Sitting back, Luca shrugs. “I figured you wouldn’t, but you were there for me with Damien. I wanted to be there for you, even if you didn’t know it.” He glances at me. “You’re my best friend; you know that, right? I didn’t even know I needed someone like you in my life until I had you.”
My throat tightens. “You’re my best friend too. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about everything.”
“It’s okay. I forgive you.”
Relief rushes through me. “Thank you.”
Luca turns to me. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I didn’t know, really.”
“I almost lost you, Arlo. Hell, we all did. Austin was a fucking wreck. Jasper too, obviously. You’re alive. Everything else seems pretty silly in comparison.”
We fall silent. Almost dying kinda feels like a cop-out, but I’m not too proud to take his kindness and generosity.
“Deb has forbidden you from coming back to work for at least a month, but she would prefer six weeks.”
I shake my head. “I can’t afford to do that. I need to provide for the kids.”
“Oh.” Luca sits up straighter. “No one told you?”
“Told me what?”
“Holy shit. Deb took up a collection at the diner.”
What? “What does that mean?”
Luca grins. “She put, like, a jar on the counter and collected money for you.”
“I’m sorry… What?”
“We raised close to ten thousand dollars.”
My eyes nearly bug out of my head. “What?”
Luca shrugs.Shrugslike it’s just no big deal. “To be fair, most of it was Burt. He showed up with an envelope full of cash. Eight grand.”
My brain nearly short-circuits. “What the fuck. Why?”
“Why what?” Luca asks, eyebrows scrunching up.
Is he being serious? “Why did they do that?”
“That’s what we do in small towns, Arlo. We look out for our own.”
He says it like it’s obvious, but when I was growing up in poverty and scrounging and sometimes stealing to make sure we had a meal each day, it didn’t feel like my small town was looking out for their own. It felt like I was nothing, another nobody with druggie parents and no future. Maybe this is standard in Silverpine, but it’snotthe standard everywhere.
“I’m not one of your own, though.”
Luca laughs at that. Actually laughs. “Of course you are.”
I shake my head. “I’m a transplant.”
“You’re one of our own, Arlo,” he says again, his eyes turning serious as he stares at me. “You take care of the people of this town every damn day. Maybe not in the same way Austin and Jasper do, but you do it all the same. You talk to them, and you make them feel special. You’re one of us, and you belong here.”
His words hit me square in the chest, and for reasons I can’t explain at all, they make me cry. It would be fine if it was a little teary-eyed gratefulness. It’s not. I go from nothing to chest-heaving, ugly sobs between one second and the next. And just as quick, I’m being pulled into Luca’s arms.
He shushes me softly, stroking my hair, much like I did to him in the hospital the night Damien died.
