The Girl in the Love Song (Lost Boys #1)(43)

“Nuestra casucha es su casucha,” Holden replied, immediately, in a flawless Spanish accent.

Ronan and I exchanged glances.

“You speak Spanish?”

“And French. Italian. A little Portuguese and some Greek.”

“You some kind of genius?” Ronan asked.

“So they say,” Holden said, his gaze on the ocean. “My IQ is 153.”

I gave a low whistle.

Holden nodded. “Sounds as if it could be helpful, right?”

“Helpful?” I snorted. “That’s like having the answer key to life.”

He scoffed. “If only. As far as I can tell, it just means the nonstop thoughts in my head are more cunning and can torment me in multiple languages.”

I waited until the tension eased a little, then casually asked, “So, do I email you all my homework assignments directly or do you prefer hardcopy?”

Holden rolled his eyes, laughing, and the dark shadow that had fallen over him seemed to lift. “No chance, Stratton.”

I grinned. “Worth a shot.”

A more comfortable silence fell. “Yeah, it’s pretty damn perfect, right here,” Holden said. “Like we’re at the edge of the world and no one can touch us.”

“Yep,” I said, and Ronan nodded.

Holden inhaled and then exhaled. “I’m gay,” he said. “I just want to get that out there. In case it wasn’t obvious. Is that going to be a problem?”

I frowned. “No. Why would it?”

“Ask my father.” He looked to Ronan. “How about you?”

Ronan took a pull off his beer. “No, I’m not gay.”

A beat passed and then the laughter came roaring back. My sides ached and tears built in the corners of my eyes. Even Ronan chuckled and spewed more lighter fluid on the fire. Any tension that might’ve existed between the three of us burned up in the flames, and I felt like I had when I first met Ronan. That Holden Parish belonged here too. With us.

“You’re a crazy motherfucker, you know that?”

He wiped his eyes. “So I’m told.”

“You could have been in with them, you know? The popular kids.”

“Why would I do that when fucking with them is so much more fun?”

“Fun,” Ronan said, his voice flat, cutting into the laughter like a cold knife. “Is that what that shit with Frankie was about? Fun?”

Holden’s smile fled, and a cold shadow seemed to drop over him. “I did it to throw him off guard. That’s all.”

That wasn’t all. Not by a longshot. But we all had secrets and dark shit in our pasts. What made Ronan stick around was that I didn’t pry, and neither of us was about to start now with Holden. But as the night deepened, he told us a little about himself. How he’d moved here from Seattle and that he lived with his aunt and uncle in Seabright, the wealthiest neighborhood in Santa Cruz. The mansions even dwarfed Violet’s house.

“You had only one more year of high school,” I said. “Why leave?”

“Not up to me. After my sophomore year, my father arranged for me to take a little detour into the wilderness.”

“You mean like a camp?”

“Sure,” he said sourly, hunching into his coat, despite the fire and the warm summer night. “A camp. And that camp necessitated that I spend a year in Switzerland. At the Sanitarium du lac Léman,” he said in a French accent as flawless as his Spanish. “That’s Lake Geneva, to you and me.”

“Sanitarium…?”

“Loony bin. Crazy house. Mental institution. Take your pick.”

I faced forward. “Jesus.”

“There was no Jesus as far as I could see,” Holden said, smiling sadly. “Believe me. I looked.”

A short silence fell and then Ronan arched another stream of lighter fluid on the fire. “That must’ve been one helluva wilderness camp.”

I held my breath while Holden stared. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “Is this guy for real?”

“One hundred fucking percent.” I clinked my juice to Holden’s beer bottle. “To you for surviving the camp. And Switzerland.”

Holden swallowed, trying not to show how those words touched him. “To Ronan, you magnificent bastard.” He reached across me to toast with the big guy. “For being one hundred percent fucking real.”

Ronan dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small yellow device. “To Frankie, the stupid fucker who didn’t notice I swiped his police Taser.”

The earth stood still for a split second and then we laughed. All three of us. We laughed so fucking hard that for a few hours, I forgot that my heart was broken.





Chapter Nine





The gym was loud with the sounds of cheers, stamping feet, and music. The cheerleaders, Evelyn leading, performed a routine in their blue and yellow skirts and sleeveless sweaters. Metallic gold pom-poms rustled and glinted in the sun streaming in from the huge windows behind the basketball hoops.

The crowd gasped as two male cheerleaders tossed Evelyn high into the air, where she pulled off an intricate gymnastic flip and landed in the cradle of their arms.

I sat with some friends from my study group—guys and girls who were working toward their own med school or MIT dreams—and Shiloh, who had earphones in, eyes closed, tuning out the pep rally as if she were meditating in a forest.