I drop my head in my hands, finally understanding her frustration. “He can’t take it, Lane. Anything to do with the Kennedys is bad news.”
“I know that. And I tried to tell him that. I even told him that I broke up with Cooper—”
“He didn’t know?”
“No!” This entire conversation is whispered which makes it so much harder to communicate. “He asked when we broke up, and I said Monday when I got home because I didn’t want him to know about spending all that time in a hotel in Charlotte.”
“And what did he say?”
She sighs. “He said that I was cruel for breaking up with him after he spent the week taking care of me.”
“You have to tell him, Lane.”
“I can’t.”
“So he’s going to take the job?”
“I don’t know,” she whines. “I can’t believe this. I’m finally free of him, and he still finds ways to dig his claws into my life.”
“What do you mean ‘free of him’?”
“Nothing.” She shakes her head. “I’m just emotional.”
“Maybe he’s bluffing?”
“How?”
I get up, sit next to her on the bed. “What if he’s making it all up? Like, maybe there is no business?”
She scoffs. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”
I get out my phone, call Lucy.
“What are you doing?” Lane asks the same time Lucy answers.
“Did I wake you?” I ask Lucy.
“It’s 11:30, Luke, I have an early class. What do you want?”
It’s 11:30! Holy shit, I must’ve been sniffing my pillow for longer than I thought. “When you were working admin at Dad’s, you had to look up companies on some business register, right? Do you still have access to it?”
“What the fuck is this?”
“I need you to do me a favor.”
“Right now?”
“Please, Luce.”
She moans and not like, in an annoyed way, in a…
“Holy shit, are you guys having sex right now?”
“Cam will be done in two minutes. I’ll call you back.”
I drop the phone. “Fucking gross.”
Laney’s laughing now, silent but pure.
“It’s not funny.”
She flops on her back, holding her ribs from laughing so hard. I lean over her, take in all her features. I miss her smile, her laugh. Her. I reach up, run a finger across her forehead, move her bangs away from her eyes. I miss those eyes. “I miss your eyes, your smile.” And without meaning to, I’m running my thumb across her full lips and licking my own and I want to kiss you, Laney.
“Luke,” she whispers, her smile fading. “We can’t.”
“Why not? Are you planning on getting back together with Cooper?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Her gaze falls between us. “It has to be different,” she says, and I have no idea what that means. “And it’s too soon.”
“It’s too soon” = Throwing a dog a bone.
I ask, “So a month from now, would you consider going out with me?”
Her smile’s back. It’s small, but it’s there. “Define going out?”
“A date?”
“One date?”
“Ten. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred! Whatever it takes.”
“In a month’s time?” she asks, and she’s the fish and I’m reeling her in and I don’t even care that I just heard my sister having sex because, in some fucked up way, it brought us to this.
“I can wait a month,” I tell her.
“I doubt it.”
“Watch me,” I announce. “I’m the fucking Felicity of waiting, and you’re my Ben Covington.”
Her eyes go wide, her smile wider. “Did you just Felicity me?”
I nod, chuckle. “I’m that good, Lois Lane.”
My phone rings and I blindly answer it, forgetting who it is and what they’re calling about because Laney’s still looking at me, smiling at me. Then Lucy says, out of breath, “What am I searching for, cockblocker?”
“Kennedy Construction.”
“Not that Cooper asshole?”
“Yep.”
I hear her typing the same time Laney reaches up, combs her fingers through my hair, and I close my eyes. She shifts beneath me until her mouth is to my ear. “I miss you,” she whispers, and Lucy says, “Don’t say that, Luke. It’s so creepy.”
I stifle my laugh and Laney does the same, falling onto her back again.
“Yeah, it’s here,” Lucy says. “Registered business as of… four days ago.”
“Shit.”
“Why the urgency on this?”
I come up with a lie. “I just heard the rumors and wasn’t sure if it was true. I’m worried about them running Dad’s business to the ground.”
Lucy scoffs. “They can try, but Dad’s been at this for a long time, and he’s built a ton of great relationships with loyal clients. Also, the entire world hates that family… besides Lane of course, but Cooper has that charming, hot, older, bad boy thing going for—”
“They broke up,” I cut in.
She squeals. “So what’s the game plan?”
I smile down at Laney. “No game plan. I’m just going to do it right next time.”
“There’s a next time? Shit. I have to go, Cameron’s asking for thirds.”
“Thirds?”
Lucy’s voice softens. “Well, he thinks because my chances of getting pregnant are so low, the more sex we have, the better our chances.”
Lane’s brow knits, her eyes questioning.
“Makes sense,” I say. “Enjoy.”
As soon as I hang up, Lane asks, “Lucy can’t get pregnant?”
I nod.
She sits up, forcing me to do the same. “What happened?”
I try to hide my hurt by looking away because it’s painful to think about Cameron and Lucy and what all they went through. Plus, I’ve never spoken openly about it before. “Remember last summer, when I went to New Jersey? Lucy was there and something happened and I found her bleeding out on the bathroom floor.”
“Oh my God,” Lane whispers.
“They rushed her to the hospital and long story short, she had to have an ovary removed and they told her it’d be difficult for her to get pregnant.”
“That’s so tough for her and Cameron to go through so young.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They separated for a while. It was hard on all of us.”
“They broke up? Why didn’t you say something?”
I shrug. “Because it wasn’t my story to tell and I wasn’t sure if Lucy wanted people knowing, but now you know.”
She pouts. “That’s so sad.”
I inhale deeply, go back to the problem at hand. “What the hell are we going to do about your dad?”
“I don’t know,” she murmurs.
“Lucy said something about loyalty. You think that’s going to come up when your dad makes a decision?”
She shakes her head. “I really wish it would, Luke. But that extra salary alone plus the twenty-five grand, that’s my entire four-year college tuition and that’s all he can think about. He still feels so guilty about it all.”
“I hate your mom,” I say.
“Me too.”
“I should talk to Dad. See what he has to say.”
She nods. “I want to be there when you do it.”
I look back at her, smirk. “You want me to stay with you tonight?”
“See? You already suck at waiting.”
I don’t stay the night. Instead, I go home and I fall asleep sniffing my pillow. Whatever. Felicity was a creep, too.
Chapter Twenty-Six
LOIS
“And I think, ultimately, that’s what true love is, you know? To want to be someone’s hero when they’re faced with villains. To want to be the one who saves them. To be their Wonderwall.”
Lucas’s words replay in my mind, over and over, and I think about the way he looked at me last night, the way his eyes met mine. Is that what he saw? Someone who needs a hero, needs saving? Because Cooper saw me as that, and we confused his need to be those things as love, and I fell for him—hard and fast—and it got me here. And as much as I don’t want to admit it, I’m making the same mistakes again, only this time with Lucas. Lucas—who’s standing a few yards in front of me, his back turned, looking out over the school parking lot. His hair’s in need of a cut and his hands are in his pockets, his triceps on display. He’d changed over the past few months, physically and otherwise. His body had gotten harder, his demeanor the opposite.
I sneak up behind him, kick the back of his shoe and he turns swiftly, his eyes narrowed. Then he smiles. “Sneaky Lane,” he says. “Sneaky Lane does sneaky things with… never mind. I didn’t see your car pull in.”
I joke, “You stalking me, Preston?”
We begin walking together, two of my steps for every one of his. He says, ignoring my comment, “Seriously, where’s your car?”
“In my driveway. I caught the bus.”
“Why? Something happen to it? I can check it out after school if you want.”
“What do you know about cars?”
He laughs. “Not a lot, but knowing you, you probably left your lights on and drained the battery.”