Page 42 of Synced to Us

“I…” Lucy tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know. May seemed fine. It’s only when we moved in that I noticed something off. Not right.”

“Does she need to go back to rehab?”

Lucy works her jaw, and says in a quiet tone. “You should talk to your brother about that.”

“Count on it.” I suck my lips to my teeth in thought, then add, “On top of that, I don’t want to drag Dee through my family’s intense biases against money managers if I don’t have to.”

“Then why date her at all?”

At my silent response, Lucy perches on the edge of the bed. “Going out with her today started out great. But looking back, it was all about me. She asked me about the kids, my hobbies, my life here in Thicketville. I talked her ear off. Then I somehow got in one question, and that was what she did in Manhattan. She’s so well spoken and put together. Smooth and sleek like a city girl. I was dying to know what her job was. She told me.” Lucy shakes her head. “After everything this family’s been through, your father’s death, Wyn, you bring a money girl into this house?”

“I know.” I cover my eyes with one hand, using my thumb and index finger to massage my temples. “But we…” Made a deal on the fly, didn’t think it through. Now she’s here and I have to explain why the source of our ruin is back in this house. “We fell in love.”

It’s out before I can stop it.

Lucy spears upright. Her eyes go wide. “What the hell, Wyn. It’s that serious?”

I’d say anything to justify why I’ve put Dee in this house. I say, softer, “Other than my brief affair with you in senior year, Luce, yeah, I’m in love with her.”

Saying I’m in love with Dee feels right on my tongue. It does. My heart is another matter. It’s feels heavy and full of lies. The words can’t match the feeling, not with such deception as the pulse.

I step closer to Lucy. A decade ago, her presence in my room would’ve been irresistible. I’d thought she was the one. Yup, the going-nowhere guy in the garage band had a crush on his older brother’s cheerleader girlfriend. And I got her for a while, a couple nights of slobbery, teenaged passion. Until she chose him.

“I need you to look past Dee’s occupation. She’s not her job while she’s here. Okay? I haven’t asked her to look into any of our money problems. I’ve refused to invest, and I haven’t done anything to piss off Ma or Brad. You don’t have to tell them shit right now, Luce.”

Lucy sighs. “We’re good at keeping secrets, aren’t we?”

I stare at her for a few beats. “Yeah.”

She shakes her head. “I played it off as nothing when Dee mentioned her work in finance—I hope. She freaking surprised me, though. Hopefully she doesn’t suspect anything…”

“I’ll take care of it if she does.”

“All right. I’ll keep quiet. But only because I like her.” Lucy rises, brushing off her jeans. “And I don’t want to see Brad turn that ugly shade of prune while we try to end this weekend on a nice note.”

Her statement brings my head up. “How’s it going with you two? Good?”

Lucy pauses halfway to the door. “As good as ten years of marriage and two young toddlers can be.”

She looks over her shoulder, her large, cobalt eyes damp. Her look is…something akin to loss. Something like, I chose the wrong brother.

But I blink, and it’s gone. I had to be imagining it.

“You’ve been together a long time,” I say, like I’m knowledgeable about this shit. “It takes some navigation after a while.”

“You and I, we never needed a compass. Or a map. We just were. I miss that.”

Lucy and I were a lot of things. My greatest mistake mixed with what I thought was my first love. Looking back doesn’t give me the same nostalgia as it does her—she was the one and only time I stooped to my brother’s level and tried to take what he wanted, the way he was always attempting to steal from me. Lucy was Brad’s source of status and his sweet disguise as to who he really was. And me, angry with him for belittling every single thing I accomplished, thought it’d be fair to hurt him.

What I didn’t realize was how much I’d hurt her, too.

We connected unexpectedly, the sex transforming into pillow talk, then long conversations. She helped me through my senior year when she and Brad chose different colleges, but then Brad came back with a full-time teaching job in his pocket, and Lucy, afraid of the unknown outside Thicketville, chose him over a fledgling band member not guaranteed to make it and begged me to never tell Brad we were together.

A superficial choice, sure, but look at her now. She’s paying for it, yet Lucy’s changed. Become less selfish, more attentive, and fiercely protective of her kids.

I’ve transformed, too, into a man that refuses to hurt her anymore.

My silence extends for so long, Lucy lowers her gaze to the floor, downcast. She twists the doorknob, then disappears into the hall.

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