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Luke reached out with his fingers and touched my chin. Gently, he tilted my face upward until my gaze met his.
“This wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
“I—I know.”
“This was on her, Kayla. This was on Elizabeth. You know that, right?”
His eyes swirled, shifting in the muted daylight. They were as captivating as I remembered them. Everything else about him was the same too, from his six-foot-five frame to the high cheekbones that framed out his gorgeous face. Luke had the model good looks of a Scandinavian surf God. Anywhere on the coast of California, he’d have fit right in.
“Now…” he said, nodding back to the house. “Do you wanna go in?”
My brows crossed in confusion. “Go in where?”
“Your house.”
“That’s not my house.”
“Itwasyour house,” he smiled. “Shit, as far as I’m concerned it’ll always be your house.”
“Yes, but—”
“I know the woman who owns it now,” he interrupted. “Nice old lady. I pick up meals for her sometimes, when her arthritis gets so bad she can’t cook.”
I blinked, looking back at him with all new respect. “Y—You do?”
“Not just her, but other people too. I help out where I can,” he shrugged.
I should’ve been shocked, but in a way it made perfect sense. Luke had always been generous to a fault, even when we were young. It was one of the things that had… well…
Driven you to him?
“I told her you’d be in town,” Luke went on, “and you might want to see your old digs.” Smiling, he extended a hand. “C’mon.”
I swallowed again, and the lump was no longer there. Reaching out, I slipped my hand into his. It fit as perfectly as it always had.
Ten very strange steps later, I was knocking at my own front door.
Six
KAYLA
Walking the halls of my childhood home was like stepping back in time. There were things that were very different; paint, furnishings, stuff like that, but there were also things that were very much the same. Things like the wallpaper in the kitchen, that I’d helped my mother put up when I was nine. The notch in the doorway I’d chipped out with my handlebars, while trying to ride my bicycle in the house.
All these things rightfully belonged to me, tous. To my little family of three, as small and insignificant as we’d been.
“Take all the time you need sweetie,” Mrs. O’Shea said with a warm smile. “I’ll be down in the den, doing cross-stitch.”
Luke was certainly right about her being a nice old woman. Mrs. O’Shea was a short, bespectacled old lady, as sweet as she was harmless. If anyone had to end up with this place after the bank foreclosed on it, it might as well have been her.
I crossed into the dining room, where I’d done thousands of hours of homework. Trudged slowly up the same staircase Elizabeth and I had skidded gleefully down in our sleeping bags, whenever we had a sleepover.
“You okay?”
Downstairs, Luke had laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. Now that hand slid to my waist, pulling me close.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “I’m good.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?”
