Chapter Nineteen
Luke
Trouble is a seven-letter word. And that seven-letter word doesn’t say a word in the cab or spare me a glance until we board the train.
She comes to a halt as soon as we pass the sleeper cabins. “This is us.”
The coach area on this train has four seats to a pod, with rows of two facing each other. A small table with a cracked plastic facade sits between.
Staring at strangers for twenty-something hours.
The setting is rife for small talk. My fresh hell. The only redeeming qualities are the floor-to-ceiling windows that offer something else to look at, once the sun is up.
Which it won’t do for hours.
Cass and I stall at the edge of our pod. I point at the choices. “Window or aisle?”
She shrugs. “Dealer’s choice.”
I take the spot by the window, and she plops down beside me. The two seats we’re facing are occupied by an older couple. The kind of people I’d expect to be cruising the country in an RV with their grandkids and golden retriever, not snoozing on an Amtrak.
Cass rolls her neck and exhales slowly.
I keep my voice low, leaning closer to her ear. “Are you okay?”
She looks at me, and our eyes lock. My stomach drops like I missed the bottom step of a staircase. A foot of distance between our faces might as well be an inch for how close we feel.
Her lashes flutter as she shifts away. Her gaze drops to her hands, folded in her lap. “Yes. Could’ve used ten more hours of sleep, that’s all. My brain is foggy.”
“Right.” Relief that she’s not upset comes on way too fast, too strong. “Me too.”
I curse myself for jumping to conclusions when her mood is none of my business in the first place. “Maybe you’ll fall asleep once we get going.”
She doesn’t look at me. “Maybe.”
What I wouldn’t give for a book right now. Or a video game. An entire virtual reality headset so I could insert myself into an alternate setting.
Last night changed things. It’s like we left a window open while we slept and woke up to different air.
I rifle through the backpack Cassidy bought from Walmart until my fingers grasp the burner phone. I’ll work. No quicker way to distract myself.
My hopes are dashed in about ten seconds when the phone won’t connect to wifi.
Shoving it back in the bag, I close my dry eyes. Not enough sleep and no Visine drops are a bad combination. Minutes meld together as I drift off.
I never remember my dreams.
Thank God for that.
…
A soft, cheerful voice sneaks into my brain. “Remember Barcelona, Howard? I bet we looked just like them, sleeping on the plane.”
“’Course I do,” a rumbly voice answers. “You couldn’t make it a two-hour flight without sleeping, let alone transatlantic. You slept so long my legs were numb.”
An easy laugh. “That was my favorite of our Spain trips. The tapas were the best we’ve ever had. Though I know you’re partial to Madrid.”
“I’m partial to whatever you love, Alice.”
I pry open my eyes. It’s still dark outside, but the cabin lights glow softly overhead.
A weight shifts in my lap. My gaze falls to a warm, curled-up Cassidy. Her head rests on my leg, the curve of her neck perfectly aligned with my thigh. A blanket of hair obscures her face and her knees are tucked into her chest.
For the second time in a matter of hours, I’ve woken up cuddling her.
My body tenses, waiting for her to rouse as I sit up straighter. She doesn’t so much as flinch.
My fingertips skim her warm cheek as I move her hair aside. So she can breathe. A mouthful of hair would be a terrible way to wake up.
And then I tuck it behind her ear for safekeeping.
A sensation skitters up my spine, down my arms. It settles in the hand now hovering near her chin. Fuck me, I hoped to sleep this creeping feeling off—
“She’s got you now,” the cardigan-clad man across the pod says with a crooked smile, pointing an arthritic finger at Cass. “You’re trapped.”
I peer down, and heat sizzles my skin. Words pinball around my head and take a while to sort themselves out.
Thank god Rogelio exercised mentor nepotism when he gave me my job out of college or I may never have landed one. I am conversationally incompetent.
“Maybe so,” I finally manage.
The white-haired woman to his right—Alice, he called her—reaches over and lifts the bill of his cap so more of his forehead is visible. “I think we woke him with our tittering.”
