Last Good Thing (The Fallout Series Book 1)

by Heather Young-Nichols

  “Yeah, seems like that’s your thing. Is there anything you do tell me? The biggest thing to happen to you and you didn’t pick up the phone.” I shook my head at him and wrapped my arms around my stomach because nausea began to roll through over and over. I wanted away from him and I wanted out of East Branch. Mostly, I wanted my mom. “Don’t worry, Zac. You’re not the asshole here. I am for thinking anything had changed. For thinking that we were something.”

  “We are,” he said, interrupting.

  Shaking my head, I said, “No. We aren’t. Not when one of us hides things from the other. Not when one of us is obviously so judgmental that she can’t be trusted to tell the important things.” No one had said that even once but clearly there was a reason nobody would tell me anything important. “Not when one of us is so obviously hated that the other left and forgets her the moment she’s gone.”

  “Forgets? Fuck that. Laney, you were the last good thing about this fucking part of town. That’s why we made sure there was nothing in your way when it came to getting out. One of us had to become something.” His voice cracked. I feared he might cry and that would break me more than this already was. “If you would’ve known that Maddie and I had a kid, what would you have done?” I wasn’t going to answer that. “Don’t bother answering. I already know. You would’ve chosen a college closer to us to be there for us. To help. It’s what you fucking did.”

  I clenched my jaw and left him standing there as I made quick work of the steps. Just before opening the front door, I turned back. He was still in the same spot on the lawn.

  Every time I thought my life was evening out, something else popped up to punch a hole in my heart. I didn’t know how much I had left to give. Maybe I forgave them all too quickly. I didn’t know. But right then, it was all just too much.

  “Then we’ll chalk this up to me being the asshole here. Maybe I can’t get over it when people keep things from me.” I slammed the door behind me.

  The fire burning inside me hadn’t been dampened by that outburst. It didn’t even occur to me that I’d effectively broken up with the one guy I’d always wanted. But that was on him. I wasn’t a little girl who couldn’t handle to truth and was sick of feeling that way. If he couldn’t be honest with me, then the relationship was doomed anyway.

  But I wasn’t going to deal with those feelings until I was alone in the dark of my bedroom. Instead, I needed to unload on another person who’d been keeping secrets. My mom.

  “Hey, honey,” she answered in her normal chipper voice because she didn’t have a clue as to what kind of storm was headed her way.

  “Dad was gay?” There was no greeting on my end. Fuck that. I wanted to get to it. The line was dead silent so long that I thought the call might have dropped, but then I heard her take a breath.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you got divorced?”

  “Yes. Well, we got divorced because he thought he might be and wanted to explore that part of his life.”

  “What the hell, Mom? Didn’t anyone think I should know that? Be a part of his life?”

  “Oh, honey. We both did, but he wanted to figure things out first. To see if there was anything to tell you in the first place. Then he insisted he’d find the right time to tell you. He just never did. He begged me not to tell you until he was ready and honey, it was his to tell. He said… he said he didn’t want you to look at him differently.”

  A full sob broke away from my chest. I slid down the nearest wall until my ass hit the floor and I cried until there wasn’t anything left to give. Mom just listened. She didn’t hang up and she didn’t say a word. There was nothing she could say to make me feel better anyway.

  “I wouldn’t have looked at him differently,” I finally said once I could speak again. “He was my dad. I’m pissed off because none of you trusted me to be a god damned human being.”

  “Laney, it wasn’t that. I trusted you but had to trust him, too because it was his life.”

  “It’s not just you.”

  “Then who?”

  I let the dam break and told her everything that had happened between Zac and me before I’d called her. She chimed in at all the right times to show she was empathizing, but that didn’t help.

  I wanted to burn the world.

  I’d gone from getting through my father’s death to wanting to burn the world down. I’d lost Dad, I’d lost Zac, and I was exceedingly angry with Mom. Add Maddie to that and all I had left was Rhian.

  My anger at Zac wasn’t just about not telling me about my Dad. When I was thinking logically again, I’d probably see his point. But I guessed I wasn’t as over him cutting me out of my life before as I thought I was.

  “I have to go. I’m too pissed off to talk to you right now.” I didn’t wait for her answer before hitting the end button.

  I’d barely stood back up when my phone beeped with a text from my mom with Lance’s full name and phone number in case I wanted to reach out. Thanks, Mom.

  I wanted to call Rhian. Yet when I tried to dial her my finger wouldn’t tap her damn name. No. What I needed was time alone.

  Time to figure my dad out.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I took that time, although a good portion of that first night was spent crying. Crying for my dad for the first time in a while and crying over Zac. I’d trusted him more than anyone else I’d ever come across and felt truly crushed by the feeling of being on the outside of his life.

  I woke the next morning with a plan. Step one… finish the damn house. Next, get things down to Goodwill, though at this point I was thinking I’d need to rent a truck. The clarity I’d had just days ago now seemed clouded. I wasn’t ready to cut bait and run just yet but the closer to August I got, the less time I had to figure it out. I’d have to get back to school and get settled in just weeks.

