by Jay McLean
And, right on cue, the door behind the desk opened and she stepped out. Her eyes widened when she saw the two of us waiting for her. We stood at the same time, but her eyes fixed on me. “What are you doing here?” She sounded pissed.
“Waiting for you,” I answered with equal attitude.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I just wasn’t expecting you.” She turned her attention to Clayton. “Or you.”
He shrugged. “What am I gonna do? Let my little sis sit in the slammer?”
Her face lit up with her smile. “I wasn’t in the slammer, you asshole.”
“Close enough.” He yanked on her arm and pulled her in for a hug. “Don’t do this shit again,” he said into her ear.
She nodded as they pulled apart.
“What are you doing now?” he asked her.
“Get my car, go home, and crash.”
“You won’t be able to sleep. The kids will be up soon.”
She shrugged.
“I’d offer you stay at mine, but Lisa’s home this weekend. That could be awkward.”
I cleared my throat.
They both turned to me.
“Um, I know you’re tired . . . and there’s no one home at my house. We have lots of space . . . You can always crash there for a few hours. It’s the least I could do.”
Chloe
“Are you sure your parents aren’t going to care?” I asked as he opened his front door.
“They won’t know. Mom lives in the guesthouse, and Dad’s not home.” He waited for me to step inside.
I stopped in the middle of the foyer. My gaze scanned the expansive space. From the outside, I knew it was large, but I wasn’t prepared for how vast it would be on the inside. “Whoa, this is, um . . . big.” But it looked unlived in. Kind of like a hospital. The only personal touches I could see were military pictures of a man—I assumed, his dad—and some war memorabilia on the mantel in the living room. There was absolutely nothing at all that said a family lived there. No family photos hung on the walls, and there were none of Blake anywhere. No proud trophies on display. Nothing.
“I guess,” he said, taking my hand and leading me upstairs to his bedroom. “I’d describe it as empty.”
I stopped in the middle of his room and looked around. “This is, um . . .”
“Big?” he finished for me.
“No.” I dropped my bag and turned to him. “I was going to say empty.”
He glanced around the room. “I guess.”
“But this is your home, right?” I kicked off my shoes and slowly made my way to the side of his bed.
“Yeah, of course it’s my home. Why?”
I pulled back the covers and sat down. “I mean your permanent home. You’ve lived here for years, right? So why don’t you have anything personal in here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just expected it to be different. You’re good at basketball, right? Where are all your team pictures? All your trophies? Your jerseys?” I shrugged. “Aren’t you proud of your accomplishments? Or your parents—they aren’t proud of you? Mary—she even keeps the kids’ participation ribbons. I just thought—”
A low laugh bubbled out of him. But then he stopped—he must’ve noticed the look of pity on my face. “It’s just a room, Chloe. I come home, and I sleep in the same bed every night.”
“I don’t know,” I said, moving down the bed until I was under the covers and my head rested on the pillow. “I guess I just grew up in foster care . . . moved around a couple times . . . Those places were houses, not homes. I’d give anything to have a room I could call my own.”
He cursed under his breath and moved to draw the curtains closed. “I’m an asshole, Chloe, I didn’t even think.”
“It’s fine,” I said through a yawn. “Are you gonna sleep for a bit, too?”
“Yeah, I’ll be downstairs. Just come—”
“Wait.” I sat up. “You don’t have to go. It’s your bed.”
He hesitated for a beat, until I pushed down the covers as an invitation. He smiled, and I could see any fight he had left was gone. I waited for him to settle in before I spoke again. “Thank you for waiting for me. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Why did you do it—take the fall for us? You didn’t have to do that, either.”
I turned onto my side. The bed shifted as he did the same. We were face-to-face, only inches apart. “I didn’t want you to get in trouble. Josh has Tommy. You have your entire future ahead of you.”
“And what do you have, Chloe?”
“I have the now.”
I could see that he wanted to persist, but he just frowned and stayed silent.
“They’re not pressing charges, Blake. Don’t worry.”
He nodded. “That’s good.”
“I’m wired now.”
“You want me to take you to get your car?”
“Do you want me to go home?”
“No,” he said quickly.
I laughed. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything.”
“Where’s your dad? And why does your mom live in the guesthouse?” He blinked once, his eyes searching mine for a long moment. Long enough that I suddenly regretted asking. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry if it’s too personal.”
“No. It’s not that.” He reached out and settled his hand on my hip. My eyes drifted shut, but I didn’t remove it. After taking a deep breath, he continued, “My dad goes hunting with some old friends the first weekend of every month. That’s where he is now, or at least that’s what he tells us. The truth is he has a mistress. My mom lives in the guesthouse because she probably knows about it and hates her life. She’s a big-shot author. You know those romance novels with a bunch of white people almost kissing? Most of them are hers. She’d rather live in the world she creates in those books than deal with what’s in front of her. She’s also an alcoholic, so I guess living in the guesthouse makes it easier for her to not have to justify her actions or behavior to anyone.”
