Lucas - A Preston Brothers Novel (Book 1): A More Than Series Spin-off Read online

  “You’re freezing,” she says, her tone clipped.

  “Well, yeah, your room’s an ice chest.”

  “You’re the most cold-blooded person I know.”

  I laugh under my breath, pull her closer, use her body heat to warm me. “That’s an unfair assumption. How many guys have you let hold you like this?”

  She doesn’t respond. In fact, she’s silent for so long I start to second-guess my words. Was that mean? Maybe it was. Even if it is true. “Sorry,” I say because I’ve been with enough girls to know that a single word can save any and all future drama.

  “It’s fine. I need to sleep and you need to shut up.”

  “Got it.” I shift closer.

  “Did you drink tonight?” she asks.

  “Yep. Three light beers. 435 calories. I should be able to burn it off tomorrow morning. Ten miles… fifteen minutes, plus what I normally run.”

  She sighs. “Did you drive here?”

  “If I drove, I’d have my keys, and if I had my keys, I would’ve let myself in and I wouldn’t have been standing—”

  “Sorry I asked,” she cuts in.

  “You’re so snappy tonight. What’s going on with you?”

  She turns over and faces me, her eyes still closed. “I’m tired.”

  Reaching behind me, I switch on the lamp, knocking her glasses off the nightstand. After replacing them, I turn back to her. And I try to read her—the same way I’ve seen my sister’s boyfriend do with her. “If something’s going on, you’d tell me, right?

  Her eyes flutter open. First one, then the other. The corner of her lips lift, and I know I’ve said the right thing. Her forehead meets my chest and her toes tickle mine. The smell of her shampoo hits my nostrils: coconuts, lime, and Laney.

  I don’t know how long we lie there, the lamp still on, my hand on her waist, her head on my chest before my stomach rumbles, slicing through the sound of our mixed breaths. She laughs once, her exhale warming me. “You hungry?” she asks, tilting her head back to look at me.

  I’m not sure how much of me she can see without her glasses, but the contacts I’m wearing allow me to see all of her; the freckles across her nose, the scar below her right eyebrow, the fullness of her lips… I’ve tasted those lips. Accidentally, but it still counts. It was Christmas. We were fifteen. I went to kiss her cheek. She went to kiss mine. Our lips touched. She tasted like strawberries, and to this day I can’t look or smell a strawberry without thinking of Laney’s full lips.

  “Luke?”

  “Huh?” Fuck, I’m a creep.

  “You want me to make you something?”

  I swallow loudly and look at anywhere but her. “Is that okay?”

  Laney throws the covers off both of us, then reaches over me to get her glasses. “I’m awake now anyway.”

  “You should make your own sandwiches,” she mumbles, cutting the bread in triangles as if I’m Lachlan. Her eyebrows are drawn. She’s annoyed. She’s cute when she’s annoyed. She’s cute always.

  I swing my legs back and forth while I sit on the kitchen counter watching her. “Last time I did that, you almost puked at what I put in there.”

  She hands me the plate and moves to the fridge. “Pickles and peanut butter are not…” she trails off. “That’s just gross, Luke.” Opening the door, she asks, “Water or soda?”

  “Water.”

  I catch the bottle she throws at my head, then freeze when I hear her front door open. “Is that your dad?”

  She shrugs. “Probably.”

  I look at the clock on their microwave and with a mouthful of food, I ask, “It’s 1:30 in the morning. Where’s he been?”

  Laney leans back on the counter next to me, her arms crossed. “On a date.”

  “Lois, is that you?” Brian calls out from the hallway.

  She doesn’t respond.

  “I thought I heard voices.” He peeks into the kitchen, a smile forming when he sees me. “Lucas,” he says in greeting.

  Before I can respond, Laney says to him, “Young man. Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  Brian laughs.

  I chuckle.

  Then Laney says, “I’ve been up all night worried sick!” And I can no longer tell if she’s kidding.

  Brian rolls his eyes. “Sorry, Mom.”

  “You could have called,” Laney says.

