Page 85 of Her Brother's Billionaire Best Friend

I woke in the morning and pulled on some of the old clothes we’d found in the bedroom. Their scent felt strangely familiar. A thick, cable-knit jumper and an old pair of jeans.

I sat in the cool, quiet of the morning for a while. My heart felt heavy. It was awful that I’d let things get to this point, where my fears about Lucien had threatened my life. And yet I wasn’t any closer to understanding him at the same time. Understanding what he was doing here, what the locked room in his house meant. Why he felt so familiar, and yet so alien to me.

Then, I heard voices talking. One of them was Lucien’s, I could tell by its depth. I was so familiar with the cadences of his sentences now that it was almost impossible to believe I hadn’t known him for years. But the other voice was more muffled, and I didn’t know who it could be.

I stood up and made my way out of the bedroom. Through a window to my left I could see a porch, and on the porch, Lucien was sitting in his shirtsleeves.

I smiled and stepped out of the door. But when I looked down, I gasped.

Lucien was there, in his distressed shirt and pants which he’d dried by the fire that night. He was sitting on the porch, a cup of coffee in his hands. And next to him….

“Mom?” I said.

She looked up at me, and gave me a thin smile. “Well, hello Laura,” she said. “You’ve come to visit me, huh?”

*

Tracey knew perfectly well we hadn’t just come to visit. But as we sat in the living room, while Lucien lit another fire, I was full of questions for her, which she answered curtly.

“This place is yours?”

“Of course. I bought it after your father died.”

“But why, Mom? Why here?”

“I can carry on doing my research in peace, and I have somewhere to rest if I’m working over at the Falls or on the other side of the woods.”

“This is incredible,” chuckled Lucien, but I flashed him a warning glare. Didn’t he remember what my mom had said to me the last time we’d seen each other?

“Mom, what about the apartment?”

My mother narrowed her eyes at me. She reached up and casually adjusted her steel-grey bun. “At my age Laura, you don’t have a lot of time left to do the things you want to do. I realized that I could stay in town and become the kind of crabby old widow the neighborhood kids make fun of. Or I could get serious about my research. I’ve been out here ever since then.”

I suddenly felt awful. “What do you mean?” I said. “You had David, didn’t you?”

“David’s busy,” said Tracey. “Besides, I wasn’t much of a mother, was I?”

I couldn’t imagine isolating yourself from everything and everyone because you were so dedicated. But as I stared into my mom’s shiny dark eyes, thinking about all the times she’d never come home, I realized it was because she felt like she was no good there.

“Mom,” I said carefully. “Is that really how you feel?”

I was still exhausted from yesterday, and gradually I realized that I could feel a lump forming in my throat. I must be catching a cold.

“We always wanted you there,” I said.

“Except when I was,” Tracey said, pain in her voice.

I remember all the fights at home, all the times my mom had told us we were the reason she never came home. I felt angry about it, but at the same time, there was something desperately sad at the thought of my own parents living alone like this. And it was all because our dad was dead.

“You must hate me,” I said. “For not coming home when dad…”

“Sweetheart,” said Tracey. “I’ve never hated you. I always just wanted you to be safe. And I suppose when Derek died, I felt like…well, like in a way, you’d never be coming back now,” she said, coughing. “After all, your dad was the one you—”

She didn’t have to say any more. I’d sprung off my chair and I was by her side on the couch. I had my arms wrapped around her. I half expected Tracey to push me off, but she brought up her hand and stroked my hair instead. Her voice was choked as she spoke to me.

“I’m just so happy Lucien was there with you when you fell,” she sniffled.

I looked up, into the bright green eyes of the man who watched us, expressionless, as I hugged my mom for the first time in a long time.