The Shriners Children’s Hospital logo on his hat dredges up old memories of Sophie applying for free care for my oldest niece to get corrective inserts for her shoes. Howard is either a doctor or supports the organization some other way. A saint either way, as far as I’m concerned.
This softens me to the idea of small talk.
“You didn’t wake me.” I scan the bags at their feet. Her colorful quilted tote parked next to his plain leather satchel prods a part of me I can’t identify.
My left arm grows heavy with tension from trying to keep it off Cass. I give up and let it lie across her. My hand lands near the crook of her hip. It fits a little too nicely there.
“You’ll have to excuse us.” Howard lifts a large lunch box off the ground and struggles with the tiny zipper. When he finally works it open, he procures two Tupperwares filled with scrambled eggs and places one on the table in front of Alice. “When my wife gets going talking about our travels, there’s no stopping her.”
“We’ve had so many adventures.” She rustles two forks from the lunch box’s side pocket—silver, not plastic—and sets the table.
Howard pulls out a quart-size bag with a sliced grapefruit and deposits it next to her eggs. She locates a paper pepper packet in her tote and places it delicately beside Howard’s container before unearthing two thermoses.
They are a well-oiled breakfast machine.
When the table is fully prepared, they dig in. The piercing smell of citrus wafts through the tiny cabin.
About a minute after they finish, Howard pats the pockets of his cardigan. He locates a plastic capsule filled with pills and sets it on the table. Alice wordlessly accepts, swallowing the contents with a swig of her drink.
A powerful ache lodges itself at the base of my throat.
Alice smiles softly over the rim of her thermos. “Traveling for business or for pleasure?”
Cassidy makes a noise, and I startle.
A laugh. Of course she laughs in her dreams.
The ache inexplicably grows more painful. I tear my gaze away from my lap. “Sorry, uh—seeing family.”
Alice hums. “How nice.”
I almost want to issue a correction. Not your kind of family. Not the type of relationship you choose and nurture and take to Barcelona and back until you know each other so well you can have entire conversations without words. My breakfasts aren’t choreographed acts of love and devotion.
I’ll never have that kind of family, because I’ve already got one.
A mom with diabetes that she exacerbates with reckless drinking—so much so she’s put herself in not one, but two diabetic comas. Who also has COPD from a lifetime of smoking cigarettes, even though Sophie and I begged her to quit for years. Who runs when she’s on a bender and fucks up days—sometimes weeks—of our lives when we can’t find her.
A sister who didn’t choose to be cheated on or abandoned by her low-life ex-husband. And two beautiful nieces who deserve better than the fatherless upbringing my sister and I had but are stuck with it anyway.
They depend on me. When shit hits the fan in my family, financially or otherwise, I’m the one they turn to. And I’m committed to being the kind of man who upholds my responsibilities not just when it’s convenient, but always. Even when that means I don’t get to have a life of my own.
In the past, I hardly cared. I never felt like something was missing. Life is easiest when I don’t want anything at all.
Because if I were to want that—breakfast for two, forever—I’d be setting myself up for a world of hurt.
But those fucking thermoses grew arms and now they’re reaching inside my chest to wring out my heart.
Alice eyes Cassidy. “How long have you two been together?”
My empty gut churns. “We’re not together. We’re…”
A dull buzzing intensifies in my ear, like a swarm of pissed-off bees has chosen my head as their new home and I won’t let them inside. The longer the sentence hangs incomplete, the more insistent they become.
When did I become as dramatic as Cassidy?
It’s not bees. It’s the sound of my own goddamn brain struggling with a simple question.
What are we?
Another question eclipses the first: would I have given one single fuck about thermoses or scrambled eggs if I hadn’t met her?
I need this to swerve into physical-attraction-only territory because I know how to ignore that. But whatever the fuck is happening to me right now isn’t just physical, and it’s stealing my attention. It’s growing insistent.
Cassidy squirms, bringing her hand beneath her cheek as a pillow. Her fingers dig into my thigh.
