Chapter One
Lorena
I stand outside the train station with a weight in my chest, clamping down as my gaze moves over the city.
It never used to be this way. When I came back from college, it was always with a smile on my face, a spring in my step, ready to rush home and be with my mom and dad.
But that was before dad got sick and I transferred colleges to be closer to him.
“Hey, Lori,” Jaime calls as he strides over.
Jaime was my closest friend growing up, and we still talk regularly on the phone even now that I’m at college and he’s still on the East Coast. He’s tall and slender, with sharp features matched with a soft smile. We were so close when we were kids, best friends, that people said we must’ve been boyfriend and girlfriend, but that isn’t true. We were ever only friends.
He runs a hand through his mop of dark hair, grinning as he nods down at my bags. “Think you brought enough?”
Despite the darkness trying to take hold of me, I manage a smile. But then it falters when the reason for my three overstuffed bags crashes into me.
“Sorry.” Jaime sighs. “That was a pretty stupid thing to say.”
“No, it’s fine.” I lean down to pick up the heaviest bag. “Thanks for giving me a ride home.”
Jaime quickly leans down, snatching up two of the bags and rising to his full height. He’s not as tall as his father, but he’s still over six feet tall, with a boyish look about him.
Sometimes I can’t believe people would think Jaime and I were a couple. We’ve known each other since we were little kids, and it’s only ever been platonic.
We carry the bags over to his car. It’s the same one he’s had since high school, black with the paint chipping, looking like it’s ready to keel over and die at any second. As we place the bags in the trunk, I laugh softly.
“I can’t believe you won’t just let your dad buy you a new one.”
“Hey, I’ve got my pride, I’ll have you know,” he says chuckling softly. “I didn’t save all through high school for nothing.”
I remember how he refused to let his wealthy father buy him a car, insisting on working a part-time job until he’d saved enough to be able to afford a down payment on this hunk of junk.
He strokes his hand along the car’s roof as he walks toward the driver’s seat. “And she is a beauty.”
“A beauty that looks just about ready to kick the can.”
He grins. “Hey, don’t say that about my darling.”
I climb into the passenger seat and he drops into the driver’s, starting the engine and leaving the train station parking lot. As we drive through the city, the buildings get taller and more imposing around us. I can’t help but feel a pang of longing for the old-fashioned look of my college in Maine. It always made me feel as though I’d time traveled back to a different era.
“How’s your dad?” I ask, cautioning myself not to be weird.
My voice falters toward the end, on the word dad.
Jaime’s dad is Lukas Landon, an ex-boxer who towers over everyone at six and a half feet tall, with rippling muscles and silver hair that is almost the same shade as his pale blue eyes. All through high school, whenever I would visit Jaime at his place, I would secretly watch Lukas any chance I got. Imagining one day he’d notice me and make me his.
Of course, it never happened. It couldn’t happen.
I was just a dork with my head buried in a book. He was cordial to me, the way parents are to their kids’ friends, but that’s it.
I haven’t seen him since I left for college two years ago. Jaime has his own place now, and that was the only time I ever saw him when visiting my friend.
But thoughts of Lukas followed me across the country, teasing me in my dreams, as I compared the college boys around me to the manliness of Lukas Landon.
He's never going to notice me. Nothing’s changed, except I’m not a teenager anymore. I turned twenty last month. Which would make Lukas… forty-three.
But the age gap means nothing to me.
In fact, I love his silver hair and the experience in those haunting eyes of his. But that doesn’t mean he feels the same. In his eyes – if he ever bothered looking – he’d probably still see me as a kid.
I silently curse myself when I realize Jaime has been talking all the while I’ve been too busy fantasizing about his dad.
What would Jaime think if he knew the path my thoughts were on?
“Sorry. What did you say?”
Jaime chuckles. “Thinking of your next book idea?”
“Don’t even mention books or ideas. It’s hard enough coming to grips with the classics, let alone trying to write my own one.”