Our friend Lina stepped up. She was long-legged and edgy even in a sexy pantsuit and mouth-watering stilettos. She grimaced, then leaned in for an awkward hug. Lina wasn’t the touchy-feely type with anyone other than Nash. It made me appreciate the gesture even more.
Although if people didn’t stop being nice to me, the dam holding back the endless reservoir of grief was going to crack.
“This sucks,” she whispered before releasing me.
“Yeah. It really does,” I agreed, clearing my throat and forcing the emotions back down. I could do anger. Anger was easy and clean and transformative, powerful even. But the messier emotions I wasn’t comfortable sharing with others.
Lina stepped back and slid neatly under Nash’s arm. “What are you doing after this…shindig?” she asked.
I knew exactly why she was asking. They would show up for me if I asked. Hell, even if I didn’t ask. If they thought for one second that I needed a shoulder to cry on, a well-made cocktail, or my floors mopped, Naomi and Lina would be there.
“Mom booked an overnight stay at a spa with some friends, and Maeve is doing a family dinner tonight for out-of-town guests,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. My sister was hosting our aunts and uncles and cousins. But I had already planned to feign a migraine and spend the night letting out my sloppy torrent of sad in the privacy of my own home.
“Let’s get together soon. But not at work,” Naomi added sternly. “You take as much time off as you need.”
“Yeah. Definitely. Thanks,” I said.
My friends moved on down the receiving line to my mom, leaving their future baby daddies with me.
“This fucking blows,” Knox said gruffly when he hugged me.
I smiled against his chest. “You’re not wrong.”
“If you need anything, Sloaney Baloney,” Nash said, stepping in to deliver his hug. He didn’t need to finish the sentence. We’d grown up together. I knew I could depend on him for anything. The same with Knox, even though Knox wouldn’t actually offer. He’d just show up and grumpily perform some thoughtful act of service and then get mad if I tried to thank him.
“Thank you, guys.”
Nash pulled back and scanned the crowd that spilled out of the room and into the foyer. Even at a funeral, our chief of police was like a guard dog making sure his flock was safe. “We never forgot what your dad did for Lucian,” he said.
I tensed. Every time someone mentioned the man’s name, it felt like a bell rung in my skull, resonating in my bones as if it was supposed to mean something. But it didn’t. Not anymore. Unless “I hate that guy” counted as “something.”
“Yeah, well, Dad helped a lot of people in his life,” I said awkwardly.
It was true. Simon Walton had given back as an attorney, a coach, a mentor, and a father. Come to think of it, he and his greatness were probably to blame for my current marriage-less, baby-less existence. After all, how was I supposed to find a partner in life when no one measured up to what my parents had found in each other?
“Speak of the devil,” Knox said.
We all looked to the doorway at the back of the room that suddenly seemed dwarfed by the brooding man in an expensive-ass suit.
Lucian Rollins. Luce or Lucy to his friends, of whom he had few. Lucifer to me and the rest of his legion of enemies.
I hated how my body reacted to the man every time he walked into a room. That tingling awareness like every nerve in my body just got the same message at the same time.
I could deal with that innate, biological warning that danger was near. After all, there was nothing safe about the man. What I couldn’t handle was how the tingling turned immediately into a warm, happy, reflexive There you are, as if I’d been holding my breath for him to appear.
I considered myself to be an open-minded, live-and-let-live, reasonably mature adult. Yet I couldn’t stand Lucian. His very existence pushed every button I had. Which was exactly what I reminded myself every damn time he appeared as if conjured from some stupid, desperate place in my psyche. Until I reminded myself that he wasn’t the beautiful, rakish boy of my teenage bookworm dreams anymore.
That Lucian, the dreamy, hopeful boy who carried a burden much too heavy, was gone. In his place was a cold, ruthless man who hated me as much as I hated him.
“I trusted you, Sloane. And you broke that trust. You did more damage than he ever could.”
We were different people now. Our gazes locked in that familiar, uncomfortable recognition.
It was strange, having a secret with the boy I’d once loved and now sharing it with the man I couldn’t stand. There was a subtext to every interaction. A meaning no one but the two of us could decipher. And maybe there was a small, stupid, dark corner inside me that felt a thrill every time our eyes locked. As if that secret had bonded us in a way that could never be undone.