Chapter Nine

Nine

Shawn

I grit my teeth through the whole dinner with the Millers. Not only am I uncomfortable as fuck, but I’m also royally pissed at Lucas for this. I’d made it pretty obvious that I had no intention of seeing either one of his parents while I was in town, and Lucas had lured me here anyway.

The irritation sits in my stomach, making it hard to eat. I do my best to choke the food down because I don’t want to upset Katherine, but I can only get through about half the plate.

The entire time, Lucas sits beside me chattering away like there isn’t a problem. Like his father isn’t pissed that I showed up here.

It’s definitely one of the most awkward nights of my life.

By the time we finally leave, it feels like as though a whole week has passed. I can’t get out of that house fast enough. Especially when Katharine hugs me again at the door, squeezing tightly.

When we get in Lucas’s car, I pull my seatbelt on then stare out the windshield. It rained while we were inside, and water drops dot the glass, making the streetlights twinkle.

Lucas gets in the driver’s seat and shuts the door. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

I don’t respond. My teeth are gritted so tightly together that they hurt.

“You’re not even going to speak to me?” Lucas asks when I let the silence linger. “Shawn, look, I’m sorry I didn’t warn you but—”

“But what?” I cut him off. “But it was more fun this way? More entertaining?”

“You know that’s not what I was doing.”

“What you were doing was being an ass. You said we were going out somewhere, then you brought me here where you knew your dad still hated me. How do you think it felt to sit across him all night while he was glaring at me?”

Even as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s not what’s really bothering me. I’ve sat through worse dinners, nights where I was nursing broken ribs or fractured arms. But this seems almost as bad those times. And it takes me a second to realize that it’s because I trusted Lucas wouldn’t put me in a situation where I would be uncomfortable. At least, not on purpose.

Lucas starts the car, the engine growling into the quiet night. “It wasn’t that bad. And it’s good for you to get out of your shell and visit people.”

“Stop fucking acting like you know me. We’ve been apart eight years, Lucas. I’m not the same guy I was when I left.”

Lucas’s jaw works, an obvious tell that he’s fighting the urge to either argue or insult me. He’s silent as he guides the car from the neighborhood and out onto the freeway. Then he says, “I never thought you were the same guy you were when you left. I had no ulterior motive for bringing you here. My mother said she wanted to see you. That’s it. Maybe I should’ve told you where I wanted to take you, and that’s on me, but please stop acting like I strapped you to the electric chair. I took you to a dinner.”

I lapse back into silence because I don’t want to say something I’ll regret. I know I should look at this from his point of view. He doesn’t know what I overheard that night I left. He was trying to do something nice for his mom, which I’m guessing he tries to do frequently since he’s the one cancer left behind. Their only surviving child.

But I can’t stay in his point of view because I keep coming back to being unsure of if Lucas knew the real reason why I left. He’s acting like he doesn’t, but what if I’m wrong? What if he’s just pretending to not know to save face? Or to get back into my bed?

Those thoughts plague me the entire drive back to the motel. When Lucas parks in the lot, he doesn’t hesitate to turn the engine off and get out of the car with me. I don’t really want to talk to him, but I don’t stop him either.

I take the stairs up to my room because I don’t want to lock myself in an elevator with Lucas. I don’t even really want to be in the room with him right now.

When I push open the door to my hotel room, the first thing I see is my unmade bed, which has me remembering when Lucas was in there with me. The sheets had still smelled like him this morning.

Lucas follows me into the room and shuts the door behind us. “Are you going to talk to me?”

“I don’t know.” I toss my keycard on the desk and reach out to close the curtain above the heater. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Look, I-I’m sorry. You’re right. I should’ve given you a heads-up about where we were going. For the record, I didn’t know my dad was going to act like that.”

I swallow and cross my arms over my chest, leaning back against the side of the desk. “Lucas, you… you know your dad didn’t really want to take me in, right?”

