True to his word, Lucas doesn’t return to the hospital, so I have all morning to try to begin the process of sorting out my thoughts. After one of the physicians comes around a little after noon, and a nurse issues my discharge paperwork shortly thereafter, I’m stunned to find that the person who arrives to pick me up at the hospital is Kylie.
She’s smiling when she comes into my room, but her lips are pale. And when she hugs me, taking the utmost care to be gentle, I can feel how violently her shoulders are shaking. “I called your gram and asked if I could—” she begins to explain, drawing away from me. Pushing her sunglasses on the top of her head, my chest contracts when I see that her brown eyes are puffy. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“No. Thank you for coming.”
Even though I’m perfectly capable of carrying it myself, Kylie insists on toting the small overnight bag that Gram dropped off for me yesterday out of the hospital. She leads me to a car, a rental Expedition that she has to practically do acrobatics to get into since she’s so short.
“They’ve upped the bond on that shithead to two hundred thousand,” she says, breaking the silence a few minutes after she pulls out of the hospital parking lot. “So there’s no way in hell that he’s going anywhere.”
“Lucas’s doing?”
She gazes straight ahead at the Mini Cooper in front of us. “I’m not sure.”
“Are you going back to the band tonight?” I ask, but the underlying question is obvious: Has Lucas left already?
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
Choosing not to respond to that, I focus my attention on adjusting the AC vent, playing with the dial until the cold air is blowing into my face. “You’ve always been amazing to me, Kylie, but I’m guessing that you coming to pick me up wasn’t just to tell me that the guy who attacked me won’t be getting out of jail anytime soon.”
She laughs nervously. “You perceptive bitch, you.”
It was funny, I vividly recall her brother saying nearly the same thing to me backstage after the show in Dallas when Cilla had debuted “Second Best.” It was only a couple of weeks ago, so why the hell does it seem like a lifetime has passed since then?
“What are you going to do about my brother?” Kylie asks softly.
I turn my head to the right and look out the window. “What he did doesn’t change how I feel about him.” A strand of my hair blows out of place thanks to the air conditioner, and I tuck it back behind my ear, cringing when my knuckles brush against a bruise along my jawline. “I believe him when he says it was an accident, but why couldn’t he have just—”
When my voice cuts off, Kylie whips her head toward me, her brown hair flying around her face. “What? Told you? Sienna, I have been riding his ass for years about this, and nothing could have prepared me for what he said in that hospital room yesterday. And I don’t think for one second that you wanted to hear that any more than me.”
“So you never expected it to be that?”
She returns her gaze to the road. “I should have, huh? I mean, the signs were all there. Cilla stopped complaining about having a stalker a few weeks after Louisville and then there was the whole thing with Lucas avoiding the damn place. But honestly, I just thought that was because he didn’t want the stigma of Cilla’s rant being attached to the band.” She turns onto the Interstate sharply, muttering a curse when someone honks his horn at her. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I Googled Bryce. The authorities thought it was a mugging gone wrong—he had drugs on him, and he was high as a kite when he died. If I had suspected that . . .”
But she can’t finish the sentence.
“If you think that I plan on saying anything, I’m not,” I say, and she gives me a sad smile.
“If I thought that, you wouldn’t be in this truck with me. I need to know what you plan on doing. My brother loves you, and if Sam is going to pull some crazy shit—and use your head, babe, we both know she is—I want to know where you stand.”
“I . . .”
Where the hell do I stand? I know exactly where my heart lies, and that’s with Lucas, but my head?
“Because I don’t want my brother to go away. I don’t want his niece or nephew not to know him, and—”
The air feels like it’s been punched out of my lungs. “Wait. Kylie, are you pregnant?”
“Surprise,” she says in a flat voice. “Six weeks, and believe it or not, nobody knows except for you and Lucas.”
“Are you okay? This has to be bad for the baby.”
Kylie shakes her head. “I promise I’m fine.” She takes the exit for Gram’s house. When she reaches the stop sign, she looks over at me. “You’re sitting there with your face all bruised up, and the only thing you can think of is me. No wonder my brother is in love with you.”
She’s quiet for the rest of the ride, but when I sneak a glance in her direction every minute or so, I see the tears rolling down her cheeks. When she pulls the Expedition into my grandmother’s driveway, she drives as close as she can to the front door. She cuts off the ignition and rests her shoulder blades back against the leather seat.
“I don’t like to leave the people that I love, and that love me,” I say at last, staring at the front door of the house until the rectangular shape of the wood is blurry. “That’s why I came back here, you know?”
“You’re a good one.”
“I don’t know how I’ll look at Lucas from now on, but I do know this: I love him. That may make me stupid or weak or even na?ve. I don’t care. But no matter if we’ll be together or not, I don’t want that bitch Sam to do this to him.”
“She’s going to ask for more money,” Kylie says.
“How do you know that?”
She lifts her shoulders. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. And he’ll keep giving it to her just to bury what he did. What scares me the most is what happens when there’s nothing left? When she’s taken everything from him, and there’s nothing else for him that will appease her?”
I watch as the door to the house opens, and my grandmother comes out with a warm smile on her face. But that smile melts away quickly when she sees Kylie and me inside of the SUV. Slowly, she backs up into the house, and the door closes behind her.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “It doesn’t matter if I stay away or not does it?”
“Him loving you puts a fire under her ass, but no, it doesn’t. She’s going to keep coming at him.”
Until there’s nothing left to give.
And how long will that take?
A year?
Another four years?
For the rest of Lucas’s life?
Reaching behind her seat, I grab my overnight bag and draw it up to the front of the car. “Thank you for coming to get me,” I whisper.
“Like it or not, you’re stuck with me.”
“I know I am, but luckily, I like it.”
As I climb out of the Expedition, I give Kylie a worried onceover, my eyes stopping when they drop to her flat stomach. She looks down too. “Take care of yourself, Kylie. And tell Wyatt about the baby, will you? You’ll make his year.”
For the first time since she picked me up a half an hour ago, she offers me the cheery smile that first drew me to her. “Don’t worry, I will. You take care of yourself, too, Sienna.”
I nod and slam the door. “I’ll call you soon.”
As I walk slowly up the front steps, I hear the automatic window slide down. “What should I tell Lucas?” she questions, and my shoulders go taut.
“That he would be an idiot if he thought I would ever stop loving him.”
Over the next day and a half, two messages from Samantha pop up in my inbox—one to ask me how I’m feeling again and the other wanting to know if I had met the real Lucas yet. I don’t answer either email, nor do I erase them, though I have no idea what I’m keeping the damn things for. All I know is that they make furious.
I don’t realize that someone is following me, until Tuesday afternoon, when I notice the black car that was parked on the street near the top of my driveway sitting in front of a meter close to The Beacon.