“Me either,” Zeke said.
“No women in this town that I want,” Evan said. “Everyone has been with everyone.”
“Yeah, could you imagine dating someone from high school?” Ezra shivered with disgust. “Just no.”
Evan sat a plate of bacon in the middle of the plastic table I told Luna about, and it reminded me that I never talked to her about the Hampton Mansion. Not that it mattered now. It was probably being bulldozed. Now was the time, not just to tell her, but my brothers too. The smell of bacon had my belly rumbling. Come to think of it; we didn’t eat last night since we found out the best diner in town got burnt down.
“Any word on the Rocky’s and Kathy’s?” I asked just as Evan put down a giant bowl of scrambled eggs next to the bacon along with a plate of toast. It was enough to feed eighteen people, but even though there were only five of us, it would be gone.
And then my appetite got squashed when the memory of Ethan drifted through my mind. “Any update on Ethan?”
Luna gripped my hand tight as we looked at my brothers. Zeke’s blonde hair was wet from a shower, Evan’s elbows were on the table, and he had his hands folded together, and Ezra took another drink of his coffee, the mood solemn and heavy. Everyone missed him. Not having Ethan here was like having a piece of us missing. It just didn’t make sense.
“They are doing some skin grafts today while he is still in his coma. They want to wake him up in a few days. I hear…” Evan’s Adam’s apple bobbed when he spoke. “I hear he will be in so much pain. I read up on burn victims that had that much of their body burned. They scream because the nerves are exposed.”
“Stop! Fucking shut the hell up, Evan!” Ezra tossed his full mug of coffee against the wall, and Luna jumped when a piece of the ceramic ricocheted off the wall and hit her in the chest.
It didn’t cut her, but it did leave a red mark.
“What the hell, Ezra? That could have taken her eye out! You okay, baby?”
“I’m fine. I swear. It’s just irritated.”
“Fuck, Luna. I’m so sorry.” Ezra sat back down and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to think about Ethan in pain. I can’t. It kills me. We can’t take his pain away, you know? He’ll be scared, and we are just sitting around here, useless and healthy, for the most part.”
I agreed with Ezra. I glanced down at my arm, from the elbow to my wrist was wrapped in fresh bandages, and the skin was black underneath, slowly starting to peel. It didn’t hurt, only when I, you know, rammed it into a wall. The nerves were dead. Thankfully, I could use my hand, but I couldn’t feel anything in my forearm. If that was how my brother felt all over his body, I couldn’t imagine the pain he would suffer.
The table became quiet. Pain rippled through the air like waves during a windstorm. As if on cue, thunder rolled above us, and when I looked outside, fat flakes of snow started to fall. “Ethan loves the snow,” Luna said, and I brought her hand to my mouth, kissing her knuckles gently. I was glad she knew my brothers so well. She was family, always had been, and she cared for Ethan just like we did.
“He’ll see it,” Evan said confidently. “He’ll be fine. He’ll need us to be strong. The last thing he would want is for us to mope around. We can’t change anything right now. We can be there for him. That’s all we can do.”
“Can we see him today?” I asked, but all of them shook their heads. “Why?”
“He will be in and out of surgery and recovery. The doctor said we wouldn’t be able to come by until tomorrow.” Zeke sighed, tossing his bacon on the plate. Yeah, I had lost my appetite too.
Deciding to change the subject, I pushed away from the table and made my way toward the coffee on the counter. The kitchen was a bit too small for my liking. It barely had any counter space, and it was made of cheap material. I hated cheap.
“I was just about to tell Luna why I don’t have decent furniture.” Which was hypocritical since I hated to have cheap things. I didn’t want to invest yet. Not when I knew I always wanted something bigger.
“Oh yeah? Enlighten us,” Evan said, welcoming the change of subject.
I opened the cabinet a pulled three mugs down, one for Ezra since he had a temper, one for Luna, and then myself. They were all the same, blue coffee cups, nothing special. “It’s because I wanted all of us to get a place.” There. I had dropped the seed; now, I just had to water it. “I was hoping to buy the Hampton place at auction, but I missed it. It’s probably sold by now.”
