“Bachelorette party is on me.” Zoe had leaned her head back again and was enjoying her foot massage.

“Drinks at R&B’s is good enough,” Mel said.

Zoe and Luke both laughed.

She opened her eyes, glanced at the happy couple, then looked at Luke. “I’m thinking Vegas.”

“I like the way you think,” Luke told her.

Chapter Nine

Wyatt and Mel had retired to her room and Jo had dropped off Miss Gina’s van before leaving with her squad car and the promise to drop by the next day.

Zoe refused to go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink or crumbs on tables that ants could find by morning.

Luke was removing a few empties from the back patio and turning off the lights.

“You don’t have to help.”

“Just say thank you.”

Zoe smiled. “Thank you.”

He tugged a plastic bag out from under the kitchen sink and filled the can. “You really can’t leave it until the morning, can you?”

With her hands full of soapy water, she said, “Call it a byproduct of growing up in Casa de Trailer.”

It was her quirk that she didn’t expect anyone else to understand.

Luke finished with the trash can and rolled up his sleeves.

Instead of putting the clean dishes on a drying rack, she handed them to Luke. He dried them and searched the kitchen until he found the right places to put things.

“I noticed your mom didn’t come.”

“I noticed, too. Probably for the best.” The last thing she wanted was the stress of her mom acting put out. It was always something with her. Zoe wasn’t paying enough attention, someone looked at her sideways and whispered. Not to mention she’d always been jealous of Zoe and Miss Gina’s relationship. “Zanya tells me Zane’s been keeping a job, helping out.”

“That’s what I hear. I hope it lasts.”

“Me, too.” Her baby brother had had more run-ins with the law than Jo had before she decided to carry a badge.

“What about your sister?”

Zoe groaned. “I can’t place a finger on her. She seemed like she had it together before Blaze was born. Now . . . I’m not sure what she’s thinking.”

“My guess is she’s just surviving.”

“Crappy way to live.”

“Life’s choices, babe. We’ve talked about this.”

They had . . . since she was a teenager. If there was one thing Zoe had on her side, it was the ability to watch the people around her and decide which path not to take.

“I can’t help but feel like I could be helping more.”

It took a minute for Luke to respond. “And how would you help?”

“Send more money . . . send Zanya back to school . . . I don’t know, help.” Zanya had skirted through high school and dropped out six months before graduation.

“Has Zanya told you she wants to go back to school?”

“No.”

“So handing over what you work hard for would do what?” Luke asked.

Zoe watched him put two glasses into a crate Miss Gina had ordered for the party. “Nothing but get her by.”

“She has to want it.”

From the first open conversation she’d had with Luke, he’d always told her the same thing. The people in her life, from her mother to her father to her siblings, everyone made their own choices. Even when life tossed you curveballs, you had the choice to push away from the base to hit the ball or let it fly by without trying.

“Do you think Zane wants it? That he’s figuring out how to get out of that damn trailer?”

Silence had Zoe glancing Luke’s way.

He stood with his hand swiping a glass dry with a kitchen towel, his hair falling in his eyes, those same sharp eyes on her . . . “I think you were both raised in the same home, and he sees how life can be. You’ve shown both your siblings that, Zoe. It’s up to them to make life work out for the better.”

“Maybe they don’t know how.”

Luke stepped up beside her, turned off the running water, and took her hands in his. “I know you, Zoe. You’ve told them both you’re there if they need you, right?”

She nodded.

“You’ve told them you’d help out.”

Her head bobbed again.

“You’ve probably even given money without them putting out their hands.”

“Every Christmas.”

“It’s up to them, now. Their lives . . . the paths they need to follow in order to survive on their own.”

Zoe lowered her head and closed her eyes. She saw her baby brother and sister the day their mom had come home from the courthouse after their father was sentenced. The fear in their eyes had matched the joy in Zoe’s. As much as they didn’t like getting hit, there was an uncertainty that came with the lack of beatings that only survivors living in an abusive situation understood.

Zoe got it . . . but she never looked back. She’d vowed to help her mom out as much as she had to in order to keep them in their broken-down trailer.

“You’re their sister, Zoe. Not their mom.”

“I’ve always felt like I was both,” she whispered.

Luke lifted one hand to her chin.

When she opened her eyes, she found understanding and support.

“I hate to see you hurting.”

It did hurt, more than she cared to admit. “I wish it didn’t.”

Luke stroked the side of her jaw with the pad of his thumb. “It hurts because you care. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be Zoe. Just don’t let it consume you.”