handle it.”
“You’ve been gone a long time,” he replied. “I think you might be surprised by how this all plays out.”
“I was just home after my dad’s car accident,” I reminded him. “And not much had changed. I was still the – God, what do you call a person when everyone else are black sheep?”
“The white sheep?” he said with a chuckle.
“Definitely not that,” I said with a huff. “The llama.”
“Huh?”
“They’re the black sheep, and I’m the llama. I don’t fit…and I spit at people.”
“This metaphor has gone in a really weird direction,” he mused.
“You know what I mean. When I was there, Lily wanted nothing to do with me—even though I made a serious effort to make things right between us. Everyone stared, waiting for me to cause a scene or something. It was complete bullshit. I was there for my dad. What did they think I was going to do, start a brawl with my baby sister over a guy that I hadn’t wanted when I was 16, and still don’t want now? So ridiculous.”
“Just take it one day at a time,” he said, setting his hand on my thigh, his thumb rubbing back and forth over the seam of my sweats. “It’ll be fine.”
“At least I’ve got you with me,” I said, holding back a smile. “They’ll be so busy wondering if me and you are together that they won’t be taking bets on when me and Lily will get into a fistfight.”
“Puhlease,” he said, making me laugh. He paused. “Like Lily would ever get into a fistfight.”
“Hey!” I said, swatting at him.
“What? Have you ever met a sweeter person? She’s the least confrontational person I know.”
“To you, maybe,” I muttered. Though, I knew he wasn’t wrong. The idea of getting into a physical fight with my sister seemed as likely as being abducted by aliens. “Still, they’ll be waiting for some sort of drama that they can blame me for… beyond the drama I’m bringing with me, I mean.”
“I think they might surprise you,” he mused. “They’re dysfunctional as fuck, but when someone’s in trouble, they circle the fuckin’ wagons.”
I sighed. “I know. I just never wanted them to do that for me.”
“They already have,” he pointed out, glancing at me. “They didn’t cut me out back when I bailed on you, but not one person set me straight on you and Leo. They let me believe it.”
“I think they believed it,” I confessed, watching him drive. “At least for a while. They just assumed, and we didn’t correct them. Plus—” I swallowed hard. “I used it—you know? During arguments and shit. I used Leo as a shield to keep people from fucking with me.”
Sometimes I forgot how much I owed Leo. He’d come through for me in a way that defied comprehension. There was nothing in it for him at that point. I’d already completely screwed him over. He should have hated me. A familiar memory hit me, and my lips twitched as I tried to hold back a laugh.
“You’re being surprisingly cool about this,” I said, failing to keep the surprise out of my voice.
“I look like the jealous type?” Leo asked. If I was being honest, yeah. Yeah, he did. When the right woman came along, I had a feeling that Leo would be jealous and possessive as hell. He just wasn’t that way with me.
Leo hadn’t held a grudge when I’d started screwing around with Mark and inevitably left him behind, and I’d never really understood it until years later, when I’d seen him with my little sister. Me and Leo just hadn’t fit, and we’d both known it. Ironically, he’d fit with my baby sister—who was my complete opposite.
I started to stretch to look over the back of the seat again, but Mark held me still with the hand on my leg.
“Stay put, yeah?” he said, glancing in his rearview mirror.
Alarm thrummed through me.
“Why?” I looked in my own rearview mirror, but couldn’t see anything.
“Just noticed a pickup that’s been with us for a while,” he said, giving my leg a squeeze. “Could be nothin,’ but no reason to highlight exactly where Olive is, yeah?”
“Fuck,” I breathed, clenching my fists on my lap.
“Should be meeting up with the boys in the next hour,” he said, switching lanes. He gave a chin lift to Forrest as we passed his SUV. “They’re probably freezing their asses off in this weather.”
“I know. Just another reason for everyone to be pissed at me,” I said