“You wanted that haunted, half-burnt down mansion? Where the ghost of Glenn roamed the halls?” Ezra pretended to be a ghost and lifted his hands, wiggling his fingers as he made a creepy sound.
“Stop! You know I don’t like ghost stories, Ezra!” Luna said, and then something fell on the table. She probably tossed something at him.
“We all know it isn’t haunted, but yeah, I wanted it. Ethan always knew I wanted it. The place is huge. Big enough for all of us to live together but have our own lives. I know it’s a lot to ask, but it could be a cool project if it was still up for sale.” I was too afraid to look at them and see the amusement on their face. They wouldn’t take me seriously. I filled each mug with rich black coffee.
“It would make sense for all of us to live together,” Evan said. “My apartment is a shoebox, and I never invest because I’m always bouncing around between apartments to hang with you guys. It would save me money. I feel like my rent is going down the drain since I’m never there.”
“Us too,” Ezra and Zeke unified. They already lived together. The two couldn’t be separated or they wouldn’t function.
“Hampton place, huh?” Ezra said, leaning back in a wooden chair that I found on the side of the road. It creaked, and for a second, I was worried he was going to break it, but it held strong. “I think it sold at that auction,” he said. “Wasn’t it about a week ago?”
“Yeah, it was, come to think of it,” Zeke said.
“Shame. That would have been cool,” Ezra chucked in his two cents too.
Great. If I would have just put the fear behind me, we could have had the Hampton place, but because I didn’t speak up, the opportunity was gone.
I sat the coffees on the table, and disappointment gnawed at me. For years, I thought of that place as mine. Years. “Oh okay, I’m sure there are other places.” There weren’t. No places existed like the Hampton Mansion.
Keys were tossed at me, nearly dropping into my coffee, but I caught them in time. “What’s this?” I asked Evan, who then lifted his left side and slid something out of his back pocket. It was an envelope, and he tossed that to me too. “What is this?”
“Just open it and find out. Stop being annoying,” he grumbled in an agitated huff.
“Okay,” I drawled. The envelope was long and white, but not sealed. When I pulled the paper out, I unfolded the top and bottom of the pages, and my heart caught in my throat. “Guys,” my eyes watered when I read the deed.
It was the deed to the Hampton place. It was dated back to the 1600s. The last signatures on it was Evan, Ezekiel, Ezra, and Ethan Moore in black squiggly lines. The only name that was missing was mine.
“What is this?” I asked, holding up the paper that meant this home was ours. “What the hell is this?”
“Let me see,” Luna said with excitement, her smile as bright as a ray of light shining through the blinds in the morning. “Oh my god, you guys are homeowners!”
“How…when? Why? What? How…how did you guys know I wanted the mansion?”
Ezra snorted while Zeke slapped his hand on the table. “You’re kidding, right? You’ve been obsessed with it since we were kids, sweetheart. Everyone knows your obsession with it,” Luna said, still looking at the paper.
“It was only a dollar,” Evan said.
I spit out my coffee, spewing it all over Zeke across the table. Luna covered her mouth and giggled, and Ezra and Evan hollered with boisterous laughter. Zeke’s eyes were closed as he nodded, then wiped his
face off with his hands, spitting out the coffee I got into his mouth.
Whoops.
“That was real nice. Nothing like a good coffee shower.”
“I’m sorry, Zeke. I just, I thought Evan said the entire Hampton place was a dollar.”
“It was.” Zeke wiped his face in impatient movements. He’d have to shower again. Brown specs of coffee glistened in his blonde hair. “No one wanted that place. Everyone believes it is haunted, and with half of the mansion being ash, people think its damned or cursed or something. I swear, if you get me killed when we leave there, I am going to haunt your ass! Damn it; I smell like coffee. I’m going to shower again.” He tossed a napkin on the table and pushed back from the table. The chair legs rubbed against the floor, making a shrilling nose. “Excuse me, Luna,” he said to her sweetly, a little too sweet if you asked me.
