by Anna Bloom
“Third. After you.”
This was it. Come on, he had to say something incriminating… it dangled right there between us.
“So why would you taking me as a date to the gala upset your dad?” I sipped on the beer he’d passed me.
“My family are pretty old school.”
“Oh yeah?” God, did I sound too obvious and fake? I did, didn’t I? I coughed and cleared my throat.
He laughed into the neck of his beer bottle. “Yeah, I…”
Nooooooo. My phone rang in my pocket.
“Fuck, sorry, hold on. It’s probably Eva needing to know if I want her to pretend we’ve got an emergency.”
Alex’s mouth dropped open. “You have a date save?”
Laughing, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, trying to keep the screen away in case he should see the blatant recording I had going on.
Whoever this was, they were about to get an earful. He was about to give me everything.
“For God’s sake.” I scowled at the screen. “It’s just my brother.” I shoved it back into my pocket, hoping the call hadn’t disturbed my settings, but unable to check. “Sorry, you were saying?”
“I don’t even know.” He pulled the basket closer and grabbed some packets out of its depths. “I raided the sandwiches left in the cafeteria.” He tossed me one.
“Stale sandwiches.” I peered at it. “Yeah, maybe this isn’t a date after all.”
“Hey, I bought you beer too.”
“True and you know how I love warm beer.” I grinned and took another sip. “So you were saying about your family being old school. Is that why you didn’t get the scholarship? Because that wouldn’t have been seen as proper?”
He eyed me speculatively over the rim of his bottle. “Not exactly. The Collins are old money, they like things certain ways.”
“But you’re angry right? I mean, I’ve heard you play, Alex, you’re better than me.”
He stared at me for a moment, his expression thoughtful. “You know, I thought so too, until the night of the gala. Then you played. Something had changed, hadn’t it? You couldn’t play at all, and then that night you did. I mean you left my dad utterly speechless, which isn’t easy I can tell you.”
I shifted, trying to hide my burning cheeks. “You make it sound like your dad wanted me to fail.”
“Would you hate me if I said I’d wanted you to fail too?”
I shook my head. “Not knowing how you feel about your family and the scholarship, no. I mean, I’d rather you had it then someone like Brittany.”
Come on…
My phone rang again. “For God’s sake, Luca,” I groaned loudly.
“I think he knows you’re with me. He’s definitely a protective older brother. Tell him it’s an icebreaker is all.” Alex winked at me and for a moment I had to remind myself he was a Collins and therefore part of the enemy camp. Such a shame because he seemed kinda nice.
“He’s got nothing to protect me from. I’m the perfect baby sister, literally.”
I pulled out my phone when it didn’t ring off and frowned at the screen.
“Lyra? What is it?” Alex moved closer across the blanket on his knees.
I shook my head. “Nothing, it’s just this number never calls.” It was the number I’d saved the other day in the coffee shop—under Mom.
Oh. God.
My stomach squeezed and I tried not to heave. “Hello?”
“Lyra, baby?” Mom sniffled down the phone.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” I jumped up from the grass and paced away from Alex.
“Lyra, baby,” she repeated. Never a good sign, but normally it meant she was sky high and not that something awful had happened.
“Mom.” I sighed. “Are you out of it again?”
She sobbed, mixed with a hiccup. “It’s Mommy. She’s gone.”
“No, don’t be silly you’re on the phone. Seriously, what have you taken? Shall I try and get Luca to come by and see you?”
Fear prickled along the back of my neck. My concern for my mother ran at a standard level of ‘couldn’t give a damn’, but I didn’t want her overdosing in a guest room and stinking the place out for Grams.
“No, no, he’s here. It’s Grammy, she’s died.”
Everything stopped.
The stars stopped blinking down.
The air stopped moving in and out of my lungs.
My legs battled to hold me up.
“She can’t be. Stop it, you’re tripping, pass the phone over to someone who can actually talk to me and make sense.”
