I turn away.
Holy fuck.
Of all the things I expected to see here, a woman with a child was never even in the running.
I look back and he’s got the little girl in his arms, twirling her around as her blonde hair fans out from the spin. She laughs and giggles, and I see that smile. That same smile that I’ve seen on Fletcher the few times he’s flashed it in front of me.
There is no mistake who these two people are to him. It’s written all over their happy smiles.
Fletcher Novak has a family.
I run back to the guardhouse, burst through the gate, and then yell at the guard, “Can you tell Mr. Silverman I had an emergency and had to leave?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I just run all the way back to the cab, get in, slam the door, and say, “Take me back to the hotel.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Hey, Sea Shells, when we going to the Seychelles?”
Shelly laughs that little eight-year-old laugh that picks me up and makes my day every time. She’s in love with the tongue-twisters. I have to shake off a mental image of me holding a shotgun at the door when her first boyfriend comes knocking—trying to twist his way into her life like the words that are twisting out of her mouth.
“I can’t say it!” She giggles, still trying as she hugs my waist.
I pat Shelly’s head and then look up to Samantha. “How’d your week go?”
Her smile is fake. I’ve known her since she was fourteen, so I can tell. She swallows hard. “Walker called a little while ago.”
Fucking hell. With all the shit going on, I’d forgotten about my piece-of-shit older brother. “What’d he want?” I growl. But I know what he wants.
Sam shrugs. “Just to talk, I guess.”
I squint my eyes at her. “You talked to him?”
“I hung up on him. I can’t do it again, Fletch. I’ve been over and over it in my mind and we didn’t do anything wrong. Walker and I broke up.” She looks up at me, pleading. “You and I didn’t do anything wrong. Right?”
I pull her in close for a hug. “Of course not. Forget about him.”
“He says he’s coming over. Says he’s got things to say. Things he’s been wanting to say for a long time now. But I told him you weren’t coming home today.” She looks up with watery eyes. “He didn’t believe me.”
“Did you tell him about—” But I don’t have time to finish, because I can hear the rumble of the car he’s been driving since he got his license. A twin of my own nineteen-sixty-nine Camaro, but in blue, and received one year earlier. Our grandfather was a collector and we each got our pick the day we turned sixteen.
If he took the blue, then I’d take the red. It’s always been like that with Walker and me. One-upmanship. Jealousy. And rage. We were competitive to the end. But the end came sooner rather than later. And I stayed when he left. I got Sam and then, later, Shell. And he got… well, I have no idea what he got. I hadn’t seen him in almost a decade before last week. But whatever it was, he came out on the wrong end of that deal.
“Where are the Seychelles, anyway?” Shelly asks, tugging on my shirt sleeve. “And when can we go there?”
“Indian Ocean, Shells. Go inside with your mom. I’ll be just a second.”
Samantha nods and takes Shelly’s hand. “Come on, baby. Let’s get lunch ready.”
“I’m starving,” Shelly says, as they walk up the front steps of the eight-thousand-square-foot beachfront mansion. It’s the biggest house on this end of Lakeshore. Been in the family for three generations. And it’s mine now. Everything in there is mine now.
Walker slides his sunglasses up his forehead and opens the car door.
“Don’t come any further, asshole.”
The pause is short-lived, and a second later he steps out anyway. I knew he would, but I figure he deserves a warning. And that one sentence was all he’s getting.
He’s wearing clothing that gives him the appearance of acceptable. White dress shirt, sleeves casually rolled up his forearms. Tight black slacks tailored for his athletic form. And fancy leather shoes that could probably put Shells through a year of community college. He looks well-bred and rich. And I guess he is. I guess we both are. But some of us just know how to wear that good breeding better than others.
My fists are clenching before he takes his first step on the stone-paved driveway and my feet are in motion before he takes the next one. “I’m warning you, Walker.”
He holds his hands up, palms out, to calm me or piss me off, I’m not quite sure. “I’m not here to start trouble, Fletch.”
“The fuck you’re not. Why come here then? You need money? I don’t have any left over for you. You need somewhere to stay and you figure this place is your home? You’re wrong, brother. I bought you out and I will kick you out. I don’t care if you’re sleeping in your car at the state park tonight. You’re not walking into my house.”
He lets off a fake sigh. I’ve known him a lot longer than Sam, so I peg that fake shit right out of the gate. “I just want to talk to her, man. That’s it.”
“If she wanted to talk to you, she’d be outside right now.”
“I heard you, Fletcher. Ordering her around like some kind of boss. Still insisting on calling the shots, eh? Some things never change.”
“Some people either,” I spit back.
“Those who live in glass houses, Fletcher. Does she know what you do for a living?”
“Why would I lie about that?” She does know. She doesn’t like it, but she knows. And Walker can see the truth in what I said. He’s not gonna win her sympathy with that he’s-a-no-good-stripper bullshit.
“Because you lie about everything else.” He shoots me a smile that says he’s got something on me. I recognize it from all the fights we had growing up. All the times we tangled over girls, or cars, or hell, the attention of our parents. “I know all about you, Fletch. More than you think.”
“Good for you,” I say, ratcheting down the urge to punch him in the face. “Now get the fuck off my property.”
“I traced you all over this country, Fletch. First New York—”
I see red.
“—then LA. You sure get around for a hometown boy. Even found some girls who were more than willing to tell me all about your—”
My fist crashes against his jaw. His lip splits and then I take one in the same place. The blood rushes into my mouth as we start brawling. Samantha is yelling and I catch a glimpse of her running across the well-groomed lawn as Walker and I roll on the ground. I get him in a headlock, ready to choke the life out of him, when he breaks out of my hold with a knee to the stomach. We roll again, and then Sam is grasping at my red-stained shirt.
“Fletcher! Stop!” Sam screams. “Please!”
I push Walker away and we get to our feet, circling each other. He wipes a trickle of blood off his lip, looks at it on his fingers, and laughs. “Yup, some things never change.”
I spit out my own blood, and the crimson saliva finds its way to his fancy-ass black dress shoes.
He looks down at that for a moment, like he cannot believe I’d fuck up his two-thousand-dollar shoes, then turns his attention to Sam. The reason he’s here. The reason he’d start a fight after all these years. The reason he cannot come one step closer.
I step between them, forcing him to look at me instead.
He speaks directly to Sam at my back. “I’m not here to cause trouble, Sam. I just wanted to make peace with this shit. That’s all.”
And then he turns away, walks to his car, gets back in, and backs down the driveway, screeching his tires the whole way out.
It’s a goddamned miracle he didn’t kill someone on the sidewalk with that move.
“Who was that?” Shells asks from the top step of the house porch.
“No one you ever need to worry about, Sea Shells.” I spit out some more blood, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand—hoping there’s no blood on my lips—and feel relief when Sam smiles and lets out a deep breath. I take her hand and turn her around. “No one important, baby.”