AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.
“That family is a mess,” Dad warned.
“So is ours,” Landon pointed out.
“Women like that…they require a certain type of man.”
“What kind?” he asked. The answer mattered to him.
“The kind that can fix ‘em, Landon.”
His mom appeared in the doorway and leaned on the open doorframe. Her eyes were soft and understanding. “It isn’t her fault. Whatever caused her animal to disappear? It isn’t her fault.”
“Where do I take her?” he asked.
“If I was her?” Mom asked. “I would want to go where no one was talking about me.”
“Outside of Damon’s Mountains?”
Mom nodded once, and when he looked over at Dad, he nodded too.
“And stop sending her stupid dick pics,” Mom griped. “No woman actually wants to see that shit. Buy her some flowers instead.”
“Yeah, get her some flowers, son,” Dad said, hinting, his eyebrows arched high as he twitched his head toward the shovel he’d left on the porch.
Oh. Right.
Kirk had some rosebushes that apparently needed relocating.
Landon’s grin matched his dad’s.
He hoped Lucia liked neon-pink roses.
Chapter Three
“You haven’t been sleeping well,” Aviana Novak observed from across the table.
Lucia traced the red-and-white checkered squares of the tablecloth at Moosey’s Barbecue. “I’ve been having a vision. It’s the same one, over and over.”
“I know,” her mom said as she cut into a slice of brisket. “Your dad gets the same look in his eyes. Do you want to talk about it?”
The flash of flames consuming the trailers of Smashland Mobile Park cluttered her mind, and she shook her head hard. Talking about it wouldn’t fix what was going to happen.
“No point,” she said softly. “I would rather talk about anything else.”
“Fair enough. Guess who called me this morning asking for your dad?”
“Who?”
“Oh come on, it’s no fun if I just tell you. You have to guess.”
Mom’s smile was gorgeous. Lucia had inherited Aviana’s dark hair and bone structure. Out of all four of Beaston and Aviana’s children, she looked the most like her mother. Secretly, she’d always loved that. She was a daddy’s girl in many ways, but her mother was her shero.
She’d always been the one Lucia knew how to talk to. She understood her when the rest of the world didn’t really speak Lucia’s language.
Lucia took a bite of her ribs and held the bone in front of her, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully at her mom. “Weston.”
“Terrible guess, Weston calls all the time. Someone outside of the family.”
