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My heart skipped a beat at the sound of the door being unlocked.Could it be?
“Sis?” my brother Vincent called from the foyer. “You ready to go?”
Elation gone, I waited until he walked into the kitchen. “Go where?”
“Back home to Mom and Dad’s.”
I shook my head. “Not happening.”
He leaned against the wall. “I’m here to help you pack.”
“Nope.” I sipped another spoonful of soup.
“You’re a Benson. You’ve given up. It’s what we do, and then we go back home and hang out to forget our mistake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Grace tells me she thinks you never really liked him anyway.”
I shook my head, not going for the bait. Grace wouldn’t have told him that.
“So, you do like him?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.” What I’d felt for Duke had gone way beyondlike.
“If you’re going to follow in my footsteps and give up, you have to go all the way and move back home.” He thumbed toward the stairs. “So let’s get going.”
“Since when did you ever give up on anything?”
He smirked. “Not anything…anyone.” His eyes shifted to the prom photo on the mantel—the one of him and Ashley Newton, the one who’d gotten away. One drunken evening, Vincent had lamented to me that he counted not going after her as the biggest mistake of his life.“Learn from my mistake,”he’d said.“Don’t repeat it.”
I finally understood the message I’d forgotten.
“Time to be an adult and make up your mind. Are you going to give it your best shot or give up and go home to Mom and Dad? Those are your only two choices… Well?”
“You suck.” He’d ignored the curl-up-in-a-ball-and-sob-for-a-month alternative I’d been pursuing.
“Insulting me won’t do you any good,” he noted. “I’m staying until you make a decision.”
“Why do you have to be so mean?”
He snorted. “I used to think you were tough.”
“Now who’s being insulting?” I closed my eyes for a minute and wished him away. Peeking, I found it hadn’t worked.
He smiled smugly. We both knew he was right.
As much as I wanted to wallow, it was self-defeating, and I wasn’t a quitter. I levered myself up. I’d watched how letting Ashley get away had hurt him, and that wasn’t the path for me. I knew what I’d experienced with Duke, and I wasn’t wrong about what he’d felt. But something had spooked him. “I’m going to go get my man back.”
Nursing the coffeeI’d ordered, I heard the woman next to me sigh before I saw him. Then, with a stir, every pair of female eyes in the small diner shifted to the man walking my way. Lucas Hawk had arrived. The men who noticed him shifted uncomfortably. Lucas exuded a dangerous vibe like nobody I’d ever met.
He settled into the booth across from me. “I think you’re safe now.”
I’d made up my mind, so direct was the order of the day. “That’s not why I called. But I suspect you know that.”
He shrugged. “Jordy and I both told him he’s being an idiot.”
The news warmed me. I didn’t expect them to be opposed, but having their support had to help.
