Page 49 of No More Secrets

He finishes off his beer and returns to his apartment. Shiloh’s door is closed, a sliver of light visible underneath. He takes a shower, towels off. He pulls on loose shorts and a shirt and only then notices the laptop he’d stashed in his dresser isn’t there.

Why that little...

He stomps to her room and bangs on the door. “Open up, Sunshine.”

“That’s not my fucking name.”

“Language.”

“Like you’re one to talk.”

“Get off my laptop.”

He hears her slam it closed before she throws open the door.

“I didn’t say you could use it.” He snags the laptop from her.

“I wasn’t going to steal it.”

“And you’re not using it to chat with fish brains.”

Her nose crinkles with ire. “His name’s Finn.”

He grunts and opens the laptop, expecting to find a chat window in his browser history, but paused on the screen is a cartoon squirrel midleap. His heart seizes.

“A newTabby’s Squirreldropped. You know, the cartoon from those books you’ve got?”

He knows.

His heart pounds as he watches his finger direct the cursor to play the video, as if he can’t stop himself. The squirrel shrieks, landing in a sprawl. Acorns spill from a hole in a tree, landing on the squirrel’s head. A scruffy dog paws the nuts into a bucket and takes off with it across the yard.

Unaware of what he’s doing, Lucas wanders into Shiloh’s room and slowly sits on the edge of the bed. He can’t stop watching. Lily made this. It’s funny. How could she find humor in anything after what she’s been through?

“Here, start at the beginning.” Shiloh leans over him, and he stops short of flinching away at her nearness. “What?” she asks.

“Don’t like people touching me.”

He grimaces. That’s two confessions in one night.

He waits for her to make some silly comment about him, but she only shrugs and says, “I don’t like it either.” Then she replays the video. They watch together. He even laughs at the appropriate moments. When it finishes, he feels a tightness to the point of pain in his chest. His baby sister made this.

And it’s physically hurting him to stay away from her.

“Your sister has a book signing in LA this weekend.”

His first thought: he wants to go.

“She’s not my sister.” And she won’t want to see him. He closes the laptop.

“Liar.”

“There are a thousand other Lucas Carsons.”

“But if she was your sister, would you introduce me?”

“Haven’t seen her in years,” he mutters under his breath, standing up.

“What?”