Accidentally Family (Pecan Valley 1)

He stared at her. Hooked up? She sounded like Diana. Uncensored and unapologetic. Still, the idea wasn’t bothering him the way Romi Takahashi’s phone call had. No, something told him he would have reacted very differently if Felicity Otto-Buchanan had called him. And he wasn’t sure that was a good thing. “If you can act like a patient, I will be your doctor. Agreed?”

“Yes, totally. Agreed.” She nodded. “But outside your office, all bets are off.”

…

Nick ran his hands through his sweat-slicked hair, heart hammering in his chest as he ran along the near-dry creek bed. No one hovering around, acting like he was going to explode. If one more person asked if he was okay, or gave him that look, or said they were sorry, he was going to lose his shit.

But that would give everyone in this pathetic town something else to say about his family. And that was the last thing his mom—any of them—needed.

Diana said she had something that could help. Why he was listening to someone who was even more screwed up than he was, he wasn’t sure. But now he was running the dry creek bed at two in the morning to meet her where all the potheads hung out to get high. He was that fricking desperate. Because his dad was an asshole.

Dead now. A dead asshole. And the fact that his asshole dad’s death hurt this bad pissed him off.

He couldn’t shake it. The anger. His phone kept blowing up with texts to hang out, go see a movie, or game online, but Nick ignored them—ignored the phone calls and tweets and snapchats, too. They didn’t get it. He couldn’t hang out and act like everything was normal. Unlike his friends, he knew the truth: life sucked. It was cruel and pointless and believing anything different would get your heart stomped and your dreams trashed.

Over and over again.

“You came.” Diana was sitting at the edge of the pipe, her skinny white legs all but glowing in the dark.

“Yeah,” he said, gasping for breath. He pulled at the hem of his shirt, sweat gluing the fabric to his chest.

“Jesus, Nick.” She pushed off the ground. “You ran here? You are crazy. Come meet everybody.”

Everybody was three people. Some vaguely familiar overweight girl named Beth, with bloodshot eyes and a see-through shirt. A guy Diana called Whack, who had acne scars and a chip on his shoulder.

And Lane. Lane Aisley. Lane was a major prick—everyone at school knew that. The asshat lived to piss people off.

This was further proof that life wasn’t fair. If it were, this waste of a kid would have died, and his father would still be here to piss him off and ignore him.

Breathing in hurt. Something jagged lodged in his throat.

Lane had a joint in one hand and a half-empty bottle of whiskey in the other—as if Nick needed more proof that the guy was a complete tool. But something about Lane’s face, his cocky smile, made Nick’s hands clench. Planting his fists into Lane’s face, again and again and again… Stopping would be the problem.

He pulled at the hem on his shirt again and rolled his neck.

“Chill. Here,” Diana said, holding out the lit joint. “I promise, this will help.”

Getting high wasn’t going to do a damn thing—except get him high. But screw it, he needed a break before he did something really stupid. The sweet cloud of smoke flooded his lungs and then he breathed out slowly—through his nose.

“Feel anything?” Diana asked, watching him.

The full moon overhead cast shadows over everything. Diana’s smudged dark liner made her eyes look like holes in her pale face.

“No,” he murmured, his tongue thick in his mouth. Anything? Try everything. Too frigging much. He was sick and tired of choking on all the things he didn’t say. Wound tight with all the things he ached to do but didn’t.

Diana smiled. “Sure.” She took a long drag off the joint. “You can cut the crap, okay? It’s me.”

Maybe that’s why he was here. With Diana, he didn’t have to try. He didn’t know why she was pissed at the world, but they had that much in common. Considering she was a total nut job, that wasn’t exactly comforting.

He stared beyond her at the others. Lane was watching them, that smug smile creasing his face. His fist, on that face—he could almost feel the force of the blow, see the way Lane’s head would pop back. He’d fall, down, down… And Nick would be the one smiling.

The images stretched and twisted, throwing off his equilibrium. The world slanted, the corners softening and blurred.

“I get it.” Her smile was hard. “I so get it.”

Wait, what? She got it? “No. You don’t,” he pushed back. She had no idea what he was going through.

She ran a hand through her hacked-off black hair, scratching her too-thin forearms with black-tipped nails. “Whatever.” She took another hit. “If you’re going to be an ass, you don’t get to share my weed.”