“Friends,” I say evenly.
It’s all we can ever be. And I’d do damn well to remember that.
“Alice and I started as friends,” Howard says, flicking egg out of his mustache.
Alice clasps her wrinkled hand around his. “He came to my house every single day with a daisy because I said they were my favorite.”
Howard lifts her knuckles to his mouth and plants a kiss. “I was wife-hunting.”
He whispers something else, and they both laugh. Suddenly I feel like an intruder. My gaze drops to Cassidy’s serene profile. Looking at her is far preferable to staring at two googly-eyed married people.
I could wake her. She’d get a kick out of these two. But she looks peaceful. Heat transfers from her to me, me to her, on a circuit in all the places we touch.
The train lurches to a stop.
“Another one,” Howard grumbles.
I lift my head. “Another what?”
“Right-of-way issue. Freight trains are supposed to yield to passenger trains, but they never do.” He shifts his attention toward the window. “I worked in logistics for forty years. Far and wide, freight is the biggest cause of commuter delays.”
Cassidy stirs. She blinks open her eyes, gets an eyeful of denim in my lap, and shoots up like she’s been tased.
I adjust my legs, which have lost all circulation. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“Oh.” Her gaze drops to my jeans. “Oh God, no.” She scrubs the side of her face.
So much for peaceful.
My enthusiasm cools at the horrified look on her face. “Far be it from you to have a calm, reasonable reaction to something as basic as falling asleep.”
“You could’ve woken me. You didn’t have to let me sleep…there.” Her gaze flits between my face and my lap.
I feign innocence. “There?”
Her blue-eyed glare hits me like a shot of caffeine. “You know what I mean.”
“You looked quite comfortable.”
“I…well, you should get a less comfortable lap!”
Damn if that compliment doesn’t delight me. Double damn if I don’t enjoy verbal jousting just as much as I liked watching her sleep. “Quality comeback.”
She rolls her eyes and shifts in her seat. Her gaze lands on the couple. As is her default response to strangers, she livens like a flower pivoting toward the sun. “Hi there! I’m Cassidy.”
“Hello, dear. I’m Alice, and this is my husband Howard. We were just having a lovely chat with your sweet friend.”
Cassidy shoots me a look that I cannot even begin to decipher before turning her winning smile on Alice. “I’m so glad. Where are we? Oh dang, did I miss Colorado?”
Howard is squinting through the darkened window. “Nearing Topeka, when we get going again.”
Topeka. My brain stalls. “That’s strange. I thought we’d be farther by now.” I frown at Cassidy. “You said we’d arrive tomorrow morning originally, right? Or this morning, I should say. Which means even with our three-ish hour delay, we should still get home early this afternoon?”
Cass’s brows furrow. “I’m confused. We’re not even in Topeka yet?”
“You two were asleep for our first delay. But that’s the joy of the train. It’s a beautiful, unhurried journey.” Howard sweeps a bony arm in the air, painting an invisible picture. “Are you overnighting to Colorado?”
“Los Angeles,” I clarify.
Howard adjusts his cap. “Oh, you meant tomorrow morning, then.”
Cassidy’s expression is that of a child lost in a shopping mall: mostly panicked and a little defiant. “Wait, no. That’s not right. We were supposed to be on the fast train to L.A. The website said it’d arrive at eight a.m.”
Howard lifts a finger. “Eight a.m. tomorrow. The Chief’s transit time is thirty-six hours, not accounting for weather and freight delays, obviously. We’ve got a few of those already in play.”
My cogs turn faster. I assumed this was some kind of bullet train or something. Thirty-six hours is an entire day and a half. And that’s best-case scenario?
“But the website…” Cass grapples for my arm. “Can I see the phone?”
My lips pull into a grimace. “Wifi doesn’t work.”
Judging by the stricken look in her eyes, this setback is beyond her last straw. This is the universe throwing a lit match at her straw house and leering as it erupts in flames.
She closes her hand around my wrist until nails bite my skin. “I’ve made a huge mistake.”