Promise Me Nothing (Hermosa Beach Book 1)

by Jillian Liota

  He lifts a hand to give me a small wave as he steps up the curb and walks towards me. He’s all casual beach attire in a pair of trunks and sandals, his shaggy hair making him look exactly like the beach boy I’d pictured him to be.

  And then a smile stretches across his face.

  A face that looks so much like my dad’s that my mouth actually drops open.

  I saw a photo of Lucas when we Facebook friend-ed each other, and I knew the instant I saw that picture that he truly was related to my dad.

  But seeing him now, in-person, as he walks towards me with an expression that reminds me of the man who used to tuck me in at night when I was a little girl…

  It’s a hard pill to swallow.

  “Hannah?”

  He says my name again and I manage to finally give him a little bit of a grin and a half wave from where I sit on the ground, sprawled out with my few belongings.

  I must look absolutely ridiculous.

  “Ye… Yeah. Yeah, that’s me,” I say, my throat choking on the words. I scramble to my feet, dusting my hands off on my shorts, then stick a hand out to him. “Lucas, right? Nice to meet you.”

  He grins at me, an easy smile full of a sincerity that surprises me. And then he does the last thing I expect.

  He steps forward and pulls me into a hug.

  A tight one. The type of hug you expect to get from people who love you. The type of hug I haven’t felt in quite a while. Since the last time I saw Joshua.

  Not knowing exactly what to do with myself, I stand there stiffly, finally raising my forearms so I can give him a light tap on the back.

  He chuckles, then steps away.

  “Not really a hugger, huh?”

  I lift a shoulder, giving him a small smile. “It’s been a while, I guess.”

  His face falls slightly. “Since you’ve been hugged?”

  I nod.

  His expression stays confused. But I don’t offer him any more than that. Besides, I’m sure the last thing he wants to hear when he’s first meeting the sister he never knew about is the nitty-gritty of what happens in the system.

  It’s not even something I want to hear, and I’m the one who lived through it.

  I lug my backpack over my shoulder, using it as an excuse to look away from him. This causes him to spring in to action, reaching over to grab the duffle that’s resting at my feet.

  “So, is this all you brought?” he asks, walking us towards his swanky blue truck, which sits still running at the curb.

  “It’s all I own.”

  He chucks my duffle into the back with a little more force than I’m expecting, then plants both hands along the rim of the bed and lets out an exhale, his shoulders tight.

  Then he turns and looks back at me, and gives me a smile. “You know, I heard being a minimalist is pretty freeing. Maybe I can learn something from you.” Then he pops open the passenger door for me and rounds the front to climb in to the driver’s seat.

  I don’t have the heart to tell him that I’ve never been a minimalist, so I keep my mouth shut and just get in.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” he says, giving me that same comfortable smile as we pull out onto the road. “Traffic was horrible.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I say, not wanting to focus on his tardiness. The last thing I want to do is make him feel bad when he’s going out of his way to pick me up. “I wasn’t waiting that long.”

  He makes a light humming sound. Not an agreement, just an acknowledgement.

  “So how was the trip? It was like, eight hours or something, right?”

  I let out a sigh. “A little over seven. And it was exhausting. I haven’t sat in one place for that long before.”

  “Well, I’ll try to get you back to the house as quickly as possible so you aren’t sitting for too much longer,” he says. Then his eyes drop to my shirt. “And once we get there, I’ll see if I have a better shirt for you to wear.”

  My eyes drop, taking in the Diamondback shirt. “Huh?”

  “This is Dodger territory,” he says, and I finally pick up on the teasing in his voice. “I’m not sure I can have a D-Bag supporter staying in my house.”

  I allow myself to smile. “I don’t really watch baseball.”

  “Me neither. But if you’re staying with me, I gotta make sure you fit in.”

  Nodding, I look back out the window and watch as we drive through Downtown Los Angeles. It only takes a few minutes to get onto the freeway, and holy moly was Lucas not joking when he said traffic is bad right now. It’s horrendous.

