AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Bentley started to giggle and cover her mouth. “You should’ve seen them twitching and howling around the school parking lot… Oh my God.”
“It was terrifying at the time,” Bella cut in dryly. “From a simple dead battery to thinking I killed my twin brother and friend…I was bawling like a baby.”
Tears started to run down Bentley’s face as her laughter only grew, and she waved her hand in front of her eyes to dry them. “You should’ve seen her screaming… It was awful then, but so hilarious now. Chloe was standing there, asking them how many fingers she was holding up as if they’d gone blind.”
“And then Luke strolls up,” Beau carried on with the story. “Big, bad senior at the time. And he—”
“Wait,” Vaughn cut in and waved his hand to ask Luke, “you’reolderthan them?”
When he pointed between Beau and Gray, Luke frowned as if offended. Then he glanced around the entire room before answering, “Sonny, I’m older than everyone here.”
Which was true. Everyone older than him had families and children that they’d decided to stay home with tonight.
“No way,” Gracen’s wife gasped in astonishment. “I was sure you were at least Trick’s age, if not younger.”
“Crazy, isn’t it?” I asked, before tipping the bottle of my wine cooler against my aching forehead. “It’s like he grows more and more immature the older he gets, not the other way around.”
Some of the others laughed in agreement, and Luke lifted his gaze to me, but he said nothing.
He didn’t strike back with his usual need to argue. He didn’t scold me for my rudeness. He just silently took my insult and then glanced away again.
And it left me feeling…shitty.
Like really, deep-in-my-bones shitty.
I drew in a breath and swallowed, already wishing I could take the words back. But everyone around me was already moving on with the story, Beau once again taking over the events of that day as if nothing had happened.
All the while, it felt as if my stomach had just dropped out of me. And my heart started to ache as if he’d broken it all over again.
But why hadn’t he parried back, calling me out for my obnoxious behavior? Healwaysfought back. Even when I’d been stripped naked and bleeding on that basement floor, he’d argued with me. His arguing was like the only thing in life I knew I could count on.
I hugged myself, not at all liking the self-loathing sensation that Luke had left in me bynotbeing crude back to me.
Across the room, he idly spun his bottle on the counter he was leaning against, only to pick the glass container up and finally seem to notice it was empty. Then, he chucked it into a nearby trash can and turned away to wander toward the kitchen
“...Turns out, the battery wasn’t even dead after all. Lowe just used the wrong damn key that went to the trunk the first time he tried it.”
The room exploded with laughter, and I flinched in pain.
When I eased to my feet to escape, Lucy looked up in concern, but I flashed her a megawatt smile, and she smiled back before returning her attention to story time. From there, I was able to slip out unnoticed.
Luke was alone in the kitchen when I reached it. He had a new bottle in hand, but he was still browsing through the hordes of liquor that were on the counter as if he were trying to decide which one to samplenext.
When I appeared in the doorway and paused, he glanced up. I didn’t even have to speak. He was already setting the bottle in his hand back down as he said, “What’s wrong?”
“You’re my ride tonight,” I told him without preamble.
His eyebrows twitched in confusion. “Yeah…”
“Well, I want to go home,” I growled in a not-at-all-friendly tone. “Right now.”
He stepped toward me, his eyes growing alert and concerned. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I snapped. I was feeling shitty and small, and my head hurt. “I want to go home.”
Reaching out to grip my elbow, he nodded and answered, “Alright. Let’s go.”
But we’d barely turned toward the opening of the kitchen when my nineteen-year-old cousin Riley appeared.
