Never (11 page)

In the split second that passed between us, we knew we were taking the first step toward rebuilding our relationship. We couldn’t go back, but we could have something different. Something good.

I cleared my throat, pushing the cart ahead a few feet. “I’ll grab the other stuff. Meet me up front?” I didn’t give her a chance to deny me, whipping around the corner—and nearly colliding with someone.

“Sorry,” I said, continuing on my way.

“Julia?”

The sound of the name I’d used before I ran away to Seattle hit me like a ton of bricks. I gripped the cart, reminding myself to breathe. To keep moving and hope there was someone else named Julia.

I took two steps, praying harder than I’d prayed in a long time.

“Julia Stevens?”

My breath caught in my throat as panic set in. This was one of the reasons I even went out when I was home. Only a few people from my high school graduating class ended up at North Carolina State University and we didn’t travel in the same circles. There was no one to rub my nose in the mess I’d left behind. No one to remind me of what I ran away from.

I couldn’t move. My vision blurred and I prayed that whoever it was would take my strange reaction and outright ignoring of my name as indication that I didn’t want to engage in a conversation.

But she was oblivious. “Oh my gosh, it’s you, isn’t it Julia?”

I turned around and recognized her instantly. Meghan Wilder. The loudest and most aggressive friend in the group I used to hang out with.

Anyone else would have spared me this awkwardness. Not Meghan. Her sense of privacy was non-existent. When she threw her arms around my neck, I realized her sense of personal space was also lacking. The smell of her sporty, vanilla musk perfume assaulted my senses along with her glossy blond hair as she hugged me tight, nearly breaking bones despite the fact that she was the smaller of the two of us.

She held me at arm’s length, ivy green eyes drinking me in like I was a vision. “I can’t believe it’s you! I heard...” She trailed off, finally blushing with the realization that this wasn’t some amazing reunion for me. I’d gotten over the shock and remembered our last conversation.

Me and Meghan were never close. She was the roommate of one of my friends, so she came around every now and then. When I first met her she’d told me I was gorgeous, but as an accusation, not a compliment. I”d been taken aback, but over time there was a charm in her bluntness. She didn’t BS or sugarcoat things. Except for that day.

My knocks reverberated down the hall. This is the last place on earth I want to be, but no one else returned my calls.

When I saw Alice earlier, she’d smiled and rushed off, claiming she had a class even though we both knew that was a lie. But Meghan didn’t lie. She never lied.

The door swung open and I could tell that she wouldn’t have opened it if she knew it was me.

“Julia—”

“Is everyone avoiding me because of the video?” I bit my lip, preparing myself for the blow. Needing to be put out of my misery.

But her lips pulled up at the sides. Painfully. “No, of course not. Don’t be silly.”

“I tried facebooking you,” Meghan offered, her nervous tone cutting through the memory. “I wanted to apologize.”

The girl that didn’t have BS in her dictionary wasn’t the girl standing in front of me. She was lying to me. Again.

I played along, pushing down my anger. “Right. I should probably get going.”

“You should know, Jared finally admitted that you didn’t know about the video,” she said, her eyes lowered, like guilt wouldn’t let her look me in the face. “He was completely drunk of course, and he denied it in the morning, but no one believed him. And everyone...everyone feels really terrible about it.”

I’d played this out in my head a milion times. Running into one of the people that abandoned me. In the fantasy, they always said exactly what Meghan was saying. How sorry they were. That they’d been wrong to desert me. It always ended with this rush of emotion where we’d hug and have a good cry and everyone lived happily ever after. But now that I’d heard her apology, I didn’t feel relief or closure. I didn’t feel anything.

“It’s too late for apologies, Meghan.”

Her face fell, but she nodded. “I totally understand.”

I pushed the cart away from her, away from the hurt and a painful, sobering fact.

I needed closure—but I didn’t know if I’d ever get it.

