“Oh, and if you have another bag,” I cautioned, leaning close to him so that the elderly couple that was beaming at us wouldn’t overhear, “I will pull your entrails out through your nose.”
“Kitty-cat doesn’t like big scary places like this?” Lucas asked.
“No, I don’t like wasting my time,” I snapped, folding up the sign. Lucas attempted to hand me the roses back, but I just shoved them back against his chest. My finger slipped on one of the thorns, and I gritted my teeth.
Hot irritation was singing through my veins, replacing the blood. He had used that nickname, the one I remembered from a long time ago when he had still been a nerdy boy who liked his X-box more than people. I most definitely hadn’t missed that.
Lucas looked about ready to respond with some snipe, but his phone beeped in his pocket, and he wrestled the roses into one hand in order to reach into his jacket pocket and pull it out. He frowned down at the phone for a few moments. His taste in technology hadn’t been altered a bit. He was still for the high-tech, top-of-the-line work that cost thousands of dollars. Hell, he’d probably taken this iPhone apart and added a few extra somethings to make it that much better.
I glanced back up on his face, and for the first time, he didn’t have that ridiculous smirk on his face, and I noticed that there was something very different about him. It wasn’t just his physical appearance, but it was the way he carried himself and the haggard, haunted look in his eyes. I wondered how many times he had seen combat over the last three years.
Then he glanced back up at me and grinned again, and the illusion—for what I must have been seeing was illusion at best—disappeared. “Ready to go home?” he asked.
“Most definitely,” I replied. “Hurry up before they expect us to hug and make up again.”
Lucas glanced around at the people. “Aww, Kitty, you were never any fun.” He reached out and snaked an arm around my waist, pulling me against him. I screeched in protest at the unapproved action, but Lucas didn’t let go. I saw him slip his phone back into the pocket of his camouflage jacket and then both arms were around me.
I hated to admit it, but after a few moments, the strangeness of it all disappeared and I began to feel safe in his arms. I let my guard down for six heartbeats before I remembered how he used to light my hair on fire and kill my pet gerbils and then dissect them as a science experiment. I pulled away. “What are you doing?”
“Giving the good people a show. We might be internet famous, Kitty-cat,” he added, nodding to the woman who had her camera out and was following us with it. I rolled my eyes.
“Maybe you want fame, but I don’t.”
His hand reached over and tousled my curly hair, making the already messy curls look positively obscene. I ducked away, but he held me tight. “Fame isn’t something that I want, Kitty-cat.”
“Really?” I snorted. We walked past the many gates, and I imagined that I was boarding each one of them. Even Detroit sounded better than taking my brother home to our big, empty house and expecting me to get along with him as if his time at the military had changed his piss-poor attitude at all.
I sighed. When we were finally around a corner, I pulled away from Lucas again, and he let me go. The folded up sign I held in my hands got put in the nearest trashcan, and I wiped my glittery hands on my pants, not caring that they made my thighs sparkle. At least every time I brushed my face, I wouldn’t have little bits of the annoying stuff sticking to my face.
Lucas made a move to throw away the roses as well, but I shoved them against his chest once more. “At least put them in a vase to make Linda happy,” I said. “She spent hours picking them out for you.”
“It took my mother hours to decide on a dozen red roses?” Lucas asked, examining the flowers. They were rather wilted from the cold, but still hanging on.
“You know how she is.”
“I do.” He nodded and lowered the flowers so that they hung beside him. I let out a breath. It was bad enough that I had thrown the sign away. Linda would freak out if she found out that Lucas had gotten rid of her other beautiful and so very original gift as well. She would bounce off the walls with anger.
The rest of the walk to my car was uncomfortably silent. It had been three years since I had put up with Lucas, and both of us had changed so much that it was as if we had met each other for the first time.
Lucas had always had the potential to be good looking, and my friend from high school had said, “With a few pounds of muscle and a tan, this kid would be a knockout.” Of course, there had been more than that. The nerdy t-shirts with ironic meanings, those damned round glasses that weren’t really serving any purpose and the strangely fitting jeans would have had to go as well.
With those few pounds of muscle and the tan he must have gotten from being outside a lot, I would have liked to see what Melany would have said about him now.
“You’re staring,” Lucas drawled, leaning back in my seat.
I quickly snapped my gaze away. Had I seriously just been admiring my step-brother? The one who constantly tortured me as a teenager and made my life difficult?
Yes, yes I had, but I would never tell anyone else that.
“At your ugly face, indeed I am. I wondered if it was possible that anything could have made it any uglier. Well, ding-ding-ding, this is it.”
“I actually think that the thirty girlfriends I had while I was in Texas would beg to differ,” Lucas said, glancing over at me. His voice and face were tinged with amusement.
I sighed. “You are insufferable,” I said. “I can’t believe that you’re back. I might have to go jump off of the nearest high-rise.”
Lucas grinned, a deep, low chuckle sounding in his chest. It sent shivers down my spine, and I internally slapped myself on the cheek. Get it the fuck together, I told myself. This isn’t going to work if you stop hating him.
