Your legacy is loss,
Struggle.
Unbent wills that clamor
For freedom.
Find only loss,
Strife.
Ache of a Broken promise.
Leave it behind,
Pass it along,
As a warning
One they do not heed.
Thirteen
Twenty minutes I waited in my car, watching that front door and the small face that kept peeking out behind the newly fixed pane instead of getting out and doing what I’d come to the lake house to do. Mack needed a lesson in subtlety but it wasn’t my place to give it to her. At twenty-two minutes, I decided it was stupid to sit and wonder about how wise it was stoking the fire that Ransom was.
Aly: You over your attitude? I’d texted him, getting nothing in reply. That had been a day ago and despite what Ethan thought about my feelings, I didn’t particularly love Ransom at that moment. I did still care enough to kick his ass when he needed it.
The house was quiet when I knocked, other than the scrambling Mack made behind the door, I couldn’t hear anything at all.
“Hey, Aly,” she offered when she opened the door, smile beautiful and wide and before I could answer, the girl grabbed my arm and pulled me over the threshold. “Mom and Cass are in her studio and Makua, I don’t know where he is.” She pulled me closer so I had to bend to hear her. “Ransom is on the sofa sulking.”
“Still?” I whispered when she nodded. “He hasn’t been walking around?”
“Yeah, he can walk now. Koa says he’s just being a punk then I told Koa that he was a lolo punk and he won’t talk to me now.”
It was hard not to laugh at her. Especially when she led me into the room and Mack shot her brother a rude hand gesture through the back glass doors as the boy bounced a ball against the side of the house. The insults she and Koa threw at each other were colorful and they were freakin’ adorable doing it, but I had to remind myself that I was an adult, that it wasn’t exactly proper to encourage those insults.
“Well, maybe you ought to just stay away from him, cheri.” She didn’t seem to agree with that suggestion, but when Ransom sat up, looking at me as he leaned his elbows on his knees, Mack let it go, squeezing my hand as she disappeared out onto the patio.
Ransom watched me walk into the room. I didn’t speak or acknowledge him at all until I sat across from him, easing onto the love seat with my expression neutral. Let him look. I’d put in the effort because I wanted a reaction—a skirt that was a little shorter than I would normally wear in the fall, heels I knew made my calve muscles flex when I walked. He loved my legs, always told me so and I wanted him watching. By how low his gaze moved over my body, my gut told me my efforts had paid off.
“So,” he started, relaxing against the sofa. “You decided to come back.”
“I wanted to check on you.” My voice was even, hid the small irritation I felt at how casual he was being.
“That right?” A small head tilt and Ransom leaned further back, stretching out his arms along the back of the sofa.
“Despite your protests,” I shook my head when he grinned, “worrying about you will always be part of my life. No need to attempt the bata dissing again.”
He considered me, gaze back on my legs, at the opened toe peep hole on my shoes, to the red polish on my toes nails before he worked his attention back up my body, stopping at my mouth. “I was a bastard, wasn’t I?”
“Wi.”
Around us, the house seemed to come to life again. No one seemed to care that we were making attempts at civility. Mack followed Koa back inside, both of them ignoring us as they flew up the stairs bickering at one another. The music wafting from Keira’s studio—strings and the slow whine of a steel guitar lowered, replaced by Keira’s muted voice and Cass’s response that I couldn’t quite make out. With Ransom watching me and me returning that long gaze, Cass appeared from the hallway, but didn’t speak. We disregarded him completely, continuing to watch each other like some stubborn game of chicken without a sound, without paying any attention to the slam of Keira’s studio door and her hurried ascent up the stairs.
The activity in the lake house was nothing new. There was always commotion, there was always background noise. Over the years we’d learned to ignore it. Now it seemed that Ransom and I were still good at the practice, as good as we were at silently daring the other to break.