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All I know is I don’t want to be around people—not these people, at least They’re way too wholeso in my mind

I open the door of my brother’s old, beat-up car This car used to be Dad’s until he died, at which point it was handed down to Peter And now, I guess it’s mine

After the divorce, Dad had just enoughand buy this piece of junk Dad could’ve said “no” to house calls and gone without a car, but he was the kind of guy who’d rather sleep in the clinic before doing that, so that was exactly what he did

There were always plenty of farm animals in Ashbourne that wouldn’t even fit inside our clinic, but it was rooh for the three of us—Dad, Peter, and me—to live upstairs

As my butt hits the driver’s seat, the smell of burned nicotine fills my nostrils This stupid car smells like Peter

I pull on the door handle, but it won’t budge As I lift ot his hand on it

“Sorry,” he says in a hair-raisingly familiar voice—deep, calm, peaceful “I called your name, but you didn’t hear me”

“Oh, I didn’t hear anything Sorry There was just tooon,” I say

It’s a lie, of course I had my eyes on him, and I definitely heard hi to him

Now that he’s here, though, I don’t have a choice I have to entertain him for a few minutes, at least

“You’re really hard to get ahold of I called the clinic a few times too, but nobody picked up,” Luca says

To people who don’t know hi Luca, I know this is just a statement of fact

“We were closed,” I say I stopobviously

“Yeah, I wasn’t” Luca’s eyelids lower as rain rolls down his head past his dark eyebrows and into his eyes He slicks his rain-soaked hair back with his fingers “I wasn’t expecting it to be open I just wanted to talk to you”

When Luca opens his eyes again, I see so I dread in therief with, and he thinks that person could be me

He can’t be