I looked over to my left, out the window, noticing a thick gray sweatshirt. Luke?
I opened my car door.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as soon as I began climbing out of my car. “Did you sleep out here?”
“I didn’t know where else to go,” I explained, looking completely defeated. I was a mess. “Sophia’s grandma died last night, and it was so awful. I tried to text you on my phone.”
“The battery died. You hadn’t charged it all night while we were out at the lake, and then I’d used it briefly yesterday. It was dead by early evening. Why didn’t you call my phone?”
“I couldn’t remember the number,” I said with a smirk, feeling stupid all over again. “Do you have mine memorized?”
“Probably not.” He smiled back. “I guess I didn’t really think that through. I thought you just didn’t show up. I thought maybe you gave up on me, thinking I was crazy.”
“After all this? Why would I give up now? I went out there, to the beach – in the pitch black darkness, by the way – just to find you, but you weren’t there. I wasn’t sure if you’d made it there at all, or if things went sideways…”
“Everything is going to be fine,” he said, reaching out for me. “All I’ve wanted to do this entire time is do right by you. I hope I’ve done that. I think it’s all okay now.”
“I don’t believe it’s that easy,” I said skeptically, letting him pull me into his chest.
“It wasn’t easy. None of this has been easy. I had to make some hard decisions, but I truly believe they were the right ones. Everything is going to be okay. Did you see the eleven o’clock news last night?”
“This whole ordeal is newsworthy?” I said it a little too loudly, but it caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting that. I was hoping this would all be a lot more discreet than that. If I didn’t want Casey to know what I’d done, the news wasn’t a good place to keep that under wraps.
“It’s a good thing,” he said, calming my nerves.
“My brother?” I sucked in a breath, fearing the worst. If he didn’t know whether or not my brother was safe, I was going to lose it. That’s all I really wanted out of all of this.
“Cade got out of the fray just in time,” he explained. “I was able to warn him before the raid went down.” He pulled my phone out of his pocket, holding it up.
“What?”
“That’s what I needed this for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dynamite. That was your code word, right? To warn him that trouble was on its way?”
I nodded.
“It saved his ass. He got out of there before the cops came to bust the group my brother was part of.”
“You turned in your own brother?”
“Perhaps no one will ever know the answer to that.” He shrugged, keeping things somewhat vague, though I knew the truth. “It was an anonymous tip to the Crime Stoppers hotline, explaining they had some stolen vehicles and weapons and whatnot stashed at their headquarters house. Nothing specifically related to the bank, so no ties back to you or me. Totally different criminal activity, but enough to get them held up for a bit.”
“My brother was there?”
“Right before the raid? Yeah. He got the message and bailed though, so he’s not going where they are.”
“What do you mean? Where did he go?”
“While those guys were being carted off by the cops, it forced Cade back to his dealer’s house. Unfortunately that place was raided later as well, but he didn’t get a warning about that one because that’s exactly what he needed, Lexi. You were right about that. He was going to kill himself in that mess. He was picked up by the drug unit last night. That’s his best shot at getting into a rehab program, since you know he won’t do it on his own. It’s what he needed. They’ll still prosecute him, but he won’t be charged with the more serious stuff he was involved in with Casey. Instead he’ll get minimal time, enough time to get clean, but then he’ll be court-ordered to attend a rehab. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be cured, but it’s a start.”
My eyes welled up. It was exactly what Cade needed.
“I know you weren’t totally sure about turning him in,” he continued. “You wondered if he would ever forgive you for that, right? Well, now you’ll never have that guilt since you weren’t the one to do it. As far as he sees it, you actually warned him from real trouble. You saved him in another way, and I’m sure he’ll be grateful for that. This is his best chance at a fresh start. I’m sure he still has plenty of enemies, but once he gets out of rehab and he’s clean, he can literally start over anywhere he wants.”
“That’s the best thing for him,” I agreed. “Thank you. For all of this. But what about Casey? They’ll lock him up?”
“He’ll probably be in for awhile since it’s not his first offense. But hey, at least I can see both of my brothers in one visit,” he said lightly, trying to make a joke out of it, but I could hear the sadness in his voice. “You were right all along. It had to happen. I didn’t know how else to save someone who didn’t want to be saved.”
“But we try anyway, because that’s what we do. That’s who we are.”
“Exactly. At least we understand each other there. When you told me what Casey he’d done, I wanted my brother to face a far worse fate but this is enough for me. It’ll give him time to work through his own demons. He needs the chance to work through those on his own. I know I can’t pull him out every time.”
“Remember when you told me I was a good person?” I looked up at him, so thankful he found me this morning. He nodded. “I think you’re a good person too. I think that makes us perfect for each other.”
“A bit of a rocky start for us, wouldn’t you say?”
“Eh, I don’t know. Just a bank robbery, a home invasion, crime-ridden family relationships, and some weird upcoming holiday prison visits in our future, but otherwise our relationship seems perfectly normal.”
