All Chapters of I Never Hated You : Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Father Webber got to the farm later than usual. Not that Lucas was waiting for him, or expecting him. It was just that Lucas was a creature of habit, and he’d gotten used to the priest arriving in the early afternoon. That was all.As it was, Lucas was actually watching for the school bus to drop Alex off by the time the priest’s battered sedan appeared on the dirt road. And the man who stalked up the hill after parking the car did not look like the mild priest who’d been helping out for the last week or so.“Bad day?” Lucas asked quietly.The priest looked startled, then snorted. “Bad week, month, year…but, yeah, an extra-bad day.” He made a face. “Sorry. It’s not your problem.”“You want to spend some time with Rascal? She could cheer you up. Or would you rather work some of it off?”“Work it off?” The priest’s expression was blank.“Yeah. You know…when you’re mad about something, you can, I don’t know, hit a punching bag or something. Like that. Work it off.”The priest looked like

Mark woke up the next morning, shifted in bed, and groaned. Lucas hadn’t been lying about the effects of the exercise. Mark stretched a little and realized that Lucas had even identified the exact area that would be giving him the most trouble—the muscles between his shoulder blades were so tight he felt like his arms were being drawn back and his chest pushed out.He rolled over, groaned his way to a sitting position, and recognized the shift in his thinking. Lucas. Not Lucas Cain, formal and distant and reminiscent of the newspaper articles from years early.“Lucas,” Mark said out loud. He knew he’d never called the man by name, not to his face, so this might be the first time he’d ever said the first name without the last. “Lucas,” he tried again. “Luke.” But no, that was Alex’s name for him.Alex. No pondering names, there, but something to worry about nonetheless. The boy had seemed increasingly distant since Mark had started volunteering at the farm. Instead of being able to sup

Mark’s father had been moved around a bit early in his hospital stay, but he’d been in the same room with the same nurses for quite a while now, and the whole setup was depressingly familiar.“Hey, Dad,” he said as he eased into the hard plastic chair by the bedside. Some days his father seemed fairly aware, but this time it was hard to be sure if he was even awake. His eyes were open but that didn’t seem to mean as much as it would have in the outside world. “Sorry I didn’t make it this morning. I was…” He was what? What story could he tell in order to avoid telling the truth to this marginally conscious stranger? More importantly, why should he bother? “I had a bit of trouble. And then after that…I could have come this afternoon. But I really wanted…needed…I’m not sure which…to go see someone. Someone I wanted to talk to about it.”And talking to Lucas had helped. Just being around him had helped. Being around the animals had been good, too, and doing physical work instead of sittin

Lucas hadn’t had a problem with his nine o’clock curfew since he started working at the farm. Having to be at work before sunrise made an early bedtime a necessity, not a virtue. So he was already asleep when someone knocked on the door of his room and then pushed it gently open.“Luke? Hey, Luke, the phone’s for you.” It was Chris, a former resident who’d graduated to being a night supervisor.Lucas pushed himself upright and tried to clear the sleep from his brain. He looked at the glowing digital clock on the dresser, then back at Chris.Chris nodded, his head silhouetted against the light coming in from the hall. “Yeah, it’s after hours. But the guy said it was an emergency. He sounded like he meant it.”Lucas swung his feet over the side of the bed and reached for the phone Chris was holding out to him. Was it Alex? Who else would call him in an emergency? “Hello?”“Lukey.” It was Sean. “If you’re serious about looking after that priest? You need to give him a head’s up. The boys

It all happened more slowly than Mark had anticipated. After the panic outdoors and the sudden passion within he’d somehow expected the police intervention to be more dramatic. Instead, Constable Parker had trudged through his inquiries, nodding patiently but without understanding as Mark had given his statement about Lucas’s heroics.It was all so prosaic that Mark started to feel foolish about his instinct to help Lucas hide. There had been no need for that. Lucas must think he was insane, or at least melodramatic. Mark looked over to where Lucas was slouched on the sofa, staring impassively at the ceiling as if bored by the proceedings. It was hard to reconcile this sullen creature with the man whohad fought so savagely outside, or kissed so passionately…but Mark couldn’t think about that. It was too confusing, and he needed to keep his head clear until this situation was resolved. “So everything’s okay, now,” he told the constable. “But I’m worried that it took you so long to get