Waiting On You (Blue Heron #3)(35)

Lucas, on the other hand, got a full scholarship to University of Chicago. When Didi announced the move to Manningsport, he figured he’d stay in Chicago; Stephanie would let him crash on her couch for a couple of months until he graduated. But Bryce wanted him to come along, already distressed that they wouldn’t be at the same college, and Bryce generally got what he wanted.

It was fine. Lucas had no ill will toward his cousin, who was easy to get along with and endlessly cheerful. Come August, they’d be parting ways, and he’d even miss the big doofus, so what was another few months? No big deal.

Until he saw Colleen O’Rourke, that quick instant when their eyes met, and something he’d never felt before slammed into his chest at seventy-five miles per hour.

Under normal circumstances, he would’ve classified (and dismissed) her as another too-popular pretty girl, same as any other.

But something happened when their eyes locked.

She saw him.

Not just his general bad-boy looks, which he had nothing to do with but which had an undeniable effect. Not just a slide of her eyes up and down his torso.

She saw him. Her eyes—her big, wide beautiful eyes changed from smug and amused to...more open somehow. Like something clicked, and she could see his whole life story in one look.

He didn’t like it one freaking bit.

By the end of that day, he knew her voice, could tell when she was nearby, because it was the same feeling as when the barometer dropped in front of a storm, that strange, buzzing sensation he’d get before the mighty Midwestern clouds rolled in, churning with electricity and heat. The same feeling as the night he’d put his foot on the rail and felt the train coming, that hum of power.

She felt it, too. He could tell, because she avoided him for weeks.

Couldn’t even look him in the eye, the girl who seemed to have a smile and a quip for everyone, universally looked up to by the other girls, universally wanted by the boys.

If she was walking down the hall and he happened to be close by, she’d veer off or stop to talk to someone—the janitor, a teacher, a friend. If he was sitting in the bleachers, watching Bryce play soccer, she made sure to sit far away. She didn’t come into Raxton’s Hardware, where he’d gotten an after-school job. Only if she absolutely couldn’t avoid it would she give him the briefest and most generic smile he’d ever seen.

Ever since his father had gone to jail, Lucas felt as though he was half invisible and half a front. His fellow students in Manningsport were a little awed by his newness, his half–Puerto Rican looks, as most of them were as white as snow. A mixed-race kid from Chicago? Wow! Cool! Bryce saw him almost as a superhero, where the ordinary act of doing his own laundry was regarded with wide-eyed wonder. To Joe, he was a remembrance of the old neighborhood, an obligation to his late brother.

Sometimes he’d watch Bryce and Joe horse around on the perfect lawn of the perfect house, scuffling over the soccer ball, and a sense of longing would almost drop Lucas to his knees—to go back in time so just once more, he could sit on that old blue plastic crate, handing his father tools as he worked on a car.

The memory of that almost moment on the train tracks, when he’d almost made it to see his father one last time, almost had been able to tell his father he’d been a good dad, almost had that last time to see his father who had worked so hard, who’d done a very wrong thing for very right reasons...just one more time to see those careworn eyes smile at the sight of his son. He’d almost had that.

Joe tried. But he had a son, and Didi made sure he remembered the difference between son and unwanted relation.

As for Didi, he’d learned early on to stay out of the way. If he joined them for Family Movie Night (Fridays) or Family Game Night (Mondays) or Family Hike (Sunday afternoons), she’d get that corpse-sniffing look on her face, her lips tight, her eyes on him for too long, willing him to disappear. Lucas claimed that he’d rather stay in his room and read, which wasn’t untrue. But when he heard them laugh, or even just the sound of Didi’s voice, relaxed and easy with him not around...he’d just turn up Bryce’s cast-off iPod and try to remember his mother’s face.

His sister would call once in a while, mostly to vent about Rich. Things weren’t working out, and Steph was up to her ears in babies: Mercedes was one of those high-maintenance types who’d learn to talk back before she could walk, and the twins, Tiffany and Cara, were toddlers bent on taking over the world one broken lamp at a time.

So Lucas’s plan was simple. Make good grades, get a scholarship to a school in Chicago, go into a field where he’d make a lot of money, take care of Steph and the girls. Head down, nose clean.

It irked Didi that Lucas was smarter than her own son, but then again, this way, she had a built-in tutor. She made sure Lucas checked Bryce’s homework and taught him algebraic theorems and quizzed him in history dates. Between that and his own heavy load of homework, running interference when his cousin hung out with the wrong kids or drank too much, the job at the hardware store and cutting lawns on Sundays so he could save as much as he could, Lucas definitely did not have time for a girlfriend.

He had a plan, and it wasn’t to fall in love. He had three months of high school left, three months to spend with kids who’d been together since birth, it seemed. He’d be going back to Chicago soon. He was just passing through Manningsport.

And then prom night came, and for once, he was in the right place at the right time. When he saw Colleen on the dock, being held by that dickless wonder, he felt something bigger and more powerful than anything he’d felt since his father had been led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. He would’ve died for Colleen O’Rourke that night with a glad heart, no questions, no hesitation.