Love at First Fight - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Three

Sometimes it happens for no reason at all. The fear. The paranoia. The tense, buzzed feeling just beneath the skin. Sometimes I drown, even when there's nothing pulling me under, and I have to catch myself before I lose control.

This was not one of those times. This time, there was most definitely a reason.

He had made the trip out of his room, because even Luke Collins needed to eat, but he had long ago finished his plate, and was now separated from the noise and the chaos. He'd found a spot out back, along the edge of the deck, right where his feet could hang and his arms crossed over the center railing. I could only make out his silhouette against the setting sun, and I was reminded of the last time I'd seen his shadow, dark against the flames, as he ran towards an explosion.

This boy in front of me had secrets. He had motives. Inside of this boy was an entire world that I didn't know—didn't have answers to—and that scared me. It scared me a lot.

"What do you want, Goode?"

Luke is often stuck in this strange middle ground. A monotone, emotionless nightmare. His whole personality is a poker face, which means that his words don't give way to what he's thinking. I'm trained to get a read on people, but Luke Collins might just be one book that I'll never be able to open. "How did you know I was here?"

He laughed, low and quiet and tired. "I've told you since day one. You stand out." He held his hand where I could see hit, sticking his thumb towards the sky. "Like a sore thumb, Goode. Your family has some of the best pavement artists in the business, but you? Well, you're something else."

He didn't watch me as he spoke. He didn't face me. I didn't know why, but I was left with the distinct impression that he didn't dare. Instead, he just kept talking, taking off in an uncharacteristic ramble. "Now, Matt," he said. "There's someone who knows how to sneak up on a guy."

I could have sworn I felt his mood shift just then. I could have sworn that I caught a glimpse at what was going on inside of his head. He was thinking the same thing I was, imagining Matt stitched up and stiff. Remembering the sound that his boot made against tile and thinking about the entire summer when Matthew Goode couldn't disappear. "Not so much any more, I guess," he said.

The words were quiet. Sore. I couldn't blame him. Thinking about Matt was hard. Thinking about Matt sparked memories of helicopter rides and cabins in the Alps. It brought back the screams and the pleas and the sound of my brother begging for someone to just help him.

Somehow I knew that Collins felt it too—the aftermath. The fear. That feeling in his gut when he fell asleep at night, reminding him of what it had sounded like when his partner had asked for death. He felt it, and the two of us didn't feel a whole lot anymore, so I walked over to him and slid my legs through the railing, sharing this moment in the only way I could.

We could have been kids, sitting along the side of the deck. We could have been kids, letting out legs hang. We could have been kids. We were kids, and for a moment, that was okay. For just one moment, Luke and I were a couple of teenagers, sharing the sunset.

It was nice. It was almost peaceful. Except I could feel that numbness at the back of my mind—that freeze of anxiety. I knew that if I wanted to stay afloat, someone had to say something. "Thanks for the report."

He nodded. "Happy birthday." There was more he wanted to say, but he took a moment to debate it—put it through that unyielding filter of his. "It would have been sooner," he told me. "It should have been sooner. We did the interrogation at the start of the summer. It shouldn't have taken me this long to get it to you."