I squeezed my phone so tight my hand ached. She wailed and shouted until a rustling sound crackled down the line.
“Lyra?”
My stomach dropped at Luca’s dead tone.
“I’m sorry. I told her not to ring, that I would come and get you tomorrow, tell you face to face.”
My knees slowly gave way beneath me.
“She’s dead?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry, Lyra. I didn’t want you to find out like this. It was so quick though, she just settled down for a nap and that was it.”
I hung up, my hands slipping across the surface of my phone, unable to stab the screen properly.
“Lyra?” Alex called behind me, but I didn’t turn. There was only one person I needed right then, and I didn’t care who knew. Didn’t care what it would cost us.
I pressed the screen until something happened. “Jack,” I whispered when he finally answered. “I need to go home.” A sob tore from my throat and I glanced at where Alex stood behind me. “I’m on campus. I’ll meet you at Evan’s.”
Hanging up the phone, I turned to Alex. “I guess this is the point where you decide what sort of Collins you want to be.”
“What’s happened?”
“My grams has died.” I heaved in another sob of air.
“Shit.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “What can I do?”
“Can you give me a lift to Evan’s? He lives down at the docks.”
“Evan’s?”
I nodded. “Because I need to see Jack Cross.”
“Ah.” His expression cleared and he shook his head, ruefully looking down at his boots. “Everything just became so much clearer.”
“What?”
“Come on. I can tell you in the car.”
Funny that when crushing grief finally consumed you, it didn’t come the way you expected. You thought it would be this tidal wave that would pull you under, make you gasp for air and wish for darkness.
But instead it wasn’t.
Everything still existed. Life went on, cars drove on the highway, people chatted on their phones. Then a little stab of acknowledgement hit you, prickled you under your skin.
Dead.
It echoed inside you.
I was never going to see Grams again.
Never.
She was never going to tell me to fly. Never going to tell me the tomato ketchup needed a splash more vinegar, never going to tell me that it didn’t matter what I acted like, or what people thought but rather how I felt and thought.
None of that would ever happen again.
“You okay?” Alex asked, idling his car outside of Evan’s apartment and pulling me from my thoughts.
“No.” I shook my head. “I can’t feel anything.”
“Well, if your Grams was a witch, like you and Luca said, and not a bitch like mine, then I’m pretty sure she knows how you feel about her.”
A tear rolled down my cheek. “I was going to run away. I wasn’t even going to go home and see her.”
Alex watched me carefully. “I know this isn’t the right time, but I need to ask you something.”
I swatted at the sticky wet trails on my cheeks, but it didn’t stop fresh tear tracks taking their place. “Hm-mm.” I nodded.
“Why did you not play for all those weeks until the night of the gala and then you played like an angel who’d been cursed with walking with us mere shit musical mortals.�
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Despite the heavy oppressive, couldn’t fucking breathe feeling pressed against my chest, I chuckled. “Jack. He said he couldn’t go home with me if I went, so I had to decide to stay.” I lifted a shaky finger. “Finding out that I’d got the place just because I’m half-black didn’t make my choice any harder to make.”
“Hence the questions earlier?”
“I’m sorry.” Was I sorry? I didn’t know. Did I care? Possibly not anymore. Grams was dead.
“Lyra, I need to tell you something.”
I watched the window of Evan’s apartment. A blind moved, and I knew I was being watched. “Sure.”
“You weren’t second on the list. You were third. And I was pretty fucking angry about it.” He bit his bottom lip between his teeth. “I’ve exerted rather a lot of energy being jealous, possibly coming across like a crazy stalker in the process.”
I turned to face him. “The photo of Jack and me singing, that was you wasn’t it? Listen, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. Violin was my grams’ dream.” I mulled over what he’d said. “Your family are insane, Alex. Like mine are mental: my mom’s a drug addict, my brother thinks I’m twelve… but they aren’t a patch on yours.”