“Yep,” I said instead, focusing solely on the road. “Definitely going to. Maybe I’ll bring you with and shove you off first.”
“Oh, hun, I’d like to see you try.”
We hadn’t made it ten miles from the airport and we were already squabbling like old times. This was going to be a long and hard process.
###
Dinner was quiet without Linda here to coo and fuss over her baby boy who had come back a hero. Dad had come home a few hours after Lucas and I had returned from the airport. I had been looking forward to a nice, long session of reading in the den with a fleece blanket thrown around my shoulders and old movies running in the background, but Lucas had ruined that with a few simple actions of sitting down on the couch, propping his feet on the coffee table where I usually rested my mug of tea, and flipping the TV on to the sports channel.
I had high-tailed it out of there and sulked in my room until Dad came home. Since Linda wasn’t here to cook us one of her fabulous meals that she enjoyed getting off of the internet and the cooking channels, I popped some instant macaroni and cheese into the oven to bake, and quickly prepared a salad for myself. No matter what I had told my parents about the dangers of eating too many refined sugars, they had refused to cut down their carb intake, saying that grain was healthy and needed to be consumed at every meal.
Thus, we still had a lot of junky food sitting around in our house, and I had to avoid pigging out on it whenever the urge to eat everything overtook me. I still got that way sometimes, but I had already come so far in my endeavor to become a healthy, fit person and resisted the urge to eat a full box, bag, or package of the unhealthy thing. I let myself have some, in moderation.
I wondered if Lucas had eaten well. He would have had to because those kinds of muscles don’t come naturally to a skinny guy. He would have needed a lot of protein and lots of reps of heavy lifting—why was I thinking about Lucas lifting weights and eating lean meats?
I shook my head in annoyance and poured some lemon juice and olive oil onto my salad. Lucas was already in my house once again, and I wouldn’t let him get back into my thoughts
and worm his way through my defenses. No, sir. I needed to stay focused, on my degree and on keeping myself healthy and strong. Lucas wouldn’t distract me from any of that, not if I had any say over anything that went on in my head.
Which, as it turned out, wasn’t a lot. My mind wandered all through dinner, wondering what could have happened to Lucas while he was in the military. What had changed him from a skinny, nerdy, mean asshole to a drop dead gorgeous, ripped and arrogant asshole?
I remembered what he had said about his thirty girlfriends in Texas. With his body, I could imagine that the girls were all over him. I hoped that he got some incurable disease from all of them that would kill him off in the near future so that I wouldn’t have to deal with him. Or maybe just stick him into the hospital long enough for me to complete school and move halfway across the country.
“So, Lucas,” Dad said suddenly, halfway through his plate of macaroni. To my surprise, Lucas had requested that I give him some salad and no macaroni at all. I had been so stunned that I had done it without complaint.
Lucas glanced up from swirling his food around his fork without lifting a single morsel to his lips.
“From the few updates we received from you—” there had been two—“you were in Hawaii and Texas?”
“Yes, sir,” Lucas said, nodding. “I was also in Los Angeles for a few weeks, but it was so short that it didn’t seem mentioning.” The tone in his voice when he said that last part changed from easygoing to the kind of intense that begged Dad not to ask him to elaborate any further.
If Dad noticed, he either chose to ignore it or disregarded it. “Oh, really? What happened there?”
“Nothing much,” Lucas said stiffly. “They decided that they didn’t need me and sent me back to Texas.”
I frowned, unable to determine what exactly it was that was bothering him so much. It wasn’t as if he had actually ever seen any combat, but he acted as if talking about his time in Los Angeles was taboo. Maybe he had done something wrong that the officers had threatened to kick him out over.
I was sure that was it after a few moments. Lucas had always been kind of a troublemaker, at least for as long as I had known him—only four years, thank God, and he had been gone for three of those. It would make sense that he would find some way to fuck up something. I was just surprised that they didn’t actually kick him out and that he had managed to serve his three years that had been assigned to him.
“Katy, how’s school been?” Dad asked me. I rolled my eyes internally. I had already told him this over the phone before he had persuaded me to come and welcome my brother home.
“Good,” I said curtly. “It’s been wonderful. I’m meeting lots of new people and doing alright in all of my classes.”
Lucas smirked over at me. “Taking any chemistry?” he asked.
I frowned at him, and then remembered the other, other time he had set my hair on fire. That one had actually been on accident, but I still had screamed at him about it for hours afterwards, because it could have easily been prevented. “No,” I said sharply. “I’m going to school to become a nutritionist and dietician. No chemistry is required past the basics that you need to get your general credits.”
He had the audacity to grin at me. “I bet you’re thrilled about that.” He leaned back, setting his fork down on his nearly untouched food. Dad glanced over at the bowl and then up at me.
“Lucas, aren’t you hungry?”
“I ate on the plane,” Lucas said, waving it away easily. But a liar can spot a liar, and I saw the telltale way he tightened his shoulders. It was so minute that someone who wasn’t so good at reading people would have missed it, but I didn’t. Why not just tell Dad that he wasn’t hungry? “But thank you.”
