Read Online Everlasting by Elizabeth Chandler - Free Book Online Page A

wait till now to tell me?” All this time, Bryan had known facts that she and Tristan had desperately needed.
    “Because I’m a coward.”
    Ivy studied him. “I don’t think so.”
    “Really, I am. The pressure’s off now. Luke’s gone. I don’t have to figure out what’s right, what’s wrong. I don’t have to decide whether to help him again.”
    “You helped him before?”
    “I told you, he was my friend.”
    “A close one?”
    Bryan glanced over Ivy’s shoulder, checking out the others, then said, “We grew up together. Yeah, in that hood Chase speaks so highly of. I knew it would come out sooner or later. Luke and I skated together. His mother was an alcoholic, drank herself to death. His father was gone all of his life—who knows where. Luke spent a lot of time at our house.”
    Bryan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s really hard for me to believe that everything a person knows about his life can be erased—that everything we did together is suddenly gone.”
    Ivy remained quiet.
    “But I guess it’s better for Luke that way.”
    “Better?” she asked sharply. “Not knowing how to defend himself or who to fear?”
    “The truth is, Luke didn’t know that even when he remembered everything,” Bryan said. “Mind if we walk a little? I know Kelsey’s body language—she’s thinking about joining us. But she’s got too much pride to chase us.”
    They walked silently for several minutes, Ivy watching the frothy surf roll over her feet, trying to work out what this discovery meant.
    “Luke was a good person,” Bryan said at last. “He’d do anything to help out a friend. But he was a bad judge of character, and when you grow up in a tough area where survival is the first order of business, you have to know your friends from your enemies.”
    “Did he have many enemies?”
    Bryan stopped to watch a gull wheel and drop toward the water. “You only need one. But no—most people liked Luke, and those who didn’t just blew him off.”
    “What was his relationship with Corinne?”
    “He was totally in love with her.” Bryan shook his head and continued walking. “She played him for a fool.”
    “That’s hard to deal with, but unless you’re the possessive, abusive type, you don’t usually murder the person who breaks up with you,” Ivy said. “Was he abusive?”
    “No. But Luke’s feelings always ran strong—you must have seen that yourself. At times his passion made him abrilliant hockey player; other times it destroyed his game. He couldn’t harness his feelings. And like a lot of guys, the way he played his sport was the way he lived his life. When he drank, he had even less control.”
    “Was he drinking the night she died?”
    “Yes.”
    “So how did you help him?” Ivy asked.
    “I pretended to cooperate with the police by giving them a tiny piece of accurate info. Then I gave them enough fake leads to send them rushing in the wrong direction, allowing Luke time to escape. I drove him a hundred miles or so and gave him some cash. The police were pretty ticked, but they chalked it up to me being a stupid hockey player from a bad hood—to being a lowlife, as Chase puts it, ultimately loyal to another lowlife.”
    Ivy’s hair kept blowing in her face; she turned her head as she tossed it back. “Kelsey’s coming.”
    “Is she? So I guess Luke isn’t the only poor judge of what a girl will or won’t do,” Bryan replied with a wry smile. “Ivy, no one on the Cape but my uncle and Stefan—the guy Chase was talking about—knows my connection to Luke, and I want to keep it that way.”
    “Okay.” It was in Tristan’s best interest to keep things quiet. And she thought it better to let Bryan assume “Luke” had fled the Cape until she and Tristan had thought things through.
    “I’ve told you all this for a reason,” Bryan continued. “I know my friend. If Luke has feelings for you, he’ll come back, even if it means risking his life.”
    Ivy