Page 16 of Secret Triplets, Second Chances

JAKE

“ I think we should list the house how it is,” I say to Shelby, who’s on the other end of the call.

Yesterday, I’d started by trying to cut some wood for the banister, to strengthen it, only for the saw to backfire and cut my forearm. I’ve never cut myself with a saw before, and that’s convinced me that this renovation shouldn’t happen.

The only good thing that came out of the injury was seeing Lara in the emergency room. At first, I didn’t recognize her. She looked different in her scrubs, with her blond hair shorter than I’d ever seen it, tied back in a stubby ponytail.

And the way she looked at me — like I was a fallen angel, or at least someone she thought was gone forever — had me wondering why in the world I’d ever left Wildfern Ridge. Why did I leave when Lara was here? Just because she didn’t want to come to Michigan with me?

Asking her to hang out was natural. Just like the first time, after that party. After the tree house.

But I don’t tell Shelby about Lara.

Instead, I tell Shelby about the cut, the time wasted, the stitches, the pain. I explain that I think the house might be cursed, and if I try to do anything else to fix it up, I’m convinced an evil spirit might do something worse than a couple of stitches on my forearm.

I expect Shelby to be sympathetic to this request, but she just huffs on the other side of the phone, sounding like an exasperated mother.

“It’s going to make a lot more money if you do the bare minimum to fix it up,” she says, grunting, and I realize she must be loading something on the other end of the line. Always working.

“Who cares about the money?”

“Spoken like a true professional athlete,” she scoffs. “Welcome back to the real world, where we care about making twice as much on the sale of our childhood home.”

The way she says childhood home makes it sound like there are a lot more warm and fuzzy memories here than there really are.

I stand in the center of the kitchen, scowling with disdain at the old, orange-toned cabinets, the carpet in the kitchen — who in the world thought that was a good idea?

— the mold that’s probably growing round the sink.

“Everything here needs replacing,” I argue. “It’s going to take forever.”

“Your season doesn’t start until September,” she argues. “You have the time.”

“I didn’t know you were a hockey fan,” I tease. Shelby sighs on the other end of the phone.

“Are you serious, Jake? I’ve seen every one of your games.”

For some reason, that knocks the air out of me. Maybe she only means the games since I became a Los Angeles King. How could she have possibly seen my college games?

I remember her in the crowd back in high school. She hadn’t missed a single one of those, even coming to the away games with her group of friends to cheer me on.

It makes me think of the first game Lara came to and how I could feel her gaze on me the entire night. How I’d played my hardest, wanting to impress her. To show her that I could be something special, too.

Maybe I should ask Shelby about Lara casually. See if she can tell me anything about what Lara’s been up to the past five years. But I don’t want Shelby to start making guesses about Lara and me. If only I had other friends in town to ask about her.

“Hello?” Shelby presses, and I realize I still have my phone to my ear, that I’ve been lost in thought.

“I don’t know,” I grumble. “Now until September still might not be enough time to get everything done in here. He wasn’t taking care of the place at all, Shelb.”

“He was doing his best.”

It’s not the first time she’s said something like this, something to defend our dad, and it’s not the first time I’ve skated over it, not wanting to get into it with her.

But still, something uneasy grows in the pit of my stomach. This idea that she got a different version of him than I did. That for some reason, he put in more effort with her, more effort once I was gone.

That, or she has been a lot more willing to put on blinders when it comes to him.

Shelby speaks again before I can, “You’re really telling me you don’t like the sound of doing a bit of demo on it?”

“Demo?” I ask, glancing around the kitchen, already imagining what it might feel like to rip some of these cabinets right off the walls.

“Yeah,” she says, and I can tell from the tone of her voice that she knows she’s got me, that I’m a fish circling the hook. “If everything is as bad as you say it is, you’re probably going to need to strip it down. Maybe I could even spare a few guys to come and help you with it.”

“No,” I say, glaring down at the carpet I’m already fantasizing about tearing out of the floor, “that’s all right.”

I may be a fish, but at least I’m smart enough to know when I’ve been hooked. She baited me with the idea of demolition, and I’m falling for it.

“Great,” Shelby says, and I can practically hear her smirk through the phone. “Send pictures when it’s down to bare bones.”

After showering and getting ready to go and meet Lara, I go downstairs and walk into the kitchen.

“Fuck!” I say, nearly throwing the pile of clothes in my hand, thankful that I got completely dressed before coming out of the bathroom. “Ever heard of knocking?”

“I did,” my sister says from on her knees in front of the sink, not looking at me. “For three minutes. When you didn’t come, I let myself in.”

“I didn’t know you had a key.”

“I didn’t know you had hearing loss.”

“I was in the shower.”

When she says nothing, I let out a sigh and tuck my clothes into my duffel bag. Shelby is on her hands and knees, looking at something under the sink.

“No use fixing that. I’m tearing it out.”

“Hmm.” She makes a noise and sits up, turning to look at me. She’s still wearing coveralls from her job, and her hair is thrown up into a knot on the top of her head. “You know, I think the first step might actually be going through all the stuff in the attic.”

I wave a hand, not wanting to think about Mom’s stuff up there. Or what I might find belonging to Dad.

“You let me handle this. Focus on your own stuff.”

“Yeah, well…” she wipes her hand on a towel hanging from her belt. “I feel bad for making you do this. So, I came over to help.”

“I don’t need your help. Besides, I’m not working on the house right now, anyway.”

“What are you doing, then?”

I’m tempted to say nothing , but I know that will be worse than giving a vague answer, so I go with a half-truth instead. “I’m hanging out with an old friend tonight.”

Shelby pauses, turns, and gives me a once-over as though she’s just now realizing that I’m freshly showered and wearing a nice button-up. Her eyebrows shoot up.

“Are you going to hang out with Lara?”

I nearly swallow my own tongue. “What? What are you?—”

Lara and I were unnecessarily careful in high school, to the point where you would have thought we belonged to rival families. Sometimes it felt dramatic, but sometimes it also felt like it kept us sane. Like the entire school knowing about the thing between us might have ruined it.

They would have reduced it to something it wasn’t. Dumb jock dates nerd, some sort of tween romcom about opposites attracting.

“Please, Jake,” she laughs. “You think you kept that a secret from me? You basically kept her photo in a locket around your neck.”

I gasp. “You went into my room.”

“Just once, looking for gum. Not my fault you built a shrine.”

“I never should have given you the key.”

“Yeah, why did you do that?” Shelby laughs, and I shake my head, scrubbing my hands over my cheeks and realizing I’ve missed this — bantering with my little sister. Going back and forth with someone who really knows me.

“So, is that who you’re going to see?” Shelby’s eyes shine with something I can’t quite identify, something under the surface that makes me want to press her, ask her for answers. Like there’s something she knows about Lara that I don’t.

For the first time, it occurs to me that Lara could be seeing someone else. But she wouldn’t have agreed to see me if she was, right? Then again, I did specify that we would just be catching up. I didn’t call it a date.

As much as I want it to be one.

“That’s none of your business,” I finally answer, swatting at her, shepherding her toward the door. “Now, get out. Go home and rest. I can tell you came here straight from your flip.”

Shelby rolls her eyes at me but walks with me out to the driveway, looking like she could fall asleep at the wheel.

“And text me when you get home,” I say, and as I do, I realize I don’t even know where home is for her.

“Fine,” she says, then, before ducking into her car, “I will if you mess up your hair a bit — you are not a gelled back kind of guy.”

I scowl at her, wait until she’s pulled out of the driveway, then run my hand through my hair as I drive over to meet Lara at the lake.