Page 56 of Regrets

I finally join the rest of them as Nora unlocks the front door to the house, and we all go inside. It hasn’t been touched by the year that passed. Everything looks the same as the last time I was here, and I want to scream at the top of my lungs at the quiet room because nothing is the same.

Everyone is eerily quiet as they all take their bags to their designated rooms. I sit on the couch, my head in my hands feeling every emotion I felt a year ago but topped with grief and loss, knowing he’s gone forever.

“Do this for her. Pull it together.” My eyes lift to look up at Linc, and I want to slap him as I stand to face him.

“What should I do? Go put on my bikini and splash around in the lake where he died?”

His eyes draw together with frustration as they dart behind me to the hall leading to the master bedroom. “Behave. Don’t say shit like that around her.”

It surprises me to see Linc so protective of Nora after so many years of deliberately pushing her buttons.

“I thought I’d cook dinner, and then we can go out on the deck to eat.” Nora comes into the hall, and Linc drops the daggers he was staring at me, turning to give her a reassuring smile.

“Sounds good, Mom.”

Her eyes go to me, and I struggle not to break. “What about you, Penelope?”

I can feel Linc’s eyes threatening me.It sounds insane. “Absolutely.”

“Great.” She smiles as she gives my arm a quick squeeze and walks into the kitchen. Lola and Asher come out of their rooms. Lola helps Nora as Asher plants himself on the couch with his headphones on, listening to music on his phone.

Dinner is quiet as we sit out on the deck with a clear view of the water below.

I hate it here.

“This used to be my favorite place in the world.”What?My own thoughts are interrupted by her as I stop pushing the food around my plate with a fork to look up at Nora. She looks over her shoulder, out at the lake below with a whimsical look on her pretty face. “Maybe it can be again.”

Linc and Lola share a look before Lola squeezes Nora’s shoulder with a strained smile. “Maybe, Mom.”

“Oh, comeon.”

We all look at Asher, who has said his first sentence of the night and is stewing in fury from his seat at the table.

“Ash, knock it off,” Linc growls, taking the protector role seriously.

Asher’s grown a lot in the last year, now a match for his big brother. He doesn’t back down, tossing the cloth napkin over his plate of food. “No. This is not a happy place. This is the place where Colt died. And I’m not sitting here and pretending like nothing fucking happened.”

“Asher, please.” I hear the pleading in Nora’s voice.

Ash softens slightly, but he doesn’t give in. “We lost the only good thing to come out of the Sterling family here,” his long arms gesture out toward the lake, “in this place.” His eyes meet Nora’s, desperately trying to convey the truth to her, and I feel it from across the table. “The only person who could ever tame Linc. The one who told Lola she didn’t have to always play the pretty princess and could be real.” His hand moves to his own chest, the anguish filling his eyes. I never realized how badly he was hurting. “The one who got me away from the house occasionally and tried to make sure I was more like him and less like Linc.”

I flinch when he says that, but Linc stays stoic as he listens.

Asher’s eyes move to Linc. “And obviously, he failed because I’m an asshole at seventeen.”

“Asher, you are you, not either of your brothers.” Nora is sitting straight up in her chair, her hands in her lap.

“Oh please, Mom.” Ash’s cold gaze lands on Nora. “Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do all year? To make me him? The tutors, volunteering. You miss him so damn much you thought maybe you could make me more like him.”

Nora shakes her head from side to side, tearing up. “No. Not at all. I just wanted to spend time with you and help you grow into a man.”

“Please.”

“Knock it off, you little shit.” Linc’s voice is a warning growl.

But Asher again doesn’t back down, his hand gripping the glass patio table in front of him. “No. None of you have been there this year. You haven’t seen it. Mom is barely able to get out of bed, and when she can, it’s to drag me to something to better humanity with fake smiles plastered on our faces, acting like everything is okay. And it’s not. Nothing is okay.”

Linc’s sitting right next to me, and I swear I can feel the tension that’s built up in his body. “There’s nothing wrong with trying to move on.”

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