  If I kept the house, I’d already decided that I needed to decorate in my own style. The living room furniture was good, as was the small dining table, but the bedrooms needed to be gutted.

  And lastly, before I went back to school, I needed to meet Lance. I wanted to at least know something about him. If he’d been my dad’s boyfriend, then they’d spent a lot of time together and he’d known a whole other side of my dad.

  After all that was done, I was getting the hell out of there and not looking back for a while. Distance would clear my head. Hopefully enough to have a conversation with Zac.

  The next three days were spent painstakingly going through everything left in Dad’s room and ignoring Zac’s texts. He got the hint on day two and just told me to let him know when I was ready to talk. I had a special box for the things I thought Lance might want. Now that I knew he existed. Pictures of them together and things like that. Though I kept a few of my favorite.

  I also had to tackle the small storage closet in his bedroom. It was boxes and boxes of things that took a while. But didn’t contain much that I wanted to keep.

  On my third trip back to the house, I turned to find Zac in his driveway. He looked frozen in mid-step and just stared at me. I still wasn’t in any shape to talk to him.

  Who was I kidding? I was in no shape to be seeing him.

  He sighed. I couldn’t hear it but saw it. He looked tired, like he hadn’t been sleeping. I hadn’t been, so that seemed fair. Since I couldn’t just stand there looking at him, I hightailed it back inside.

  Having exhausted myself for the day, I sat on the couch with a pint of ice cream and watched a stupid show that I had no interest in watching. I was going to start sleeping on the couch since I needed to get the bedroom furniture ready to donate. But the knock on the door kept me from getting comfortable at all. I ignored it at first. Whoever was out there was relentless, though, banging like the house was on fire.

  Getting up, I checked out the window quickly because if it was Zac, there was no way I was opening that door. Going through Dad’s house had made me more angry instead of less.

  I was sure I’d get over it ev
entually, but it was still too fresh, and I wasn’t ready. I’d been hit with so many waves this summer that I needed some time for myself.

  Instead of Zac standing on my front porch, I found Maddie nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Fuck, I did not want to open that door. Then she banged again, and I knew she wouldn’t be giving up anytime soon.

  “What?” I said as I swung the door open.

  “Oh, hey. I was thinking you weren’t home.” She stalled on a few words. Definitely nervous.

  “My car is right there.” I pointed at the driveway. “What do you want, Maddie?”

  “Wow. OK. Um, I just wanted to check on you.”

  “I’m fucking fabulous. Anything else?” I was being a bitch. I knew it. She obviously did, but I was done with this. I just wanted to get back to school and have this entire summer over.

  “I… feel like I missed something. I called to check on Dylan and Porter answered Zac’s phone. He said you and Zac broke up, but he doesn’t know what happened. Talk to me.”

  “Maddie, we’d have to be friends for me to talk to you about this. We’re not. Not really. You made that decision four years ago.”

  “What are you talking about?” She looked genuinely confused.

  The hardest part of losing them was never knowing what I’d done to cause it to happen. I knew now that I hadn’t done anything. Yet that wasn’t something I’d wish on anyone. The not knowing. There was too much ambiguity between us then and I wanted no confusion now.

  “I can’t get into it, but let’s just say that I can’t be friends with people who don’t’ let me into their lives. I’m done with this Maddie. You can go back to your happy little life knowing that you got the best of Zac.” Kind of a low blow, even for me. Maddie hadn’t done anything new and she shouldn’t have been the one for it all to fall onto.

  “You don’t mean that,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. It should have made me feel good to cause her the kind of pain that she had me, but there was nothing good in this situation.

  “Maddie,” I said then sighed. “Look. I’m sorry this is all falling on you but you knocked on my door at the worst possible time.” I took a deep breath. “You haven’t done anything new but due to some things that have recently come to my attention, I don’t think I’m as over being left out of everyone’s lives as I thought I was.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. “I have questions.”

  “I’m sure you do but I can’t answer them right now.” My eyes began to fill with tears. “But every time I think I’m on solid ground with you, with Zac, my dad, something else comes up and I am starting to feel like I don’t actually know any of you anymore.”

  “Your dad?” she asked but I shook my head. I was not having that conversation with her or anyone else right then.

  With that, I shut the door. I didn’t slam it because I didn’t want her to think that everything I’d said was completely out of anger, even if parts had been.

  I watched Maddie through the window. She stood there on the porch for a couple of minutes, turning to leave several times, then coming back like she might knock again.

  Finally, she talked herself out of whatever was running through her mind, and she headed straight for her car. I thought she’d go next door, but she didn’t. Her car squealed away from the curb.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It’d been a week since the fight with Zac and I’d done my best not to look over at his house when I left or returned home. It was hard not to. Sometimes I could hear him over there and other times things were eerily still. The best time was when he was at work. Then I knew I wouldn’t see him. My anger had started to subside for the most part, but that didn’t mean I was ready to hash everything out with him.

  For now, I had to compartmentalize just to get through it. A long conversation with him was going to have to happen if we were going to be together. But I had something else big to take care of first.

