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No one had said those words to him in a long, long time.
“Say that again,” he whispered, just to make sure he’d heard right, and she laughed, and the sound was even better than her words.
She could do that—flip a switch like that. She’d be laughing with her friends on the green, eating an ice cream cone, and she’d see him walking to the hardware store, and her eyes would change from that slightly knowing, sly smile to unguarded and soft and full of so much that he could drown in it. Or the reverse, too—one July night they were lying on a blanket in the backyard of her house, just holding hands, and Lucas was trying to figure out a way to tell her he loved her, because of course he did, and of course she knew it. But the actual words...they were harder.
Just say it,his brain instructed.Don’t be such an ass. She tells you five times a day. You’re gonna blow this, you know.
But the words stayed locked.
Colleen rolled on top of him, looking at him, and there it was, that soft, gentle gaze that seemed to know every event that had torn off a chunk of his heart—his mom’s slurring voice as her ability to speak died little by little, his father’s arrest, the phone call that came from the prison at 2:36 a.m., asking if he was the son of Daniel Wakeman Campbell—every jealous thought he’d ever had about Bryce, every lonely minute spent trying to be invisible...Colleen’s love erased them all.
But all he could do was look at her, touch her face, and hope she knew.
She smiled just a little, almost as if she was answering his question. “I’m starving,” she said, and her smile grew in a flash, and his was born. Because yeah, it felt as if he had never smiled until her.
Her family liked him well enough—except for her father, which was understandable. Pete O’Rourke tolerated him, though, and Lucas appreciated it. Her mom exclaimed over his manners and always made a lot of noise when she was coming down the hall, giving them a warning to keep it clean. Connor watched him at school, and then seemed to mellow, realizing that Lucas wasn’t some player out to break his sister’s heart.
In late August, she drove him to Chicago, ten hours of them holding hands and barely talking, and dropped him off at the university, took an unnecessarily long time to unpack his meager belongings and walked around campus with him.
Then it was time for her to leave.
“I’ll call you in an hour,” he said, kissing her for the hundredth time.
“Nah,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m already over you. It was a passing thing, like a virus.”
He waited.
“Fine,” she said. “I love you.”
“Say it again.”
“Say it again,” she grumbled. “Not thatyou’veever said it once, mind you.”
He kissed her, feeling as if he was saying goodbye to the brightest, best thing that life had ever granted him, and Colleen wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him. “I love you, too,” she said, and her back hitched with a sob.
“Adiós, mía.”
“God, I love when you speak Spanish. So hot.”
Then she got into her car and drove off, tossing him a cheery salute that contradicted the tears that gleamed on her cheeks.
He stood there until her car turned the corner. Kept standing there until she pulled up again, because he’d known somehow that she’d drive around the block to see if he’d left. She got out of the car, laughing, and jumped into his arms again. “Go to your dorm, idiot,” she said. “Call me in an hour.”
So his plan became more complicated. Stay in college, make good grades, get a job that earned a lot of money, take care of Steph and the girls...and marry Colleen.
For three and a half years, it worked. Whenever possible, in between working as a security guard at a gleaming skyscraper downtown, between fixing Stephanie’s car/furnace/pipes and the occasional stint babysitting the girls, working summers for a construction company, keeping his GPA over 3.7, he saw Colleen. He’d hitchhike back to Manningsport when he could, or kick his roommate out for the weekend when Colleen came to Chicago. They called, emailed, instant-messaged, took advantage of whatever form of communication available to them.
She was still his. He was still hers. He wasn’t sure why she kept him, but she did.
And then, one weekend when he had scored a plane fare that let him fly to Buffalo-Niagara for seventy-nine dollars, the shit hit the fan.
Because he hadn’t been sure he could get the time off from work, he hadn’t told Colleen he was coming. Figured it’d be fun to surprise her; she was going to Ithaca College, not wanting to be too far from home, from her elderly grandfather, specifically. Connor was at the Culinary Institute, which was a few hours’ drive, and Faith was all the way in Virginia. Colleen put on a cheery front, but Lucas knew she was lonely. She’d told him she’d be home this weekend, and the stars had fallen into alignment with that flight.
He stopped for a cup of coffee at an airport kiosk, tore open two sugar packets, glanced up and saw a familiar figure.
Colleen’s father was kissing someone who was definitely not Colleen’s mother. Who was, in fact, a redhead dressed in a tiny white dress that just cleared her (admittedly great) ass and who wore high heeled shoes and was wrapped around Pete O’Rourke.
Both of them had suitcases.
