Page 24 of August Lane

CHAPTER NINE

A ugust hadn’t heard from Luke in two days.

She had assumed he’d reach out once he was settled at Birdie’s, but he was avoiding her.

It made her view their last argument differently.

She thought they’d reached a truce. But Luke never committed to keeping his end of the bargain; he’d only listed all the reasons he shouldn’t.

Once the breakfast rush at King’s was over, August drove to her childhood home.

There were two parts of the Eastside neighborhood: the newer area closer to town filled with apartments and duplexes, and the older part, hand-built houses passed down through generations with murky titles that would never stand up in court.

Birdie’s house was on five acres her father bought during the Great Depression.

According to Birdie, neither of her parents wanted to live in the middle of nowhere, but Eastside was one of the few neighborhoods the government would approve for Black mortgage applications in the county.

As she approached the house, August noticed the siding had recently been patched with fresh paint. A rusted toolbox sat on the porch. Luke’s truck was parked in the driveway, dotted with earth from the surrounding dirt roads. The Chevy looked like it belonged there.

Bill Withers was playing and August followed the music until she found the source.

Luke was in the side yard removing a dead rosebush beneath her old bedroom window.

He wore work shorts and a sweat-soaked T-shirt.

His skin was darker than when she last saw him, burnished copper, which meant he’d been outdoors for a while.

She watched him move the spade back and forth, pull it out, and then push it back in again.

It was obvious he’d done this before, often enough to sing “Use Me” in perfect pitch while his muscles strained and flexed with the rhythmic motion.

August cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Thought you had my number!”

Luke used his phone to turn off the music, then squinted through the sweat sliding into his eyes. “To the phone in this house,” he said. “Not your cell.”

She folded her arms but immediately uncrossed them because it was too hot to touch herself. “If I share it, you can only text me for work purposes.”

“Is that what they call blackmail these days?” He frowned at her sundress as if he didn’t approve. It was white linen with pockets. Cool and functional. Undeserving of his attitude.

“Don’t be dramatic. It’s a business arrangement.”

“Where’s the contract?” He wiped his face with the bottom of his shirt and gave her an eyeful of the fitness magazine ad hiding beneath it. A sculptor couldn’t carve more perfect ridges. She hadn’t expected that. In high school he’d been strong but lean, two skipped meals from skinny.

“What’s the split on rights?” Luke asked. “Fifty-fifty? Or do you plan to take everything to get even with me?”

He was testing her, focusing on the business side of her scheme to see if she’d cave.

But he was also fidgeting, moving his hands from his pockets to his sides and back again.

He had every right to be nervous. Based on what he’d told her about his career, holding his comeback hostage probably triggered bad memories.

“I don’t know,” August admitted. While she didn’t owe him comfort, lying wouldn’t get either of them what they wanted.

And she did want more for him. At least, more than what she’d seen in that truck.

She could hate Luke and hurt for him, too.

Jojo taught her that. Feelings didn’t have a straight path.

They were riddled with forks and ditches, blocked by rivers too strong to wade through.

“I’m being impulsive, which shouldn’t surprise you. People don’t change much.”

She looked at her old bedroom window. The flowers taped to the glass had been there since her tenth birthday.

It had been a good one, predictable the way special days should be when someone cared enough to plan them.

“I want to build a time machine,” she’d told Birdie, because the sun insisted on setting no matter how closely she watched it.

Everyone knew that was the quickest way to slow a thing, keeping your eyes on it.

Birdie picked wildflowers from the yard and pressed them inside a book.

Once they were dry, August had hung them next to the worn chair she used for writing and dreaming.

“Everyone changes.” Luke followed her gaze to the window. “The boy you see when you look at me is gone. Just like the girl who hung those flowers.” He met her eyes. “Who do you want to be now?”

She understood his point, but he was being naive if he thought they weren’t still carting those damaged kids around.

The high set of his shoulders proved he was still bracing for impact.

His hands still twitched when they were empty, always grasping and striving.

