Page 5 of Lovely Darkness

“You’re holdin’ it in your hand, ya little weirdo. Read it.”

She carefully opens the flap and pulls out the decades-old stack of papers and starts reading. On page two her mouth drops open and then she looks up at me and smiles. “I knew it.”

“You did not.”

“I so did.”

I reach over and tickle her until she’s squealing and kickin’.

Then her line gets a bite and we forget all about stupid Nick Tate and go back to fishin’.

CHAPTER TWO - NICK

Wendy shakes me gently. “Nick?”

I’m tired from… well, everything. My whole life makes me tired. But also, the two-day drive with Merc sitting next to me—the whole time wondering what Wendy and Sasha were talking about—then last night… what the actual fuck was that?

Fucking Adam Boucher has lost his mind. That brain injury is rearing its ugly head. We didn’t get to discuss it because of course, right after he told me this, everyone appeared and we both figured this was probably a subject that deserved a private conversation. But there is no way I’m his brother.

Maybe we’re the same height and we kinda have the same build, but that’s really where the similarities end. We’re definitely not twins. And there’s no way he’s related to my sister.

This bothers me.

Not that he’s not related to Harper, but that he could be.

It bothers me bad because Harper used to be my one and only. The one person I could count on for ever and ever and ever. She was always waiting for me when I got home at night. Always wanted to know about my day. What did I learn? Teach it to her. And I would tell her all the secrets I had promised to keep. I would spill them out all over her. And I would teach her what I’d learned.

We were inseparable when we were kids. And now I have to share her with James Fenici. In fact, he gets like eighty percent of her.

I refuse to share my remaining twenty percent with Adam Boucher.

“Nick?” Wendy tries again.

I open my eyes and smile at her. “Yeah. What’s up?”

“I feel weird.”

“What?” I prop myself up on my elbows a little. Wendy is not lying next to me. Instead she’s sitting up in bed staring down at me intently. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” She frowns. “I just don’t feel right.”

“OK.” I take a deep breath and my mind starts going crazy with questions. What kind of weird feeling could this be?

Does she want to kill someone?

Does she want to run away?

Does she want to kill herself?

I throw the covers off, grab my pants from the floor, and pull them up my legs.

Wendy looks confused when I glance back at her. “What are you doing?”

I offer her my hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”

She glances at the mandatory bedside table, looking for the mandatory clock. But this isn’t a hotel room. This is the third-floor attic bedroom of Old Home. “What time is it?” she asks.

I shoot her one of my disarming, trademark Nick Tate dimpled grins. “Do we have a curfew or something?”