Alex clutched my hand, squeezing my fingers. “Listen, I’ve been a shit friend, a Collins through and through, but if you need me, you know where I will be.”
“I’ve got to go home. I really don’t think I’ll be coming back.”
“Then they won’t have a Collins kid, will they? I won’t take it if they offer it to me. Not now.”
“I’m sure Brittany will.”
“I can stop that.”
“And there you are… a Collins…”
“Let go of her hand.” A shadow loomed by the car and a sag of relief washed through me. Jack.
I scrambled for the door handle, but he’d already yanked it open, his hands reaching for me.
“Jack.” I sobbed into his neck once he’d hauled me out and into his arms. “Please tell me we can go home.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Jack
I carried her up the stairs, her tears soaking into my T-shirt.
Of all the calls I’d expected this evening… the dark wail of Lyra’s broken cry wasn’t the one I’d have bet on.
Grams was dead?
That woman had been everything to me, keeping Luca and I on the straight and narrow during the times my own mom hadn’t been able to parent me properly. Some days I thought it might have been Grams alone who’d kept me alive.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered over and over with every tread of the stairs up to Evan’s front door. I’d left him at the bar, the evening had barely really begun.
Smoothing the back of her hair with my hand, I let us into the apartment. She blinked at the bright lights, so I leaned over and switched a couple of them off at the wall.
Without putting her down, I strode to the sofa and lowered myself with her still in my arms, and then I huddled her on my lap, wrapping her up as tight as my arms could without crushing the life out of her. She whimpered, so fragile and delicate, tears splashing between us. My firecracker extinguishing in salty water.
“Mom rang.” She sobbed, her voice breaking. “I thought she was high, that she was just talking bullshit.” She sat up, staring at me wild eyed. “You know how she always talked bullshit, Jack, you remember don’t you?” I soothed her with my hand.
“Yes, I remember.” She stared up at me with red rimmed pale eyes.
“Then Luca came on the phone and told me he was planning to come tomorrow to tell me face to face.” She wracked in another sob. “But Mom beat him to it.”
I held her close as she cried silently, her shoulders shaking.
“What am I going to do? I’ll never see her again.”
“I know. It’s so hard.” I did know this, with heartbreaking clarity.
“Jack, I need to go home. I have to be there, have to make sure that Mom doesn’t mess everything up. Have to make sure that Luca…” she cut off, dropping her head onto my shoulder.
I steeled myself, a large dread-filled boulder of anticipation weighing down heavily in my stomach. Finally, she pulled away, clutching my face in her hands, pressing her mouth against mine; a desperate and broken kiss that tanged with salt.
I knew the taste of that kiss. I’d had it once before, but the tears had been different, filled with anger and hatred.
“Jack,” she breathed into my mouth, “you have to come home with me, I need you.”
And there it was, the one thing she could ask that I didn’t know if I could give. I’d have chased her across the world, across heaven and hell, but could I return to Florida, New Orleans? I didn’t know if I could.
I slid her off my lap and got up from the sofa. The space felt good, freeing. In the kitchen I found a bottle of bourbon and grabbed a glass, filling it to the brim.
I startled when she touched my shoulder, not realizing she’d followed me. “Jack?”
“Lyra, you know I can’t go home. Believe me, I feel like a shit for saying this now, when I know you need me, but I can’t.”
Her lips pressed together. “Why?”
“Because I can’t.”
“But why?” She edged closer, taking the glass from my hand and holding my gaze as she took a deep sip.
“Can we not do this now? You’re in shock.” I threw back the rest of the drink and poured another.
“Please come home with me, Jack. I can’t face this without you. Grams is dead.”
“Yeah! And my whole life is dead there.” I didn’t mean to shout. I wanted to snatch it back as soon as the words left my mouth.
She stepped back. “The only reason I can think of why you wouldn’t come home with me and face whatever it was, is if you were the one to nearly stab your dad to death that night.” She gasped a breath like she couldn’t believe she’d said it, but her eyes held a challenge.
