Page 67 of Truly

“How do you get candy in your hair?” Maggie asks, shaking her head. “You never cease to amaze me, Lucas.”

“He never ceases to amaze me either,” I say.

I look at him at the exact moment he looks at me. He’d be balls deep inside me if we weren’t at his parents’ kitchen table and they weren’t sitting beside us. There is no doubt.

“How are your parents, Laina?” Lonnie asks.

I clear my throat. “They’re doing well.”

“Where are they living these days?”

“Los Angeles. They moved out there two or three years ago, I think.”

Maggie slices her meatloaf. “Please tell them we asked about them.”

Lonnie chews slowly, his brows tugged together like Luke’s when he’s thinking.

I set my fork down. “I’m going to be honest with you. I very rarely talk to my parents. I haven’t been to their home in LA, and they didn’t see me for the holidays last year.”

Maggie sets her fork down, too. “Oh, honey. Why not?”

“Because they’re assholes,” Luke says, firing his father a look I can’t quite read.

“But she’s their child,” Maggie says to her son. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”

I know this must be unbelievable to Maggie and Lonnie, two people who love their children more than their own lives. They must think there’s something wrong with me not having a relationship with my parents. But it’s the truth, and I don’t want to hide it from them.

I’m tired of hiding from the things that make me uncomfortable.

Luke reaches for my hand under the table, squeezing it tightly.

“So,” Maggie says, reading the room. “How did the two of you see one another again?”

“Laina needed a place to stay away from the paparazzi, and my house was the perfect answer,” Luke says.

I smile at him.Thank you for not telling them I broke into your house without asking you first.

He winks at me.

“Well, I, for one, am glad you are here,” Lonnie says. “We’ve missed you. I know Luke has missed you. He was devastated when he came back from seeing you in Cleveland.”

Seeing me in Cleveland?

Luke’s face pales.

“I’m sorry,” I say, focusing on Lonnie. “When Luke visited me in Cleveland?”

“Does anyone need more potatoes?” Maggie asks. “Or tea? I’m getting up and can bring it back.”

No one says a word.

Lonnie stabs a chunk of meatloaf and lifts his gaze to mine. “Yeah. Right after you left that last time. Luke got a ticket to see you in Cleveland, and then you guys broke up for good.”

Luke didn’t visit me in Cleveland. What’s he talking about?

I would chalk it up to Lonnie having misunderstood a story or mixing up something that happened with one of his other children with Luke. But the guilt on Luke’s face makes it clear.

He came to see me in Cleveland?