by Anna Bloom
Dark shadows ringed her eyes, her normally golden caramel latte skin paler than I remembered it being.
I peeled myself away from the car. “Hey,” I called.
She did a double take, slender fingers clutching the strap of her backpack like she might wield it as a weapon. Automatically, I held my hands up in a ‘don’t scare the pony’, nice and easy gesture. Ironic really.
“What do you want?” her lips paled and pressed into a firm line. “Torture doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes.”
Ouch.
Shrugging, I stepped closer, keeping my movements small just in case she did bolt like a wild horse. “I know. I figured you’d be tired from work last night and you might want to grab some breakfast.” I sounded ninety nine percent moron. #theLyraeffect.
She eyed me with bright blues and I resolved not to flinch under their sweeping gaze. Instead, I studied the smooth skin of her throat. “I am hungry,” she muttered.
“Me too.” I smiled, wishing it didn’t feel all foreign across my face.
“What about the practice for the gala? You must have lots of constructive criticism to impart this week.”
I nodded, my smile a little easier. “Still got all week.”
“Of course.” She met my gaze, bright with bravery, kindling an alien sensation in my gut, my stomach tightening, aching down low in places I’d forgotten.
“Shall we?”
She turned for the direction of the cafeteria, but I caught her arm. “Where are you going?”
“Breakfast.” She frowned.
“Lyra, if I wanted to clog my arteries with half cooked trans fats I’d just go to Burger King.”
“They do croissants.” Her lips curved and I stood at ease. She didn’t plan to use the backpack as a weapon—not right now anyway.
“Come on, kid. I know a great place.” I towed her towards the Audi, but her feet cemented to the sidewalk.
“Don’t call me kid.”
“Sorry, old habit.” Dangerously twisted and totally fucked-up habit, but a habit nonetheless. “Lyra... I’ll take you someplace better than the cafeteria.”
As if on cue, her stomach gave a long and loud rumble of agreement.
I chuckled and clicked the remote for the car. “I think you’ve just agreed.”
I turned, smirking, catching her cheek tinged with a dark pink I’d held far too long in my spank bank. “Aren’t you worried about being seen with me? What was it you said... Teachers and students shouldn’t—”
I raised my palm cutting her off. “It’s breakfast, there aren’t rules against that. Plus, where we are going not many members of staff go.”
She arched an eyebrow and that deep ache in my lower stomach turned to an outright punch to my gut.
“Well maybe while we’re there you can tell me how you managed to get a faculty position here,” she snapped tartly.
“Maybe.” I held open the door, slamming it shut after she’d folded her long legs inside the car. “Or maybe not.”
“Are you sulking?” I asked when the silence in the car began to make my ears bleed.
She didn’t turn her face from the window. “Define sulking.”
I bit down on my lip, turning the steering wheel through the back streets of downtown Boston. “Staring out of your window with your arms folded, refusing to acknowledge you are even in the car with me.”
“Wish I wasn’t,” she mumbled under her breath.
“So you aren’t hungry?”
Slowly, she turned to face me. “Oh I’m hungry. I just don’t feel the need to share a meal with you.”
“Ouch.”
Her pale gaze slithered into a narrow glare. “I don’t lie.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” We were nearly at the diner and as I scoured for parking spaces along the street, I mulled her words in my head.
“You don’t go to church with Grams anymore?” I spotted a space and flicked on my indicator, taking ownership of the space before a work van could dive in there. I glared at the driver just in case he got any ideas.
“Why do you want to know?” Lyra’s focus settled on the street and the row of shops; her whole body turned away from me.
“Just interested. I always thought you enjoyed it.”
She shifted but didn’t answer.
I flung the gear lever into park and waited for her to look at me. A faint pink ebbed across her slender throat. If she turned, I knew it would be on her cheeks too. “I told you. I’m not a liar.”
I wanted to laugh. The Lennox siblings were master manipulators, I knew that now.
