Lucas : A Preston Brothers Novel (Book 1)(45)
I take her home afterward, walk her to the front door. She’s blushing when she turns to me, and I take both her hands in mine.
“I had a really good time, Luke.” She moves our hands behind her back, leans up on her toes, kisses me once. “I like this,” she says. “It’s nice. You and me. Us.”
Say it, Luke. Tell her you love her. I swallow, nervous.
She says, “I think I’m going to drive myself to school in the morning.”
“Why?”
She motions to her car. “Because it’s just a car. It doesn’t mean anything. Cooper doesn’t mean anything. Not anymore.”
I get home, get into bed, and immediately shove my hands down my shorts. But then my phone rings and Laney’s name flashes on the screen and I force myself to wait. What’s another few minutes?
“Hey,” she says. “Remember that first week I spent with you, and then on Sunday night, I called and we spoke on the phone for hours?”
I take my hand out of my shorts. “I remember.”
“I guess I’m just missing you already. Lame, right?”
“No. I miss you, too.”
“Did you, um…” She takes a breath. “It kind of seemed like you wanted to say something when you walked me to the door, but you held off.”
“Yeah,” I admit, sighing. “I did.”
“What did you want to say?”
I run a hand through my hair, stare up at the ceiling. “You know what I wanted to say.”
She’s quiet a beat. Then: “Why didn’t you say it?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble. “I guess it felt wrong to say it, but it definitely feels right to live it.”
Chapter Thirty
LUCAS
For the next couple of weeks, Laney and I date… without the actual dating part. We sneak in a kiss now and then, a boob grab sporadically, but besides that we don’t have a lot of spare time. With me practicing four days a week instead of three and her working every possible shift she can get to earn the money she so adamantly needs to pay back, it doesn’t leave room for much else. Now Dad’s gone on a business trip for a week, leaving Leo and me in charge which means I’m sleeping in the main house and I’m starting to lose my damn mind.
My family responsibilities had always been a problem with my previous girlfriends; I didn’t spend enough time with them, I didn’t take them on enough dates, I didn’t answer every single phone call every five minutes and why the hell did I have to be home at seven, on the dot, every night? They didn’t understand. But Laney does. “Maybe I should stay here for the week while your dad’s gone. Help out when I can?”
“You’re sweet,” I tell her, leaning on the kitchen counter flipping through one of Mom’s old recipe books for something I can make for Lachlan’s bake sale tomorrow. “But I don’t want you sleeping in the apartment by yourself, and I don’t think Dad would let you sleep in here. Do we have cocoa powder?”
She checks the pantry. “Nope. What are you looking for?”
“Lachy’s got a bake sale, and I need to make twenty-five of something.”
“You’re going to bake?”
“I’m going to try,” I say, flip, flip, flipping the pages. “And I need to do it soon because I have so much homework to do and I need to help Logan with his and make sure he does his piss cup and oh! Maybe you can bring the cup to Misty if she’s staying at your house, it saves me a trip.”
Her nose scrunches.
“Yeah. I didn’t think that one through.”
“Where’s Leo?”
“Basketball practice with the twins.”
“Okay,” she says, “I’m not going to touch a cup with Logan’s urine in it, but how about I do the baking, you do your homework, and when the cookies are in the oven, I’ll help Logan with his?”
“Cookies?”
“They’re quick and easy and”—she closes the recipe book—“I don’t need a recipe and you already have all the ingredients.”
“Really?” I ask, my shoulders suddenly rid of the weight they’d been carrying. “Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
I hug her tight, squeeze her boob.
Twenty minutes later I’m at the kitchen table drowning in textbooks and websites, and Lane’s got the cookies in the oven. Logan walks in through the back door (God knows where he’s been) and sniffs the air. “What the hell is that? It’s like heaven in my nostrils.”
“Cookies,” Lane tells him. “And you can have one as soon as you finish your homework. Go get your books.”
“No,” he says.
