She smiled. “You know, you’re very kind under that grumpy exterior. Your brothers are lucky to have you.”
“You have me, too,” he said, and the words fell heavy between them, clunky and undefined. He didn’t know exactly how he meant them, and he was afraid of how she’d take them. “I’m almost as good a friend as I am a brother.”
Lucy gave him a weak smile, but those words didn’t feel right to him, either. Were they friends? Were they something else? If Miami wasn’t in her future, would he be a part of it?
“I’m just a woman passing through,” she reminded him.
“I didn’t mean that. You’re a lot more than that.”
“Not really. Iamjust passing through, even if it’s taking me a long time to actually do it.”
The thought of Lucy leaving Wayward Harbor made his stomach hurt, and it threatened to resurrect the fading headache, so he shoved it out of his mind. He definitely didn’t want to think about why that bothered him so much.
“What are you going to do?” he asked softly.
“Iwon’tbe hiding under the blankets again. I don’t know if I’m toughening up or if spring is finally doing its spring thing here, but I got too hot under there.” She laughed. “As for having a sister… I don’t know how that works. We’ll do a test to make sure, I guess. And then, I’d like to have a sister, I think.”
“It’s good to have siblings. Even the ones I got stuck with.”
“I’m not sure how that works, considering everybody in Wayward Harbor will know, and Kim Perkins keeps trying to set me on fire with her eyeballs evenbeforeTaylor talked to me.”
“Let Taylor navigate her mother,” he suggested. “You just hold your head up and keep doing what you’ve been doing because you haven’t done a single thing wrong.”
She smiled then—a genuine one—and the knot in his chest loosened. “Do you think that pizza place would deliver a Hawaiian pizza?”
That was too far. “No. Lucy, I know I owe you, but I can’t do pineapple on a pizza.”
“It’s apology pizza. You kind of have to.”
“How about half pepperoni and half Hawaiian. And I’ll buy, including the delivery fee.”
“Okay. Assuming we both make it off this dock without it collapsing and drowning us, you’re forgiven.”
Chapter Twelve
Whoever took my wooden cow from the end of my driveway on Windward Avenue, please bring it back. No questions asked.
First comment: Is there a reward?
Original poster: The reward of being a good neighbor.
Second comment: There’s a wooden cow on the roof of the police station. I don’t think it was there yesterday? Maybe it’s yours?
Original poster: I doubt there are multiple wooden cows.
Third comment: Get there fast before it starts moo-ving around.
Fourth comment: How do I delete this app?
Original poster: That isn’t the search bar, Colleen.
—Wayward Harbor Online Community Group
“Ithink maybe your head is on crooked.”
Lucy laughed, even though Nick’s tone implied he might not have been totally joking. “That looks straight to me.”
He sighed, dropping his forehead to the piece of deck railing he was holding in place. “If you’d just go get the level out of my truck, that would be great.”
