by Stacey Lynn
He kissed me then. Lips brushing my cheek as he whispered.
My eyelids fluttered closed while I inhaled every memory of this moment, cementing it into my mind forever. A rush of excitement and nerves slid through me, making every part of me hot.
It was barely a kiss. A hint of one. My first in seven years.
And it was glorious.
I reached for him as he pulled back, hands sliding to his sides above his hips but as he stepped back, my hands fell down, unable to get a grip and pull him back.
Did I have the guts to do that anyway? In the grandest scheme of things, I was so inexperienced.
So much less confident.
So incredibly surprised that a guy like him would even consider such a thing with someone with my past. This moment… it was beyond my wildest imagination. And it was true. This was really happening.
“Be safe at work and I’ll see you soon.”
“’Night.” That word fell on a breath from my still stunned lips, still feeling his finger at them. I licked my lips to see if I could seal in the taste of him.
He walked backward to the elevator, grinning at me in that way of his that made my toes tingle, but didn’t move to press the button.
“Get inside, Lilly.”
“Maybe I wanted to make sure you get in the elevator okay.”
He shook his head, one edge of his mouth lifted into a smirk. “Inside before I hit this button.”
Something told me he was more stubborn than me, and I needed to get ready for work. “Bye, Hudson.”
“See you soon.”
I opened the door with that promise lingering in my ears and my cheeks hurting from a smile.
He liked me.
He really liked me.
22
Lilly
Seven Years Earlier
“I said no.”
I shoved against the guy blocking my exit from the bathroom. Billy Palmetto. He didn’t go to our school and while he’d freaked out several of the girls tonight, creeping up on all of us, drunk and swaying, no one had kicked him out yet.
Now, he’d set his sights on me. Stupid. So stupid of me to leave Kendra and go to the bathroom alone. I thought putting space between me and him would make him lose his attention.
“Just a kiss,” he whispered, leaning in. He smelled like beer and bad decisions. And he was larger than me.
“Go away.” I shoved him again, but he leaned against me, ending up closer until his breath was on my cheek and his hands were fumbling at the waistband of my jeans.
“Stop it.” I tried to knee him. Tried to shove him off me but his hands had their grip on my button and his mouth was moving closer.
I turned away, shoving my cheek to the wall, and opened my mouth to scream when his other hand covered mine.
“Shut up. No one will hear you anyway and no one will stop me.”
I bit down on his hand, made him scream enough that he yanked his hand away from me.
His hand glared at his fingers, where I’d left teeth marks, and then that hand balled into a fist.
I cringed, bracing for impact when across from us, the door opened. Someone stumbled out of it so fast they knocked into the asshole who intended to harm me.
Billy swayed on his feet and it was enough for me to kick at his leg, sending him sprawling to the floor.
I didn’t look back. I ran down the stairs, and ducked into the kitchen that was filled with people, searching for Kendra but I stayed there, around people, and frantically texted Josh.
He’d fix this. He’d save me.
“Josh!” I screamed at him while he pummeled his fist into Billy’s face.
As soon as he showed up, rage poured from every one of his pores.
He took one look at my face, shoved his finger in my direction at the scratches on my cheek and shouted, “Tell me who in the fuck had the gall to fucking put their hands on you!”
I didn’t hesitate.
Billy had what was coming to him.
I didn’t expect Josh to totally lose his shit and still be punching his face even though the guy was already passed out.
He yanked his arm back to let forth another round of punches when I grabbed his arm.
“Let’s just go,” I said.
“Not done with him. No one fucks up my sister. No one.”
“Come on.” I yanked on him until he stood and then pressed my hands to his chest and shoved him backward. He seemed steady on his feet, eyes filled with rage but not hazy from beer. Maybe a little too alert. “I just want to go home. Are you sober?”
“I’m sober enough, Lilly.”
“We can call an Uber.”
“That’s stupid. We’re two miles from home.”
I’d been in the car with my brother before when he was drunk. He always insisted on driving. I’d never once gotten behind the wheel. He’d sideswiped a mailbox and ruined the third stall garage door when he forgot to open it before trying to park inside.
Tonight he didn’t seem nearly as bad.
“I just need a drink. Only one. To calm down before Dad sees me or finds out about this.”
This was the rearranging of Billy’s face. He glanced down at the guy who’d touched me. Who tried to attack me and spit right on his pummeled and bloody and swollen face.
My brother threw his arm around me and pulled me to his side, guiding us toward the house where the party was back into full swing. He ignored the small crowd who had lingered, wanted the view of him punching someone but Josh only had his focus on me.
“It’s you and me, Lilly. Always. I’ll always be here for you whenever you need me. Even if I do have to leave a kickass party on campus to help. You know that right?”
“I know, Josh.”
It was us. Together. Always. We were all we had.
Despite the mention of the party he left, despite the drink he had, one more for me even though I’d quit drinking hours ago, he seemed okay.
Not sober, but I’d seen him worse.
After his drink was done, he tossed his keys in the air and tried to catch them in his fist. He dropped the keys and laughed.
