“Maybe it hasn’t been that long.” She was clearly getting revenge during the Night Rides, but maybe she didn’tknow where the brothers ran off to and hoped the news of the murders would lure them back. “Maybe when she killed the people who tried to kill her, the brothers heard about it and returned,” I tell him. “The trail hasn’t gone cold yet. Maybe there’s another chapter, after the tower and Rivalry Week and the Night Ride.”
Maybe a lot more has happened in the last twenty years.
But Lucas thinks I’ve drawn the wrong conclusions. “She hasn’t been following you,” he states.
I continue, “Maybe they learned she was alive and had to come back for her. Maybe they weren’t runners.”
Like you, I don’t add out loud.
We stand there with the rain and thunder kicking up outside and the sky goes from black to gray as the sun tries to break through the clouds but fails.
He thinks, if someone is following us, it’s someone else. Who?
“So here we are,” I challenge him, keeping my distance. “The world has stopped spinning, nothing else exists but us…”
Why is he so afraid to tell me his story?
He drops his head, breathless. “You don’t want to know,” he breathes out. “You want to keep your little childhood crush going, so you can keep imagining I’m this idea I never really was.”
He lifts his eyes. “And I want you to keep thinking I’m the person you always thought I was because I was only ever a hero to you and no one else.”
“If you leave me, you’re no hero.”
His jaw tightens, and he lowers his gaze again.
“Out with it, Lucas.”
He moves to the kitchen island and leans his ass on one of thestools.
“Drew Reeves used to be one of mybestfriends.” He clasps his hands in front of him. “That’s how awful my judgment was, and how little you saw me for how weak I could be.”
He was friends with a dirty cop. I didn’t know they were that close, but I’d heard as much already.
He peers over at me. “Did you ever notice that I always looked for you in a room when you were growing up?”
No.
I looked for him.
“You probably thought I was being nice,” he goes on, “to make sure you were included in card games or had someone to talk to on road trips or had someone to practice your baking skills on, but the truth is, I felt like we were in the same boat, for some reason.”
“Pairs,” I murmur. “Everyone else was in a pair.”
“Yeah.”
Both of us looking for our niche, our spot.
He continues, “I used to see you trying to keep the peace any time there was an argument…”
Trying to be useful. Valuable.
“Or always doing exactly what you were told as if you knew the pain that was wrought to bring you into the world—”
I think back to Madeline, Madoc’s mother, and all the pain she was caused because my parents couldn’t stay away from each other.
“—and it was like you were trying to earn your right to exist.”
My chin trembles. Is that what I was doing?
