Page 66 of Love Like Lightning

I rip my eyes away from the plate in front of me and throw my leg out so it connects with Ian’s shin. He winces and looks at me like I did something wrong when he’s the one speaking way out of turn. “Ian, what the fuck?”

“Language,” Mom hisses at me before she shoots daggers at Ian. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Watch it. You don’t talk to Gianna like that,” the man sitting next to Gia snaps at Ian and stands.

In an instant, Mack’s standing too, glaring at him. “Don’t speak to my brother that way.”

What the fuck is going on? This is a living nightmare. I swear, in a second, I’m going to wake up.

“What is going on here?” Mom’s voice cuts through the room like a blade through Jell-O. For a tense moment, no one says anything. Then, one by one, everyone sits back down. “I’m sorry, Gianna, Cam. Normally, my children act like they’ve lived in civilized society.”

“It seems like the introduction may not be needed, but, kids, these two are Cam and Gianna. They’re the team we’ve hired to help out with the lodge’s finances and business at large. We’ve been discussing a lot over the last few weeks, and we’re going to start implementing some changes, so we thought it would be a good idea to loop everyone in. No, this is not up for discussion.” Mom cuts a glance to Mack, who looks like she’s on the verge of blurting out exactly what she thinks about this whole thing.

I don’t care, though. Right now, I don’t care how much Mack is going to hate this. I don’t care that Ian’s upset that our parents didn’t share their financial troubles. I don’t care that this Cam guy seems so ready to defend Gia’s honor.

Okay, I kind of care about that…

Who the hell even is this guy?

More than that, I care that I’ve been spending time with a woman who’s been lying to me since we met.

She won’t even look at me. And that almost pisses me off the most.

The conversation continues, but doesn’t get much better.

“Why exactly do we need these people coming into our family business?” Mack continues to shoot daggers at Cam. For some reason her anger isn’t directed at Gia, which I’m grateful for despite being angry with her myself.

“Honey, we’ve been working with Cameron and Gia for several weeks now, and we think they’ve got some great ideas. Next week, we’ll start implementing them.” My mom glances at my dad, clearly looking for support.

I can tell he’s not completely on board, but he’d never leave my mom hanging. “It’s what’s best for the business, and we’re going to give it a go.” His word, no matter how unconvinced we may be, sounds incredibly final.

“So this is already decided? You didn’t want to ask us what we thought? Does Art know about this?” Mack bulldozes ahead, her neck breaking out in blotchy red spots.

“We’ve scheduled a video chat with Art and Natalie tomorrow.” My mom sounds as if her patience has worn thin. “When he left for his trip, he put you in charge of his usual duties.”

“But you still made these decisions without me. Without us.” Mack’s eyes brush mine before she glances at Ian.

“Yes, we did. And we’d do it again. Your father and I thought it would be best to work alone with Cam and Gia initially to make sure that this was the avenue we wanted to take.”

“You really thought about selling to the Bakers, didn't you? Like, honest to God considered it an option.” As I ask the question, my devastation over knowing Gia didn’t tell me what she was really doing in Ever Lake is momentarily overshadowed by the realization of how bad this situation really is. “It’s bad. Almost too bad to bring back.”

At the mention of the Bakers, Ian’s face shutters. His jaw clenches, and he takes a deep breath before standing and leaving the room.

My gaze slingshots from my parents to this Cam guy, and he flinches slightly before I look back to my parents. I watch as a weight I didn’t quite see before settles onto their shoulders, and my chest tightens. There were signs. There were signs that things had gotten bad, that they were getting bad, and I didn’t care enough to see them.

The shadow on my dad’s face seems more prominent now, and I can’t help but try to remember the last time I saw him clean shaven. He’s been clean shaven my entire life, but it’s been months…so many months that I guess I just got used to it. And the lines around my mom's mouth, they’re frown lines. I don’t know how I didn’t see it, but she’s been frowning way more. At least until she notices someone else around, then she flips it right side up to a smile.

Even now, I watch as she catches herself frowning and plasters a small smile on her face.

“It’s bad, but that’s why we’re doing this. We don’t want to sell. We want all of this to still be in the family when we’re old and retired.” She softens her words, trying to console us and explain.

“With the work we’ve been doing, we have a great chance at bringing things back for The Wright Lodge.” Gia’s voice is quiet as usual, but it seems to practically boom through the dining room to me.

My body tenses when she finally meets my eyes. I thought it was what I wanted, to see what she was thinking, but I rip mine away after half a second. The pressure in my chest grows unbearably. There’s more chatter and argument, but I can only hear those words Gia spoke. Not even the words, just the sound of her voice.

I make it maybe ninety seconds before I stand up. All conversation grinds to a halt, and I make sure to keep my eyes on my parents and only them. “If this is what you think will work, I fully support it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do, renovations or whatever. I’ll do everything I can, but I need to go now.”

I grab my backpack from beside my seat and rush out of the door as every conversation I had with Gia filters through my head. There’s no way—there’s absolutely no way she didn’t know who I was.

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