by Tiffany Sala
“I thought I knew. Now I think I didn’t ask enough questions when I had the chance.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Mum admitted. “Just… be careful. Nobody can completely change who they are overnight.”
Lucas was an exception to that rule, of course, but I got her point.
“I want you to know I appreciate everything you and Dad have done for me,” I told her. “Even if I decide to do things a bit differently. I could never have done anything without you guys.”
I could tell she was touched, because she tried to push me aside with a joke. “That is the literal definition of being a parent, you know, Callie.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lucas wasn’t so bothered now if I told him I had to work or I didn’t want him around on a particular day. I wasn’t sure if it was the girlfriend angle that had given me a bit more leverage with him, or the sex angle, or if maybe he was actually trying to give me a more reasonable amount of space in our relationship. Just another thing I should have discussed with him and hadn’t.
Anyway, once I let Amanda know I’d be into work up to an hour late that day, it was easy for me to take a sneaky route over to Rob’s car place. And it was amazing how much quicker my new car had him running out to meet me. I might end up being only minutes late to work.
Rob was already looking my car up and down as I stepped out. “That goal to stay away failed already, huh?”
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with mine this time.” Well, there were some scratches that had turned up mysteriously while I was with my parents overnight, but it was possible the car was so expensive it intimidated most would-be vandals. It was a strange blessing, but I was used to that sort of thing now. “Actually… I was here wondering if you still had copies of the paperwork from when you fixed my, um, boyfriend’s car… Lucas Starling?”
Rob gave me a funny look. “Still the boyfriend, huh.”
“Well, he wasn’t at the time.”
“I didn’t think so,” Rob said.
I would have written it off as just patriarchal nonsense, but I was growing wise to the way people acted when they knew something about Lucas they didn’t want to have to tell me.
What would Rob know? Well… if he’d looked at Lucas’s car and then my car on the same day, it might occur to him that one of them had damage consistent with smashing into the other.
It wasn’t hard to imagine why Lucas might have waited a few weeks to get it fixed, either. He had to assume I would be trying to find the driver who’d hit me, that police might be looking around for any repairers who’d worked on a car that would fit the description I’d provided. And, weak as that description had been, I was fairly confident it would have pinged Lucas when paired with the damage to the car.
So he’d waited. Probably selected a repairer who wouldn’t be likely to blab to his parents—if I was clear on one aspect of their personality, it was that they didn’t appreciate when Lucas did those out-of-control things. They probably would have made him own up if he’d even partially explained his reasons for not getting the car fixed right away. If I’d been a little more experienced with Lucas at the time, I might have known to call bullshit on the idea that his usual repairer wouldn’t bump people out of his schedule to service someone with that much money. It had been a good enough lie at the time, though. He’d just gotten unlucky with picking the same guy I used.
Rob gave me the itemised receipt from Lucas’s visit, which didn’t tell me much. It wasn’t like he’d made notes of needing to remove paint flecks that matched the colour of my old bucket or anything. But Rob clearly had more information to give, if I asked the right questions, and that counted for a lot.
I kept going over and over the implications during lull periods at work. So he’d hid the accident. How had he been able to do that when he was travelling between school and his home every day?
He must have had a friend helping him. Steven—no, Steven, I’d learned from his own self-deprecating ribbing, was not from a wealthy family. Too risky to hide in plain sight on a street.
Ashleigh lived in the same sort of oversized house as Lucas. Her family probably had its own vast garage that could hold the odd unanticipated arrival.
Now I was thinking about it, the whole setup with Lucas had been so strange. It was Ashleigh who’d approached me first, not Lucas. That seemed implausible all by itself. With how suspicious Lucas was of Ashleigh, why would he delegate making contact to her?
He could, of course, have lied about that too. Perhaps they were working together on this, not on opposite sides at all, Ashleigh helping to mess with my head even further by tricking me into thinking she was reaching out to me in kindness. I couldn’t figure out what would be in it for Ashleigh, but it wasn’t as if she cared about me. Maybe for Lucas’s part, it was enough that he had decided he wanted me. It wasn’t hard at all for me to believe he could just spot me one day and decide he was going to have that—it was basically the explanation he’d given me from the start.
All of this was becoming ridiculously excessive for any guy to do to hook up with a girl, but Lucas Starling was not exactly going through the world on a basis of logic, was he?
Amanda clapped a hand on my shoulder once the gate was closed to customers. “Go talk to him before you come back here again. Any more morose and the customers are going to think you’ve found definitive proof there’s a Chinese backdoor in all our stock.”
I blinked at her. “Nice to have someone assume it must be a man problem.”
That was a lot snappier than seemed appropriate for my supervisor, and I was about to apologise, but Amanda actually laughed.
“I know it’s a man problem because I know you well enough to know you don’t have any other problems. You are absolutely solid when it comes to work ethic and conviction. I’ve only ever seen you falter when it comes to Lucas.”
