Page 22 of Five Brothers

“I mean, Clay is still in town,” I say as I climb off the bike, “but she’s busy. I don’t have to see too many familiar faces from high school. It’ll only be embarrassing when they come home for the holidays and I’m still doing nothing.”

He flicks his lighter, mumbling over his cigarette as he lights it. “At least you won’t be in jail.”

Puffs of smoke rise into the air. I don’t remember that smell last night. Iron doesn’t smoke a lot, but he smokes every day.

“True,” I say.

If I were him, I’d be depressed, knowing where I was going to be in a week. It’s almost better to just get arrested and go, without the opportunity to dread it.

“It can always be worse.” He peers over his shoulder at me. “And once in a while, it will be. Stay in the moment. This could be it, right?”

This could be it.The Tryst Six motto. A reminder that time is the most valuable commodity and no one can buy more of it.

We can try, but the clock ticks and it never stops. It never slows.

“For what it’s worth,” I tell him, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know. I just …” I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. He did the crime. Multiple times. Blew the chances he was given. He chose this. “I just know you’re good. A good person.”

Despite his troublemaking.

His eyes soften, and I can see the wheels turning in his head as he looks at me. Finally, he gets off the bike and digs into the saddlebag, the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “I know how you can pay me back,” he tells me. “For fixing your car, I mean. Mariette needs help at the restaurant, and you don’t seem to have a job.”

He pulls out my backpack.

But I shake my head. “I told you. I’m not going back over there.”

“Done looking for love in all the wrong places?”

“Isn’t that a song?”

He comes around and holds out the straps of my bag. I slip my arms through, feeling his fingers graze my skin. My skin tightens, tingles spreading.

“I enjoy this town more this time of year, too,” he says in a low voice. “The college kids are gone, and the snowbirds haven’t arrived yet. For a little while, it’s just ours. Nothing else really changes. It’s always summer here. But the nights do cool down a little, and the streets are quiet enough that you can hear the wind in the palms. The air smells better. We finally come outside. It’s the locals’ turn to play.”

A taunt laces his tone, and I swear I feel his breath on my neck.

He’s right. I never really thought about it like that. Saint or Swamp. We’re both still locals.

“I’ll kind of miss you, kid,” he almost whispers. “I hope you had some fun in Sanoa Bay at least. While you played.”

A jolt hits me low in the belly, and I turn around, but he’s already climbing back on his bike. I watch him speed off, and for asecond, time slows as he leaves, turns, and disappears behind the hedge wall.

A knot twists in my stomach for just a second. I said I was done there, but it suddenly hits me that I don’t know when I’ll see him again. I almost take a step as if I’ll catch up to him, but I shake it off and head inside.

I’ll miss him.

I step into the house, hearing the buzzer on the stove going off, and rush into the kitchen. Bateman, Paisleigh’s nanny, pulls a sheet of fresh-baked pastries out of the oven, and I exhale. I forgot he was going to be here today.

“Morning,” I call out, dumping my backpack on the chair next to my sister as she sits at the island. I lean over her. “What are you working on?”

“Drawing dinosaurs.”

Her hair, just a shade lighter than mine, is styled in two reverse French braids that Bateman undoubtedly did when he got her up this morning. I think my mother stopped doing her kids’ hair with me.

I peek at the triceratops walking underneath a rainbow. “Nice,” I tell her. “You know they weren’t purple, though, right?”

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