“So why don’t you go?”
She turned, the pink of embarrassment flooding into a hot and angry red. “Why are you so interested?”
I shrugged my left shoulder up to my ear. “Believe me, I’m asking myself the same question.”
We watched one another, the silence of the car almost ear splitting.
Until her stomach rumbled again. I cast a quick searching stare over her. “Are you looking after yourself at all?”
“Yes, thanks, Dad.”
I ground my teeth together. “Why did you get the job at Blue’s? Surely your scholarship pays for everything?”
Her chin tilted in the air.
“Secrets, Lyra Bird?”
Her mouth popped open, but nowhere near as wide and gaping as the hole in my chest that smashed into existence with that one name.
Fuck.
“Come on. Let’s eat, you’ve still got to practice too.”
I caught her eye roll but could also see the slight tremor to her fingers.
Hunger or nerves? Although, judging the noises coming from her stomach I didn’t think I could credit myself with that one.
Out of the car, I opened the door, guiding her elbow through before me. Steam and sweet cinnamon blasted over us. Her gaze swept my face and I dropped her elbow.
“Ah, Jack!” Letitia busted her way out from behind the serving counter and pointed to the table by the window bathed in early sunlight.
I winced. “Away from the window please, Letitia.” I smiled and bent to kiss both her cheeks as she came over thrusting plastic covered menus at us, her astute gaze taking in all of Lyra’s long slim legs and too thin frame.
I wouldn’t need to ask for extra portions, we’d get all the sides and then some.
“Whatcha wai’in for.” She waddled off at an impressive speed clicking her fingers behind her. Lyra’s eyes searched my face for any clue why we were here. I could read the question scrunched in her expression. I offered her a tight smile. “Best food in town,” I murmured bending down to her ear.
Lyra glanced about and I bit down on my lower lip again. Letitia’s place hadn’t been decorated since nineteen seventy-five when she first arrived on the East Coast. I hovered close to Lyra’s ear, trying very hard not to breathe in her scent. “I asked her once why she didn’t redecorate. She said, why fix what ain’t broke and then smacked me with a menu.” I rubbed at my head remembering the sting of the plastic whipped through the air by arms that could have thrown shotputs for the national team at the Olympics.
“This doesn’t look fancy enough for a man who drives around in a sports car and only wears designer clothes.”
Her gaze lingered on my shirt.
At the table I waited for Lyra to sit down first, not because I wanted to be gentlemanly, but because Letitia put the fear of God into me. And it had been a long time since I’d felt any niggle of concern of His attention.
“Usual, Jack?” she asked, busying around getting a napkin for Lyra and unfolding it.
“Please. New Orleans special, for two.”
Letitia’s lips crimped but I held up my hand.
“That’s plenty, we don’t have long. Lyra has a practice session this morning.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Lyra’s shoulders slump.
“But,” I added with an easy smile, “if anyone’s breakfast is going to help it will be yours, Letti.” Turning my gaze to L
yra I met her blues. “Still prefer your coffee like milk and sweet enough to stand a spoon in?”
Her lips curved just a faction. “Yes.”
“And two coffees please.”
Letitia hummed as she sashayed away.
“You remember how I like my coffee?” Lyra fiddled with her napkin.
“Lyra, it’s been four years, not four decades.” I didn’t add that even if forty years had passed, I’d probably still remember, because that’s the kind of moron I was. “So are you going to tell me?”
I pulled the napkin away from her twitching fingers and she slumped in her seat.
“Tell you what?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t be smart. Are you going to tell me why the hell you can no longer play the violin and how you plan to keep your scholarship?”
Grabbing out across the table, she snatched her crumpled napkin back up, ripping a strip off of it, and then another, creating a pile of two-ply destruction on the table. Her gaze lifted, a swallow flexing her slender throat.
“I’ll talk, but you have to talk first.”
