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“Great! This is just great,” he said, turning his back. “Paulie and Bryce are missing, and you two are up here, making out.” He gave them a second, then turned back with a disapproving look. “The Chicken King wants you to help find his little princess, Coll. Mind getting your ass in gear?”
* * *
THEREWASLOGIC, Lucas thought as he followed the O’Rourke twins downstairs, and there was...this.
It didn’t make sense to get involved with Colleen. She wasn’t a quick, sweet summer romance. She was forever. And he’d be leaving in too short a time, back to his life in Chicago, where he’d worked so hard to build something. A life. Friends. A career in which he was respected. He had family there, Steph and the girls, Frank and Grace.
And Ellen was, arguably, his best friend.
Colleen was Manningsport. She was the heart of the town, and she wouldn’t leave, and he wouldn’t stay.
He didn’t want to hurt Colleen again; he hadn’t wanted to hurt her ever.
But they were adults now. They could talk about things better. They could make something work.
Until Lucas had met Colleen, everything had always been...tainted, somehow. Complicated. His father had been a good man, and yet he’d dealt drugs. Ask the mother of a meth addict how good a man Dan Campbell was. Lucas’s memories of his mother were that she was too sick, too fragile, and he always had to be careful and quiet. Steph...of course he loved Steph, but until the past five or six years, she’d been something of a screwup. Bryce was the good-hearted idiot, and Joe was the uncle who couldn’t quite stand up to Didi. Ellen was the woman he’d made a life with because of their circumstances, and try as he might, he hadn’t made that work.
But Colleen had been perfect. Pure in the sense that...well, hell, he didn’t know exactly, but that’s what it felt like.
You didn’t just turn your back on that.
“Where is my daughter?” Ronnie Petrosinsky asked. He looked furious, as if Paulie were a fifteen-year-old who’d just slipped off with a college senior. “Is she with that idiot friend of yours?”
“I’m not sure, Mr. Petrosinsky,” Colleen said. “But they’re both adults.”
“They’re not adults!” the man yelped. “That Bryce is a complete loser, and my daughter is a very innocent and protected person, Colleen! I am not a happy man! If Bryce is compromising her, he’s in for a world of hurt. You think the Chicken King becomes king without a lot of bloodshed?”
Colleen bit her lip, trying unsuccessfully to look contrite (and not laugh, Lucas thought). “No, no. I respect that, Mr. Petrosinsky. But the little chicks have to leave the nest sometime, right?”
“Wrong!”
“But I don’t think they’d do anything—”
At that moment, a door slammed and in came Paulie and Bryce.
Paulie’s sweater was on inside out, and her face was pink. Bryce, too, was sweaty, grinning ear to ear. “You’re about to get killed,” Lucas murmured.
“Dude! Having a good time?” Bryce said.
“Paulina! Where have you been? What have you been doing?” her father barked. “What did he do to you?”
“Hey, Dad. I was showing Bryce the gym.”
“She can bench-press my weight,” Bryce said. “I mean, she canliterallybench-press me.”
“And you thought I’d drop you,” Paulie said, beaming.
“You were lifting weights?” Ronnie said.
“Yeah,” Paulie said. “Well, I was lifting Bryce.” Her face flushed, and she shot Bryce a little smile. Bryce returned it.
Well, well, well.
Colleen caught Lucas’s eye and lifted an eyebrow in an unmistakable “told you” expression. Had to hand it to her.
“Bryce,” Mr. Petrosinsky said. “You can leave now.”
“Dad!” Paulie said. “He’s my friend. Don’t kick him out.”