  That was the day I made the scariest phone call I’d ever made. I punched the number into my phone and my thumb hovered over the call button.

  There were so many questions in my brain that I couldn’t think straight. Did Lance even know about me? Would he want to talk to me? Ugh, I didn’t want to do it at the same time I really wanted to meet the guy my dad had spent so much time with and possibly loved. After I decided that it wasn’t too early on a weekday to call him, I bit the bullet and pushed the button.

  “Hello?” He answered on the second ring. He had a nice friendly voice. Deep and somehow comforting with just that one word.

  “H-Hi. I’m looking for Lance Mosely.”

  “This is he.”

  Silence hung between us. I knew it was my turn, so I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “My name is Laney Douglas.”

  “Oh,” he sounded surprised and something banged in the background like he’d dropped whatever he’d been holding. “Yeah, uh, hi Laney.”

  “I’m wondering if you’d have some time to meet with me. I mean… ” I cleared my throat. “I’d like to meet you. And talk, of course. Talking is always good.” I shut my eyes and bit my lips together. I sounded like an idiot.

  “Of course, Laney. Can you meet today?” That was fast.

  “Sure.” My stomach knotted at the idea. Yes, I wanted this to happen but I’d assumed there would be days to prepare. Then again, with days to prepare I’d likely chicken out.

  We settled on six-thirty at a coffee shop closer to East Branch. That gave me hours to work myself into a frenzy. I tried to keep occupied. I put together an envelope with most of the pictures I’d found in Dad’s room. I figured Lance would want those. Or maybe not. I had no idea because I didn’t know him or how long they’d been together. Ugh, I hated this.

  I left my hair down even though, with the humidity, it took forever to get it to cooperate and even longer to go through the dozen outfits I tried on. I had no idea why I was trying to impress this guy or if I was just nervous. And then I left way too early.

  As I made my way to the Jeep, I heard a loud laugh from Zac’s front porch. I didn’t need to look over there to know it was Porter. Another person I hadn’t talked to though he was collateral damage right now since I was avoiding Zac because he hadn’t done anything.

  But I also needed Porter’s help. Steeling myself for whatever could come up, I tossed my purse into the car and headed over to Zac’s.

  “Hey, Porter,” I said when I got there. He spun around quickly. Zac was sitting in a chair behind Porter, his finger running over his top lip. It was a sign there was something on his mind that he wasn’t saying. I didn’t look directly at him but could still see him out of the corner of my eye.

  He looked good. Sexy as always.

  “Hey, Laney, what’s up?” Porter leaned on his forearms against the railing.

  “Actually, I have a favor to ask you.” His eyebrows shot up, then he looked over his shoulder at Zac, who hadn’t even blinked yet. “I have to rent this truck to move stuff out of the house. Goodwill can’t get to me for a week. I don’t want to wait that long. Anyway, if I can figure out how to get the damn thing down this street, do think you could help me move the furniture?”

  I had serious doubts that the truck available to rent would fit down our street or that I could maneuver it there because I’d never driven anything so big. I saw what he was going to say before he said it.

  Again, Porter looked over his shoulder at a completely still Zac before answering me. “Sure, Laney. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so I’m available all day. Want me to come over to help get things ready tonight?”

  “No. I’m meeting someone soon. Tomorrow works. Thanks.”

  All of my willpower waned in that moment and I allowed myself to glance over at Zac. His hard stare saw right through me. He was angry, but I thought there in the corner of his eyes was a little sadness.

  I knew the feeling.

  Walking away in that moment was hard. So hard that I almost couldn’t do it
. But the fact was, I needed to figure things out in my own head before I said or did anything. The question remained, could I forgive them all—Zac, Dad, Maddie, Mom—for hiding things from me or shutting me out parts of their lives? Would he do it again? I didn’t think I could handle it if it did.

  With it being such an odd time, the coffee shop was dead. I ordered an iced coffee, something I’d grown to like at school, found a seat near the window, and waited. When the bell over the door rang, my eyes and heart jumped every single time.

  Until a tall man stood before me.

  He looked to be about Dad’s age and was toned and tan with blond hair and these freaking crystal-like blue eyes that held nothing but kindness when they looked at me.

  “Hi, Laney. I’m Lance.” He reached a hand out that I shook it twice.

  “How did you know I was me?” What a stupid freaking question to start off with it.

  Lance sat into the chair across from me. “I’ve seen a lot of pictures over the last few years.”

  “Few years?” My eyes widened bigger than I’d known they could.

  He sighed. “I’m guessing you have a lot of questions.”

  I nodded as my eyes filled with tears. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  Lance sat all the way back in his chair and told me their story. He’d met my dad five years ago and they’d become friends. Eventually, they’d both admitted they’d wanted more than friendship, but because Dad wouldn’t cheat on Mom, Mom and Dad talked and decided divorce was the only answer. Once that happened, my dad and Lance began to see each other.

  Then they fell in love and Lance insisted Dad intended to tell me but wanted to wait until I’d graduated.

  “Why?” I asked him. “Why wait until I graduated?”