Ocean (Damage Control 5)

PART I

Chapter One

Kayla

“Kay, are you listening to me? This is a matter of life or death!”

“Uh-huh, Allie,” I murmur as I spread my newest deck of Tarot cards on the carpet. I’m trying a Celtic Cross spread, and frankly, I’m lost. Too many cards.

“You’re not listening,” my older sister grumbles.

“Sure I am.”

With Allie, it’s always a matter of life or death, especially when it comes to her boyfriend, Brad—or rather, her fiancé. The one and only since high school, her one teenage love—since then grown to a full asshole—and her one big mistake.

According to me, so who cares, right?

“He said he spent the night with his buddies, but his friend Josh told me he didn’t show up, and what am I supposed to think? And I can’t call him out on it, because he’ll get mad and—”

“Seriously, Allie…” I stare at my cards, frowning. Are there more person cards or more symbols? Is it important? “How can you be with someone you can’t even confront about that?”

“Because! I’ll seem clingy and paranoid and he hates that, and with the wedding around the corner, it’s the last thing I want. If we put it off again, Mom and Dad will have twin fits.”

And so what? I want to say but force myself to keep quiet. How she can even consider marrying that idiot is beyond me. I met him a few times, and he made my skin crawl.

Yeah, I know Mom and Dad think the two have to marry after being together for three years and that they want grandkids ASAP.

But hey, what about Allie’s life? Her happiness?

And why doesn’t she care about it, either? Am I the only one here asking that question? I mean, she’s studying medicine because my parents want it, and will marry her asshole boyfriend because my parents want it, have two point five kids and buy a house with a white picket fence, and then what?

“Think, Allie.” I rearrange the cards into groups. “Think about what you really want in your life.”

“What are you talking about? This is what I want.”

Moving from Chicago to Milwaukee to be with a loser because he stared at her tits long enough in high school it counted as a date?

“Whatever,” I mutter.

“Like you know any better, Kay?”

Not really. My experience with boys is definitely limited. Not that I’m about to admit it to Allie.

I stare at the card smack in the center of my spread. The Fool. Of course. He keeps popping up in my attempts to read the future in the cards.

Then again, Tarot isn’t meant for reading the future, is it? It’s for reading oneself. Which makes me the fool.

Only apparently the Fool signifies the spark that sets everything into motion, and coupled with the card right next to it… The Moon. A veiled path, a hard path that you must tread to reach the light, a path—

“And Wyatt has been acting up again,” Allie cuts through my attempt at concentration, “and Mom is pissed.”

“You mean our little brother insists on hanging out with a girl Mom doesn’t approve of just because she isn’t the right color and the right religion?”

“Kayla,” Allie mutters, “she’s a foreigner, she’s—”

“No, she’s not. She was born here. Not that it matters, especially since, you know, she’s not what our parents want her to be.”

“It doesn’t matter, you’re right, because Wyatt is too young to know—”

“He’s seventeen. He’s not a kid anymore.”

Silence spreads over the phone line, chilly like a winter wind.

Then Allie says, “Why do you always have to be so contrary?”

“I’m not being contrary. It’s the truth.”

“The truth is you don’t want to ever back down from your ideas.”

I sit back on my heels, re-situate the phone at the juncture of my neck and shoulder. “Right. Question is, why should the family origins of his girlfriend bother you, or anyone, for that matter?”