  Her dad slips into the room. “I said I was sorry,” he whines dramatically.

  Laney giggles.

  Oh, so she is kidding. Man, I suck at reading her.

  Brian says, looking between us, “Let me guess how your night went. You”—he points to Laney—“stayed home and watched TV or knitted a scarf, and you”—his finger moves to me—“went drinking at a party and came knocking on my daughter’s door.”

  I take a sip of the water and jump off the counter. “And you,” I say, pointing to him, “went on a date?”

  “I did,” he says, lifting his chin.

  “So…” I sway from side to side teasingly. “What’s her name? What does she do?”

  “Her name’s Misty.”

  “Oh,” I say through a chuckle. “Is she a stripper?”

  Laney slaps the back of my head. “Luke!”

  Brian laughs. “She’s sure got the body of one.”

  “Dad!”

  “What?!” Brian and I say at the same time. Then he adds, his eyebrows lifting, “She’s a police officer. Handcuffs and all.”

  “Dad!” Laney shouts.

  “Nice.” I high-five him. Brian and I had gotten close over the years. Besides the family get-togethers and ball games, I guess he found it necessary to get to know the kid who was constantly knocking on their front door and asking to see his daughter. It’s not a bad thing. At all. I like Brian and I hope to God he likes me. He has to, right? I mean, there’s a reason he’s permitting my knocking on Laney’s door at all hours of the night and getting into bed with her. Well, the bed part he probably doesn’t know about. We always make sure the couch looks slept in.

  “Honey, why don’t you ever go to these parties with Luke?” Brian asks her.

  Laney shrugs and looks down at the floor. “It’s not really my scene.”

  “Yeah, but if Luke’s there then it—”

  “He doesn’t invite me,” she cuts in.

  “You would go?” I ask, my voice loud. Too loud.

  Laney’s eyes snap to mine. So do her dad’s. Great. The Sanders Stare. There are very few things in life more terrifying than the Sanders Stare. I stutter, “It’s just, I mean, it’s not really… you’re not—”

  “I wouldn’t go,” Laney says, saving me.

  “Why not?” Brian asks. “You’re almost eighteen, Lo, and you barely leave the house.”

  Laney shrugs. “Just because you’ve gotten a social life in the past year, it doesn’t mean I have to.”

  Brian rolls his eyes again. “You should be out there…” he says, throwing his hands in the air. “…making mistakes and falling in like. Not love. Not yet. But you should at least be dating.”

  I choke on the bite I’d just taken.

  “I’ve dated,” Laney says. She doesn’t say it with pride or with snark. She says it so matter-of-factly that I know she’s telling the truth and that thought alone has the food lodged somewhere between my throat and my stomach, and I thump at my chest, hoping to clear it.

  “Who?” Brian asks, his eyes narrowed.

  “Who is not important.”

  Brian steps closer to her. “Tell me.”

  Swallow. Water. Gasp for air.

  Laney presses her lips tight, refusing to answer.

  I look between the two because I just now realized there is one thing more terrifying than the Sanders Stare. It’s the Sanders Stand-Off.

  “I’m sorry,” Brian concedes, stepping back. “I just worry you’re missing out on life.”

  Laney points to me. “Because I don’t want to be him?”

  “Hey!” I look down at myself. “Wh
at’s wrong with me?”

  Brian points a finger between the two of us. “Why don’t you two…”

  “Dad, that’s gross. It’s Luke.”

  Ouch. “I’m right here!”

  They both laugh. I don’t know why. I don’t find it funny.

  “Goodnight, kids,” Brian says, turning away and waving a hand in the air.

  “Wait!” I square my shoulders. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Chapter Two

  LOIS

  Stupid alarm.

  Every night he stays here, there’s his stupid alarm.

  4:45.

  Every morning.

  Stupid, stupid alarm.

  “Luke, your alarm. Get up. Go!”

  With his eyes still half closed, he reaches for his phone in my hand, switches the alarm off, then throws it across the room.