“I hate that you’ve given me an ultimatum,” I admitted.
Amanda was already getting on with the evening cleanup. “Some free advice. You might have heard that ultimatums are a bad idea in relationships… well, for some of us that advice is useless. You need to put your foot down, at least now and then, to see what he does when there’s a clear boundary being presented. Even if you don’t plan on following through with consequences, it’s useful to know where the lines are. For you and for him.”
“Thank you,” I told her. “Do you mind if I take a moment to let him know I’d like to hang out tonight? Just before it gets too late for it to be polite to ask.”
She gave me a look like she understood that for Lucas, time was a barrier that didn’t exist unless he wanted it to exist for me. “Go ahead.”
I wasn’t sure how I managed to put together an appropriately casual text message. He would definitely have picked up on my nervousness in person.
But by the time I was going out to drive to Lucas, who still couldn’t legally get in his car and come to me, I was feeling more calm. And it was because I still had Rob’s paperwork in my hand… though the logic behind that was probably not what anyone would have expected.
I’d realised I was getting myself into exactly the same situation I’d started out with. I was considering using my sketchy evidence I’d gathered through questionable means to meet him on his own turf.
I couldn’t let myself go down that path again. I had to do something that was authentic to me… something I would be able to live with no matter what.
And that might even mean I had to make decisions a lot of the people who loved me and wanted me to do well would never understand.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I opened my mouth as soon as he opened the door. The risk of losing my nerve seemed too great otherwise. “Did you realise I was the target of your hit-and-run after the fact, or was it planned all along?”
If I’d had any doubt left at that point, he yanked me inside and upstairs so fast I would have dropped it at the door. He didn’t stop, or speak, until he had me behind the close
d door of his bedroom and somehow backed against a wall, tall and imposing against me.
“I didn’t think you would find out.”
“Obviously.” I ducked sideways and past him to reclaim some space. “Well, the fact that you didn’t just feed me some bullshit story helped me to figure it out, strangely enough. But I’m pretty sure Rob figured it out too.”
“I only realised when I saw your car there too,” Lucas said. “I’d remember that shitty thing anywhere. Seemed like a really fucking insane coincidence, but there’s no fucking point in telling real life it’s being too unrealistic. Trust me on that one.”
I looked up at the perfect ceiling of Lucas’s perfect bedroom. This whole house was just like Lucas himself: beautiful, but hard to hold onto, if you were someone like me. “Lucas, why didn’t you tell me the truth earlier?”
“I never thought I’d have to,” he said, which was more honesty than I’d expected.
“You realise this puts me in a bad position now. How am I supposed to trust you’re telling the truth and not just telling me what you think will get you out of trouble this time?”
Lucas shrugged. “I haven’t even worked out what the fuck it all means.”
Well, there was another angle to this I hadn’t considered yet. I crossed the room and sat down on his bed. “Lucas, from now on I’m going to need you to answer my questions directly and honestly. That’s a non-negotiable point. If I don’t at least know that I can come to you and confirm things I think I’ve found out, what do we have here?”
“Fine,” said Lucas. “That’s fair.”
He sat down next to me and tried to touch me, but I shooed him off. “I’m bothered that you agreed to that so quickly. It feels like there’s a catch.”
“No catch. I figure you’re still here, you came here tonight even knowing all of this, so what the point in playing stupid games?”
He had a point all right. “Well, time to put that into practice. Did you only start coming after me because of that crash? Because you thought… I don’t know, that it was fate or something?”
Lucas shook his head. “Not fate. That’s the last thing I believe in. But I do believe in life giving you moments where you’re supposed to act, and… us meeting like that, it felt like a moment. Suddenly that sense of unfinished business was just too strong.”
Anyone more superstitious than either of us would have been left with no doubt. It made for the most insane of coincidences.
“I should tell the police about this, you know,” I said. “Your parents—”
“My parents?” There I went surprising a laugh out of him again. Lucas stood up and stepped back so he could face me. “Callie, my parents helped me to cover the whole thing up.”
His turn to surprise me. “But they—”
“Have a lot to lose if they get caught out, I know, right?” He sounded so gleefully impressed. Only Lucas, indeed. “I think they were smart about it. If I got busted after all it’d look pretty much like I acted alone. They let me keep the car in the garage for a few weeks until the heat was likely to have gone down, I went to a lot of parties so I either had Steven or Lucy driving me in to school which happens a lot normally anyway, and my dad picked a repair place reasonably close to school so it would be easy for me to pick up after. Nothing too big.”
“Of course, you got Ashleigh to come talk to me first because—”
“I didn’t get Ashleigh to do anything,” Lucas said. “She interfered because she’s an interfering bitch. Honestly, Callie. Most guys have to worry about their girlfriends thinking they’re cheating with their female friends, not that they’re conspiring with them.”
He was talking so casually. Like there was no chance this could be leading to me walking away permanently. It was just another weird conversation he had to get through with me.
