rented.”
“Your car?”
“Are you kidding? We’d have to pay someone to take it away.”
“Savings? Stocks? Anything your parents left you?”
