Page 23 of His Build

“How old were you when it happened?”

“Sixteen.” He was sixteen, exactly. It was his birthday, and his parents were driving him to the licensing office to apply for his learner’s permit. They were on the highway between here and Ruby Lake when the bright burst of light flashed. A truck’s headlights, too close. The truck had swerved into their lane, the officers said later. They didn’t know why. All Graydon knew was his parents were happy and in love and alive in the front seat one minute, and gone the next. He should have been killed too, but he’d escaped with a concussion and a gash on his jaw.

And a lifetime to replay the horrific incident over and over again in his mind.

Graydon felt a warmth on his arm. He looked down to see Lucy’s hand. To his mortification, he felt a wetness in his eyes, the knot in his throat expanding.

He swallowed it down. “How about you?” he asked, desperate to move away from his pain. “Your parents still kicking?”

Lucy smiled and after a moment, pulled her hand away.

His skin ached where she had touched it.

She folded her arms, hugging her clipboard against her chest. “My mom’s alive, though I haven’t spoken to her in a couple of years.”

He was surprised at this—holding grudges didn’t seem like it meshed with what he knew of her. Admittedly, what little he knew.

“I don’t remember my dad at all. He died when I was a toddler. It was sudden—a brain aneurism.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “And sorry for taking us down this gloomy path.”

She smiled again, and the thing in his chest twisted once more. Even though he never liked to talk about this stuff, he had the sudden knowledge that if he ever wanted to talk to anyone about it, it could be with her.

But that moment wasn’t now.

“So, how long were you a designer?”

Lucy smiled. She knew he was changing the subject. She was good at reading people, he could tell. Of course she’d have to be with her job. Mercifully, she indulged him by telling him about her old job, how she’d worked for a fancy firm for a few years. About her career change.

“It’s actually fun to be doing this again,” Lucy said. “Temporarily. Even though so far I haven’t actually done much designing.”

“You’re walking around with a clipboard,” Graydon said. “That looks important.”

Lucy laughed. “It is very important. It has all my checklists on it. But so far all I’ve really checked off is rear ending a douchebag, getting lost in the woods, yelling at you for marking the road when you’d done it for that other guy… what else?”

“Gave another douchebag a verbal thrashing?”

“Oh yeah. But that part was fun.”

He grinned.

Lucy pulled out her phone and sighed. “Well, I better get going.”

Graydon couldn’t stop the twang of disappointment, even though he knew he couldn’t keep her here all day.

Calm down, dude.She’d be back in a couple of days when the concrete guys come back. But a couple of days suddenly felt like a year. He tried to think of what he could do to keep them together. As she gave him a smile and started to walk back up the path, he opened his mouth.

“Is there anything else you need to do around here? That you need help with, I mean?”

Smooth, Gray-Man. Real smooth.

She lifted a brow at him. “Don’t you have stuff to do?”

“Not really. I mean, yes, loads of stuff. But it’s… ugh, paperwork.”

“Did you justugh?”

He grinned. “I didugh.Paperwork is the worst.”

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