Should have worn sunscreen. Irresponsible asshole.
My teeth ground together with a squeak, and my eyes followed my hands as I snip, snip, snipped stems, imagining they were Luke’s neck.
I realized I sounded like the insufferable one, like he’d said. But ten years of being ignored by Luke Bennet would do that to a girl.
Maybe ignored was the wrong word. Forgotten. Rejected. Disregarded.
Because Luke didn’t ignore anybody. In fact, he had a knack for making every person he came across feel special and important to him. As such, every girl in a thirty-block radius—including yours truly—had, at some point, had a massive crush on the handsome, cavalier charmer. Regardless of the fact that he systematically snakebit every woman he came across and exploited every little crush to the fullest extent.
The worst part? He didn’t do it with a single malicious intention. He just gave and took and moved right along.
I almost couldn’t be mad at him.
Almost.
Except I couldn’t forgive him for the night he’d forgotten. He didn’t remember that kiss, touched with whiskey and fire. It had branded me like a red-hot iron, but it’d meant so little to him, he didn’t seem to have a flicker of a memory of the moment. And the next day, when I saw him at work, he treated me as if it had never happened.
Worse—he’d brushed right past me on his way to manhandle my best friend, Ivy.
“Lucas Bennet!” Mrs. Bennet said in that fond way a mother scolds her child. “Let me get a good look at you.”
He set her down, standing proudly, smiling softly. If he wasn’t a beast, he’d look like a boy.
Mrs. Bennet lifted her hands to his face, her gnarled fingers brushing his cheeks. My heart lurched at the sight.
Rheumatoid arthritis had twisted her hands, limited her mobility, ceased her passion. I’d been her hands for years, my mentor, my surrogate mother. She’d taught me everything I knew, inspired my own passion. I’d found my calling, thanks to her.
I’d found a place to belong, thanks to her.
And now, Luke had returned with his stupid, perfect ass and his pizza bod. You know the kind—broad shoulders, narrow waist that pointed to some spicy pepperoni you’d just love to get in or around your mouth. Even through his T-shirt, I could make out the landscape of his back—hills and valleys, ridges and rolling bulges, like alluvia drawn by water running through sand.
My life as I knew it had officially been flung into a meat grinder, and Luke Bennet’s hand rested firmly on the crank.
Snip, snip, snip, I cut, so mad that I saw everything behind a curtain of fuchsia. I barely even noticed Brutus, the shop’s cat and premier rat hunter, had taken a seat on the table next to me, watching me with detached curiosity, golden eyes knowing and dark fur gleaming.
I had known Luke was coming home—the rest of the Bennets had just arrived, and per the usual, he was late. Really, I should have assumed he’d be working here. What else would he do? The whole point of their return was to help with the shop, and everyone had a job to do. Even Luke. Though the extent of his skillset consisted of making a joke out of everything, seducing unsuspecting women, and being a nuisance. Working the counter seemed to be the only thing he could do.
It was here where we’d first met, here where he’d worked every summer until he graduated high school. And then he gallivanted off, never going to college, never planning for anything. Instead, he traipsed around the city without a care in the world, working a hundred jobs in a handful of years. Then, he met Wendy, and off they went to California by way of a Vegas courthouse. Two months—that was the length of their courtship.
Seriously, she could have been a serial killer for all he knew.
No one thought Luke would ever get married, but if I’d had to pair him with someone, it would have been Wendy. They were equally vain, vapid, and vacuous, thus making them perfect for each other.
No one had been shocked when he caught her riding a Hollywood producer like a pony.
I’d heard she’d laughed. I’d heard she’d mocked him. I’d heard she’d left him because she learned the flower shop was failing, thus depleting Luke’s trust and income by way of his share in the store.
I’d heard a lot of things, though who knew how many of them were true? Because everyone loved Luke, and as far as they were concerned, he could do no wrong. The way Mrs. Bennet spoke of Wendy, she was an evil thing with no other desire but to ruin Luke’s life and happiness. Luke’s brother Kash had softer things to say, but they still painted her as a user and abuser of sweet, innocent Luke.
Some days, it seemed I was the only one who thought he was a louse. I could fill a notebook with infractions to prove my case, if I were so inclined. There may or may not have been such a notebook somewhere in the recesses of my room, but I’d never admit, even with a gun to my temple.
I was shivering, I realized, my fingers numb in the cold water, my wet shirt freezing, my hair dripping in icy rivulets down my back.
“Oh, to have all my babies under one roof,” Mrs. Bennet crooned, her eyes misty.
“Except Marcus,” Luke amended. “He wouldn’t deign himself to live at home, Mr. Independently Wealthy.”
Mrs. Bennet tsked. “He lives two doors down. Deny it all he wants, but he likes being home just as much as any of you.” She turned to me, beaming. “Can you believe it, Tess? Can you believe he’s home for good?”
“No, I really can’t,” I said, snipping another stem with more force than was necessary.
Her smile fell as she assessed me. “Why on earth are you all wet?”
“Funny story, that.” I filled up my lungs to tell her that her son had humped me in the cooler, deciding to leave out the way his very large, very strong hands had felt clamped on my waist or the delectable feel of his hips nestled into my ass. My official statement was: groping and a possible concussion with some mild to moderate shaming to really lay it on thick.
But he cut me off. “It was my fault. I scared Tess, and she hit her head. I would have come up sooner, but I was helping clean up.”
Her face softened, opening up like she was looking at a box of kittens instead of her grownass lying liar of a son. “That’s my Lucas, always willing to help.”
I rolled my eyes when she wasn’t looking. Luke caught the motion and smirked.
Stupid bastard.
I dropped my scissors on the table with a clunk and wiped my hands on a towel next to the bowl. “Excuse me. I’m just going to go get cleaned up.”
“Okay, honey,” Mrs. Bennet said with a smile. “Come on, Lucas.” She threaded her arm in his and towed him toward the door. “Come get settled in.”
“Oh, I will,” he said to his mother, though he was looking at me with that outrageous smile of his tilting his lips. “I’m in for the long haul. So don’t you worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
3
The Brood
LUKE
Mom hadn’t stopped talking, but I didn’t hear a word she’d said.
I hummed like an engine, my skin sparked with electricity, and every thought in my head was of Tess Monroe.
I remembered her as a sixteen-year-old kid with eyes too big for her face and hair like a shiny penny. We met here at the shop, though we lived a block away from each other, the Bennets went to private school, and Ivy and Tess went to the local public school. Once upon a time, we had been friends—summers spent working together in the shop, pizza and video games at her place, sneaking into the greenhouse after hours with booze my sister had bought for us. The occasional rabble-rousing with Ivy, Tess on our heels, hissing warnings that we’d get in trouble.