silence for a few minutes before he speaks up. “I was raised in the outskirts of a town in West Virginia, I told you some of it, but not really the truth. My father did odd jobs to pay the bills but mostly left during the day to get drunk with his buddies. My mother worked at a gas station. To my parents, I was both obligation and nuisance. My dad lived for NASCAR, and my mom lived for my dad. They fought and fucked, and neither was pretty. We lived in a trailer with thin walls and a leaky roof. I slept on the same lumpy twin mattress for sixteen years. I was the kid everyone avoided because I was poor.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“My mom slapped me around a little, but it wasn’t anything I still lose sleep over. She did do it once at school, and that stuck with me. Maddie, she was the one who gave me a mother’s love…” he fumbles a little with his words and I can tell it pains him. “She’s the one who showed me what a mother was supposed to be like, as reluctant as she was.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I had Maddie. I think the universe interjects people in your life for a reason, brief or otherwise, to make up for a few shortcomings, to help make sense of things you can’t figure out.”
“But, Lucas, you can’t just make decisions for the both of us.”
“I know.”
He drives in silence for a few minutes, and before I know it, we’re parked at a duplex.
“Where are we?”
“My place.”
I turn in my seat. “I thought you lived at a hotel when you weren’t working?”
He blows out a breath. “I lied.”
“What? Why?”
“You’re about to see, come on.”
To say the outside of the town house is meager is an understatement. He guides me through a small fence, and I can see the courtyard is well taken care of, in fact, it’s beautiful. “This is lovely,” I remark, looking at the lush green yard.
Lucas nods. “Denny does a good job.”
“He seems like a really nice man.”
“He owns the town house. I give him extra for yard work.”
“I’m confused,” I say, pausing on the porch as he pulls out his keys.
“I know.”
“I mean this is nice, but it’s…can’t you afford more? You’re renting?”
“Money talk is rude,” he says with a wink.
I swallow. “Sorry.”
“No, this is exactly why I brought you here.” He unlocks the house and pushes the door letting me in ahead of him. I gasp when I see the scarce furnishings. There is no life, barely any personality. There’s a large TV and a recliner in the living room and nothing else. No pictures, nothing that makes the space personal, warm, or inviting.
I turn to him completely floored. “You live here?”
He bites his upper lip and nods.
“What’s upstairs?”
“Just a bed and necessities.”
“That’s all?”
Another nod.
“Lucas…”
He leans against the wall and shoves his hands in his pockets.
“My mom had this legal notepad, and she terrorized me with it.”
“A legal pad?”
“Funny how something so ordinary can become the bane of your existence.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, on that legal pad was this list of monthly bills she had to pay and nightly she’d drink about a fifth of brandy and sit me down to tell me exactly how much money we had, and what we didn’t. She would cry, and it scared the shit out of me. We lost our power once for almost a month in the dead of winter, so her fears weren’t that farfetched. Maddie got it turned back on.”
My eyes are already tearing up.
“My mom did this, for years and years, always instilling in me that there was never enough money. I guess it made me a little sick too.” He swallows, looking around his house. “That Land Rover you dented tonight is leased, and I don’t have to pay for it.”
I wince. “I’m sorry.”
He’s already shaking his head. “That’s not…baby, that’s not why I told you that. I can afford to buy every Land Rover in the state of California and probably several states over. I’ve barely spent any of the money I’ve made off the movies. I’ve been living off the interest, which is plenty.”
Realization has my chest constricting. “Because you’re scared it’s not enough?”
“Shit, I know. It’s crazy. I don’t expect you to fully understand, but I hope you’ll try. This is scary for me. I have tens of millions in the bank, and I know how hard it is to