“We can take an Uber,” I suggested.
“Nonsense,” he slurred and bent down to pick them up. “It’s two miles.”
It’d snowed earlier. Roads were wet. I couldn’t drive.
“Whatever,” I mumbled and hopped into the truck. Like Josh said, it was only two miles.
Two miles with rarely any traffic and only a couple of turns.
We’d be fine.
“Josh!”
I shook his shoulder and screamed his name again. His chin had hit his chest. But it was too late. The curve too sharp and he was pressing the gas too hard.
“Josh!” I screamed so loud my throat burned and reached for the steering wheel but it was too far away, my seat belt preventing me from grabbing it.
Not that I could do anything with my brother passed out behind the wheel.
“Josh! Wake up!”
My screams were cut off by bright lights in our faces. They blinded me and I screamed right as the car somehow swerved and missed us. Tires squealed and I slapped Josh’s cheek. “Wake up, you asshole!”
But it was too late. He was gone and the truck flew right off the edge of the road.
We hit the ditch and I fell forward, slammed my face onto the dash, then my shoulder to the window. I was bounced again and pain so fierce slashed my temple, I bent over.
“Josh! Wake up!”
The truck played me like a ping-pong ball, tires scratching, and then all I saw was a tree, racing toward us. Josh’s foot still on the gas.
I covered my face, braced for impact and all the horrific screeching sounds amplified until there was nothing but the truck’s horn, the racing of my heart.
“Josh? You awake yet?” That had to have woken him up.
I pushed down the white pillow of the airbag and looked to my left.
“Josh?! Josh!?
The driver�
�s side was empty. Glass was everywhere. The front window. The driver’s side door. Glass was gone. And Josh was nowhere.
“Oh fuck,” I groaned. Something wet slid down my face and my arm felt like it’d been yanked a thousand directions but I was alive.
I was breathing. And I could move.
Move!
“Josh! Where are you!?”
I unbuckled my seat belt and scrambled over the console to his seat.
And then I looked out the window’s empty frame.
Blood.
So much blood.
And then everything went black.
“But I wasn’t driving. Josh—”
My dad was bent over the edge of my hospital bed, arms braced, scowl etched in place so harshly. I’d seen that look before. Frequently. Usually right before his hand curled into a fist. “Josh’s reputation will be ruined. I will be ruined if anyone finds out about this.”
“But…” My chin trembled. I could no longer deny what happened. “Is… is he okay? Where is he?”
I’d came to while being loaded into an ambulance. Vaguely I remembered the EMT mumbling to his partner, “Teenage kids and alcohol. Fucking rich kids.”
“No joke,” I’d said, right before I passed out again.
“Josh will be fine. But you were in the driver’s seat, so you can’t tell me you weren’t driving.”
“I wasn’t. Josh was. I just climbed over…”
“Shut your fucking mouth.” My dad leaned over me on the bed, shoved his finger in my face.
His words hit me like a slap and I laid back in the bed. Monitors beeped next to me, checking my vitals. My heartbeat. Ten stitches in my temple and a dislocated shoulder.
Josh… no one yet had told me about him, so I assumed the worst.
“I don’t give a flying fuck if Peter Pan was driving that truck. You’ll say you did. You don’t, and Josh’s future will be absolutely destroyed. He has too much history. Are you laying there telling me you want to be responsible for that? For destroying your brother? This family?”
“But—” My head was too cloudy. I was either sobering up or they’d given me meds. Pain meds, hopefully. Actually, I hoped they gave me an hallucinogenic. My dad couldn’t be asking this of me. “It wasn’t my fault. Will Josh be okay?”
“He will be. He has to be.” My dad had never looked desperate in his life. “And this was all your fault, Lilly. He wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Dad—”
“It’s your first offense. You’ll be given probation. Community service, but if Josh was the driver, his life is ruined. This is not a time to be selfish.”
Selfish. As if he’d ever been anything but that. My throat clogged and I shook my head to clear it.
This was happening. My dad, throwing me to the wolves to protect the only child he actually cared about. Josh should have gotten help years ago but instead, Dad brushed everything under the rug. Sure, he sent him to rehab, but no one paid attention or got him help once he was back home. It was years of a vicious cycle.
Yet through all of it. Josh had always been there for me. He protected me. He took care of me when no one else would, and we’d always promised we’d be there for each other.
This… this was asking too much.
Dad must have taken my silence as refusal because he leaned in once more. “Take the fall, Lilly, or never return home. You will have nothing. I will make sure of it. Your choice.”
Tears ran down my face.
He meant this. He absolutely meant it.
My dad would kick me out if I didn’t do what he said. And then where would I go?
“Okay,” I mumbled, wiping away tears with my good hand. “Okay. But promise me he’s okay.”
He turned and left the room, never giving me his promise.
A few minutes later, cops came in and I told them everything. The party. The fight. The ride. The car. The tree.
I lied to their faces and prayed like hell it’d help save Josh.
Two days later he died.