Chapter Thirteen: Lucas

I stepped onto the  balcony, knowing instantly that it was a bad idea. I swallowed my sense of self preservation and moved to the ledge. I gripped it, ordering myself to take in how the sun filtered through the branches of the tree, creating prisms in the water dancing from the sprinklers. After the permanently overcast Seattle sky, coming home to blue skies was a welcome thing. But coming home meant something else besides sunny weather. It meant memories. Memories I refused to acknowledge even though everything in me told me to cut the crap and get on with the real reason I’d come out here.

Just turn your head a few inches to the right.

I saw the tennis court, the pavement and lines crisp even though I knew it had been years since anyone actually played on it. My eyes shot past their true destination, looking out at the pool, the waterfall vomiting perfectly blue water. I bristled when I saw Dad stretched out in a lounge chair like he didn’t have a care in the world.

He still looked painfully uptight in a polo and khakis, probably reading Fortune or Wall Street Journal on his iPad. I knew the timing of his quarterly three-day weekend was suspiciously timed to correlate with my Fall Break, despite Mom’s insistence that it was just a coincidence. Every move he made was calculated, engineered to meet some end. There were no coincidences as far as Conrad McNamara was concerned.

I watched his eyes pull from the screen of his tablet. His whole demeanor changed when he looked at the one building I’d been avoiding since I pulled onto the estate.

My hold tightened, the iron railing almost malleable in my fierce grip. How dare he even look in that direction after what he did? Was he daydreaming about stealing away, missing the thrill of preaching family and honor to us while he selfishly disregarded us for a warm hole?

I tore my gaze from him, slices of guilt stinging like a papercut. Juliet’s mom was more than that to him. Hell, she was more than that to
me
.

Even as a kid I was perceptive, and I knew that everyone else on staff except Juliet’s mom saw me as an indulgent brat. It didn’t matter that I shied away from all of the swag that came along with being a McNamara. My little brother and sister shut down toy stores with their hauls, racking up bills that cost as much as an economic car. Even though I had a mole hill to their mountain of barely played with toys and trinkets, I still got that tight little grin, my last name lumping me together with them regardless of our differences.

But Mrs. Stowe gave me the the eye when I tracked dirt inside when she’d just finished mopping. When I came over to Juliet’s Mrs. Stowe put me to work, making me clean up behind myself and load the dishwasher. She always asked me if I finished homework before we played.  Sometimes she even played Xbox with us.

Mrs. Stowe treated me like a normal kid. Even though the part of me that warred with my father wanted to believe he just used her for sex because he couldn’t possibly care about anyone but himself, I’d seen the truth with my own eyes. She was a good woman. And he’d loved her. He probably still did.

“Fuck,” I whispered hoarsely, looking at the house.

There were so many good memories. Climbing the oak tree with Juliet and feeling like anything was possible. I crossed my arms, my finger tracing the feather thin scar above my elbow. Remembering the day I got it so clearly that I smelled the freshly mowed grass. Tasted the fear.

“Hurry up, slow poke!” I goaded her, glancing over my shoulder and grinning when her eyes narrowed to slits.

I felt around for the sturdy limb to the right and pulled myself up with a grunt. When I steadied myself and started to reach for the next one up, an ‘ahem’ stopped me cold.

She was a branch below me, face flushed and grin broadening when she saw my shock.

“Who’s the slow poke now?”

“You’ve been cheating,” I said with a laugh. “It is right outside your house.”

“Boys are such sore losers,” she winked. She reached for the next branch and gasped. For a split moment, I forgot I was hanging precariously in a tree. I turned to see if she was okay and by the time I realized I’d let go of the branch, I was sailing through the air. Wind whistling through my ears. Heart stalling in my chest.

Pain exploded all over me and there was no air in my lungs as I looked up at the blue sky. Her head popped into view, lips working but nothing coming out.

I frowned as I reached up and touched a thin red line of blood oozing from a cut above her eyebrow.

My voice was tiny and far away. “You okay, Julie?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “Am I okay? You’re the one that just fell out of a tree!”

I let go of the railing, pushing away the memory. This was exactly why I didn’t want to remember. Remembering just led me back to the now. It made losing her that much harder.

