The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(95)

I’ve been promising myself that I just need to hold it together a little longer. It’s a lie, of course—I’ve got three straight weeks ahead of holding it together, no end in sight. But if I think nothing of lying to everyone else, I’m certainly not going quibble over lies to myself.

I duck into the bathroom to clean up before I head to baggage claim. My hazel eyes are bruised with fatigue, my skin is sallow. No matter how sick Donna is, I’m certain she’ll notice. And worry. Every time she’s visited me in LA, she’s said the same thing: oh honey, you look so tired. I wish you’d come home. As if returning there could ever improve anything.

At least my hair looks good. I’m a brunette naturally, but got caramel highlights for the tour I was on. I pull my curls out of my sloppy bun, hoping that will distract Donna a bit from the rest of the package and step back from the mirror just in time to catch a woman taking a picture of me from the side.

She gives me an apologetic smile. “Sorry. It’s not my taste,” she says, “but my niece likes you.”

I used to think fame would solve everything. What I didn’t realize is that you’re still every bit as sad. You just have the whole fucking world there to watch, and remind you you’ve got no right to be.

I scurry away before I say something I’ll regret and head down the escalator to baggage claim. It wasn’t until I started to date Cash that I understood the kind of chaos that can descend when the public thinks they know you—but today there’s no crowd. Just Donna waiting near the baggage carousel, a little too thin but otherwise completely fine, pulling me into her arms. She smells like roses, just like her home will—a place where some of my best moments occurred. And some of my worst as well.

“You didn’t need to get me. I was gonna Uber.”

“That would cost a fortune,” she says, forgetting or not caring that I’m no longer the broke kid she was once forced to take in. “And when my girl comes home, I’m going to be the one to get her. Besides…I had company.”

She glances over her shoulder, and my eyes follow.

I don’t know how I didn’t see him, when he stands a foot taller and a foot broader than anyone else in the room. Some big guys go out of their way to seem less so…they slouch, they smile, they joke around. Luke has never done any of those things. He is unapologetically his unsmiling self, size and all.

He looks older, but it’s been seven years, so I guess he would. He was never rangy, exactly, but he’s even bigger now, harder and less penetrable. His messy brown hair still glints gold from all those hours he spends on the water, but there’s a full week’s beard on a face that’s normally clean shaven. I wish I’d known he’d be here. I wish someone had said: Luke will be there. And he’ll still feel like the tide, sucking you out to sea.

We don’t hug. It would be too much. I can’t imagine he’d be willing to do it anyway, under the circumstances.

He doesn’t even smile, but simply tips his chin. “Juliet,” he says.

He’s all grown up, even his voice is grown up...lower, more confident than it was. And it was always low, always confident. Always capable of bringing me to my knees.

I respond with the same smile I give fans who stop me in my worst moments—on my way into a toilet stall or just after bad news. It’s a smile that could crack and turn to tears at any second. “Luke.”

It feels intentional, the fact that I’m only learning now that he’s here. Donna knows we never got along. But she’s dying, which means I’m not allowed to resent her for this tiny manipulation.

“He offered to drive,” Donna adds.

He raises a brow at the word offered, arms still folded across his broad chest, making it clear that that’s not exactly the way it happened. It’s so like Donna to attribute far kinder qualities to us than actually exist.

“How many bags do you have?” he asks, already turning toward the carousel, manning up to do the right thing, no matter how much he hates me.

“Just one,” I tell him, moving in front of him. “I can get it.”

It irks me that Luke walks to the carousel anyway. I press a finger to my right temple—my head is splitting, finally coming off everything I took yesterday—and I just don’t feel up to polite conversation, especially with him.

I swallow. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

I see my bag coming and move forward. “That’s not what I meant.” What I really meant was this is the worst possible situation and I don’t see how I’m going to weather four weeks of it. I guess that’s not much better.

I glance over my shoulder. “How is she?”

His eyes darken. “I just got in this morning, but…you saw her. A strong wind could knock her over.”

And with that there’s really nothing left to be said. Not easily or comfortably, anyway. The silence stretches on.

We reach for my bag at the same time. For a moment our hands brush.

I snatch mine back but it’s too late. Luke is already in my bloodstream, already poisoning me. Making me want all the wrong things, just like he always did.

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