“You’re excused,” she said, biting that bottom lip, which drove me insane. She slid the paperwork toward me and tilted her head, giving me her beautiful green eyes that I wanted to look at for the rest of my life.
“You’re going to live with us, right? You’re going to live with me?”
Her mouth fell open, then closed, opened again, and then closed. All eyes were on her. I didn’t mean to put her on the spot, but the words just spewed out before I could stop them.
“Um, can I think about it? My dad is sick, and they need my help.”
My heart sank, but at the same time, I understood completely. Her parents needed her right now. I couldn’t be selfish. I brought her hand to my lips and kissed the sweet, soft knuckles. “Absolutely, Luna. There is no pressure.” I meant it. I hoped her dad beat this cancer, and then she could move in with me.
I wanted us to finally start our lives together. They had been put on hold for way too long. I was getting anxious like if we didn’t start our future now, we never would. Patience was key right now, but I had been patient for far too many years. Now I actually had the woman of my dreams, and I had to wait.
It was torture.
“Shit,” Evan sighed as he stared at his phone. Another beep rang, and Zeke cursed from the restroom, then turned the shower off.
I didn’t like the look on his face. His face was masked in stone, but his knuckles were white from how tight he held the phone. “What?” I finally managed to voice.
“Another fire.”
At this rate, the entire town was going to burn, and we were nowhere closer to figuring out who was starting them, killing people, ruining lives, and placing fear in the residents of Camden.
Chapter Nineteen
Luna
I was trying out a different café in town. I wasn’t going to support the coffee place that didn’t support my best friend. Speaking of, Oliver sat down next to me with his vanilla latte
and London sat on the other side of me, drinking her chai tea.
It had been three days since the fire at the high school. Luckily, no one was injured this time. People were chalking it up to an accident, but I wasn’t so sure.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Oliver said, tapping his chin. “What if it’s that inmate from the state prison?”
“In Camden? No way.” London shook her head, and the tendrils of her red hair flowed over her shoulders. It was straight as a board but shiny and beautiful. The color was unlike anything I had ever seen, and she had no freckles, just pale skin that matched the snow falling outside. “Who would want to come here? It’s off the map.”
“Maybe that’s why,” I said. I couldn’t stop the feeling in my stomach. The one that told me the fires were far from over and that others were going to get hurt.
“Okay, let’s talk about a happy subject. The fires are depressing, and Kathy and Rocky’s funerals are coming up, and I just can’t with all the sadness, okay?” Oliver said, leaving no room for argument. “Luna, how is the shop? Actually scratch that. How is the man?” He sipped the foam on his coffee a little too loudly as he locked those curious blue eyes on me.
I hadn’t been able to update them because I had spent the last three days with Easton, and it was like the entire world faded away. “Good,” I squeaked, trying not to blush, but my cheeks betrayed me. Damn, I hated my fair skin.
“Good?” Oliver mocked. “Good! Are you kidding me? That is all we get? No juicy details?” He slapped his hand on the table and gawked. “This is slander, no! It’s pure blasphemy.”
London chuckled. “He is right. We want some details.”
My phone chimed, interrupting our conversation. I was thankful. Until I saw the picture. I gasped and turned my phone into my leg.
“What was that?” Oliver asked and tried to steal the phone from my hand.
“Nothing! It’s nothing!”
I did my best to keep my phone out of Oliver’s grasp, but London was quicker, stealing my cell right from under my nose.
“London, don’t! It isn’t for your eyes.” The venom that spewed from my lips shocked me. I never got upset with them, but this was crossing the line.
London handed the phone back to me, and I tucked it in my purse. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m not. Was that a dick pic? Girl, you better give me something to go on. I’m living vicariously through you.” Oliver fanned himself. He was so dramatic.
“Just something. Anything,” London said.
“Fuck that. Don’t listen to her. Tell us everything. Was he good? Was it big? Was it sweaty? Or was it all just a major disappointment? Oh, honey, it was, wasn’t it.” He looked at me sadly and patted the top of my hand. “They can’t look good and be good and have a bat between their legs. It just doesn’t happen.”
“Oh, it happened,” I mumbled at the rim of my coffee cup, and Oliver nearly jumped out of his seat.