I felt I had plenty of reason to feel sorry for myself, but at least I had people that cared for and supported me, even when I didn’t deserve it. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, it could be worse. At least I have parents.”
I smiled, but it was sad. “Mary and Dean are good people. They take care of who needs taking care of. I’m eighteen now, they don’t even have to let me stay there anymore. I’m lucky, really.”
“Maybe. Or maybe they just know how lucky they are to have you.”
I tried to hide my smile. “You’re not at all what I thought you’d be like.”
He laughed and pulled me closer. “You’ve been thinking about me?”
My cheeks warmed with my blush. “You know what I mean. It’s . . . never mind . . .” I buried my face in his chest.
“What, Chloe? What were you going to say?”
I raised my eyes to meet his. “You and Hannah. I get the whole high-school-jock-and-cheerleader thing, but you just seem above all that, you know? I guess it just doesn’t make sense to me why you’re with her. Well . . . apart from the fact that she’s ridiculously beautiful.” I stopped myself from saying anything else. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I shouldn’t say stuff like that. I don’t even know her. I’m being mean.”
His hand on my waist gripped me tighter while his gaze roamed my face. His eyes met mine with that same intensity I’d seen before. “I think you’re beautiful.”
My heart tightened at his words, but I couldn’t let him see that. So instead, I laughed and pushed his chest. “Shut up!”
He fell onto his back but recovered quickly, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me closer. I didn’t care that it might have been wrong, and I didn’t think he did, either. Alone, in this room, we could be w
ho we wanted to be. No faking. No hiding. Just us. “Oooh,” he teased. “Chloe . . . What the fuck is your last name? I’m the worst friend ever.”
“Thompson,” I chuckled. “And I forgive you.”
“Well, you did give me a fake name. What the hell was that about?”
I laughed and shook my head. “Blake, will you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“After we wake up and we go to get my car, will you come over and have dinner with us? Dean—he goes to all the games. And maybe you could hang out with the kids . . . shoot your touchdowns?”
He laughed. This beautiful, boyish, carefree laugh. “Shoot my touchdowns?”
“What?” I asked, playing along.
“You’re not kidding?”
I bit my lip, trying to contain my smile. “What?”
“You’re just cute, is all. Fire truck, yes. I’d love to meet them and shoot my touchdowns.” He pressed his lips to my forehead. “Now sleep, my beautiful little stoner.”
“HUNTER!”
I knew who it was before my eyes snapped open. Within seconds I was out of his hold, out of his bed, and out of his house. “Shit shit shit.” I didn’t have time to see Hannah’s reaction, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be there to witness the aftermath. What the hell was I thinking? “Shit,” I said, louder this time. Pulling my phone out of my bag, I tried not to trip as I ran down his driveway. I’d never been to this part of town before, and I had no car—and my phone had just died in my hands.
A door slammed.
Turning around, I glanced at the front door expecting Blake. But no one was there.
“Is everything okay?” I looked back down the driveway and saw a middle-aged woman walking toward me. Her hair was dark, as dark as Blake’s. She had the same light blue eyes as him, too.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hunter. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
She laughed once, stopping a few feet in front of me. “No one’s called me that in years, dear.” Then she looked from me, to the house, and to the car parked near the front door. “Is that Hannah?”
I nodded, trying to keep the tears at bay.
“Do you need a ride somewhere?”
I nodded again, but then I remembered what Blake had said about her drinking. “Uh. No, thanks. I’ll walk.”
I turned to leave, but she grabbed my arm. “Sweetheart. I’m not—what Blake has probably told you. I’ve been sober for six months.” She pulled her keys from her pocket and showed me her six-month-sobriety-chip key chain. “I promise. I would never endanger someone else’s life.”
The front door opened, and Hannah’s deathly loud shriek made my mind up for me. “You can’t just have other girls sleeping in your bed, Hunter!” Blake’s mom must’ve seen the answer on my face, because she had already gotten into her black Bentley and was reversing down the driveway toward me.
“Where to?” she asked once I’d opened the passenger door and slumped down in the seat. I ignored Blake standing in his doorway, glaring at us. And I ignored Hannah in front of him, waving her hands in his face, trying to get his attention.
“I don’t really know. It’s this abandoned basketball court, but I have no idea—”
“I know the one,” she broke in, smiling slightly as she pulled out onto the road.
“He and Josh used to come here all the time when they were kids,” Mrs. Hunter said, driving onto the middle of the court, next to my car. “I haven’t been here in forever,” she mused to herself. Then she turned to me. “Are you his new girlfriend? Friend?”
“I’m nobody,” I said flatly. It was the truth, despite the stupid second in his room when I had let myself believe otherwise.
“It didn’t seem like that to me. You seemed pretty scared when you saw Hannah.” I opened my mouth to respond, but she raised her hand to stop me. “It’s okay. I’d have been scared, too. She seems like a bitch.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Her words were as surprising as the woman who’d voiced them.
“I don’t have a clue what Hunter sees in her,” she said.
“You call him Hunter, too?”