“Is that what you think? That I tried to kill my dad?”
“Oh my god, Jack, no one would blame you. I told you weeks ago that the police only wanted to talk to you as a witness. They don’t care who did it, only that your dad is now in jail.”
“That’s because they don’t have a credible suspect.” I swirled the drink and then sank it down again. It burned through my veins, heating me up, pushing me on.
“Your mum was the witness. She said she didn’t see anything other than a guy in a gray hoody.”
My shoulders sagged. “Of course she would say that, Lyra, if she thought it was me.”
Her hand reached for the kitchen counter and clutched on tight. “So it was you.”
“No.”
“You aren’t making any sense. Why. Can’t. You. Go. Home?”
My resolve snapped like a rubber band stretched too far. “Because of you, Lyra. Because of you. All of this has been because of you.”
Her face paled, red rimmed eyes staring up at me. I hadn’t even noticed until now that she’d got dressed up for her ‘date’ with Alex Collins, forgoing the shorts and plaid I loved so much.
“Why me?” Her voice shook.
Closing my eyes, I took a moment, breathing through my nose and counting to ten, trying to control the rage.
When I opened them again and snapped my sight onto her I knew I had to tell her. We couldn’t move on from this point without the truth being between us.
“Luca knew about us.”
Lyra gasped, clutching her chest and bending over. “He didn’t. He’s never said anything.”
“Yeah, because he didn’t need to. He made sure that I could never come home and be near you again.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
The fire left me, the rage, the anger, the constant fucking regret. It ebbed out of me leaving me barren and bare, exposed to my real feelings, the darkness I’d always fought.
I leaned closer and picked up her hand, turning it over in mine and running a finger down her palm. “The night before I
left, you remember?”
Her cheeks flushed and she focused on the floor. “Yes. You told me I was a stupid little girl and that I should leave you alone.”
I pressed her palm against my mouth, pushing my lips into the skin. “I was angry. You were testing me so much, the restraint I’d always had, telling myself you were just Luca’s sister and that I shouldn’t feel that way, it had started to crumble. Every no got harder and harder.” I tilted her chin with my finger so she’d look at me. “I pushed you away that night hoping that maybe if I acted like an asshole you’d just leave it.”
“That would never have happened.”
“I know. Anyway, I tried to make you cross. It made me sick, but I climbed out of your window, just like I had hundreds of times before. I’d always told myself that I had an excuse, that you’d helped me with my injuries, or I’d been helping you with your outrageous social awkwardness.”
She shook her head but didn’t speak.
“So I got down to the sidewalk and went to walk down the street. Caitlin Phillips was having a party, figured I’d go and blow off some steam.”
I met her gaze. I didn’t want to be cruel, but if this was going to be the truth, I’d hold nothing back.
“His punch came out nowhere. I’d never seen him so mad. Normally, it was Luca and I against the rest of the world, so the viciousness of his attack, it knocked me off my feet.” I paused, my memories taking me a long path into the past. “He was so angry, Lyra. I tried to tell him that I hadn’t done anything, that it was innocent, that I’d never do anything as sick and depraved as he was suggesting, but he could hear the lie in my voice. Fact was, I’d thought about you in ways I shouldn’t.”
Lyra shook, her knees bashing together. “So you left, because Luca beat you up?”
“No. Really, you think that little of me? I guess I just thought he’d get over it, that he’d be mad, but eventually when you were older, when we were all older, maybe it could be something else.”
“So what changed the following night?”
I blinked my stinging eyes and tried to clear my vision.
“He didn’t relent, didn’t stop, didn’t pause. So in the end I told him what he wanted to hear. I told him I’d leave. He wouldn’t drop it. I thought he was going to kill me. I think he might have done if I hadn’t spoken when I did. I said I’d leave the next day, that I wanted time to say goodbye to my mom… I wanted time to say goodbye to you too, but I didn’t tell him that. He told me that I was sick, disgusting, that he never wanted to see me again.”