Page 180 of Wild Card 13

He looked over at me. “Ready?”

I looked at him in his ridiculous beautiful suit, at the messy piece of blond hair already falling over his forehead, at the boy I loved so much I could not imagine a version of my future that did not bend around him somehow.

“Yes,” I answered.

He climbed out first, then came around to my side.

When he opened the door, cool lake air rushed in, lifting the edge of my skirt. I gathered the chiffon carefully, but Ty was already there, offering both hands like I was stepping out of a carriage instead of a half-temperamental pickup truck.

I placed my hands in his and let him help me down. My heels touched the pavement. My dress settled around my legs. Ty did not let go right away.

He looked at me again beneath the parking lot lights, softer this time than he had in my entryway. Less stunned. More certain. “You’re so pretty,” he said.

My skin prickled. “You already said that.”

“No.” His thumb brushed over the back of my hand. “I failed to say it. Pretty sure I made a noise and forgot English.”

“So? I’m saying now.” He stepped closer, smiling down at me like the whole night had narrowed to this. “You’re so pretty, Lucy.”

The butterflies crashed in. Wild and young and impossible to control.

I smiled up at him while music drifted across the parking lot and the lake shivered in the dark behind us. For one more moment, before the doors opened and the future followed us inside, I let myself believe every beautiful thing could stay simple and perfect.

CHAPTER 22

LUCY

NOW

By the time I got home from Matt’s, Dottie had reached the portion of her evening where starvation, neglect, and personal betrayal had all become indistinguishable.

She stood in the center of my apartment with her leash already in her mouth. Not near the hook by the door. Not waiting politely beside her winter coat. In the center of the room, directly beneath the pendant light, as if she had arranged herself for maximum emotional impact.

She adjusted her grip on the leash and gave it one sharp, offended shake.

I sighed and dropped my keys into the ceramic bowl beside the door. “Fine.”

I changed out of my work clothes quickly. Dottie watched from the hallway while I traded trousers for leggings, wedges for boots, and professional composure for a long wool coat that still smelled faintly like fryer oil and snow.

Matt’s had clung to me.

So had Marion Burns’s hug.

That was the harder thing to admit. Not Ty standing too close beneath the red awning. Not his hands at my coat. Not the low rasp of his voice near my hair when he had asked me to come home with him like I was still someone he was allowed to want out loud.

I could lock that away. Probably. Eventually.

The thing I could not seem to put anywhere useful was his family.

Marion’s hands careful around my shoulders. Ruth fussing with my collar like fragile bones were a medical emergency. Hal asking about my drawing as if the question had been waiting in him for years. Fraser paying for dinner without making it a discussion. The whole Burns family folding me back into their noise with a terrifying lack of ceremony.

As if losing them had not been one of the quieter griefs I had never bothered naming because there had been no place to put it where it did not make me feel foolish.

Dottie bumped her head against my shin.

I looked down. “I’m coming.”

The apartment hallway was warm and quiet, muted by carpet and closed doors and the faint hum of old warehouse heating trying its best against a Minnesota winter. Downstairs, the lobby windows had already started gathering fog at the edges. Outside, the world had softened under fresh snow.