I tried to soundlessly close the French doors, but my feet still echoed on the stairs leading to the second floor. Two timid knocks sounded at my door and I dropped onto the couch, shaking my head.

“What is it, Mom?”

She opened the door and came in with a bottle of Perrier and a smile that nearly blinded me. “Thought you might be thirsty.”

I was, but I just shrugged a shoulder. She put it on the coffee table in front of me, wringing her hands before she went to the patio, looking out, her stance hardening.

I knew what that house meant to me and Dad, but it must have meant something darker her. How hard it must have been to know Dad snuck away, cheating right under her nose? And even when she sent the woman away, to be reminded of the betrayal every time she looked out the window?

She faced me, fiddling with her pearls. “Are you hungry? Pilar made some of her famous chicken and red curry.”

I wasn’t. “Not really.” When she gave me those glassy blue eyes, I gave an inch, picking up the water. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, dear.” She gestured at the armchair. “Mind if I sit?” I didn’t bother saying no because she was already down, dropping herself into it’s arms like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. “Haven’t really had a chance to talk since you got home last night.” She scooped blond bangs behind her ear. “I take it you had a pleasant flight.”

“As pleasant as a flight can be,” I said shortly.

She crinkled her nose. “We could have sent the jet for you. I have some not-so-fond memories of the commercial flying experience.”

“You do?” I took a swig of water. “I figured you just pretended it didn’t happen like every other unpleasant experience in your life.”

I expected the jab to roll right off her, but her eyes hardened, her voice dark with anger. “How long, Lucas? How long are you going to punish me?”

I glared at her defiantly, wanting to say, ‘As long as it takes’ but not able to get out the dig. Ignoring her when we were in different states was easy. Dismissing her face to face was harder than I ever could have imagined.

I put the bottle down. “Do you know how hard this is for me? Sitting here and making small talk with you?”

“It’s probably as hard for you as it is for me,” she said softly, looking away but not before I saw a tear dash down her cheek. “Tell me what you want me to do, Lucas. How do I fix this?” Before I could answer, she sat up a little taller, invigorated. “How’s your car doing? Bill Mosley over at BMW always keeps an eye on things for us and if you’d like, I could get you the new S converitble before it goes on sale to the public.”

Was she serious? Was my mother honestly trying to bribe me?

“A car?” I said incredulously, anger turning the blood in me into molten lava. “You think a new car will fix this?”

“I...” She blushed. “You misunderstand me.”

“No, Mom,” I said acidly. “You misunderstand
me
. And I know you better than you give me credit for.”

I don’t know why I was surprised.  Even when I was a kid, arguments were solved by giving me things. Toys, clothes, memoribilia. Money was always the default solution to every problem in her eyes.

The only thing I could remember my mom ever doing just for me, just because was Galapagos Islands. We chartered a boat and lost ourselves in the scenery, the wildlife, the water. Two whole weeks away from everyone. Back then I was sure I’d be a scientist and I didn’t learn until much later that I was studying business, whether I wanted to or not.

My jaw tightened. The date we’d gone...it was a few weeks after Juliet left.

It all came back to me, bitter and painfully clear. I’d been an asshole to everyone in the weeks after the Stowes left. I started skipping my classes, I snapped at anyone that looked at me sideways, and I was constantly arguing with my mom and dad. When they said they wanted to have a talk with me, I was sure they were shipping me off to boarding school. I was floored when they asked me if I wanted to go on a trip.

I looked at my mother, her words jumbled, despite her raised volume. I wanted to plug my ears, to shut her out. Everything that came out of her mouth was a lie.

“Lucas, I-I’m not trying to put a monetary band-aid on this,” she said, wringing her hands in frustration. “I’m just trying to make you happy.”

“You want to make me happy?” I spat, anger whipping in my chest. “Then tell me the truth.”

She nodded eagerly. “Okay! Ask me anything.”

“Did you take me to the Galapagos Islands to make up for sending Juliet and her mom away?”

Her face paled, all the color draining from her complexion. “L-Lucas—”

“Just answer the question.”