  I remember when I was younger there was some big thing on the news about freeways in California. Carmaggedon, I think it was called. Bumper-to-bumper as far as the eye can see. Exactly what things look like right now.

  And then I face the realization that I’m tired and starving and facing another long ride before I have a moment to myself.

  I’ve never been particularly good at small talk. Sienna said the girls at our old school used to call me The Cactus because I was so prickly. I struggle with jokey-joke stuff and just kind of… enjoy silence. It works for me, but other people don’t seem to get it.

  I glance at Lucas out of the corner of my eye. He seems nice enough as he sits there, singing lightly with the music coming from the radio. But I can’t think of anything to say. So I sit like a mute, my mind in a jumble, just looking in to the neighboring cars as we bob and weave and pass them, then fall behind. It’s an endless crawl.

  “Is it always this bad?” I finally ask about fifteen minutes later, having thought about no less than a hundred things I could say to not remain a mute.

  Lucas shrugs. “Pretty much. Although, we’re about to breeze through it.”

  My brow furrows in confusion until I see Lucas pull off to the left side, into two lanes that are completely free from traffic. And then suddenly we’re going eighty miles per hour and blowing past everyone.

  I smile, looking over my shoulder as we leave everyone behind. “This is awesome.”

  “Yeah it is.” He points at a little box that sits on his dashboard. “I don’t mind paying extra to drive in the FastPass lanes. There’s nothing in the world more satisfying than driving past everyone else stuck in traffic.”

  “We don’t have a lane like this in Phoenix, so when it’s time for traffic, you’re just sitting in it for forever. I mostly rode the bus. But I can’t imagine sitting in something like this every day.”

  At Lucas’ silence, I take a peek at him and catch his eyes on me.

  “What?”

  He shrugs. “I just think that’s the most words you’ve said to me at once since we started talking. I’m glad. I was starting to worry that you were, I don’t know, afraid to talk to me or something.”

  I blush, the heat of my embarrassment rising to the space between my cheeks and my ears. Whenever I’m embarrassed, I blush and then start sweating. It’s really unpleasant, but even worse in an environment where the sweat doesn’t evaporate into thin air.

  “Hey, I just meant I’m glad you feel like you can say something to me. Anything. The last thing I want is for you to get here and feel like your lips have to be zipped.”

  I nod, give him a tight smile and look back out the window, which is where my eyes stay for the majority of the ride. We change freeways after a little while, get stuck in more traffic, then finally pull off.

  I already did a Google street search to make sure I wouldn’t be living in an area worse than where I was living in Arizona, so I know he lives in a big ass house right on the water in a town called Hermosa Beach. But really, that’s all I know about where he lives.

  When we talked on the phone before I agreed to move, he told me a little about his life. Just enough to make me feel like coming to stay with him would be a good thing.

  I know his mom is a work-a-holic who manages ‘talent’ for some big agency and that Lucas is basically on his own even though he still lives at home. I know he has a girlfriend named Remmy that is finishing
up college in Santa Barbara.

  So, if my assumptions are correct, it will be mostly just the two of us this summer, since his mom and girlfriend aren’t around much. Which works for me. I haven’t had parents in almost ten years. The last thing I want is a mother-type hovering over me and resenting me because of something my dad did several decades ago.

  “You ever been?”

  I realize he’s been talking as we breeze past all of the traffic and I totally zoned him out.

  I shake my head. “Sorry, my mind wandered. What did you say?”

  He gives me that charming smile again. “I asked if you’ve ever been surfing before.”

  I laugh. “Definitely not. Unless you count boarding sand dunes in Yuma, which I doubt. And really, that was more like sledding, though I wasn’t entirely horrible at it.”

  He nods his head, turning his eyes back out to the mess of cars surrounding us.

  “I’m assuming you do? Surf?”

