Next to Never (Fall Away #4.5)

And then . . . a flutter hits my belly as image after image starts to load onto the screen.

Oh, God.

I lick my lips, all of my questions fading away as I’m suddenly lost.

There he is.

There are images upon images. Him at meetings, grand openings, parties . . . some of them are official—Lucas shaking hands with other businessmen and foreign sheiks—and then, in some, it doesn’t look like he even knows he’s being photographed. Head bent down and that look of stern concentration in his brow that I remember so well.

He’s beautiful. A sudden sob lodges in my throat but I catch it just in time.

I’ve missed him. I didn’t realize how much until now, except now I understand why I’ve refrained from looking him up. It hurts too much.

I grew up with him, talked to him and saw him regularly, and, in all this time, he hasn’t written or called or come home. He forgot about all of us, just like I’d told him he would.

No. I don’t want to see his life that I’m not a part of.

But as I gaze into his eyes, like the blue of the Pacific ten minutes after sundown, I also realize it’s something else, too. As my heart pounds, tears that I hold back stinging my eyes and every muscle in my chest tightening at the sight of him, I realize as I look at his gorgeous face that it’s more than missing him.

It’s longing.

His clothes have changed. He is almost always in a suit in nearly every picture, looking taller and older, with his tie tightened, and a flexed jaw like he’s in a constant state of preparing for a confrontation.

Where’s the guy with greasy hands who helped my brothers in the garage and taught me how to play in the dirt?

“Hey.”

I pop my head up, hearing a call behind me. Hawke comes through the doors from the kitchen, and I turn the iPad over, hiding the screen.

He throws a towel onto a lounge chair and walks up to the pool, pulling his shirt up and over his head.

“Turn around,” he warns.

I roll my eyes and do what he asks, knowing why. Behind me, I hear the shuffle of clothes as he strips off his shorts and shoes, getting naked, and pulls on swimming trunks, no doubt. Hawke is my nephew but we’re not related by blood. A fact he uses to test the lines in our family. We would never hook up, but he likes to remind me that we can if we want to. You know . . . “for practice.”

As soon as I hear the splash of water, I turn around and see his dark form gliding under the water toward me. He pops up, flipping back his hair, longer on the top, shaved on the sides, and his lip and eyebrow rings glimmer in the sunlight.

“Hi,” I say. “You weren’t at school today.”

“Had some stuff to do.”

He floats backward, and I can tell I’m not going to get any more information. Hawke skips school rarely, but lately, it’s getting more frequent.

But although I’m curious, I’m not really worried, either. He keeps his grades up and doesn’t seem to be getting into trouble. Hawke knows how to take care of himself. I just hope his mom doesn’t find out. She pushes education. A lot.

Growing up, it wasn’t “if we go to college,” it was “when we go to college.”

“Are you off-roading tonight?”

He stands back up, shaking his head as he walks toward me. “No, but I can if you want to come with me,” he teases. “I’ll let you drive.”

“I don’t know how to drive.”

He stalks closer, a playful look in his eyes. “It’s time you learned.” He puts his hands on the edge of the pool at my sides. “Enough fucking around. If you can’t practice on me, who can you practice on?”

I nearly laugh. “You mean practice with you?”

He shrugs. “Either or.” And then he grabs my iPad from behind me, flipping it over. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” I burst out, suddenly on alert as I dart out to grab it.

But his eyebrows shoot up when he no doubt sees what’s still on the screen. His eyes fix on me, and a drop of water falls from his hair down the side of his face.

“Still?” he inquires.

My shoulders tense, my guard going up, and I snatch the iPad back, turning it off again.

“They would never let it happen,” he states.

His words loom around me like a cage, and I don’t need him to clarify. I know what he’s talking about.

My wonderment with Lucas at eight had turned into a crush by the time I was fourteen. And now, at seventeen, it still sits there, this small, constant flame in the back of my heart. Despite the distance, the loss of contact, him being twenty-nine years old and a full-grown man . . .

Oh, Jesus. Hawke is right.

Madoc might come to terms with it, as well as Tate and Juliet. But Jared, Jax, and my father?

They only see in black and white.

I force down the tightness in my throat and put the iPad away, turning around to Hawke.

“So . . . ,” I broach, changing the subject. “This ‘stuff’ you’re doing . . . is it illegal?”

He hoods his eyes. “That’s insulting.”

“But still . . . is it illegal?”

He splashes some water on me. “Forget it. I’m not telling you shit.”

“Why not?”

“Because one look from my dad and you crack.”

I laugh and splash him back. That’s probably true.

“What are you reading?” he inquires, reaching over me. I see him take the hardcover book off the table.