Dirty Little Secrets

2. Luca

2

Luca

“Buddy, I need a favour.”

One advantage of spending seven years in the US Army, most of them as a Ranger, was that I could go from fast asleep to wide awake in half a second. Who needed more than an hour’s shut-eye anyway?

“Sure. Did you run out of beer again?”

Whatever Aaron wanted, I’d do it. He’d saved my ass more times than I wanted to count, including the night before last when I’d found myself on a plane out of Asmara with thirty minutes’ notice.

“Run out of beer? Are you kidding? No, Brooke’s dog hurt its leg. Can you borrow Deck’s truck and drive them to the veterinarian?”

“Brooke?”

“My sister? The brat who borrowed your Seahawks hoodie to use as a superhero cape and fell off the roof? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten her?”

If only. I’d sure as hell tried. For years, I’d tried, and it was the only thing I’d failed at since I left Baldwin’s Shore. Brooke Bartlett was the forbidden fruit I’d dreamed about every damn night, the girl whose photo I’d secretly carried with me from Afghanistan to Algeria and everywhere in between. My lucky charm. If Aaron ever found out, he’d kill me. No matter how much training I might have had, I’d be a dead man.

“Sure, I remember her. She lives in Coos Bay, right?” Which would give me thirty minutes to get my game face on. “She has a dog now?”

“Yeah, she adopted the mutt from the shelter two weeks ago. And she’s in Baldwin’s Shore.”

“Visiting?”

“No, she moved back. Decided the city wasn’t for her and rented the Crowes’ garage apartment.”

Ah, f**k. Why the hell hadn’t Aaron told me that? Actually, I could answer my own question: because every time he mentioned his baby sister, I changed the subject.

“I thought Brooke had a car?”

“She does, but she went out hiking on the Eagle’s Nest Trail.”

Brooke was on the trail? Alone? There were cougars up there. And bears, and rattlesnakes. I had one leg in my pants before I finished the thought.

“How far did she get?”

And where was my gun?

“She’s waiting at the trailhead. Do you remember where the veterinarian’s office is?”

“Behind the feed store?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

I threw on a T-shirt, tossed a handful of mints into my mouth, and debated shaving. Nah, didn’t have time. And besides, women found the stubble sexy, or so they said. One night in a bar, an army buddy had asked a group of Rangerettes to rate my attributes, and the stubble had come in third, right behind my muscles and my smile. For some reason, chicks dug the dimples. Which kind of made up for being nicknamed “crater face” in junior high, but—

Hold that thought right there.

I didn’t need to look sexy around Brooke. There was only one thing worse than wanting my best friend’s little sister and not being able to have her, and that was knowing she wanted me too. And once upon a time, she had wanted me. Two weeks before I left for boot camp, she’d broken down in my room and told me she didn’t want to lose me. That she liked me. That she’d wait for me. And I’d done the honourable thing and lied. I’d lied and told her I didn’t feel the same, and then I’d sent her away.

Fuck.

Okay, no smile, no muscles, no stubble.

I spotted a plaid shirt someone had left on a workbench, pulled it on over my T-shirt, and grabbed a razor from my washbag. I could shave at the stop lights. When I got to the trailhead, I’d act like an asshole and everything would be fine. In a week, maybe two, I’d get offered another security contract and ship out to some godforsaken sandpit, and everything would be fine.

Everything would be fine.

I made it to the trailhead in thirteen minutes and screwed up almost immediately. Brooke was exactly where Aaron said she’d be, and she looked f*****g radiant. Stunning. She’d turned from a pretty teenager into a beautiful woman, curvier than I remembered but with the same sparkling eyes. Her thick chocolate-brown hair was braided into a pair of pigtails just made for tugging on, still long, and my mind went from zero to filthy in nought point five seconds. So much for not smiling. I grinned like an i***t before I caught myself.

Had she noticed? Probably not—it was a sunny day, and the glare on the windshield covered my mistake.

The dog lying in the dirt beside Brooke had the head of a German shepherd and the stocky body of a pit bull. He might have been intimidating if it hadn’t been for the tongue lolling out of his mouth and the fact that the tip of his tail started wagging as soon as I got out of the truck. A couple I hadn’t seen before was standing with them. Friends? The man was staring at her t**s, and as I got closer, I could hear the blonde woman chattering about a Japanese tea garden and Turtle Rock. Probably tourists. I had no idea where the Japanese garden was, but Turtle Rock was the town’s biggest claim to fame, although that wasn’t much to brag about. It was a rock. Shaped like a turtle. Rumour said a ghostly siren had made it her home, but that was just bullshit, probably invented by some hotel owner in the dim and distant past. Tourists wanted their photos taken in front of it, and idiots swam out to sea to try and climb it. Lucky there was a coastguard station nearby.