  He lifts a shoulder. “You could say that.”

  “How long have you been doing it?”

  “Since I was like, maybe four or five. My dad taught me.”

  His words are innocent, but we both feel the guilt of the marks they leave behind. Because what isn’t said when he shares that his dad taught him to surf is that my dad taught him how to surf. My dad was the one who got into the water with him and showed him what he was doing.

  Or I guess… our dad, if I want to be technical.

  Which I don’t.

  In our first conversation, we tried to figure out the timeline from way back. From when we were kids and the lives we were living didn’t exactly match up to what was actually happening.

  At least for me.

  But apart from knowing the year it happened and a few of Lucas’ scattered memories of the times dad visited him during his childhood, we don’t have much else to go on. Joshua never talked about it that I can remember, and Lucas says his mom is like a vault of information unwilling to open.

  The only thing I’m certain of is that there was some kind of affair. And knowing that my parents didn’t have the idyllic relationship that I’d always imagined them having is definitely an adjustment.

  How do I look back on the life of the man I idolized and realize it was all a lie?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hannah

  I had an idea in my head of what Lucas’ house looked like. No, scratch that. I literally looked online to see what it would look like. From the maps view, I’d been able to tell it was big, and figured it was fancy since it has a beach view.

  But still, nothing could really prepare me for seeing the real thing, up close and personal.

  When we got off the freeway, Lucas had rolled down his windows, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to an old Foo Fighters song. He’s an energetic guy, and really into music, that’s for sure.

  But it wasn’t until we passed Hotel Hermosa, a mammoth of a place that seemed to welcome you to town, that I smelled the ocean for the first time.

  There was something familiar about it. Something that stirred an emotion inside of me that I wasn’t ready to feel.

  Salty and sticky and a little bit fishy. The ocean air wrapped around my throat and squeezed, keeping me from saying much as we cruised down and then up and then down again, over a handful of small hills as we got closer and closer to the water in dips and waves.

  And then the road opened and we turned onto the main drag of Hermosa Beach, a long stretch apartments and small houses to my left across the large street, and the large beach-front homes side-by-side to my right.

  And then Lucas slowed, clicked something on his visor, and I realized we were here.

  And now, I can’t stop staring, my mouth slightly ajar as I gape up at the absolutely enormous mammoth that I’ll be calling home for the summer.

  What the hell did I get myself into?

  “It’s beautiful,” I say, finally managing a few words, though they honestly don’t do this place any form of justice.

  Glancing over at Lucas, I find him looking at me with a microscopic smile on his face. But he doesn’t say anything. He just finishes pulling his truck into the three-car garage, slipping in between a car and SUV. He turns off the engine, leaving his windows down, and slips out.

  Before I can even open my door, Lucas has rounded the back and grabbed my duffel bag from the bed of the truck. He taps twice on the frame of the car above where I sit, then tilts his head towards a door in the corner of the garage that I can only assume leads inside.

  “Come on, sis,” he says with a smirk, then walks off. “Let’s get you settled in.”

  I slide slowly out of the front seat, clutching my backpack against my chest, and follow him inside.

  I’ve never envied wealth. Never felt like I missed out on something as a child because we lived in a rented apartment in a cheaper part of town. I never felt ashamed of the fact we’d lived on food stamps for a few months when I was a kid when my dad lost his job. And when everything in my life imploded, I might never have wished to live in foster homes, but for the most part I was still kept fed and sheltered.

  So, looking back, there wasn’t anything I wanted that I didn’t have, apart from my own family. Because I’d never been taught to desire anything more.

  Some of how I felt is probably because I didn’t really know what wealth looked like when I was a kid. And then I didn’t care about it as I grew older. Sure, you see Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s family on magazines at the grocery store and wonder what it might be like to have unlimited spending power. But nothing like that feels real, tangible, something you can feel with your own hands.