And here she was, still aching for someone who’d hurt her, tempted to fill those restless hands with her own.

Those kids weren’t gone. He’d just forgotten that ghosts were real.

“I want to do this together, like before,” she said, because if there was a different way to write with Luke, one that didn’t end with him leaving and her gutted, she couldn’t see it.

But what was one more heartbreak when you’d survived dozens?

She’d heal like always. The music was all that mattered.

“I’ll take my fair share of any money because that’s how it should have been before. ”

His jaw flexed like he was about to say another hard thing. That was all they did now. Exchange truths that had been sharpened into weapons. But instead he looked down at himself and took stock of the grime coating his body. “I’ll get cleaned up so we can start.”

August eyed the pile of dead rosebushes he’d collected next to the house. Pots of red Knock Outs were lined up, ready to replace them. “Where did you get these?”

Luke took his time answering, staring at the flowers like they might jump in and do it for him. “One of your neighbors needed help with his yard yesterday. I took his leftovers instead of cash.”

“But you need the money. Why would you do that?”

Luke pointed to the dead roses. “These were yours. First thing you ever planted. I think you were nine—”

“Eight.” She didn’t want to think about Birdie anymore. But trying to resist the memory felt like pushing fog. “I’d been begging her for roses since I was six.”

He smiled. “Right. You planted them together.”

August pictured her grandmother crouched in the dirt, waving around a gardening spade while swearing never to touch them again.

“They’re your responsibility,” Birdie had claimed.

But she couldn’t help herself. August would grab a watering can, determined to keep her promise, but often find Birdie outside, tending to the flowers.

Luke passing up cash to get her roses was one of those small things that felt big. Like making a stranger laugh in the dark. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “Or paint or fix anything. I offered you the house, free and clear.”

“Like I said, that’s not why I did it.” He peeled off his work gloves and threw them on the ground. “The roses are yours. So is the house. I want to give them back to you.”

He tried to make eye contact, but August refused. His gaze was too earnest and open, the kind she used to fall into. Luke would offer some sweet gesture and she’d gorge herself sick, convinced it was enough to live on. It wasn’t. Kindness didn’t make you trustworthy.

But dear God, she loved his sweetness.

Once the screen door slammed behind him, August let out a shaky breath. She rubbed her eyes, grinding sweat into them as punishment for her thoughts. Luke was a married man. Everyone already thought she’d wrecked one home. She’d never live down wrecking another a few weeks later.

Someone said her name, and she ignored the familiar voice, sure it had been conjured by her guilty conscience.

But then she heard it again, louder and more insistent.

August opened her eyes to see Terry Dixon glaring at her with a bouquet of red roses in his fist. He kicked up dirt around the flower bed.

“Didn’t take long to replace me, did it? ”

Luke rushed through his shower. He was eager to return to August now that he knew she was serious about working with him.

When she’d first suggested it, he could only focus on the risk of getting fired for refusing to sing “Another Love Song.” But last night, he’d thought up a different plan, one that would get them both what they wanted.

He was going to pitch the new song to Jojo herself.

Despite her denials, August wanted her mother’s approval more than anything.

A new song from him might go viral for a few days, but Jojo releasing a single written by her daughter would earn a different level of attention.

Maybe get August a publishing deal. It might even heal the mysterious rift between the two women, which was worth more than fame, money, or rosebushes.

Facilitating their reunion was the closest thing to atonement he could offer.

In his rush to get back to her, Luke pulled his T-shirt and jeans on over damp skin and didn’t bother tying his sneakers before walking out to the porch.

But August wasn’t alone. She was standing next to a stocky Black man holding a bouquet of roses that looked so similar to the ones Luke hadn’t planted yet that, for a second, he thought she’d caught a thief.

Then he noticed the even cut stems bound by grocery store tissue paper.

August said, “It’s not what you think,” and Luke knew he’d stumbled into an argument between two people with history.

Or maybe they were still together. He’d never asked if she was seeing anyone because he didn’t want to know.