Winter (Four Seasons #1) (24 page)

“
Yes, I’m a
lesbian now, Avery. I’ve been a lesbian the past three
years.”

“
What?
” I raise my eyebrows and blink,
trying to force the words she just said to make sense. They
won’t.

“
This is why I
didn’t tell you,” she announces. She points at my boots. “Take them
off. I just had the boards waxed.”

I pull my
boots off angrily, throwing them on the floor as hard as I can.
“What do you mean by that—
this is why you
didn’t tell you
?”

Her mouth
turns down at the corners, an expression that adds to her severity.
“I knew you would judge me.”

“
Judge you?
What the fuck, Mom? Do you think I’m a homophobe or
something?”

“
That’s an
ugly word,” she says, but she doesn’t deny it. I shake my head,
completely confounded. Where on earth did she ever get the idea
that I would react badly to her being with another woman? I search
back through the handful of conversations we’ve shared about
relationships and sexuality and can’t think of a single thing that
would have led her to believe anything so preposterous.

“
I’m
not
a homophobe! I can’t
believe you’d think that!”

“
Well, what
was that face for, then?” she argues, stalking off towards the
kitchen. I follow her, at a complete loss.

“
The face? You
mean
my confusion
?
Maybe because you just announced that you’re gay and you have been
for three years, and you didn’t think to tell me!”

“
Oh, grow up,
Avery.” She turns her back on me and pushes her shirtsleeves up to
her elbows, an indicator that she’s ramping up for a fight. An even
bigger fight. “Just tell me what Maggie Bright has been up to. I
have a ten o’clock I can’t miss and traffic’s going to be
hell.”

“
Great, I
wouldn’t want you to miss an appointment on account of your
hysterical daughter. Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick. Everyone at
Columbia knows about Dad. They know I lied about who I am. There
are posters
everywhere
with my name and face all over them. They’re calling
me—”

“
Avery, stop!”
The look on my mom’s face is classic.
Denial
. She leans forward and braces
against the marbled counter top of her twenty thousand dollar
kitchen island and yells, “This is so typical!”

“
Sorry, Mom.
There’s not much I can do about it.” I am under no illusions that
she is upset on my behalf. She’s undoubtedly panicked that people
might figure out she is connected to me.

“
How long have
you been seeing Brit?” I mutter, suddenly needing to
know.

“
Nine months,”
she grunts.

A manic laugh
itches at the back of my throat, begging to be released. I manage
to keep it at bay, but Mom still sees my lips twitch. “Why is that
so entertaining to you?”

“
You
were
getting around
to telling her you had a daughter? She’s never going to
forgive you.”

“
Whatever,
Avery.” She pushes back and runs her hands over her perfectly neat
ponytail, not a hair out of place. “What do you want me to do about
Maggie?”

“
I don’t
know.”

“
I can file
for a restraining order, but that could take some time.”

“
Luke offered
to do that already but I don’t know if the offer still stands, so
yeah, I guess so.”

Mom’s face
twists into disbelief. “Luke Reid?”

“
Yeah.”

She looks
horrified. Disgusted, in fact. “You’ve been seeing him? When? Why?”
she spits.

Her reaction
is completely unexpected. “He’s been helping me. He’s always kept
in touch. What’s the big—”

She stalks
across the kitchen and jabs her index finger into my chest, hard.
“You’re not to see him again, you understand me? I don’t want you
anywhere near that boy!” She moves over to the sideboard and pulls
open a drawer, from which she produces a silver key. She doesn’t
give it to me; she puts it down on the marble and stares at it
resentfully.

“
You can stay
here for the night, I suppose. I’m going to fix things at
Columbia.”

I’m so stunned
from her outburst over Luke that I can’t breathe a word. I know my
mom well enough to know she means she’ll fix things right here and
now. She isn’t one to put something off. Unless it involves telling
her daughter or her girlfriend about their respective existences,
of course.

I pace
nervously around her kitchen, trying to find something even vaguely
familiar or homely about it, while she rants for a full twenty
minutes to the Dean of Columbia. She paid a small fortune to ensure
my entry into Columbia—even though my grades were good enough to do
that all on their own—and she isn’t afraid of reminding the
administration of her ‘charitable donations’. By the end of her
one-sided conversation, she has obtained a guarantee that the
posters will be down by the end of the day and anyone found to be
harassing me will be dealt with accordingly.

Just like back
in high school, my mother thinks a sharp phone call with someone
who has absolutely no contact with the student body will solve all
my problems. Or solve them adequately enough that I can’t say she
hasn’t done anything about it.

“
I’m going out
to dinner tonight. I probably won’t come back after work so if you
decide to stay here I won’t see you until tomorrow at some point.
Don’t worry about making a mess. Consuela comes in the
morning.”

She flies by
me in a cloud of vanilla perfume and then she is gone. The front
door slams behind her, and I’m left standing in the cold,
unfriendly kitchen, still staring down at the key she’s finally
given me to her house.

******

Noah: Avery,
can you please pick up your phone? I feel like a complete fool.
Please, just talk to me.

The message
says the same thing every time I read it, but I still can’t
convince myself to call Noah. After sleeping with Luke….well, he’s
all I can think about, and there is just too much swirling around
in my head to figure out how I feel about him or Noah or anyone
else in particular. My blown secret identity is off the charts bad,
and everything else just seems to be crashing down around my ears.
Worst of all, I’m trapped in my mother’s freaking sterile house
with zero photos of me anywhere. Therapists all over the world
would probably recommend I talk to someone about how I’m feeling
before I go nuclear and take out half the neighborhood in my
impending meltdown, but I can’t. I just want to sit in silence and
have someone else there with me, just to be with me. The person I
want with me most of all is dead, and the only other person capable
of filling that void…I’ve royally screwed things up with
him
. Royally.