“More, tell us more.
“You are such a gossip, Oliver,” London said with a roll of her eyes and a flip of her hair.
“Oh, shut it. Like you don’t want to know,” he sassed, then dropped his chin in his hand, and his eyes sparkled with mischief as he smiled at me. “Okay, I’m ready.”
I guess I could tell them something. “It was amazing. Perfection. So good,” I nearly moaned, and then bit my cheek to stop it. “And Oliver? He’s big. He has a bat.”
He leaned back and scoffed. “That is just unfair and cruel. You aren’t allowed to talk about him to us anymore. Not when some of us are in a permanent dry spell. I’m so jealous, but tell me more.”
I tossed my head back and laughed at his indecision. I wasn’t going to tell them any more than that. No matter how hard they pried.
“Hey, look. They released a photo of the guy that escaped the prison.” London pushed her phone in the middle of the table, and my stomach turned. I dropped the coffee that was in my hand, and the paper cup fell on the floor.
“Holy. Shit. That creep!” Oliver shouted.
“What?” London asked. “He does look creepy, right? It’s the burn on the side of his face. No, that isn’t it. It’s the eyes. They look cold.”
“We saw him,” I said.
“Saw him? Girl, he talked to you! He said he would see you around. We need to tell the police.”
I nodded because he was right. I couldn’t believe we didn’t put this together sooner. “Oh my god,” I cupped my mouth when the horror of what I did made guilt poison me. “I lead him straight to Kathy’s. He asked. I pointed him in the right direction. They are dead because of me.”
“Aw, honey, no, he preyed on you. He would have found Kathy’s anyway. With or without you.” Oliver held me as I cried. I felt like it was all my fault. I should have gone straight to the cops when they burned down after a stranger asked for directions, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Why was I so obtuse sometimes? “It’s okay. They are going to find him, but we have to call the Camden PD, okay?”
I nodded, pulled away, reached for my black and white purse, and unzipped the gold zipper. I pulled out my phone and turned the screen back on, forgetting that Easton
’s dick pic took up the entire screen.
And this time, London and Oliver could see it.
“Oh!” London turned away, but Oliver leaned in.
“Oh, is right! My darling, oh my gawd. He does have a bat.”
I pulled the phone to my chest, mortified, and hoped like hell Easton would forgive me.
“Our little secret,” Oliver winked. “I know one of them has to be gay. It just… please gawd,” he prayed as he looked up toward the ceiling, lifting his hand to his chest.
While he prayed for one of the Moore’s brothers to be gay, I dialed Zeke, hoping he would come here because I doubted I could move right now.
The phone rang in tandem with my heart.
Thumping, ringing, thumping, ringing.
I wanted to call Easton more than anything right now and hear the calmness of his voice. He’d make me feel so much better.
“You have the wrong Moore brother, Luna,” Zeke answered on a cheerful chirp.
“Hey, Zeke,” I sniffled, and I heard a commotion in the background and then silence. Shit, he was with Ethan today, along with Evan, Ezra, and Easton. Ethan was supposed to wake up today.
“What’s wrong? I’m not near Easton if you’re worried about that.”
I shook my head, and Oliver dabbed a tear away from my cheek with a napkin. “No, it’s not that. I’m calling on police business, I guess. I didn’t want to talk to anyone else but you.”
“Are you okay?”
“I saw him, Zeke. The guy that escaped from prison. I talked to him.” I started to cry again when I thought about Kathy and Rocky. “I figured I needed to tell you and give you a statement on what happened?”
“I’m on my way. Where are you?”
“I’m at Café Ocean,” I said. “And…”
“I’ll bring Easton. Stay right where you are. Don’t move.”
“I’ll be here,” I said, already calmed knowing Easton was on his way. I hung up the phone and pressed my hands to my forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t report that guy. I know he didn’t do anything wrong, but still, what were the chances of a guy with a burn on the side of his face and a creepy demeanor, not be questionable? This is all my fault. If I would have listened to my gut and steered him in the wrong direction—”
Lying Hearts Page 14