She puts her hand on her waist, raises an eyebrow. Intimidating Laney is fucking hot.
Logan rolls his eyes, looks at me as he passes. “I liked her better when you weren’t dipping your cock in her.”
I stick my foot out, he trips over it, lands on his side. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
“Fucking mouth!” Lachlan yells. Seriously, where the hell do all these people come from?
Lane kneels in front of him. “Don’t repeat what people say,” she says.
“Don’t repeat what people say.” He giggles.
“Cheeky boy.” She ruffles his hair. “Can you go up to your room and build me a skyscraper with your Legos?”
“Yes, ma’am!” And he’s off, and Logan’s up, and Laney’s checking on the cookies, and I say, “You’re going to be a great mom someday.”
She smiles. “Well, I have your mom to thank for that.”
It hurts my heart to know that she didn’t have that, that the little time she spent with my mom is all she has for guidance. “Hey, did your mom contact you on your birthday?”
She laughs once, bitter. “Did you expect her to?”
I shrug. “I was hoping.”
Her head tilts to the side and she watches me a moment, then she takes the chair next to mine. “We’re basically strangers now, and I think it’s been like that ever since I left but I didn’t want to admit it. Sometimes I think about her, you know? And I wonder if she does the same with me. I get this romantic notion in my head that one day she’ll appear out of nowhere and realize she misses me. It’s so pathetic.”
“It’s not,” I say quickly, settling my hand on her knee. “She’s still around, so it’s always a possibility. With my mom, it was like… one night I fell asleep, and the next morning she was gone.”
“I’m sorry, Luke,” she says. And I know she is.
“I have this fear,” I tell her, and I don’t know if I should, but I do. “That one day, I’m going to wake up and you won’t be here. You’ll be gone, just like she was. And I know it sounds stupid but losing her… you saw what that did to me. You were there. And if anything ever happened to my brothers or to you…”
“Stop,” she whispers, holding my head in her hands. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
I tilt my head, kiss her palm. “You know how I feel about you, right?”
“I know.” She smiles. “Me too.”
Once everyone’s down for the night, I call Dad from my old bedroom. I catch him up on what’s been going on, assure him that everything’s okay. He asks about the bake sale, and I tell him Lane took care of it.
“Is she staying at the house while I’m gone?” he asks.
“No. I know the rules.”
He chuckles. “I figured you’d know that the rules don’t apply to Lane.”
“What do you mean?”
“The boys see her as a constant around the house. If it’s going to help to have her around she can stay with you.”
“But—”
“Only if you want her to.”
“It would help so much.”
“I trust you, Luke, and I trust her. Just don’t give me a reason to regret that.”
“Okay.”
“And if Logan has something to say—if he thinks my decision is setting some sort of precedent, just get him to pee in a cup every hour. My orders.”
I laugh. “Okay.”
“I love you, son, and thank you.”
“Love you, too, Dad.”
The words are so simple, so rehearsed, and yet I can’t even say it to the girl who holds my heart.
I text Lane, tell her the news.
She sends me back a ton of emojis insinuating hand jobs and blowjobs and wild monkey sex. I write back: With my brothers in the house?
She replies: Gross. But cuggles?
All damn night, baby!
I’d love to say that cuggling Laney is amazing, but I wouldn’t fucking know because some seven-year-old germ keeps crawling into bed with us at night and my girlfriend keeps letting him. Five nights she’s spent with us, and all five nights there have been three in the bed and the little one said, “I’m in the middle!” But really, I shouldn’t complain because having her around helps a lot. I don’t think the house has ever been this clean and organized, and we’re eating more than just pizza and take out, and the twins ask her if she can move in permanently. Brian and Misty have checked in twice, probably hoping we haven’t killed her or scarred her for life, but I wasn’t kidding when I told her she’d be a good mother. The one problem would be getting her up in the mornings. The only thing that works now is a reach-over-Lachy vicious boob grab and even then, it still takes her three coffees to function as a human.