Frisk Me(95)

Luc swallowed, and he stared blindly at the crowd. “I think I already found her.”

His father’s hand landed on his shoulder. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT



There were flowers on the grave.

They looked less than a week old, which struck Luc as odd considering he knew Shayna’s parents only came on the anniversary of her death.

He didn’t blame them for it.

Jasmine Johnson had said that they didn’t like the reminder that their vibrant little girl lay still and buried.

They preferred to let her live alive, laughing in their memory.

Coming to the cemetery ripped their wound wide open again, Jasmine had said.

Luc knew the feeling. He hated it.

But he also needed it.

He’d been coming the first Friday of every month since the funeral, and each time he felt like he was discovering her tiny body all over again.

Curiously, not today though.

Today he felt…at peace.

There was sadness, certainly. It was impossible to look at a gravestone celebrating a life of only seven years without feeling a pinch of remorse.

But there was something different today. The sorrow was gentler, not quite so eager to choke him in a vise.

“Hey, sweetie,” he said, kneeling in front of Shayna’s grave and putting a hand on the cold stone as he always did. “Looks like you’ve got some pretty tulips here. I always get you roses. Do you like the tulips better?”

He set the bouquet he’d bought against the slowly dying tulips.

“I bet you like both, huh? They’re pink. Your mom told me it was your favorite color.”

Luc stared at the flowers for a long minute. “It seems like forever since I’ve last been here. I know it’s been a month, but…a lot’s happened.” Luc let out a rough laugh. “A lot.”

He’d long ago stopped feeling foolish talking to a gravestone, and a little girl who had never known him.

He kept talking anyway.

“Remember how I told you last time that I was kind of famous? Well, now I’m really famous. Like, national TV famous.”

His finger traced the S of her first name. “You’re a little bit famous too. I talked about you. How I couldn’t save you. How I wanted to more than anything.”

He inhaled.

“Your brother blames me, you know. That’s probably fair. I blamed me for a long time too.” Luc clasped his hands in front of him as he stared at the ground. “But you know what, Shayna? The only person to blame is the guy behind bars. And I helped put him there so he can’t hurt anyone else, okay, honey?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I did my best. You know that, don’t you? I did my best, I swear to God.”

His voice clogged. It always did when he was here.

“She knows.”

Luc’s head snapped around, his eyes taking in the rubber flip-flops through the haze of unshed tears, his gaze moving up long, slim legs to short-shorts, a fitted yellow tank, and…

Ava.

Slowly, he stood, his eyes looking beyond the casual clothes, beyond the fresh-faced girl-next-door look, with her ponytail and flip-flops.

His brain registered that this was a far cry from the polished, plastic Ava Sims she’d chased so desperately, but his heart registered that she was happy.

Which made him happy.

Luc didn’t even try to fight the realization that swept over him.

There was no fanfare, no blaring horn. Just quiet understanding and acceptance that his family was right.

He was so far gone over this woman it wasn’t even funny.

“Shayna knows you did your best,” Ava said again, her voice quiet but not condescending.

Luc’s eyes dropped to the flowers in her hands. Tulips.

“You brought the flowers,” he said.

“Last week,” she said, her eyes going beyond him to the small gravestone. “I wondered who the other were from. I assumed her parents.”

Luc shook his head, moving aside slightly so she could move past him, setting her flowers next to his. “They…it’s too hard. They carry her with them, always, but being here, her final resting place…I think it’s too raw for them.”

“But you come.” She laid her tulips next to his roses, then stood so they were standing shoulder to shoulder.

“As do you.” There was an unspoken question in his words. Why? You didn’t even know her.

“I probably don’t belong here.” Her voice wobbled. “I used those people’s pain for my own gain, Luc. And I hate myself for it. But even that’s not why I’m here. It’s just, a little girl died, you know? I couldn’t not come.”

He knew the feeling.

They were silent for a long while, lost in thoughts in a quiet, deserted cemetery in the Bronx.

“Mike was cremated,” Luc said eventually, breaking the silence.

Ava nodded.

“Bev scattered his ashes a ways off the coast of Maine. They used to go there every summer. It was his favorite place.”

At first he thought he imagined it. The soft brush of her pinkie against his. He glanced down to see her little finger reach for his, just briefly. In solidarity. In kindness.

Because despite what she thought about herself, Ava Sims was a kind woman. A good woman.