He let out a slight laugh. “I don’t think anything is going to be normal for us.”
“Exactly. Feels kind of reckless, right? Like I said from the beginning, I’m wild – unpredictable, even. You never know what you’re going to get.”
“Right. I’m still not buying any of that. With you, I know exactly what I’m going to get.”
“Oh yeah?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because, I know you. You can be swayed with stargazing and pie, you will forever light up any time you get to be with your friends, you’re strong as hell, fighting for people you care about – and you picked me out of a crowd, knowing how perfect I was for you.”
“You said perfection was a trap, remember? It doesn’t exist?”
“Spend another night with me in the back of my truck, underneath a starry sky, and tell me perfection doesn’t exist…”
“Touché. Perhaps it does.”
“If you ever doubt that, I’m going to spend every day making you believe it does exist.” He wrapped me up in his arms, pulling me in close. “And on the days where things don’t seem so perfect? We’ll start again the next morning, as soon as the sun rises…”
“Promise?”
“Forever.”
*****
The sunrise that morning was breathtaking, just like the last one we’d experienced together, and it was a beautiful reminder that each and every day was a chance to start over. I knew things wouldn’t always be easy for us. We both loved and cared about very complicated people – and perhaps that made us complicated ourselves. But surely if we could get through everything we’d already battled, I expected we could handle anything.
As much as I wanted to stay under the orange morning sky with Luke, day after day, we still had to go through the motions of real life. I went in to the bank each and every day, and he devoted as much time as he could to his grandfather’s house. I’d like to say Cliff warmed up to me as I stopped over occasionally to help Luke with some easy
house projects, but I wasn’t sure he could ever truly be cracked – he never showed it, anyway. Maybe he would reject those who cared about him forever, I wasn’t sure. But every now and then I would catch a glimpse of him staring at the clock I gave him, his eyes full of awe and mist, and I thought maybe, just maybe, there was a little sunshine left in him after all.
I thought often of Grandma Eve. Love ain’t sunshine. It seemed to me no truer words had ever been spoken. She knew all the secrets, and she revealed them to us one broken heart at a time. Only love could make you feel full and empty all at once. It was as beautiful as it was heartbreaking. It was part of your highest highs and your lowest lows, and it never came easy. Never. But I knew, with absolutely certainty – even the smallest bit of sunshine was perfection against any storm. Luke…he was my piece of sunshine, as imperfect as he was - and I knew he was every bit worth choosing.
Epilogue
“How’s your brother?” Luke was pulling up the tile in the kitchen as I brought him in some caulk and new hardware for one of the cabinets. It was the last room in the house he had to finish.
“He gave me a letter,” I replied, setting the stuff in my hands down on the laminate counter.
“Yeah?”
“I cried in my car for an hour afterward,” I said with a shrug.
“It was that good, huh?”
“What? How do you know it wasn’t a bad letter?”
“Because you look radiant today. When your heart hurts, it’s all over your face. You’re happy today, so it’s a good letter.”
I loved the way he continued to learn my ins and outs. He could read me almost as well as Olivia and Sophia, and I loved that about him.
“He thanked me,” I said, pulling the letter out of my back pocket. “For saving him. Do you know how long it took for him to recognize that? Yet the irony of this all, is that you were the one who really saved him and he has no idea. That really means a lot to me – everything you did. He thanked me for warning him about the raid, knowing he would’ve been in worse trouble, and he thanked me for standing up for him at his hearing when I told the judge how badly he needed a proper rehab facility – which they granted. He’s finally getting clean. At the bottom,” I held up the letter, pointing toward the end of the back page, “he said he doesn’t know what he did to deserve someone like me, fighting for him, but he was grateful.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“You know, that the dynamite was from me. Technically I saved him, right? You just said it.”
I smirked. “It’s a little white lie. What’s it gonna hurt if he just thinks I’m the hero?”
“Our lies become our truths, right?” He reached out for me, playfully squeezing my side. “I thought there were no more secrets?”
“Semantics, Luke. You saved him, I saved him – what’s the difference? It’s practically all the same, so he doesn’t need the specifics.” I giggled.
“Oh, okay. I see how it is. Secrets, then. We’re back there? Then I’m not going to tell you what I did while you were at work today.”
“What? What did you do? I hate secrets, you have to tell me.”
He walked into the back bedroom, returning with a piece of paper.
“What is this?”
“A deed – to some land.”
“What? You bought a piece of land? But I thought you were going to sign a lease for that apartment in Grand Harbor.”
“It’s just land, Lexi. There’s no house on it, so I still need the apartment – for now. Look, here’s a map of it,” he explained, pointing to another piece of paper he held out in his hands. “It backs up to a lake here. You can fish it and everything, kayaks, whatever you want.”
I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. “You really bought this?”
“Yeah. Funny thing happened…” He hesitated. “When I tore up the floorboards in the guest room, there was a box underneath there. There was a bag inside. Turns out there was over seventy-three thousand dollars in there.”
