Eventually, he twists his head to the side. “I don’t know if I can right now. But probably. Maybe tomorrow.” He closes his eyes, his next comment barely a whisper. “I really wanted this to be a one-time thing.”
“We all did, Jay.”
A twitch in his cheek is all I get. We stay there until my stomach growls. Now that I’m not distracted by my work, it’s finally letting me know that I’ve been ignoring it.
“Ready to head back?”
Jansen sighs, staring back at the clouds. “Do you think birds get depressed?”
“I don’t know, man. Maybe.”
“I’ve always wanted to fly.”
“As long as you don’t go flinging yourself off anything without a plan to keep yourself in one piece. Clara’d kick your ass, but she’d have to get in line behind Walker, Trips, and me. You could take up skydiving or paragliding or something, though.”
He sits up, staring at his knees. “I really miss her.”
“Me too.” I want to keep my thoughts to myself, but Jansen needs this, an openness that I rarely allow myself. So I force the words out, force myself to actually join this team instead of sitting beside it. “I’m scared. It’s like I don’t know how to be myself without her. Or more like she made me more than myself, and now with her gone, it’s like she took parts of me with her, and now I’m less than I was.”
The mess of words makes no sense, but Jansen nods. “I was using her as a crutch. I don’t want to do that anymore. But everything is really hard.”
“Yeah.”
A bunch of girls run past us, the weight of their curious gazes pushing me to my feet, the need to get away from them stronger than it has been since I was a teenager. “A day at a time, Jansen. Let’s make it through today and worry about tomorrow when it comes.”
I hold my hand out to him, and he takes it, his grip still unnaturally strong for such a lithe guy. “A day at a time. Until we’re back together.”
“Until we’re back together,” I agree.
Chapter 58
Clara
Labor Day means another event. I’m forced into an all-white outfit and ushered onto the family yacht, a glass of sparkling water pressed into my hand by a passing waiter, while everyone else gets champagne. Wishful thinking there, Papa Westerhouse.
Mattie finds me immediately, her auburn hair tied in an elaborate French braid, her lips pulled into an angry pout. I nudge her with my heel. “What’s with the face?”
She glances around, dragging me to the back of the boat, but staying silent until we pull away from the slip.
Trips catches my eye from the side of the big boat, and I shake my head, so he stays where he is.
The hum of the motor picking up has Mattie leaning down to whisper in my ear, what’s likely her last growth spurt putting her a few inches above me. “I have a boyfriend.”
“Exciting! So, what’s with the grumpy face?”
She huffs, crossing her arms, then uncrossing them. “I’m keeping him a secret. Father’s weird about guys. I swear sometimes he lives a hundred years ago with all his talk of family lineage and marriage and shit. I mean, I’m sure you know all about it. There’s no way you and Archie would choose this farce. I know you’re locked up and separate most of the time. If you’d chosen to be engaged, there’d be no reason to keep you two as prisoners.”
Yet another wish to add to the list—to not have a fifteen-year-old worried about marriage or her brother and me locked up on the regular. Archibald Clarence Westerhouse, the second, has a lot to answer for.
“I like your brother, Mattie, but you’re right. This isn’t what we’d choose for ourselves.”
“So, you get why I’m keeping him a secret.”
I nod.
“But it’s getting complicated.”
“How so?”