And that was just how it was always going to be.
“Callie,” Lucas spoke up suddenly, talking faster than he normally did when he was trying to fast-talk me into something. “Look, what I’ve decided… you shouldn’t let all that fate shit influence you one way or another. We shouldn’t be any more special to one another just because of a stupid coincidence or two.”
It was what I’d already realised, but it felt like it was huge to hear him saying it. Despite all my protests, he had to know I was a little weak for that argument. He was setting aside a great tool of leverage.
I was already sitting, but I slumped even further. Lucas sat back down next to me.
I formed my words staring at his stylishly blank, clean white wall. People would say I’d made this decision so I could keep those walls close around me. For his money, for the life he could offer me.
But who even knew if I could hold onto him for long enough to receive any benefit? I certainly didn’t have plans that stretched that far. I could maybe keep myself from toppling off the Lucas Starling rollercoaster for another day or a week. If only Lucas had remembered that childhood trip well enough to be really conscious that a rollercoaster usually needed safety measures to keep everyone aboard.
Maybe he did remember. It wasn’t like safety measures kept a really good ride from feeling any less scary.
“I can’t be in this relationship if I’m going to feel like it’s all about to come crashing down on me all the time,” I told him. “And I won’t feel safe if you’re doing things behind the scenes all the time to try to keep me where you want me. That’s what will drive me away, as strange as it might seem to you.”
He just took my hand, and looked at me. And that response somehow gave me the courage to continue.
“You’ve never learned to not use people,” I said. “Maybe you’re too protective of Lucy to let anything happen to her… that you can see. But even your love isn’t enough protection, is it? You use me as you like, you use your parents, who have so much more to lose, rather than face up to one really stupid mistake. And pretty rich boys like you get away with that sort of thing, so you keep doing it. And if I want to be with you… do I have to just accept I’m going to be taking on the role Lucy clearly doesn’t want, where I have to keep running around after you, cleaning up the messes you feel entitled to make and just walk away from?”
“I’m trying to do better.” Lucas’s voice was small, for him: a stark mismatch to his larger-than-life features. “But I don’t know how much I can promise. I don’t even know half of myself, so how can I?”
I took a deep breath. I needed to just to get enough of a sound out. “I’m okay with that. For now. And now’s all we’ve got really, isn’t it?”
I realised as soon as I’d said it how insensitive it was, considering his memory loss, but I got his full smile right in the face so I thought maybe it had actually made him feel better about everything he’d lost. Like it wouldn’t matter so much after all if he never remembered.
I was another connection to that missing past he had now, too. I wished I’d paid more attention back then, that I could have known I needed to.
Lucas was right: the coincidence of our coming back into one another’s lives didn’t mean anything, but if it made us realise a connection that could exist there, that didn’t even matter.
My hand was warm in his, and I felt hot all over too, not entirely for the usual reasons that happened with Lucas. If almost any other human on the planet could see me right now, they would think I was mad. Hadn’t I come here to get my answers before I ended it with him?
No, that had never been the plan. I’d come to see if I could salvage things. I’d chosen to believe the best possible thing I could about Lucas instead of the obvious conclusion… and the fact that I could had to really mean something about the two of us.
And even when we’d been trying to keep the rest of our worlds from finding out what was going on between us, that had been enough for me. It had obviously been enough for him.
I put my other hand over his. I was strong enough to leave, I thought. But I was also strong enough to stay and see if it all worked out.
“What does trying mean for you, anyway? Just keeping us on the same page here.”
Lucas stood, pulling me up with him. “No more crashing my car, especially into yours, you seem to really dislike that. And like you said, I’ve got to be more straight with you, not…”
“Tricky,” I suggested.
“Not tricky.” He led me towards the door. “And also, I’ve got to stop keeping you in my room so much at odd hours. Get you out with my family. Once we graduate, all those other idiots except Steven and maybe Axel are going to melt away… but Lucy and my parents will still be around. And so will you, hopefully.”
“Yeah, I’d better get on the same team as them,” I said.
Lucas paused at the door. “What team is that?”
“The keeping-Lucas-Starling-out-of-trouble team.”
“They’ll be glad to have you if you’re volunteering,” said Lucas, glancing back as he led me down the stairs. “They’re overworked as it is.”
“The only question I have is where you’re going to get your regular dose of action if I’m splitting more of my time with you into time with your family,” I added, just to screw with him as we exited into a more public area of the house. “Because the impression I have is that you’re pretty voracious.”
As we came out into the main lounge to join his parents and sister, Lucas shot me a look that was filthy in a couple of different ways. I knew he wouldn’t think to say the actual words, but I didn’t think even Lucas could just look at a person like that if he didn’t love them.
“You’ll just have to be around more often,” he said.
I was giving him a very similar look, I think. Nobody else did it the way we did, and nobody else would understand if they knew… and I loved it. “I can probably manage that. Questionable safety equipment and all.”