Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
“We don’t need to bring it up,” Lo cuts in, his voice a blade again.
I tuck my arms against my ribs. “I thought…maybe…”
“Maybe what? That we’re even?”
“Well, yeah.” My breath smokes the frigid air. “Lily walked in on us. Luna and I walked in on—”
“I’ll stop you there.” Lo spins back to me, his gaze darkening. “This is my house. I’ll do whatever I want behind a locked door. What you and my daughter did—not equivalent.”
I’m struck into silence. ‘Cause he’s not wrong.
His jawline sharpens in the next breath. “Put the jacket on.”
Why? I frown at him like he’s jumped chapters in the strange book we’ve been writing together. “I thought you didn’t want me to have the jacket?”
“I also don’t want to murder you, Paul.” He points the spatula at my face. “Your lips are blue.”
I make a confused face at him, then thread my arms through the Columbia jacket. My skin doesn’t instantly warm. “Thanks for caring about my lips, Luna’s dad.”
His face twists through too many emotions to count. “Is that hard for you to believe?”
“Is what?”
“That I’d care about you?”
“Fuck no!! Where’s our D?!” Ryke’s thunderous voice can be heard inside, and my stomach takes a nosedive into the ground. I barely glance at the screen to see the Bills got a touchdown.
I’m cold—when maybe his words should make me feel warm, but it’s just weird. I run a hand against the back of my neck.
Lo grimaces at himself. “I never want you to see me and group me in with your dad—I never want to do anything to you that’d warrant that. But maybe I already have.”
I shake my head and smile. “Nothing about you two is similar. Don’t worry.” I zip up the jacket. “You’re a good dad to Luna, to Xander, to all your kids. One of the greats.” I touch my temple and point to him. “I’m mentally alright. You didn’t fuck me up. I’m not a child you raised. I’m the adult who’s dating your daughter.”
Lo stares harder at me, his brows cinching again. “Do you ever think about that night?”
A rock ascends in my throat.
That night.
The car.
Driving towards Lily and Luna. I blink. Lo and I are heightened in an annihilating helplessness. We can do nothing but listen to the call. We drive. We stop. We drive. We run. I blink back to the patio. The grill. The cold.
“Yeah, I think about it.”
“Have you talked to anyone?” he asks.
“I can’t unload that on Luna.” She doesn’t remember that night. I’ll never paint that horrific picture for her. I don’t want to.
“Farrow?” he asks.
“I dunno, briefly.” I stuff my hands in the jacket. My cheeks take the brunt of the biting wind. “Have you told Ryke about it?”
“Yeah, everything.”
My brows spring. “Everything? The car ride there?”
Lo flips over the burgers. “Yep. I threw up afterwards, too.” He shuts the grill lid. “My brother is pushy, but he’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Time and time again. Most days, I don’t feel like I deserve him, but that’s my own shit I have to work through.” He puts the spatula on a tray, then rotates back to me. “You don’t want to talk about it with anyone?”
“I don’t need to,” I tell him. “I appreciate that you care about me, I do, but I don’t need it.” I see that’s why he brought me out here. I’m not a Lost Boy that needs a Peter Pan. I barely even had time to be a child. “I’ve been doing alright all the years without that.”
Lo’s stare is intrusive like he’s trying to excavate my soul. “I don’t get you.”
I shift on my heels. “Not the first time you mentioned that.”
“No, I really don’t,” he says with a deep sincerity. “I’m trying to understand if I’m cataclysmically weaker than you or you’re just better at hiding it. Because how—how do you go through what we did and just shrug it off?”
I blink. My eyes scratch from the dry cold. I could make a joke. Tell him I’m just better than him, but that lie sinks heavy in my stomach like a thirty-ton weight. Dig deep enough, I know I’m not any stronger than Lo. I’m just used to running away from my demons.
Lo meets most of his like they have tee times every Monday. Whereas I try not to shake hands with any of mine.
I open my mouth. Close it. That thirty-ton weight has shoved into my throat.
Lo keeps staring. Keeps excavating. Then he says, “I care about you.”
Those four words plunge inside me, and I shake my head, on automatic.
“It bothers you that fucking much,” he says sharply. “To have someone care about you?”
I scrape a hand through my hair. Unable to swallow the lump.
“I was there, Paul,” he reminds me. “I. Was. There.” I see his breath. “You don’t have to tell me what you felt or what you went through. I was there.”