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“And?” she pressed when he didn’t clarify.
“And?” He frowned. “I’m sorry, sweetie. You’re going to have to be a little clearer if you want me to know what you’re asking. I’m not going to be of much help otherwise.”
Ella groaned. “Which Keagan is it?”Please don’t be Lucas. Please be anyone but Lucas.
“Oh, it’s Lucas Keagan.” He patted a very stunned Ella on her cheek, then pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning. If you’d like to get up with me, I’ll fix you some of those omelets you like.”
“Yeah, that sounds nice,” she mumbled with a flat voice. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Her father headed into his room and shut the door, turning the hallway and stairs completely dark. If he had noticed her reaction to his announcement, he didn’t show it.
Of all the bad luck! Why did it have to be Lucas? Why couldn’t it have been any one of his other brothers? Any of them that weren’t in her grade? She would have gladly accepted spending a hundred hours with any one of them.
But Lucas?
He hadn’t been her main tormentor. She really shouldn’t even be bothered by this news. But he’d been friends with one of those main bullies and had laughed at several jokes that were made at her expense.
Heat seared her cheeks at the thought of seeing him again. What would she say to him? On the one hand, she wanted him to know just how rude he’d been and how those little snickers were enough to put her on a crash diet.
But on the other hand, she wanted him to know just how far she’d come—just how successful. She wanted him to know that he didn’t drag her down like he probably hoped he had. Just because he’d laughed at her didn’t change a single thing.
Ella walked numbly to her bedroom. Without turning on the light, she moved through the darkened space with only the moonin the window to light the way. Her twin daybed sat pushed up against the wall. There was still a dresser with a vanity, an oversized chair in the corner, and a six-foot-tall mirror.
To anyone on the outside, this room looked like the normal room of a teenage girl who had grown up in a small community and moved on without incident.
But to Ella, there were reminders everywhere. She’d hated the mirror that reflected a person she’d wished could be different several times a year. Ella had hated that vanity and the space for makeup to help her improve her confidence. Unfortunately, all the makeup in the world would have never been enough to help her truly accept herself when she was younger.
Ella took a seat on the edge of her bed and let her eyes sweep over everything that brought both joy and pain. It had been too long since she’d come home. Her father had been right. But that didn’t mean she planned on staying for very long. In fact, she fully intended on creating a plan for this little project to be completed as quickly as possible.
The sooner she could leave this place, the better. And if that meant asking her father to get a dozen more volunteers, then so be it.
There was only one major disappointment she could see from her position.
As exhausted as she was before her father had shown up, something had changed. Now she was one hundred percent wired. There would be no restful sleep tonight. Already she could tell her mind would be racing with every memory she had of Lucas Keagan. And for every memory, there would be an equally frustrating insistence that she needed to prove herself to him even though she didn’t care one iota about him or what he thought of her now.
Not a single care.
Because if there was one thing she could count on, it was that he wouldn’t care either. In fact, she almost expected that they would end up coming to a head at some point during the next few months and she just wanted to make sure she was the one who would come out on top.
She had to.
Wasn’t that what they always taught in grade school? The bullies were supposed to get their comeuppance, and those they hurt were supposed to come out on top.
So that’s where she planned to be.
3
Lucas
Lucas wandered around the exterior of the barn. He paused, peering at some discoloring, then nudged it with the toe of his boot. The wood collapsed—or rather, it disintegrated. He jumped back and made a sound of disgust. If this is what they were dealing with, they might as well burn the whole thing to the ground and start from scratch. Whoever approved the grant to make this place like knew was an idiot.
He pulled out his watch and stared at the time. He’d never been early to anything a day in his life, but when Wade found out what he’dvolunteeredfor, he wasn’t about to allow the Keagan name to be sullied. According to Lucas’s oldest brother, they had done too much to improve their reputation. Lucas would be at the job site early every morning and put in a decent day’s work.
Lucas let out a groan. It was bad enough that he had to be out here helping to fix something that wasn’t his to fix. But to have to work side by side with the mayor’s daughter seemed tomake it even worse. He just knew she was going to report to her father about every little thing he did wrong every chance she got. If there was one thing he remembered about Ella Thompson, it was that she was a goodie-goodie. She followed all the rules, made straight A’s, and no one would ever catch her out after curfew. He was one hundred percent certain that she made it to every church meeting and every town cleanup, too.
She was his opposite in every single way he could think of, and he had zero interest in working side-by-side with her.
Lucas wandered toward the entrance of the barn. He hadn’t bothered trying to open the door. By the look of it, the track it was resting on hadn’t been lubricated in a while. There was only enough space for a person to slide through sideways to enter the barn. While there was a great deal of paint peeling and chipping, Lucas could see wide areas where the wood was still in decent condition. All they would need to do was sand it down, treat it, and repaint it. Looks like they wouldn’t need to burn it down after all.