  But this? Right now? The sprawling entry that leads through a home where I can see the sun setting in floor-to-ceiling windows on the other end?

  This makes me embarrassed of the food stamps as a kid, the foster care as a teen, the apartment I could barely afford as an adult. Everything about my life screams that I’m lacking in the things that Lucas seems to have in abundance.

  Like money. And confidence. Complete comfort in his own skin and a belief that he deserves to take up space in this world.

  I hate how it makes me feel.

  My host doesn’t seem to notice, though, as he walks in and casually chucks his keys onto a small entry table, setting my bag down and heading to the right.

  “Want something to drink?” he calls out, and I force myself to close my mouth and follow him in.

  “I’m not really thirsty,” I say, clutching my backpack tighter against my chest, my eyes flying all over the place, trying to swallow everything I can as if I only have seconds to take it all in.

  “Are all the houses in the area this big?” I ask, hating myself for being curious but still unable to keep myself from asking.

  “Actually, no. Good catch,” he says, leaning against the counter and crossing his legs, his hands braced behind him on the marble. “This house is a double lot, so it really is an obscene amount of space.”

  I nod, still glancing around.

  The kitchen is large and modern, with stainless steel and double ovens, fancy marble and antiqued white cabinets. It opens up to an expansive living room with a flat screen on the wall and multiple overstuffed couches. A glass dining room table separates the kitchen from a wide balcony that looks out to the beach.

  “Welcome, officially. Do you want to snoop around on your own, or do you want a real tour?” Lucas asks, chuckling. “We have people here all the time but if you’re going to be living here I guess I should make sure you know where everything is.”

  I manage to nod again, setting down my backpack on the floor near the kitchen island.

  “Let’s go downstairs first.”

  “I thought this was the ground floor.”

  “It’s the floor that’s at street level, but the house is built in to an incline. So the actual ground level is downstairs and opens out to the beach.”

  I smile at Lucas and try to push away some of my initial discomf
ort. “I feel like I’m on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

  Lucas laughs, shakes his head and motions for me to follow him downstairs.

  When we emerge from the staircase, we enter what looks like a living room, fairly similar to the one upstairs, with a large TV and lots of couches. Though there’s also a pool table, a long bar stocked with alcohol and a novelty juke box in the corner.

  “Down here is the party room,” he says, then turns to point to a few closed doors. “There’s also the home theatre, a gym, and the wine cellar. This space gets used a lot when friends come over because it opens out to The Strand.”

  He walks over to the sliding doors that lead out to a patio, opens one up, and then slides it all the way to the side, effectively taking the indoor living room and making it part of the outside.

  And then there’s the sand and sea. Right there. Close enough to touch right now if I want to.

  “That is so cool,” I say, stepping out onto the tiled exterior space and pulling in a deep inhale of salty sea air. “God, I love that smell. It’s so weird, there’s something familiar about it, but I’ve never been to the beach before.”

  Lucas doesn’t say anything, surely just watching me be a weirdo.

  Once I’ve got my fill, I open my eyes and turn to look at him. “So, if you have a party room, do you have lots of parties?”

  He gives me a smile that I’ve seen on a lot of my foster siblings. The ones who feel like they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t.

  “I wouldn’t say a lot,” he answers, and I know instinctively that he’s downplaying the party atmosphere at his house. “But I do host a huge 4th of July event every year. And there are a few others throughout the summer, for sure. But mostly, it’s just a hangout room. My friend Paige says it’s our MTV room because it’s so flashy.”

  I nod, deciding not to say anything else, then step back in and help Lucas close up the sliding doors.

  He quickly shows me the theatre room, which consists of several massive couches and a projector screen. “Any gaming system you could possibly want,” Lucas boasts. “And a pretty decent movie collection.”

  Then the gym, which is floor to ceiling mirrors and filled with workout equipment, yoga mats, exercise balls and weight sets. And the wine cellar, “which isn’t really a cellar as much as a massive fridge room.”