  I stare at it, expecting it to grow legs and make its way back to us. Did I mention it was 4:45? “But…”

  “But what?”

  “Your run.”

  “No,” he murmurs, digging his head in the pillow.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “But you run every morning.”

  “Not today,” he says, wrapping his arm around my waist and maneuvering me until I’m lying back down. “Let’s sleep in.”

  “Sleep in?”

  He moves closer. So close that when he says, “Leave it alone, Lane,” I can feel his warm breath against my neck.

  “Okay…?”

  “Good.”

  Ten minutes later I’m wide awake, lying on my back, his hand flat on my stomach. I listen to him breathe, feel the goosebumps prick my skin, feel an overwhelming amount of emotions. It’s not the first time we’ve been this close physically, but there’s something different, something off. And there’s this nagging in the back of my mind that’s telling me this should be the last time. I want it to be the last time. Because having him here is too much, and at the same time, it’s not enough. It won’t ever be enough.

  Without warning, his fingers start strumming against my skin. “Can’t get back to sleep, huh?”

  I shake my head, but refuse to look at him.

  He removes his hand and untangles his legs from mine, and I exhale, relieved, hoping he’ll leave. “Do I have sweats here?” he asks.

  “Bottom drawer.”

  I sit up halfway and watch him move across the room—one hand in his hair, the other covering his parts. I’d be lying if I said the attraction to him wasn’t physical because it plays a part. Unlike me, he’d changed a lot over the years. I was still Plain Lane, and he was no longer the cute boy I crushed on when we were eleven. He’d gotten rid of his glasses and opted for contacts the moment he joined the track team in sixth grade. In seventh grade, he got braces to fix the gap in his teeth. In eighth grade, he had a growth spurt and never really stopped. By the time tenth grade started, he’d dated more than his share of girls. Now, at seventeen, he topped out at 6’2” and showed off muscles in places I didn’t know existed.

  He was too much.

  He wasn’t enough.

  “Don’t forget your phone,” I tell him, lying back down.

  “I’m not leaving.”

  I glance over at him just in time to see him pull on a pair of his sweatpants. “You’re not?”

  “Unless you want me to,” he says, eyes on mine.

  After seconds of waiting and no response from me, he shakes his head, his gaze shifting to the floor. “I’m going to brush my teeth, and then we’re going to talk because something’s going on with you and we need to deal with it.” He makes his way to the bathroom, and I follow behind. It’s a routine we’ve done many times before; we stand in front of the mirror, brush our teeth, take turns to spit, pass each other the mouthwash, then I leave so he can do his business, and when he’s done, I do mine.

  He’s back in bed when I get out, his gaze fixed on the bathroom door, waiting. “So?” he says.

  I shrug. “So.”

  He pats the spot next to him, and reluctantly, I do as he suggests. I lie beneath the covers and wait for him to put his hands on me, somewhere, anywhere, it doesn’t really matter. He opts for his fingers on my forehead, pushing away my bangs so he can look in my eyes. “What goes on, Lane?”

  I shrug again, but there’s a backlog of tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat and I know he can see it because his eyebrows bunch and he moves closer again, so his head’s on my pillow. “Was it about the party last night? The whole class was invited and if I thought that you’d go—”

  “It’s not about the party.”

  “Then what?” His voice is soft, unmasking his concern. His gaze fixes on mine while mine searches his and I find nothing. Not a damn thing.

  He licks his lips, his eyes narrowing even more. “Are you worried about school starting tomorrow? Because if you are, you don’t need to be. It’s only senior year. One year of our entire—”

  “Why do you come here, Luke?” I cut in.

  He rears back an inch. “In general or…”

  “Why do you spend nights with me instead of going home or sleeping at one of your many girlfriends’ houses?”

  Luke pulls away and faces the ceiling. “Don’t do that, Laney.”

  I lean up on my elbow and look down at him. “Do what?”

  “Make me out to be something I’m not. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of girlfriends, but I’ve never been with more than one at a time and you know that.”

  I look away, the guilt quick to consume me because he’s right.

