Now, after all these years, I could look up and see her walking across town like she’d never left. But she’d changed.
Had been changed by some asshole con man who had stolen her joy.
Although, I’d taken the first crack at it, hadn’t I?
I never thought about the night she showed up at my place. It was a memory I’d shut away, like all my bad memories. Not because I’d been embarrassed for her or myself, but because of that one thing she’d said that stuck in my chest like a fucking meat cleaver.
We’re in love, Nick. We have been…forever.
It’s not that I believed it to be true, not in the way she meant it, but I should have had more respect for the bond we had always shared. I should have let her down easy, instead of acting like an idiot.
Because we were twoothers,who had found our families, there had always been this weird…connection.
It had been there the moment Antony had dropped me off at Roy and Vanessa’s because they were the only certified foster parents in Calico Cove. And Nora had been there to greet me.
She’d been a kid, a baby really, and somehow she’d seen me for exactly who I was, a lost fucking soul. Nora had walked up to me, taken my hand, blinked those big brown eyes at me and said it was okay. We would play together. It was the first time I felt like someone looked right at me and didn’t flinch.
My mom left me. My dad beat the shit out of me. Antony and Birdie worried and felt responsible for me. But Nora, she’d just wanted someone to play dolls with her. So I did. And it had been the most normal part of my life back then. The most normal part of my life foryears.
Maybe I should have said some of those things on that night, explained to her that it wasn’t a romantic love, but a…I don’t know.
Another kind of love.
Maybe she would have forgiven me sooner instead of shutting me out of her life for six years, if I’d been kinder and less dismissive.
“That face looks like woman problems.”
I jumped at the sound of the voice behind me and hit my head on the raised car hood. “Geezus fuck, Wyatt! What the hell are you doing sneaking up on me?”
I eased out from under the hood and glared at my…Wyatt. My…brother. Fuck. I could not get used to that word. He wore sweatpants and Timberland boots and a long-sleeved thermal henley that gave him a mountain man look. The beard helped. Honestly, if you didn’t know the guy, you’d avoid him on the street. Dude was kind of scary.
But he’d attached himself to me in a way that made zero sense. The guy had a brother. He had a hot fucking wife he wasmadly in love with. He’d probably have a million kids soon. Why was the guy trying so hard to get me to be his family?
“Not sneaking. Standing. Your shop’s open.” He pointed at the big open bays.
“Don’t you have a home you need to get back to?”
I knew about his retirement. Had seen it on ESPN. But he still had to have a home in some other part of the country.
“Nope. Truth is, I’m thinking of checking out Calico Cove for a future home.”
“Why?” I asked, exasperated. First his brother Liam moves here for the summer only to fall in love with Calico Cove and buy a place, and now Wyatt, too? How many Locke brothers did one town need?
“My family is here,” he said simply. “Syd doesn’t have any of her own, so we’re thinking the east coast instead of the west coast.”
Family. This fucking guy.
“Free country,” I said, not rising to the bait.
“Yep. So who’s the girl?” he asked with a chin nod in the direction of Nora, who was just now pulling open the door of Petite III.
She couldn’t boil water, so I knew she wasn’t planning on cooking. A waitressing job made sense. Jolie’s place was always packed year round as people from out of town came to taste her cooking.
I glared at Wyatt as I reached for a rag to wipe the grease from my hands. “We call them women now.”
“Sorry, couldn’t tell from here how old she is.”
“Old enough,” I muttered. Not eighteen anymore. A whole different person than the girl I’d known. Someone who had lived in Paris, made a fortune, lost a fortune. Gotten played. Gotten…
