Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
The monitors in the surveillance room all glow with the live feed of High Street, Fall Away Lane, the alley behind my shop, and the exterior of JT Racing. There’s a view of Fallstown, some old firehouse I don’t recognize, and—I squint, looking closer—the parking lot at the summer camp.
He should have a camera on Frosted’s roof. It would monitor that entrance, at least.
Searching the drawers, I don’t see the phones they were talking about, but I do find blueprints. I smile, pulling them out. As I spread them open, a memory hits me—that day at Camp Blackhawk and Lucas’s ski resort dream laid out on the kitchen worktables.
I lock my jaw together, trying not to lift my eyes to the clock on one of the computer monitors. He must be about to head to the airport.
Why do men think there’s one rule for themselves and another for everyone else? Deacon and Manas sought revenge on Winslet for not loving their brother, and then proceeded to use her without giving her their hearts in return. Men in my family have been cruel and uncontrollable in their passion for the women they love, but their daughters—and their sister—need leashes.
What does Lucas do in bed with women that he would think Farrow Kelly or Noah Van der Berg were deviants if they wanted to do it to me? The fucking hypocrite.
Raising my eyes, I see the time. 9:42
My heart jumps in my chest. It’s later than I thought.
He’s at the airport now.
It’s over.
I set the blueprints on Hawke’s desk, pass by the diary and my parents’ story on the kitchen counter, and walk out of Carnival Tower through the mirror in my shop. Walking out the backdoor, I lock up Frosted and head out of the alley, sliding my phone into one back pocket and my key in the other.
I’ve never walked this path. When I pass Lucas’s house, I’m always jogging. It felt less creepy, finding a way to visit something of his—some place he lived—if I did it under the guise of exercise.
But it wasn’t just a way to be close to him over the years that he was gone. It was something I had to do, like I was visiting a grave.
Lucas’s house sits a few houses down from the corner, every window dark, not even the porch light shining. I always loved this house. The neighborhood is something my father would call ‘spotty,’ but really, it’s just old. No HOAs to make sure people mow their lawns or keep from parking on the grass.
I start to turn onto his walkway—a blue craftsman with two massive white columns posted on either side of the wooden stairs sitting ahead—but a low rumble drifts into my ears, and I slow.
Glancing left, up the street, and then right, I don’t see the ’72 Dodge, but I swear, that’s the sound it makes. Chills crawl up my neck, the sound of its engine coming from somewhere.
Jogging up the five stairs, I hear the wood creak as I step up to the door, snatching the lockbox in my hand from where it hangs on the doorknob. There are numbers like a phone to dial in a code to retrieve the key inside. Real estate agents put them on for potential buyers.
Shit.
I drop it and take the knob, giving it an exasperated, half-assed twist, and it opens. I let my mouth fall open. “Nice…”
That was lucky. It’s unlike Lucas to be irresponsible like that.
Putting a foot inside, I peer my head in, seeing empty hardwood floors shining in the moonlight. All the furniture is gone and the faint scent of fresh paint and Lysol linger in the air.
I enter the house, closing the door behind me. I haven’t been in here since the last time Lucas was home. I would come with Madoc when he picked him up, or get dropped off here on the occasion Lucas took me somewhere on his own, like to a movie only I wanted to see, or shopping for Christmas presents for the family.
Drifting through the house, I take one last look at the kitchen where his mom raced around the table when we were playing tag, and the living room where he let me try on his dad’s jacket and hat.
I wander upstairs, find his room, and inhale the scent of that cologne he wore tonight. He stayed so close. Was he that worried I’d fall in love with the wrong guy in a bounce house?
I laugh to myself as I browse the room. His bed is the only piece of furniture that remains, the mattress a stark white. I circle the bed to look out the window into the backyard, but I spot his white hoodie from the gym the other night on the floor. Bending down, I pick it up. He must not have seen it here when he was packing up. I lift it to my nose, inhaling, and suddenly flooded with him. Tears spring to my eyes and a truck sits on my chest at the smell of his skin. And his cologne and the summer air, and it reaches down into the pit of my stomach, taking me back, because he always smelled like this.