And much like the pile of tissue she’d built into a bonfire, I knew the lies I’d have to tell would set me alight and make me burn.
Chapter Seventeen
Lyra
Jack watched me, those damn dirty green eyes flitting across my face. I slouched back in my chair and crossed my legs at the ankle. My heart hammered beneath my ribs. “Well?” I asked.
“Jesus, can we have coffee first?”
“No.” God, I actually sounded like I meant business, which was good considering I slid my hands under my thighs so he couldn’t see my fingers shaking.
I mean, this was Jack. And me. In some strange Southern style restaurant.
Which reminded me. “Why are we out for breakfast, Jack?”
His frown flickered before he carefully smoothed it away.
No answer.
So much for talking.
“You know what, don’t bother.” I leaned down and grabbed my backpack, hauling it up off the floor. Damn heavy thing, my English textbooks were created to put a life-long curvature along a student’s spine.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you.”
“Lyra, wait.”
His fingers looped around my wrist and I couldn’t hold in the visible shiver his skin on mine created.
And not a repulsive ‘never touch me again’ shiver.
Sadly, for me, not that one at all. More of a, ‘please don’t be a dick anymore so I can fully allow myself to crush on you so hard no other man may as well exist’.
“Just sit back down.” He tugged my hand, but I held firm. “Please.”
“You know.” I flopped myself back in my seat, my heart laughing at me as it raced along, for being a spineless idiot. “You really are a dick these days. I don’t know why you are here, why you didn’t come back, but I’m actually pretty grateful you never did.” Lies, obviously, but they made me feel just a little better.
“Did you ever think maybe that’s why I didn’t come back?”
I snorted out a short laugh, but when I looked up his green gaze zeroed on my face.
The fight oozed out of me, leaving a deflated feeling in its wake. “I can assure you that’s all I thought for a very long time.”
He nodded slowly and then dropped his gaze down to the table.
Conversation over, I guessed.
“I don’t really know how I got here.” His voice rumbled low, turning my stomach with little licks of unexpected warmth. “I just headed out West and never stopped until I hit the sea.”
“Very poetic.” I drilled him with a Grams’ hard stare, and when he looked up, a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. God, I’d missed that smile. More than I’d missed decent coffee and a home-cooked meal the last couple of weeks. Not seeing that smile for four whole years ate away at me like a parasite on fresh meat.
“The air is cleaner here, no dust...”
Dust and regret, my two most favorite things.
I had a list of questions as long as my arm. I didn’t really want to know what he thought the air tasted like. “Why didn’t you come back, Jack?” I chose the oldest question... well nearly the oldest. The way he’d been toward me the last two weeks, I figured I could file the other older ones under: ‘Don’t bother, keep some self-respect’.
The thing about Jack though—I thought as I appraised him with a sweeping gaze, all expensive shirt, gold cuff links, no old t-shirt and faded jeans in sight—was that him and self-respect didn’t go together.
He’d blown through the girls in our area like a hurricane straight off the sea. Most of them had walked around like shadows of their former selves once he’d cast them aside, usually four days after picking them up in the first place.
I figured I may as well lay my self-respect on the floor and jump on it from a great height. At least once I cleared the air, I could forget it, wipe it from my memories once and for all.
The burning blush on my cheeks before I even opened my mouth told me just how painful the conversation would pan out.
“You’ve been vile to me since I got here.”
“I’m your teacher, Lyra. Do you want me to pretend that everything is okay when the one thing you are supposed to do, play the violin,” he swirled his hand, gesticulating the point, “seems to be almost impossible for you?”
Yep, there went the blush, burning up my face like a wildfire.
I held up my hand. “Before we get to violins and recriminations, can we clear something up?”
That smirk tilted the left side of his mouth again. It made me ache in truly painful ways, a wincing cut that stabbed so low in my stomach I almost glanced down to check I wasn’t bleeding out. “Did you leave because of me? Because of wha-what we almost did that last night?”