She rolled her eyes. I could see them even though she was looking straight ahead, past the windshield. “Military husband. I should’ve stopped it when he was a kid. It made my son sound like a soldier, you know? Someone that’s trained to take orders. Blake . . .” She frowned. “Blake . . .” she repeated. “I love the name Blake.”
“Maybe you should call him that or talk to him about it . . . or just talk to him . . .” I trailed off. It wasn’t my business, and I shouldn’t have said anything.
She turned to me, smiling again. “I don’t think Blake—” She paused and grinned wider. “I don’t think Blake would consider you a nobody, Chloe.”
“How did you—?”
“Your mother and I were sorority sisters. I was a senior when she was a freshman and moved into the house, but I got to know her and your Aunt Tilly well enough. They were sweet, caring, genuine girls. I heard that your mother got pregnant and had you a few years later. And then when she passed . . . I was there at her funeral, and your aunt’s, too. You were what? Eight when your aunt died?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry—for what it’s worth. Are you . . . ?”
“I’m fine.” I wiped my eyes and prayed that my voice would come out even. “You can’t tell Blake. You can’t tell anyone. Please, Mrs. Hunter.” I ended in a sob. I hated that I had. But what I hated more was when strangers spoke to me about them. When they’d had the experience of sharing a piece of them that I would never know.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t mean to make you sad. This is your life, sweetheart. I won’t tell a soul.”
I buried my face in my hands, trying to compose myself. She pulled me into her and let me cry on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m such a mess.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just a girl who misses her mom. We’re all allowed to cry for that.”
I pulled back and wiped my nose. “Blake—he misses his mom, too.”
“He told you that?”
I shook my head. “He describes his house as empty. I’d say that’s pretty damn close.”
She nodded slowly.
“He thinks you’re still drinking. I’m not going to tell him you’re not, but maybe you should. Maybe that’s one secret that should be shared.”
I opened the door to get out, but her words stopped me.
“Will I be seeing you around? Are you going to be spending some more time with Hunt—I mean, Blake?”
I almost said yes. After he’d waited all night for me at the police station, then held me in his arms as we’d fallen asleep . . . the way we were both so comfortable in our own world. But I just couldn’t let it happen. “No,” I finally told her. “But it was really nice meeting you, Mrs. Hunter. Thank you for giving me a memory of them.”
“Sammy counted to ten today, including the five,” Mary said. She was sitting next to me in the swing seat and gave a push to get it going.
“That’s awesome,” I said through a yawn. It was four in the afternoon, and I’d been home for over an hour, but I was still exhausted.
“He asked for you as soon as he did it. He wanted to show you.”
I smiled, looking down at the ground.
“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need, Chloe. You know that, right? No one’s going to kick you out.”
“I appreciate that, but I’m still leaving after graduation.”
“Oh okay. I just thought maybe you might have changed your mind.”
“What would make you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the tall, dark, and handsome boy pulling up to the curb—” She nudged me with her elbow.
My head whipped up, and I spotte
d Blake’s car. He was just stepping out.
Mary continued, “—stepping out of his car with . . . what’s that? Flowers? Ooh, I hope they’re for me . . . and a bottle of wine, maybe? Now I really hope that’s for me. And his eyes look up—jeez, his eyes. And then he sees us. Oh, that smile . . .”
“Okay, Mary.” I stood up. “Thanks, but I don’t need your commentary.”
Her laughter faded as I walked down the path, meeting Blake halfway. “What are you doing here?” It came out harsh, just how I intended.
“Wow.” His eyebrows rose. “Someone’s pissy when they’re tired.”
I let my shoulders relax but not my guard. “Seriously, Blake. What are you doing?”
“You invited me for dinner,” he replied slowly, as if I were crazy.
“That was before all that shit with Hannah! You can’t—”
He pushed past, ignoring me. “You must be Mary?” I heard him say. I turned to them. He offered her the flowers. “These are for you.”
Mary thanked him before pulling him in for a hug. She smiled huge, giving me a thumbs-up behind his back.
Shit.
He was going to charm his way in. Mary was still gushing when the front screen door slammed open against the planter box next to it.
“Who the hell is this kid with his arms around my wife?” Dean yelled, a wide smile on his face.
Blake and Mary pulled apart, finally.
I stepped forward. “Dean, this is—”
“Blake Hunter!” He couldn’t contain his excitement. “Well, well.” His gaze moved to me. “Ain’t that something?” Then to Blake, “Come on in, son! Welcome to our home.”
Mary left and went to the store. Apparently, Blake’s presence was enough reason to cook a fancy meal. I could tell Dean was a little embarrassed by the house when he showed Blake around. He must’ve known the type of lavish lifestyle Blake was accustomed to.
Our furniture was old and worn and nothing matched. But they had been used, well lived-in, and I had a feeling that Blake preferred what he was seeing to what he had. It wasn’t until Dean showed Blake his high school–basketball trophies and pictures that I detected a sense of pride in his voice. I left them alone and went to the kitchen to make us drinks.