Something flashes across his face, like he wants to defend his father, but he stops himself and just nods. “Yeah. He wasn’t excited about having a stranger in the house with me or Nat.”

“He wasn’t mean about it, but it was kind of obvious sometimes. But it didn’t really bother me because he’s a good guy. Other foster parents who didn’t want me around…well, they weren’t nearly as nice about it.” I shut my eyes as flashes of past foster homes push their way into my head, but I do my best to shove them back out.

“Shawn—”

“Just let me finish,” I interrupt. When I’m sure I’m going to have some kind of panic attack, I open my eyes to find Lucas watching me, concern written all over his face. “A few nights after we learned about Natalie’s diagnosis, I heard your parents talking about me. About how they didn’t know who would keep an eye on me while they were with Natalie, and how I shouldn’t be in the hospital with you guys because I wasn’t technically family. Your dad wanted to tell me to go, and your mom wouldn’t let him. They got into an argument about it, and… Lucas, I couldn’t be responsible for bringing them anymore pain. I’m sorry I left like I did without a goodbye, but I did what needed to be done.”

Lucas is quiet for a long moment, and as I watch the disbelief in his eyes slowly turn to sadness and then anger, I realize he really didn’t know what had happened that night.

“Are you serious?” he finally asks. “Dad actually said that?”

I shrug. “It’s not a big deal. I’ve been kicked out of plenty of homes.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Look, Lucas, the bottom line is that you and Natalie were their kids. Why should they have put up with me when you two needed them?”

“It’s not ‘putting up with you.’ It’s called honoring a promise they made to foster you. You were supposed to stay with us until you turned eighteen.”

“I never really believed I’d stay that long anyway.”

He takes a step toward me but doesn’t come any closer than that. “I wish you had told me. I could’ve talked to them.”

“No.” The word comes out fiercer than I intended, but I don’t take it back. “No, I wouldn’t have wanted that. I don’t like to stay where I’m not wanted. I told you that when I first moved in with you guys.”

“But you being there wasn’t making anything worse. It devastated Natalie when you left, and that was their fault. She kept asking if you were coming back to see her when she was in the hospital.”

I rub my upper arm and look away from him. “I did go see her. Toward the end.”

He stills, and even though I’m no longer facing him, I feel him watching me. “When?”

“About five days before she passed.” I swallow again, my throat so tight that it hurts. “She couldn’t really talk, but she knew I was there.”

I don’t tell him anymore than that. The rest is between me and Natalie. Most days, I try not to think about the way she’d looked at me as I sat at her hospital bedside, having snuck in way after visiting hours were over. I’d held her hand and told her she wasn’t the reason I’d left. I didn’t tell her the truth because I knew what I’d overheard her parents talking about would upset her.

“A few days before she died, she said she’d seen you, but I thought she was just high on meds,” Lucas says, his voice hoarse. “I-I wish you’d come by to see me.”

“I couldn’t.” I’d told myself at the time that it was because I didn’t want to see his parents. But the truth is that I didn’t know if I could walk away from him a second time. The Millers’ house was great, but it was Lucas who made it feel like home to me. I’d never looked forward to actually going home before. But when I lived with them, I didn’t mind leaving school in the afternoon. I was glad to be home and around Natalie and Lucas. With them, everything felt a little bit brighter.

Lucas shakes his head then moves closer to me. He doesn’t say a word as he wraps his arms around me and pulls me into a tight hug. I feel his heartbeat against my cheek, and I try desperately not to return his embrace because I don’t want to remember how good it felt to have him so close to me.

But it only takes seconds for my resolve to break. I lift my arms and hug him back, and it feels like a piece of my heart is settling back into place. It’s dangerous to let him hold me because then I start thinking about how maybe I really don’t need to leave again. Maybe I really could call anywhere with Lucas home.

Except…I know better than that. Those endings don’t happen to kids like me. Most of us stay displaced our whole lives, roaming in search of the place that will keep us. And I could never ask or expect Lucas to be that place for me. No matter how badly I want it.