Page 196 of One Wild Wish

I had no clue why he’d come, but I didn’t care. August was in my childhood home, joking with me, offering me forgiveness. I hadn’t felt this giddy since I’d forced Rachel and Ainsley into Playworld’s bumper cars. (I’d cracked up while ramming them. Margaritas had been involved.) This wasn’t a giddy buzz, though, the tingling in my limbs more dizzying than cackle-inducing. Facing your worst mistake and greatest love in one fell swoop came with a bevy of side effects.

Functioning in a daze, I managed to open the front door. The Girl Scout I’d hoped for earlier still hadn’t appeared. In her place was an Asian man with a clipboard in front of his face and a battered red suitcase at his feet. He peered over his notes. “Ms. Hamilton?”

I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “Depends which Hamilton you’re after.”

He checked his notes and motioned to the suitcase. “Mary Hamilton. On behalf of Greyhound bus lines, I’m returning her lost luggage.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow at the roughed-up suitcase, one of those hard-shell types with dents and skid marks, the outside covered in band stickers. I snickered. “You must have the wrong Mary Hamilton.”

But I’d have paid money to see her at a Billy Idol concert. The bold stickers splashed across the suitcase would have horrified her.

He frowned at his papers and prattled off our address and the name again, scratching at his neck until a red mark bloomed.

“Look,” I said, cutting him off. “Mary Hamilton was my mother. She was a forty-five-year-old dental office receptionist who died last month, not a teenage band groupie. There must be a mistake.”

Again with the neck scratching. “Sorry…I should have explained fully.” He blinked as though he had a loose contact and nudged the bag forward. “This is from a batch of luggage we recently found, that went missing in 2001. They had been locked in an unused storage facility. We’re returning the lost items.”

Luggage from 2001? Was this guy for real? “My mother didn’t travel. I’d never even seen her pack an overnight bag. She barely—”

“Was she related to a Doris Hamilton?”

I stumbled back and braced myself against the door. “What did you say?” Doris was my grandmother. Linked by DNA, not any form of relationship, but still…I’d have fallen on my ass if it weren’t for the strong presence behind me. A large body. August with his hand on my lower back.

“Doris Hamilton,” the man repeated. “Her name was also listed on the luggage tag, but Mary Hamilton’s was the main contact.”

My mother.

Lost luggage.

Billy Idol.

2001 .

Breathing became an effort. “And you’re saying this was hers? From seventeen years ago?” I would have been ten or eleven back then. I’d have remembered having a band groupie for a mother.

“Mary Hamilton,” he said again, slowly, loudly, as though I was hard of hearing. “From 2001.”

If it weren’t for August looping his arm around my waist, I’d be eating pavement right now: face first, teeth chipped, bloody nose. Balance eluded me.

“Do you need us to sign something?” August took over, showing me where to write my name, behaving like a coherent adult. He led me inside afterward, just him and me and this shocking suitcase.

He gripped my hips and turned me to face him. “This is pretty nuts.”

“This isn’t nuts. This is like digging up the time capsule from your yard, only to discover the Barbie you disfigured by swapping her legs with Spider-Man’s had come to life to take over the globe.”

He smirked. “Barbie-Man was awesome.”

“Barbie-Man was a horror. Barbie-Man as an immortal bent on world domination would be catastrophic.”

He smiled fully, the creases around his mouth and eyes filling with affection. Wooziness swept through me again, and I clasped his wrists. Scents of sweat and clove and man drifted from him, an unfamiliar cologne. As a boy he’d smelled of fresh-cut grass and his mother’s fried chicken. To this day, I couldn’t pass a lawnmower or fast-food chicken joint without sighing.

He inched a fraction closer, his smile slipping into something darker. His warm breath skimmed my hair. I’d swear his grip on me tightened. “Barbie-Man was scary because you scalped her. You ruined what I was trying to create.”

Was that another dig? Him reviving how I’d ruined us ? He had said he’d forgiven me, but laying nine years of resentment to rest wasn’t easy, and I deserved every quip and wisecrack. Yearned for it, actually.

His grip on me grew hot and heavy—something else I yearned for. “If I’d known you had an artistic vision in mind, I wouldn’t have acted so rashly.” I might not have slept with Finch.

His thumb moved a fraction, a slight drag downward, and his attention fastened on my lips. “You would have defaced her one way or another. You were always impulsive like that.”