: Chapter 32

I sweep through Mariette’s kitchen, Aracely keeping pace behind me. “When does the menu change?”

“January.”

I flip through her inventory, scanning the numbers and cost. “You getting orders in?”

“Already done,” she says.

I shoot out my arm, passing her the papers. She should’ve asked me before she bought a bunch of shit she wasn’t sure I’d approve.

But that’s what I hired her for, right? To take initiative?

She’s wasting no time, either. In the last two days, she’s redesigned the restaurant menu, moved the accounts over to a new system I can access on any device, and hired a new server. To replace Krisjen.

I push through the back door of the empty restaurant, the night air cool and loud with life.

“I also want to talk to Mariette about extending hours starting in the spring,” she says behind me.

“Whatever you want.”

It’ll cost more to stay open longer, and we’ll need a bigger staff, but let her see if she can make it worth it. I’ll know in the first month.

She disappears off somewhere, and I look over, seeing Torres heading into the bar with his arm around his wife.

“Macon, come on!” he calls out.

I flash him a dirty look, to which he laughs and heads inside. I’ve never been fun at bars. That’s what he knows.

But if I go in there, I’ll get drunk. And missing her will be unbearable.

Gabriela Minor kicks a soccer ball across the street with her six-year-old little sister. I stop, checking the time on my phone.

It’s after ten. I look at her. She looks up at me.

Then she claps her hands. “Okay, bedtime!” she tells her baby sister.

She takes the girl’s hand and helps her kick the ball back to their house. I move along, toward mine.

I should be proud of her. I know it sucks to have to babysit all night while your mom works, and most fourteen-year-olds just want to get the kids in bed so they can watch TV and be left alone. She plays with her sibling like I never did with mine. She’s a good kid.

I hear the music before I even step inside my foyer, but as soon as I do, I shut off the playlist on the TV and toss the remote back onto the table. Trace sits up on the couch, and I think there are girls on each side of him. I don’t look. “Move it to the pool,” I tell them all.

I head into the kitchen, and Dallas leaves with someone as soon as I enter. I don’t see Army. He’s probably upstairs with Dex.

Filling a glass with water, I drink it down, refill, and drink more.

The lights in the pool out the window glow under the water, and in no time, someone is cannonballing into it, the lawn chairs quickly filling up as the house empties.

This is the time of day I used to love. Family in bed. House quiet.

World in bed. World quiet.

It feels like forever ago that she’d get in her pajamas and grab her pillow, but then she wouldn’t use it. I was her pillow those nights she slept in my room.

Someone glides into the kitchen, their reflection creeping up behind me in the window.

I turn my head, looking down at Summer, a server at Mariette’s. Krisjen trained her. Blond hair, early twenties, long tan legs in shorts, and her feet in skates. I stare down, my heart pumping harder in my chest.

“I was going to track down Krisjen to return them, but they fit me.” She rolls her feet back and forth as she holds the counter behind her. “We should all wear them.”

Her arm brushes mine, and her eyes are filled with heat as she looks up at me, waiting.

She licks her lips and cocks her head, and if I don’t look at her face, I could almost envision it’s Krisjen. Same beautiful skin. Same toned thighs.

I swallow the rest of the water in one gulp and leave, walking up the stairs and opening my door. Before I close it, I hear Van Morrison playing in Army’s room. He plays it when he rocks Dex back to sleep.

Leaving the light off, I turn on my shower and push my jeans to the floor. Stepping in, I wash my hair and body, bowing my head under the spray and letting the heat pour down my back.

I love you.

I plant my forearm on the shower wall, leaning my head in. I still feel her whispers against my mouth. She kept saying it, brushing her lips over mine.

That’s what I’ll miss. More than anything. Her kisses. Without thinking, my mouth opens, feeling her tongue prying for entry just like she’s here.

I drop the handle of the faucet, ready to turn it to cold like I’m now in the habit of doing at the end of every shower, because the cold drives every thought out of my head, but I can’t turn it. I fist it, pushing myself to just do it, but the heat feels perfect. She’s here, right where she’s supposed to be. I can feel her smile against my mouth.

Instead, I turn off the water, wrap a towel around my waist, and walk to my bed. I leave a trail of water as I go, hearing music playing out by the pool. I sit on the edge and drop my head into my hands, hating how hard I am for her. Hating the ache in my chest, and the pain in my heart.

I love you.

She just kept fucking saying it.

My eyes sting, and I close them, not noticing my door opening until light streams in from the hallway. I stare as a pair of white skates with orange wheels glides into my view, and when she’s in front of me, I slide my hands up her smooth calves. Her touch lands on the back of my neck and slips farther up as I press the top of my head into her thighs.

I love you.

She just kept saying it like she hadn’t agreed to be his minutes before. Does she want me? Does she really think she wants me after everything I’ve done?

I brush my fingertips up her legs, hearing her breathe hard and her little whimper escape.

I lift Summer’s leg, and then the other one, pulling off the skates and holding them both in my hands. “Leave,” I tell her.