I frowned and opened my mouth to say something, but Dad cut me off. “Of course, you must be more tired than hungry as well. You can go up to your room if you want and get some shut-eye.”
“Thanks, Marty,” Lucas said. Dad smiled, and when Lucas left the table, I finally felt as if I could relax and enjoy my meal.
###
My sleep was disturbed that night by a sudden loud sound. I jolted awake, unsure of what I had just heard, but very sure that it had come from the room across the hall—Lucas’ room.
I stood up, wobbling a bit on my unsteady feet and opened my door. I stood there for a few long moments and simply listened to the sounds that weren’t coming from anywhere, the complete and utter silence, and then I stepped across the hall.
I knocked on Lucas’ door quietly. Even the barest hit of my knuckles against the wood sounded eerily loud in this strange silence. I was used to Linda’s noise machine, I realized after a few moments. It was always discernable through their door, if only a little bit.
There was no response, and so I opened the door quietly. “Lucas?” I stage whispered. “Are you okay?”
It took my eyes a few moments to adjust to the dark. I could make out the faint outline of Lucas. He was sitting up, resting his head against the headboard, arms wrapped around him almost protectively as if he felt like he needed to protect himself from something—or someone.
“Lucas?” I reached over to turn on the lamp, but his fingers gripped my wrist and squeezed until I drew back.
“Leave the lights off,” he said, and his voice was devoid of any emotion though it was a bit rough. As his fingers let go of my wrist, I realized that he had been shaking.
“What is it?” I asked. “I heard a loud noise and came to see if you were alright.”
“You’re really concerned?” he asked bitterly.
I paused, wondering myself why I was over here. “Even if I do hate you, you’re still family,” I said eventually. “Family protects family.”
Lucas was silent for a long moment. I heard him shifting, the bed creaking underneath his weight that was dense with muscle. “You sound like my commanding officer. In the military, we were each other’s family, and we all had to look out for each other. Even if we didn’t like it; even if we felt as if it was stupid, we all had to look out for each other.” He let out a shuddering breath suddenly. “Please sit down.”
I started slightly. “Where?”
“Next to me. I need to feel someone alive next to me to keep the ghosts away.”
I shivered at his dead words. “You never went to combat, did you? They would have told us about it, wouldn’t they?” I asked, sitting carefully down next to him. He wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close so that my head was resting against his shoulder. He was still shaking.
“Just because I went to combat doesn’t mean that I never saw the effects of war,” he said. “Lots of people go to the military and come back without seeing a single day of fighting, but they are so fucked up in the head that they can’t even function properly.” There was nothing of the cocky, over confident man who had left, or even the arrogant man I had met in the airport today. This was who Lucas really was—who he had become—under all of his layers of personalities. I realized now that this was his way of protecting himself so that people couldn’t see how damaged he was. I could relate completely.
“What happened to you?” I asked quietly, listening to the rapid pounding of his heart.
Lucas took a deep breath. “I still have nightmares. Isn’t that absurd?” His geeky vocabulary reminded me of who he had been before, as well. “After being to the military and seeing the effects of war in real life, what kinds of demons could plague the mind that could be worse?”
“I don’t know,” I said, even though I knew the question was rhetorical.
“Memories,” Lucas said, and the stubble on his cheek scraped against my forehead as he shifted slightly. “There was this one day that I don’t think I will forget for the rest of my life. It made me realize just how mortal and delicate our race is.”
I didn’t say a single thing. I didn’t know why I was even here, but I was too enraptured to even think of leaving. Something had drawn me to his pain and suffering, and I wanted to
hear the cause of it. His foot, bare as his torso, slid along my calf. I shivered. That wasn’t a normal reaction for the nerdy stepbrother, was it? I was confusing myself and Lucas was confusing me.
“There was this one day that my friend got carted off to Iraq. The bastard spent six months in that hellhole, and when he came back, he was different. He would start at each and every noise, and I would catch him whimpering in his sleep sometimes. When I would try to wake him, he would press a knife to my throat before I was even truly awake. He never talked about what had happened, but I heard it from some other people who had gone with him.
“They said that he had accidentally killed a village full of women and children. He had been the one that had okayed the dropping of the missiles, but just as he had said that it was okay, a little boy had wandered out onto the street. He had tried to call off the attack, knowing that this had been a setup, but it was too late.”
I put a hand against my mouth in shock. Those kinds of things were military slip ups that they like to keep quiet. Collateral damage, I thought. Those women and children had been collateral damage. “That’s terrible,” I said quietly, rubbing my fingers along his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him—or me, I wasn’t sure which.
Lucas laughed bitterly. “I’m not even to the worst part yet, Katy.” I held myself completely still as his fingers brushed against mine, and he continued his story. “One morning, I woke up and he was gone from our bunker. I went outside, thinking he had gotten up to take a walk or some shit like that. Instead, I found him cleaning his machine gun almost frantically. ‘They’re coming for me,’ he had said. I had asked him what he meant, and that’s when he looked up at me and I knew. He had gone insane. That happens sometimes. People can’t live with the collateral damage, and it drives them mad.
Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) Page 17