One of Luke’s eyebrows goes up. I start to explain that her name is Ruby, so she goes by Rouge, but then I catch myself and shut my mouth.
“Look,” he says, leaning against my taillights again. “Mom stopped treatment a couple of months ago. She doesn’t have that much longer. She misses having you around, and she’s never gotten why we didn’t end up together.”
Heat floods my face, and I have to look away.
“It made sense ...” he said. “Ithoughtit made sense, to just act like we were back on. She’d have something to be happy about. You’d be there. And then things could go back to the way they were.”
Things will never go back to the way they were.
“At least until she’s ... not here,” he amends.
I swallow.
He holds my gaze, and it feels like a stranglehold. I can’t look away.
“Please,” he says now. For one awful, desperate moment, he looks like he might cry. But he doesn’t.
He waits for me to respond.
I open my mouth to say no. I can’t—won’t—have never been good at lying to Mel. I miss her, yes, but it’s not fair. Not after everything that’s happened.
I can’t say anything ... we both know that I would sooner set myself on fire than to disappoint any of the Cohens.
I will always have a hard time saying no to Luke, but I would never forgive myself for doing it to Mel.
I don’t know what he sees, but Luke’s face relaxes after a moment.
I think he knows before I say it, even before I admit to myself what my answer will be.
He knows I will say yes.
6
THEN
Mel always gother way.
Correction: Mel almost always got her way.
It wasn’t fair to sayalways,when her Big Bad went from being that she was a sugar fiend to something that was going to kill her eventually and leave her sons motherless.
So, Mel mostly got her way. But as far as Ro was concerned, “mostly” was still entirely too much.
“Rowan says I’m acting like a dictator,” Mel said with a laugh as I changed lanes. “Because I’m making us celebrate that he’s now in the top three in the state! The topthree. I told him, if you’re not careful, I’m going to up the ante and we’ll start celebrating everything. Every win, every tournament, half birthdays, and half Christmases too.”
I giggled and looked over at Mel in the passenger seat. She’d been letting me drive more and more since she’d started her treatment. She was probably too sick to get behind the wheel most days, but she’d never in a million years admit it.
“I thought it would help,” I said, “that we were calling it a joint celebration for his ranking, plus Luke’s going away to college and my passing calculus.”
Naomi, who was in the back, harrumphed. “You think boys his age are programmed to care about anything but their own—”
“Nay!” Mel shouted before Naomi could finish her thought.
“Interests. I was going to sayinterests,” Naomi said.
Mel and I laughed.
“Sure you were,” I said. I didn’t want to think about anything else she might have said, any more than Mel wanted to. Rowan was too ... Rowan.