“Ready to go?”

“Luca?”

She seriously had to ask that question?

“We’ll have to put the dog in the back seat.”

“I-I don’t think I can lift him. I hurt my back carrying him the first time.”

“You should have waited.”

Brooke’s mouth set into a thin little line. “I didn’t want to stay in the forest.”

The blonde’s head was swinging back and forth as she followed the conversation, and judging by her scowl, she didn’t think much of me either.

“Uh, do you want us to come with you?” she asked Brooke.

Translation: that guy seems like an asshole.

“No, I’ll be fine. He’s friends with my brother.”

“Okaaaaay. If you’re sure.”

“I really am, and thanks so much for helping me.”

“Maybe we’ll see you at the craft store?”

“I’d love that. And I promise you won’t regret a visit to the tea garden. It’s lovely all year round.”

Time to get going. “Will the dog bite me if I pick it up?”

“Vega. His name is Vega. And I don’t think he’ll bite, but I only just adopted him and sometimes he gets scared.”

I knelt down and petted the mutt, and he licked my hand. I’d never had a dog of my own, or any other sort of pet, mainly because my father would have beaten it the way he beat me. But when I was stationed in Afghanistan, a pack of stray dogs hung around at the base and I used to buy food for them. We’d gotten along okay.

“Hey, boy, you wanna go visit the veterinarian?”

When he didn’t seem averse to the idea, I wrapped my arms around his belly and heaved him into the cab. He must’ve weighed sixty pounds at least. No wonder Brooke had struggled—how far had she carried him?

“Should we tie him to the seat belt or something?”

“He has a harness for the car, but I didn’t bring it today, only his leash.”

“Well, unless you want to jog home and pick it up…”

“I don’t think he’ll move. As long as you drive carefully, that is.”

“Have I ever not driven carefully?”

“Well, there was that time when you parked your dad’s truck in the ditch…”

It had been icy that morning, and Dad had beaten me black and blue over the dented fender. Brooke didn’t know that, of course. I’d kept the bruises hidden the same way as I always did because I didn’t want her to realise just how bad things had gotten at home. And in some ways, the accident had been a blessing. At sixteen, I’d stood over six feet tall, but I’d always been kind of skinny. Then Aaron got a weight bench, only a cheap thing he’d bought second-hand from an internet auction, but we used to pump iron every weekend in Nonna’s garage and we thought we were the s**t. By the time I turned seventeen, I’d begun to fill out. I started watched old boxing videos on YouTube, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, “Sugar” Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns, and when I couldn’t sleep, I’d shadow-box in front of the spotted old mirror in my bedroom. Night after night after night. It gave my anger an outlet.

So when my father finished with his fists and took off his belt, I decided enough was enough, and I broke his f*****g nose. He came at me with a whisky bottle, and I broke that too.

It was the last day he’d ever laid a hand on me.

Why didn’t I simply leave, you ask? Why didn’t I join the army at seventeen? Fair question—I mean, my dad would’ve given his consent just to get rid of me. But I had a sister Brooke’s age. Romi was smart and beautiful but vulnerable too, and I didn’t trust our father not to hurt her. To break her. When he drank, he just…lashed out. So, I stuck around for another three years until she could graduate and get the hell out of town too. We’d spent a lot of time with the Bartletts in those days. Hell, Mrs. Bartlett had insisted I call her “Nonna” the same as Brooke and Aaron did. In the eight years before today, I’d returned to Baldwin’s Shore twice, once to attend Hannah Haines’s funeral and most recently to attend Nonna’s. On that cold, clear January afternoon, I’d stood there silent and full of regrets as the casket was lowered into the ground in the little cemetery by the ocean. I should have visited more often. I should have done more than send money. I should have said a proper goodbye. That Brooke and Aaron’s grandma had passed away while my father was still—presumably—breathing showed how little justice there was in the world.

“Yeah, well, I learned my lesson. I’m not gonna crash, okay?”

Brooke climbed into the passenger seat, and I dragged my gaze away from her legs. s**t, coming here had been a bad, bad idea. I should’ve taken a vacation instead, sat on a beach somewhere with hot women and ice-cold beer. Instead, I was stuck in a truck with a farting dog and a woman I could never have. She folded her arms when I started the engine, leaving me under no illusion as to where I stood in her affections. She thought I was a jerk.

I should have been relieved.

Why, then, did I feel so damn hollow inside?