I gasped. “From what?”
“I can’t be sure of the specific source.”
“Luke, this sounds like trouble,” I began, a pit starting to form in my stomach. “Is it Casey’s money? From the bank?”
“It can’t be. He’s certain all of that was stolen.” He smirked at me.
“By you?”
“No, come on. I wouldn’t do that. I’m pretty sure the cops got most of the bank money from the raid. A good portion of it, at least. Or maybe there was none left by then, I don’t even know. But I assure you, that’s not Casey’s money. It doesn’t belong to Kyle either.”
“Then where did it come from?”
“I asked my grandfather about it. It’s his house, so I thought he may know. Turns out he’d been hiding small amounts of money in there for years as a little nest egg, but then he started hiding more in there once he realized Kyle and Casey were stealing from him. He didn’t want any of it in his bank account because he didn’t want them to know about it, so he was just tucking it away in a box under the floorboards.”
“And he just gave it to you?”
“It was supposed to eventually be an inheritance, but after everything that’d happened, he wasn’t giving it to either of them. With the offer on this house, once we close in twenty-six days, the equity is enough for his nursing care. So, he gave the money to me, with one condition – that I use it to leave Oak Shores for good. He knows if I don’t escape this life, it will keep pulling me back. So, I honored his wishes, and bought that property by Brandt Beach. It’s not on the Lake Michigan side of the road, obviously, all of that is state property.” He pointed to the area again on the map. “See here?”
“Wait, is that the beach? Our beach? The one we’ve still never camped at?”
“Yep. Now that beach is right across the road from the land I own. Well, about a mile past the dirt road on that side, but it’s not a bad walk. In the daylight, I should add. Which means you and I can go camping there anytime we want. Just the two of us, in complete and total solitude, away from Oak Shores. Of course we’ll probably have to wait until spring, now that it’s getting colder out, but still. Now we can go stargazing any time we want.”
“Luke,” I muttered, covering my mouth with my hand.
“Like I said, it’s just land. There’s a lot to be done there. I have to clear a bunch of trees, and truthfully I haven’t even started looking into what kind of house I’d want to put there. Quite honestly, I’m not sure I even want to make all those decisions myself. The good news is, we don’t even have to decide any of that right now. I’m not trying to rush you into anything. But, you said I could keep you. So, if you still mean that, that’s everything I want. We can have everything we want, together. Midnight skies and pie forever.”
“Forever,” I repeated, grabbing his shirt and pulling him in. “No more secrets though, right? You promise?”
“Come on, I can’t promise that. I can think of another secret or two I’ll have down the road if you decide to keep me around. But I promise I’ll ask your dad first – so technically that one will only be a secret from you.”
I smiled back at him. My heart felt so full in this moment. Although our love story was so flawed and imperfect from the very beginning, it was ours - and that’s all that mattered.
The End
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
STOP READING. Seriously, before you read all of my sappy comments, please go leave a review on Amazon real quick! It only takes a second, and it helps me out more than you know. It’s SO hard to get people to leave reviews, but they’re important to authors and will push Amazon to show the book to more people. It doesn’t have to be long or eloquent, so don’t be scared. Just a sentence or two with your thoughts would be perfect! You don’t even have to LOVE this book to review it – seriously, even if your review is “well, I liked the last one better,” that’s okay! Obviously the sappy glowing ones bring me the most joy, but no
pressure - your opinion matters to me either way, lol. Your feedback truly helps me as I move along through this author journey, so please, take a minute and leave reviews for this series – it would really mean the word to me and I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to do so. :)
Okay, now on to the mushy stuff. As always, I am so sincerely grateful for the love and support of so many people to get these books published. To my family – thank you for eating my super quick dinners and for letting me write when I pretend I’m listening to you. To my parents, thank you for reading all of my drafts before I even publish them (yep, even my dad, who otherwise wouldn’t touch a romance novel) and of course to Bri for fitting me in when your life is as crazy and busy as mine.
Big shout-out to my Writing Club partner-in-crime Jess, and all my WAYW friends who make me laugh and forget about writing (but seriously, I should spend less time with all of you and more time writing…)
Also, to all of my other author friends who keep me going, along with all of my online mini pig friends (you know who you are - I know that seems like an odd group to throw in here, but pig owners are seriously some of the most amazing, supportive people in the universe) and especially to all of my readers, THANK YOU. Now seriously, PLEASE leave a review for this book. It only takes a second, and it REALLY helps me in so many ways.
Also, psst – one little secret before I go… I have some really exciting publishing new regarding the next project I’m working on! Want to know? Find me on Facebook or check out www.randileighkennedy.com for all the info.
XOXO,
Randileigh
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Randileigh Kennedy grew up in Nevada and now resides in the Midwest. When she isn’t writing, she stays busy planning random theme parties and working on crafty DIY projects, which are featured on her blog at www.randileighkennedy.com.
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