She stands there, waiting, but I don’t look at her face. I should let her stay. My brothers wouldn’t kick her out of their rooms, but I can’t look at anyone other than Krisjen in my bed. Not yet.

I don’t know when Summer leaves, but in a minute the room is dark again, and I’m gazing down at the skates.

Krisjen doesn’t want me. She wants to fuck me. Inside and out.

I hold a skate in each hand. “You found new ways to break me.”

I tie the skates together by their laces and set them next to my door. Ripping off my towel, I pull back the covers on my bed, about to climb in, but a beeping sound chimes outside the window and I stop. It’s the sound large trucks make when they’re backing up.

Prying the curtain aside, I crane my neck, but all I see are the people around the pool, partying with their music. Trace walks across the deck, looking toward the street like he sees something.

In less than a minute, I’m jogging down the stairs in jeans and slipping on some shoes. Opening the door, I immediately see workers placing signs and cones. The writing on the truck reads Department of Transportation.

“Fuck, what now?” I mutter, stepping outside.

I bolt into the street, slipping my T-shirt over my head as I approach one of the guys in a neon yellow shirt. I see Trace and Liv make their way, as well, out of the corner of my eye.

“What the hell is this?” I demand.

The road worker looks at me, grit all over his face from wherever they were earlier in the day. He points to another man, and I head over.

The guy wears a yellow vest over a long-sleeve blue UV shirt. “What is this?” I ask him. “What’s going on?”

He turns to me. “Sorry for the noise,” he tells me, directing another worker. “We won’t be long. I promise. Just dropping off some things for the morning.”

Morning? What?

“We’ll get started early, I’m afraid,” he calls out over the truck engine. “About five a.m.”

I glance at Trace, then Dallas. Both of them look at me, blank.

“Here’s the schedule,” the man says, thrusting a packet of papers at me.

I sift through, seeing it’s a stack of the same sheet. For passing out and posting, I assume.

I scan the notice. Lane construction. Atlantic View Avenue, Bay Hawk Road, Seminole Point, and Seascape Court. For the next two weeks. Lane closures.

They’re paving the roads.

“The streets will need to be clear,” the man goes on, “including that parking lot tomorrow.” He points to Mariette’s. “I know it’ll suck, but we’ll move quickly. You shouldn’t be inconvenienced for too long.”

“So after six years of me petitioning the city council, you’re just now, all of a sudden, getting to work?”

“I never know where I’m going until they tell me, sir.” He starts to follow his crew, still placing cones to detour traffic. “Someone pulled some strings for you.”

I look past him, locking eyes with Clay, who stands next to Liv.

“Was it your father?” I ask her.

She shakes her head. But she looks nervous.

“We’ll see you bright and early,” the guy shouts, waving as he continues his work.

The truck turns, taking a right down Bay Hawk, and I need to know if we’re getting sidewalks, signs, and streetlamps …

This isn’t a coincidence.

I walk up to my brothers and sister, the noise from the truck fading away. “What did she do?”

They stare at me, Dallas and Trace glancing at each other, and I don’t know who knows what, but someone knows something.

“She traded her house,” Clay finally answers. “Garrett Ames will back off for five years.”

He’ll back off? He’s not standing in my way of getting roads or trying to take the land?

For five years?

I narrow my eyes. “And what am I supposed to do with five years?”

She shrugs a little. “Find a way to make the land more valuable to the government than whatever Garrett Ames would do with it,” she says. “She bought you time.”

It doesn’t make any sense. “He gave up a nine-figure deal for a house?”

“No.” But it’s Liv who answers this time. “Krisjen threatened to give us the house as an alternative. We could find a million things to do with it that would drive down property values in their neighborhood.”

The wheels in my head turn. Yes, we could. He would not want us owning property in St. Carmen.

“And Jerome Watson gets her,” Liv adds.

I gaze at the papers in my hand, crumpling the edges in my fist. “She doesn’t need to sell herself to him,” Clay says. “Her parents hid some of their assets in her name. She’s been liquidating. She’d never sell herself to him for money.”

I swallow the lump in my throat.

“But she’d do anything for you,” Trace murmurs to me.

It’s not meant as an accusation, but I feel the slice all the same.

I’ve wanted roads for these people my whole life. I’ve begged for it, but we’re not taking it like this. She doesn’t get to swoop in and save us. I save us.

I need to see her.

In minutes my family is back to their party, and I’m crossing the tracks again. The gate to her house is open, but I don’t question why. Speeding down her driveway, I spot a large truck in front of the house, Bayside Moving written on the side.

Clay wasn’t lying. She gave away the house.

The windows of the home are dark, and the truck is sealed shut for the night, but the ramp is down. They’re still loading furniture. There’s time to stop this.

I bang on the door over and over again. Come on.

There’s no answer. Where is she?

Where are the kids?

I knock again, but there’s no answer. No one’s here.

I take out my phone and dial one of the many numbers I vowed never to contact again.

“Hello?” Cara Conroy answers.

I walk back to my truck. “Are you in town?”

She hesitates, and she may have forgotten my number, but she knows my voice. “I’m not far. Why?”

“Two Locks,” I tell her. “One hour.”