“Just take it one day at a time,” he said, setting his hand on my thigh, his thumb rubbing back and forth over the seam of my sweats. “It’ll be fine.”
“At least I’ve got you with me,” I said, holding back a smile. “They’ll be so busy wondering if me and you are together that they won’t be taking bets on when me and Lily will get into a fistfight.”
“Puhlease,” he said, making me laugh. He paused. “Like Lily would ever get into a fistfight.”
“Hey!” I said, swatting at him.
“What? Have you ever met a sweeter person? She’s the least confrontational person I know.”
“To you, maybe,” I muttered. Though, I knew he wasn’t wrong. The idea of getting into a physical fight with my sister seemed as likely as being abducted by aliens. “Still, they’ll be waiting for some sort of drama that they can blame me for… beyond the drama I’m bringing with me, I mean.”
“I think they might surprise you,” he mused. “They’re dysfunctional as fuck, but when someone’s in trouble, they circle the fuckin’ wagons.”
I sighed. “I know. I just never wanted them to do that for me.”
“They already have,” he pointed out, glancing at me. “They didn’t cut me out back when I bailed on you, but not one person set me straight on you and Leo. They let me believe it.”
“I think they believed it,” I confessed, watching him drive. “At least for a while. They just assumed, and we didn’t correct them. Plus—” I swallowed hard. “I used it—you know? During arguments and shit. I used Leo as a shield to keep people from fucking with me.”
Sometimes I forgot how much I owed Leo. He’d come through for me in a way that defied comprehension. There was nothing in it for him at that point. I’d already completely screwed him over. He should have hated me. A familiar memory hit me, and my lips twitched as I tried to hold back a laugh.
“You’re being surprisingly cool about this,” I said, failing to keep the surprise out of my voice.
“I look like the jealous type?” Leo asked. If I was being honest, yeah. Yeah, he did. When the right woman came along, I had a feeling that Leo would be jealous and possessive as hell. He just wasn’t that way with me.
Leo hadn’t held a grudge when I’d started screwing around with Mark and inevitably left him behind, and I’d never really understood it until years later, when I’d seen him with my little sister. Me and Leo just hadn’t fit, and we’d both known it. Ironically, he’d fit with my baby sister—who was my complete opposite.
I started to stretch to look over the back of the seat again, but Mark held me still with the hand on my leg.
“Stay put, yeah?” he said, glancing in his rearview mirror.
Alarm thrummed through me.
“Why?” I looked in my own rearview mirror, but couldn’t see anything.
“Just noticed a pickup that’s been with us for a while,” he said, giving my leg a squeeze. “Could be nothin,’ but no reason to highlight exactly where Olive is, yeah?”
“Fuck,” I breathed, clenching my fists on my lap.
“Should be meeting up with the boys in the next hour,” he said, switching lanes. He gave a chin lift to Forrest as we passed his SUV. “They’re probably freezing their asses off in this weather.”
“I know. Just another reason for everyone to be pissed at me,” I said dryly. “Hooray.”
“Nah,” he said, smiling. “They’re probably happy to ride, even in the shit.”
“Until one of them goes down because it’s fucking snowing.”
He leaned forward to look at the sky above us. “I think we’ll make it through before it gets bad,” he argued. “Rain’s nothing. They’re used to it.”
“I’m going to miss the sun,” I said wistfully. “But it’ll be nice to have actual seasons again if we stay that long.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s one of the things I missed most. The fall when it starts getting cooler and everything smells like wet leaves. You never really get that in San Diego.”
“And Christmas trees,” I said, looking in the rearview mirror again. Mark seemed calm, but I was still on high alert. “They’re so expensive in San Diego.”
“I know, right?” he replied. “Nothing like paying twenty bucks to some roadside stand for a seven-foot tree.”
“In San Diego, I always paid at least a hundred for a small one for my condo,” I confessed. “The fake ones just don’t do it for me.”
“They don’t smell,” we both said at the same time. Mark laughed.
“What’s the point of a Christmas tree if it doesn’t make the house smell like Christmas?”
“Agreed,” he replied.
We lapsed into an easy silence, and long before I was ready, we took an exit that led to a rest stop right off the freeway. Sitting up straight, I stared through the front windshield trying to see something beyond the rain. Suddenly, a whole row of headlights flashed on, and I felt tears clog my throat.