Page 36 of Hearts of Fairlake

"Did she ever write you?" I asked.

Ayla smiled at that. “She did. My dad hid the letters, though."

"Seriously?"

"I was twelve and was fucked up in the head because of her. The last thing he wanted was for me to read whatever she thought was important enough to write down. He never got rid of them and didn't read them either. Neither of them said it, but I'm pretty sure Kyle convinced Dad last year to give me the choice to read the letters."

I couldn't help but ask. “And...did you?"

"Eventually," she said, shrugging. "It was exactly the sort of thing I expected. I read them, destroyed them, and I haven't talked about it to anyone but Kam."

"Who's Kam?"

"That would be my shrink. Well, hewasmy shrink...still kind of is. Sometimes, I think we're more like friends, even though we're still technically paying him for a monthly therapy session, even though he and I talk more than that."

"Oh...well, that's...probably good?"

"You don't sound so sure."

I laughed. “Don't ask me what's good or not. I’ll probably always be running back and forth to my shrink. There's a lot of fucked up shit in this head of mine that still needs to be picked through, and I learned a while ago that doing it on my own is not a good idea."

At that, she wrinkled her nose and chuckled. "I mean, I've always known you and Grant were brothers. But sometimesit's hard to know that by listening to you. He has his own problems, doesn't he?"

"We both do," I said quietly.

She shrugged. “That's life then, isn't it? I just hope that if I ever have kids, I don't screw them up like my mom did me...was it your parents that did it?"

"They did."

"As bad as my mom?"

"I know you're not supposed to compare traumas to see which is worse or better, but...worse," I said quietly. "Definitely worse from what I know."

"Shit," she said, clicking her tongue.

"Shit," I agreed.

She grinned. “But there are worse things than having awful parents. You still have your brother, a great job, live around here, and you've got Luke."

"All very good points," I said with a snort.

Once, I would have marveled at how much life could turn on a dime and dump you on your ass. Mostly because my life had always been one disaster after another, sometimes brought about by my choices and sometimes because that's just how life was. Yet three years ago, I learned that when life turns on a dime, it's not always a nasty surprise. Sure, it hadn't come easy, but if there was anything I'd learned, it was that anything worth having doesn't come easy.

Which is how I ended up with someone like Luke in my life, well, and his whole family. Nothing could have prepared me for the kind of life I would have with him, and sometimes, it still felt like a sweet dream I would wake up from. Worse, I’d wake up and wouldn't even be in my house in Fovel, where my life had started to pick up. I’d be back in one of those shitty motels or bug-infested apartments I’d lived in, usually with shitty roommates.

But no, instead, I got to wake up with someone who meant the world to me. Someone who had found a way to be the port in the storm that was my life and the person who made me feel like I was burning inside in the best way. I had just started to get my life together, prepared to live as a single man while I slowly pieced the shattered parts of me back together. Instead, Luke had appeared seemingly from nowhere, coming to Fairlake through pure coincidence, and now he was one of the best features of that once sad and broken life.

"You look like you just zoned out," Ayla said with a chuckle. "Did I break you?"

"No," I said with a snort, pushing up from the desk. "But what brings you in here?"

"Chase is sending me around to see what people want for lunch," she said with a shrug. "Said I needed to do something other than drive him crazy."

"Something tells me he likes it when you drive him crazy."

"True, but if you try to tellhimthat, he gets that ridiculous look on his face."

"Not sure I'm familiar with it, but you can go ahead and ask around."

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