Waiting On You (Blue Heron #3)(52)
Ellen Forbes. Ellen Forbes. Oh, shit, Ellen Forbes.
Yes, Colleen remembered her. Ellen had offered them a ride once, when they were walking back to campus, pulling over in her little BMW. And while the O’Rourkes were pretty comfortable financially, there was that aura of Money with a capital M around Ellen Forbes, and it didn’t come only from the last name (though that sure reinforced things).
It came from a blissful ignorance of things as mundane as bills and taxes and budgets and sales, and allowed her the freedom to focus on other things. Her clothes were preppy and dull and screamed expensive—crisp white shirt and little gold hoops in her ears, a sumptuous bag at her side, the designer unfamiliar to Colleen, who might’ve been able to recognize a bag sold at Macy’s or Nordstrom, but not from Saks or Bergdorf. Colleen was used to being the prettiest woman in the room and didn’t worry too much about clothes, but suddenly, she’d felt juvenile and blowsy in her peasant skirt and tank top, long dangly earrings (from Kohl’s) and scruffy sandals on her feet.
Lucas was marrying Ellen Forbes? Marrying her?
“Are you...are you serious?” she asked, her voice just a whisper.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and to his credit, he looked it. Those dark eyes were all ripped up inside.
“Why?” she asked.
He started to say something, then stopped.
“Lucas...you can’t marry her. What about us? I mean, we had a fight, but you don’t have to—”
“I wanted to tell you myself. That’s why I’m here. I’m sorry.”
Good God.
“You can’t marry her,” she said, striving to sound calm. “I love you, Lucas. I always have, since the first time I met you. I’ve never loved anyone else.”
Shut up, Con’s voice said.
Lucas was staring at the grass. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
“Is it her money?”
“No.”
“Is she pregnant?” Oh, please, not that.
He looked at her a long minute. Something flickered through his eyes, and her stomach seized.
“No,” he said, and thank you, God, thank you. No, Lucas was paranoid about that.
“Then...I...I don’t...” she stammered. “Lucas, please.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Lucas...” Colleen took a shaking breath. Another one.
Hold on. Hang on, it’s coming, the thing that will explain this. Yep, here it is.
He doesn’t love you.
No, no, of course he does.
You’re the one who wanted to get married. He wanted to wait. Wait for something better, apparently. You were too easy. Too obvious.
Colleen cleared her throat. “I guess I’m just like my mother, then. I hear what I want to hear. See what I want to see.”
“I’m sorry.”
She wanted to slap his face, but she seemed to be paralyzed. Get out of here, Connor’s voice instructed, so she turned and walked away, the grass soft, crinkling under her bare feet.
The tears wouldn’t come, jammed hard in her throat like a fist.
She walked fast, out of town. Thank God everyone was on the green. The asphalt burned her feet as she went up the Hill, past the Luces’ driveway, up to Blue Heron, into the fields, then the woods. A little down the path, and there it was, the place she and Connor had thought was the most magical place when they were little, a stream that led down to the lake, complete with small waterfall. The water was cool and gentle, balm on her dirty, burned feet.
Lucas was getting married.
What was the phrase Dad had used? Moved on. Lucas had moved on.
Wrong again. Wrong about Dad, wrong about Lucas.
And then she cried for the loss of her first love. Cried so hard it hurt, and she understood why they called it heartbreak, because it really did seem as if she was being ripped in half from the inside out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
COLLEEN HAD GONE to college to become a nurse. Yeah, yeah, it wasn’t what most would’ve guessed. But she’d always been good at taking care of people, she thought, and doing it in a way that didn’t make her seem condescending or irritable. Her grandfather had gone into a nursing home when Colleen was a teenager, and the staff there made Colleen want to scream sometimes. “Just lift your butt for me, hon,” one nurse said once without even waiting for Colleen to leave the room. Or even worse, “Great. Another dementia patient. Just what I needed today,” as if Gramp, who’d been an English teacher in his prime, chose to have his brain cells harden and die.
And so Colleen had started helping. Got her certificate as a nurse’s assistant when she was seventeen, volunteered and then worked at Gramp’s place. Called the patients “sir” or “ma’am,” or Mrs. Carter or Mr. Slate. Explained what she was going to do before she started, whether or not they understood her or not.
“Become a doctor,” Dad had said when she told her family of her plans. “Why be low man on the totem pole when you don’t have to be?”
She didn’t want to be a doctor.
She did graduate with a degree in biology, but by then, her family had imploded and she and Lucas were done. Their great-grandmother on Mom’s side died, and the twins inherited a pretty nice nest egg. Two weeks after Lucas slammed her with his news, Connor asked her if she wanted to buy the Black Cat, which was in foreclosure, and she said sure. Being near her twin seemed like the smartest move, and she sensed that Connor felt the same way.