The Schemer (Harbor City 3)

“Why didn’t you ever leave?” The question just sort of popped out before Tyler had a chance to consider how to phrase it.

Frankie snorted. “Why would I?”

“Because you could,” he said, still staring at the invisible stars. “Despite the show you put on for people, you’re smart. You could make more money. You could be more than just some guy from Waterbury.”

“See, that’s your problem.” Frankie twisted in his chair to face him, his jaw tight and his shoulders tense. “You’re the only one I know who worries about that shit. I like being from Waterbury, where people make eye contact with you when you pass them on the street. The town is filled with people who work hard for what they’ve got and they appreciate it. I’m a blue-collar guy, and I don’t need to pretend I’m anything else.”

Tyler’s spine snapped straight and he turned on his friend. Pretend? He didn’t need to pretend. He needed to forget—to make others forget. “Are you saying that I do?”

“Fuck yeah,” Frankie said, not giving an inch.

“I have my reasons for wanting to leave this place behind.” The two main ones being the people who contributed to his gene pool.

“Yeah, I know. Your parents were shit.” The other man took a long swig of beer. “We all knew it, but there wasn’t a thing we could do about it short of kidnapping you and hiding you in our basement—an option Finian and I brought up with our dad.”

“I bet he had an answer for that.”

“Sure did.” Frankie looked him dead in the eye. “Where do you think the invite to apply for a scholarship for that fancy-ass prep school came from? One of the guys in his firehouse was married to a woman whose sister taught at that place.”

“He did that?” That sucked the shitty attitude right out of Tyler, and he sank back against the knockoff Adirondack deck chair. “I had no idea.”

“There’s a lot you don’t have a fucking clue about.” Frankie was on a roll and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and got right in Tyler’s face. “Remember that first Thanksgiving you spent with the Carlyles?”

“Yeah.”

“That happened because my mom spotted Helene Carlyle heading out of your house with your mom watching her go from the window, a half-empty vodka bottle in her hand. Well, Ma all but grabbed Mrs. Carlyle and forced her into our kitchen. It was a madhouse, what with all of us trying to get out of there in time to catch the bus to school, but that woman stuck it out and listened to Ma explain about your parents and tell her that you were different. That you could really be something if you could just get away from the bastards who bi

rthed you. Of course, she used nicer language than that, but that was the gist.”

It was like someone had turned out all the city lights, and the stars started appearing one by one in the night sky. “So that’s how I ended up spending so many holidays and vacations with them.”

“Yeah, and when you couldn’t be with them, you were at our house adding to the bedlam there,” Frankie snarled, sitting in his chair and turning his face back to the sky. “That’s the blue-collar community that you find so horrible. We watch out for one another here in Waterbury. It may not always be visible and we may not always brag about it or hold fancy parties to raise money for things, but we make good things happen. You wanna know why I stayed? Because I want to contribute to that, but you’ve been trying to put as much distance between you and where you grew up for so long that you can’t even see all the good stuff. And every time you try to hide who you are and where you came from you’re telling us—and Everly—to fuck off.”

Jesus. What in the hell did he say to that? Every possible response evaporated like so much nothing. How had he missed all of this? For a man who prided himself on always knowing what someone was going to do before they did it, this revelation had his brain buffering for signal. And in the darkness, he saw the one thing he’d always missed before. That he wasn’t running away from where he was from, he was running away from himself. He’d been a complete asshole who’d been fighting so hard to avoid becoming his bitter, paranoid, always-ready-to-screw-over-people-before-they-had-a-chance-to-screw-you-over parents that if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up being just like them anyway.

He drained his beer in one gulp and set it down on the deck next to his other empty soldier. “You’re right.”

“What?” Frankie turned and looked at him with a smug grin. “I must have gone temporarily deaf. Can you say that again?”

Tyler flipped him off. “Fuck off, you heard me.”

“Yeah, I did. So how about you tell me the real reason why you ended up parked outside my house like the world’s saddest multimillionaire dickhead in desperate need of a cleanup because man, you look fucking rough.”

“Everly.” Because she’d seen through it all right from the beginning.

“You mean the woman who’s not your girl even though you love her?”

“I don’t love her.” He just couldn’t figure her out when it appeared that she had his number. The first time they’d met most likely.

Frankie laughed. “Lie to yourself; don’t lie to me.”

Heat rushed through him along with the sneaking suspicion that he was full of shit. “I’m not.”

“Okay.” Frankie shrugged and nodded. “Then say it. Say, ‘I don’t love Everly Ribinski, the hottest girl who ever told me to fuck off and die.’”

“She didn’t say that.” Delay? Him? Never.

Frankie just shook his head. “Stop stalling.”