I run my
fingers over the touch screen of my phone, jumping out of my skin
when it starts to ring. Another unknown number. No way in hell. I
can see it all happening again, all unraveling, leading me down the
same road. I throw my cell on the couch and march to the kitchen
bracing myself against the counter. The slim handset on the bench
picks up ringing straight away.

“
Damn it!” I
glare at it malevolently. I won’t get away with smashing things in
my mother’s house, which almost makes it impossible to resist.
Instead I focus on the bright blue screen, narrowing my eyes at it
until the answer machine kicks in.

“
You’ve
reached Amanda St. French’s personal residence. Please redirect all
business matters to my office. Thank you.”

No,
leave a message after the beep.
No,
if you aren’t calling
about business, then please feel free to try again
later
. I know why; no one ever calls my mom
unless it’s work-related.

“
Avery?” The
sound of Brandon’s voice emanating from the tinny speakers scares
the crap out of me. “Ave? You there? My phone hasn’t stopped
ringing all morning. Pick up, kiddo.”

My hands are
shaking when I pluck the handset out of its cradle. “How d’you know
I was here?” I croak. My throat is burning. Hearing the worried
note in Brandon’s voice is enough to tip me over the edge
again.

“
Luke called
me, sweetheart. He’s worried about you. You wanna tell me what’s
been going on?”

“
Luke?
” What the hell is he doing
calling Brandon? “It’s nothing, I…” I can’t really lie to my uncle.
He’d know in a heartbeat, anyway. No matter how hard I fought to
keep my tone level, he’d be able to tell. I let out a mighty sigh.
“Didn’t
he
tell
you what happened?”

“
He explained
some. I want you to tell me, though.”

Typical
Brandon. He knows I’ll only tell half a story if I can avoid
rehashing all of it. “Just…” I dig my knuckles into my forehead,
gathering myself. “One of the girls from Break showed up with
Luke’s ex-girlfriend and outed me to Columbia.”

“
And?”

“
And?
That’s the very last thing I wanted to
happen!”

“
And I’m sure
finally sleeping with a girl you’re head over heels for, only to
have her ditch before you woke up, is the very last thing Luke
wanted to happen, too.”

“
What the
fuck?!
He
told
you that?” I close my eyes and
sink down onto a stool at the breakfast bar, considering thumping
my head against the wall. Brandon only laughs.

“
No, actually.
He called me at seven in the morning, going out of his mind. That
was the only conclusion I could come to. He didn’t deny it when I
asked him outright. Don’t be mad at him, he’s just looking out for
you.”

“
Did he tell
you that he lied to us all about Dad’s death?” I snap. The line
goes silent for a minute.

“
No, he didn’t
tell me that. What do you mean, he lied?”

“
The police
kept things from us. Kept things from the public. Luke told us Dad
was already dead when they found him, but he wasn’t! Luke spoke to
him. Luke held his hand when he died. He—”

“
What did he
say, Avery?”

“—
said it took
him a while to die after he found him, that he was in pain. All
these years—”

“
FUCK, AVERY,
WHAT DID MAX SAY?!”

I freeze
mid-sentence and blink, my eyes suddenly filling with tears.
Brandon curses down the phone. “Shit, I’m sorry, kiddo. Just…what
did he say? Did Maxwell say anything about what he’d done? Why he’d
done it? Did he say if there was anyone else involved?”

His voice is
piqued with anger. I’m so surprised by his urgency that it takes me
a second to respond. To even think straight. “No. It wasn’t like
that. He said…he said, ‘
the
trade
,’ and then he said,
‘
fly high, Icarus
.’”

Brandon’s
breath rushes out, distorting the line. “Your father, that’s the
name he used to call—”

“
I know.” And
there it is. Someone else realizing my father’s last words are a
message to me. It hurts like hell to have it confirmed.

“
What about
‘the trade’, kiddo? Does that mean anything to you?”

“
No.”

“
Are you sure?
Think about it really hard.”

“
I have
thought about it! I’ve thought about nothing else for the past
eight hours. Maybe you should call Luke and talk to him about it.
Sounds as though he and my dad had a pretty developed relationship,
from what he was telling me last night.”

I can hear
Brandon sucking his teeth; he only ever does that when he’s
frustrated or worried. “You should cut Luke some slack,
y’know.”

“
Why? He lied
to us. He’s still keeping secrets, too. Did you know my dad
mentored him when he was a kid? He must have something pretty dark
in his past for him to have needed help. Who knows what kind of a
person he is. If we’re honest, we barely know anything about the
guy. He could be dangerous.”

“
Is that why
you hopped into bed with him last night?”

I clench my
jaw. That stings. More than I care to admit. “I made a mistake,
Brand. One I won’t be making again.”

“
He’s a police
officer, Avery. How in hell could he be dangerous? And yes, I did
know Max mentored him. Your father told me a few things about Luke
that I wish he hadn’t to be perfectly honest. Makes it hard for me
to look the kid in the eye when I see him, I feel so bad for him.
If you gave him a chance then maybe he’d spill all the nasty, dark
shit from his past and you’d see how wrong you are right now. As
for lying to us, if the cops kept information from the public, then
Luke did what he was supposed to. He could have lost his job if
he’d leaked information they wanted to remain out of the papers.
Worse, he probably could have gone to jail.”