Three days later I was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide due to the alcohol in my system at the time of the crash.
Josh was laid to rest.
And I was sent to Hell.
23
Hudson
My last serious relationship ended years ago and lasted far longer than it should have. When I ended things with Nina, who I’d dated for a year and a half, she believed it was because of Melissa.
In part it was. When Melissa died, no one could have helped me, especially not Nina, who wasn’t the most compassionate woman to begin with. Mostly it was because Melissa’s death reminded me how short life was. There was very little point in going along with the flow of expectations when they weren’t what you wanted. And Nina had started expecting an engagement ring. The fact I’d had to think about it for six months prior to Melissa’s death was its own warning sign.
Unfortunately for Nina, she spent almost a year afterward trying to win me back, so certain I’d only ended things because of Melissa and my grief. She believed once I was ready to move on, I’d turn straight back to her.
By then, Dad was already looking into Lilly and I was already having thoughts about a woman still in prison. I didn’t regret walking away from Nina.
I regretted not being honest with her. I regretted staying longer than I should have.
And now, I was headed straight for the same ending. I could feel it in my bones, a living, slithering virus I couldn’t stop.
The best thing I could do would be to stay away from Lilly and put distance between us, to be her friend and only her friend. But like Melissa and Dad said, she had a way of getting under your skin. Her broken smiles and sad eyes and hardened exterior only called to those of us who spent a lifetime wanting to help others.
Which was why I didn’t bother slowing my steps as I exited the elevator, headed straight for her apartment Sunday afternoon. Knowing Lilly worked Friday and Saturday nights, I waited as long as I could to stop down. I couldn’t stop thinking about her or the kiss I gave her that still lingered on my lips.
It wasn’t even a kiss, but the way she leaned into me when I pressed my lips to her cheek, barely grazing her soft flesh and the way she reached for me… it’d taken everything I had in me to step away from her on Friday night. More effort not to hop in my truck to follow her to Judith’s. To spend the rest of the night trying to convince her all the reasons why she should give me a chance.
I already dropped a bombshell into her hands when I left. I hadn’t intended to say anything, but she deserved as much honesty from me as I could give her.
I wanted to know about her weekend. Make sure everything went okay with giving her notice. Hell, I wanted to sit next to her on the couch in her apartment while she studied just so I could watch the way her brows tugged in and she chewed on her cheek when she concentrated, or the way she tugged at her ponytail when she was frustrated. All things I’d already picked up on from watching her work at the diner.
Besides, Sunday was Sunday family dinner and while I’d dropped hints about the kind of crazy family I had, I wanted her to see it in action.
I knocked on her door, shoving aside the lingering doubt of whether this was a good thing, or questioning if I was pushing her when I promised I wouldn’t. Was spending time with us outside of work pushing? Probably.
Didn’t change a thing for me. I wanted her to get to know Dad, see the kind of dad he was to us. Mostly, I wanted her to see and learn that even though she didn’t have her family anymore, she could still find one, always, at Dad’s table.
Also, he was getting anxious and antsy to get to have her really know him. When Dad wanted something, I happily broke my back to give it to him.
She opened the door with a sleepy look still in her eyes, hair untamed and down, and promptly stole my breath.
It had probably been years since anyone told Lilly she was beautiful, but she was the most angelic woman I’d ev
er seen. Wide, surprised blue eyes blinked slowly and she rested against the doorframe.
“Good morning.”
“It’s two in the afternoon,” I said, rocking back on my heels and giving her my arrogant smile. Her gaze always stuck on my mouth longer in a way the rest of me enjoyed.
“I didn’t sleep well. Do you want to come in?”
I did. “Love to. Why didn’t you sleep well?”
She covered a yawn and closed the door behind me. Shuffling toward her small kitchen, she went straight to the one-cup coffee maker while pushing her fingers through her hair and lifting it into a mess at the top of her head.
“No real reason. What brings you by?” She barely glanced at me while she reached for a cup and grabbed a coffee pod.
I missed you.
The force of my thought made me suck in a deep breath. With the way she approached me, one step forward, two steps back, with one hand always held out to keep me away, I doubted that truth would sit well with her.
I was thinking about you. “I was wondering if you gave your notice at Judith’s,” I said instead.
“I did.” She took a sip of her coffee. Pale round lips closed over the rim of the mug and she closed her eyes, savoring that first taste. “My last night was last night.”
“What? Why?”
Lilly’s still sleepy, but large blue eyes rolled to the ceiling before meeting mine again. “Because it’s a diner, not a corporation. People don’t give two weeks’ notice, I guess.”
“That’s not right. How will you get paid?”
“I was planning on calling Brandon to see if I can start a week early.”
As soon as she mentioned Brandon, I was already reaching to my back pocket, pulling my phone out.
She grabbed my hand, stopping me. “Don’t.”
“It’s a phone call.” What the hell was the harm?
“And I can handle this.” She pressed her lips together and brought her coffee to her mouth, glaring at me over the rim before she took a sip.
“But—”