  He says, his voice low, “I come here because I like being around you. Because my own home doesn’t feel like home unless you’re there. Because I want to know what’s going on in your life and I want to tell you what goes on in mine. Because you’re there for me through every breakup, through all the shit that goes on with my family, through everything. And mostly, I come here because I want to.” He inhales deeply. Exhales loudly. “Is this what it feels like to have someone you care about break up with you because if it is, I think I’m done with dating.” He rubs his chest… right above his heart. “This feeling sucks.”

  There’s power in his words that go directly through my ears and pierce my heart. But I remind myself that it’s a lie. He doesn’t care about me. If he did, he’d remember. “Luke…”

  His gaze moves to mine, his eyes revealing his pain. I’ve only seen that look a few times. Once when we were twelve and he showed up at my house, soaking wet from the storm outside, and again when we were thirteen and he accidentally swung a baseball bat too far back and caused me to get three stitches under my right eyebrow. “Did I do something?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

  I blink, push back the emotions, the tears. “No,” I lie.

  “Then what the hell’s going on?”

  I lie back down, my head landing on his already outstretched, waiting arm. And I think… I try to come up with a lie so that we can move past this. So that his actions, or lack of, from the past twenty-four hours don’t define him or us or our entire friendship. And so I give him a half-truth because right now, it’s all I can offer. “The summer’s almost over and summers remind me of your mom and how great she was. And I miss her, I guess. I just…” I trail off, unable to finish with the lump lodged in my throat. So maybe it was more than a half-truth. Maybe it was all I needed to feel, needed to say. Maybe it was everything. “I really miss her.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” he whispers.

  “Because she’s your mom. I have no right to miss her.”

  He pulls me closer until I’m on my side and my head’s resting on his chest. Then he kisses the top of my head and wraps both his arms around me. “She may be my mom but she loved you beyond words, Lois Lane. And next time you feel like this, tell me and we can miss her together.”

  PAST | LUCAS

  “It looked like you got on well with Laney. You like her?” Mom asked, her hands and fingers working frantically on whatever knitting pro
ject she was working on while sitting on the couch opposite me. It had been more than a few hours since Lois and her dad had left, and the house was a rare kind of quiet. The twins were in bed, Logan was off being Logan, and Leo and Lucy were lost in their own fictional world, as always.

  I feigned disinterest, kicked out my legs and got more comfortable on Dad’s recliner. “Her name’s Lois, not Laney.”

  Mom smiled. “Well, I think I’m going to call her Laney. I like it better. It suits her.”

  I scoffed. “You can’t just go changing people’s names, Ma.”

  “Why not, Bobby Jo?” she sang.

  “Who the hell is Bobby Jo?”

  She laughed under her breath. “You are now.”

  I laughed with her. “I think I prefer Lucas.”

  “You still didn’t answer my question, Bobby Jo.”

  I ignored her use of my new name. “She’s cool.”

  “And cute,” Mom added.

  I pretended to wipe my mouth with my forearm, hoping it would somehow hide my blush. “She’s cool,” I repeated.

  “Mmm-hmm…” She tried to hide her smile, but I didn’t need to see it to hear it. “I was thinking—”

  “Uh-oh. This can’t be good.”

  “Smartass.” She grinned. “Brian mentioned that Laney would be staying home alone for a couple of days while he works, just until he can decide if she’s old enough to stay on her own for that long a period. But if you don’t mind, I thought I might invite her to spend the summer with us. It might be nice to have an extra hand around here.”

  “So you’re using her for child labor?”

  She laughed at that. “I didn’t think of it that way. But I don’t know. It’d be nice to have another girl around, and besides, I think we’d be good for each other. I just don’t want your mom to cramp your style by asking your crush to come over.”

  “She’s not my crush,” I said. Way too loud. Way too obvious.

  Mom didn’t respond to that. Instead she said, “She kicked your ass in that race.”

  I lifted my chin. “Like I care.”

  “About what? Her spending the summer with us or her kicking your ass?”