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“Not at all?”
I licked my lips and tipped my head from side to side. “Shocking, right? Because everyone is supposed to be close to their families, like you and Eric and Lily and Mona?”
His tone softened. “Not everyone, Iris certainly isn’t. And don’t even get Amber started on her family. In fact,thatis a taboo topic.”
At least I wasn’t alone in that regard. Sighing a world-weary breath, I opened my mouth. “Add me in with the likes of Iris and Amber, family is a hard thing to discuss, but to answer your question. I’m semi-close to my brother.”
“Is he older or younger?” He slowed to a crawl as a group of people meandered across the road.
It was surface-level information I felt I could,and should, share. “Older. I have twin brothers but one of them just doesn’t get along with anyone, me included.”
I drifted into a memory from years back when Juniper had tried to drown me. He claimed it was an accident. I’d just jumped into the lake prior and hadn’t yet surfaced when his feet connected with my shoulders, shooting me further under the water, but he never offered to help even pushing me back down when I tried to surface.
“Are you serious?”
I blinked and focused on Landon; his face was contorted in a painful expression. “About having two brothers?” It wasn’t unusual.
“He tried to drown you?” He put the car into park with a violent stop, and I braced myself against the dash.
“Oh shit, I said that out loud? I hate it when that happens.” A current of embarrassment snaked through my veins.
“Holy shit, that’s just.” Both hands ran up over his face and through his hair. “Wow. It certainly explains your fear of water. How old were you when that happened?”
My heart hammered as I replayed the horrid memory, trying to throw a precise age on. I was about Vera’s age if I guessed correctly. “I don’t know. Around six. Maybe seven.”
“Jesus, I’m so sorry.”
“It is what it is. I can’t change it now, but I can prevent it from ever happening again.”
“I suppose.”
“Double life jackets each time I go near the water.” From the depths of my gut, I plastered on a weak, sarcastic smile.
He broke our connection and opened the door. “Want to sit and watch the lights? Maybe see the storm roll in?”
“Sure, I don’t mind storms.”
Glancing to the skies, the lightning flashed in the distance, the thunder ten seconds behind. Hand-in-hand, we ambled over to the first picnic table.
The area was quiet, aside from the waves crashing at the base of the cliff where the lighthouse broadcast its rotating warning beams.
I climbed on the table and stared out toward the ocean, searching the opposite skies for the moon and shivering from a lack of bonfire heat, or from the car. I wanted a sweater.
Landon sat close enough I tried to absorb the heat radiating from him. “What about your parents?”
“What about them?” I snorted.
“Anything. What would you like to tell me about them?”
Suddenly, it made a little sense about his own open-book anthology. He was not as interested in sharing as he was in getting information out of me. Probably, although highly unlikely, he found something out. Fine. I could play along. I’d done what Everest begged of me and dropped the news on Cedar’s lap. There wasn’t much more damage I could inflict. Let the chips fall where they will.
I sorted through the facts, debating what I could tell him without fear of serious judgment. Growing up as I had, with a life that was so different from most, it was easy to judge. I know because I did it of others who had a more traditional upbringing.
Pulling my knees to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them. “Well, my mother was absent most of the time, and my father did his best to raise me, as I was his little girl, but he was busy, doing carpentry work – trading his services for the food we ate and the clothes we wore.”
My gaze zeroed in on the beam of light rotating through the area.
“Sounds rough.”