His lips pressed into a firm line, a twitch flickering at the outer edge of his narrowed eyes. “No.”
I could see the lie in his eyes and exhaled a small exhalation of air.
“So, violin.” He sat forward, leaning his elbows on the checked cloth and linking his fingers together.
“Not so fast, I haven’t finished yet.”
“No?” He curved a dark eyebrow. How I’d missed that sardonic smirk.
“No. So if it wasn’t me, why didn’t you come back?”
His smirk dropped. “I don’t want to rehash the past, Lyra. Let’s move on, shall we?” He dropped his shoulders, throwing himself back in his seat.
“The past? Jack, some of us are still living it. Me, Luca, Grams… your…”
“Well you aren’t living it anymore, Lyra, are you? You are here. In Boston, living the dream, with a full ride scholarship.”
I met his gaze. “Yeah, living the dream. Like you. Look at you, Jack.” I stared at him hard, the smooth suit, the expensive watch and cufflinks. Considering he was only six years older than me, he seemed like a grown up now which made me feel even more like a ridiculous little kid with a crush.
We stared at one another, an unnamable emotion running between us, unnamable but it felt very much like hate if you asked me.
“Did you not come back because of the police?” I pressed.
“No.”
“They only wanted to talk to you, Jack. For God’s sake, half the neighborhood searched for you for weeks just in case you were dead.”
He shifted. “Dead like my dad?”
My mouth fell open and for the life of me I couldn’t close it. “Jack, your dad isn’t dead. I think he wishes he was, but he isn’t.”
He stared at me. Stared some more. His expression utterly blank.
“There you go, sweetness.” Letitia pushed a mug of coffee in front of Jack, but he didn’t take his eyes from my face.
Did he not know?
Oh God.
Letitia gave me my coffee, shooting me a questioning glance. I smiled and wrapped my chilled fingers around the mug. “Smells amazing, thank you.”
“Sure thing, sugar. Food will be up in just a tick.”
I nodded and watched her bustle away before turning my attention back to Jack who still sat as still as though he were carved from ice.
I took his cup and pulled it across the table toward me. I’d go out on a limb and assume he still had his coffee sweet, or his sugar with coffee as Grams used to say. I spent some sweet ass time shaking sugar into a spoon and stirring it into the milky perfection. How long had it been since I had a decent coffee? The stuff in the cafeteria tasted burned… I hadn’t even attempted their ‘sweet tea’.
“Here you go.” I pushed the mug back across the table, snapping him out of his reverie.
“Sorry, Lyra. I need you to repeat what you said to me.” I could barely hear him.
Taking in a huge inhalation, I let it out through my nose. “Jack, your dad isn’t dead. He’s in jail. Your mum testified against him, said that the man who burst into the house and attacked your dad had saved her life in self-defense.”
I hated to think of that night. The blood and flash of blue, the silence of the street ripped apart by the wail of sirens… the silence that lasted afterward as the neighborhood adjusted to no longer hearing the Cross house explode every evening.
I dropped my gaze, gripping the warm mug of coffee. “At first I thought it was you.” My chest caved a bit. “You were wired that night, not making any sense. You had all those cuts and bruises and for once you wouldn’t tell me where you got them from.”
His stare weighed heavy on the top of my head.
“But then… then I knew you’d never have left her, Jack. I knew that. Where did you go if you weren’t running from the police?”
Silence.
“Your mum thought you’d died, that you had some injury that you’d kept secret from whatever happened the night before. That’s what she told the police, that it couldn’t have been you who attacked your father because you were already hurt.”
I stopped rambling and we sat in silence until finally he broke it. “Where is she now?”
Looking up, I waited for him to meet my gaze. “She lives a few blocks down. She’s got a one bed condo on a duplex. She works now, loves it. She still comes to see Grams.” I swallowed hard. “Grams testified too; said she’d never get over the guilt she felt that she didn’t help you earlier.”