Page 2

Chapter 2

Liam

“You look like shit.” Carol’s heels clicked across my kitchen floor, sharp sounds punctuating her displeasure. With me? With life in general? Who knew? I loved Carol, but my older sister was always unhappy with one thing or another. Unless you were one of her cats.

“Missed you too.” I took the last sip of my coffee and put the empty cup in the sink.

“I didn’t say I missed you. I said you look terrible. I thought people who came back from vacations were supposed to look more well-rested or something.”

There hadn’t been a lot of rest after I met Brodie. There’d been adventures. Clubs when it was safe. Hotel rooms when it wasn’t. We’d been tourists together. Friends. Lovers. And now we weren’t anything.

“I assume you’re here to collect me.” I snatched my jacket off the back of the stool I’d draped it over and slid into it. The tie around my neck felt like a noose.

“They think you won’t come.”

“I shouldn’t. Piper would have hated this, you know.”

Carol’s ruby lips flattened into a harsh line. “It’s not really for her, though, is it? It’s for her family. For all the people they’ll help by doing this. That part, Piper wouldn’t have hated.” Carol’s eyes flashed to my left hand, the one where my wedding band used to sit.

“Let’s just get this over with.” I stormed past her. “I’m changing my locks, by the way.”

I’d met Piper in college on a storybook-perfect autumn afternoon. We had no classes together. We weren’t even in the same year, Piper being a year ahead of me. She was a TA for an art history professor. She was a vivacious person, one of those magnetic people you couldn’t look away from.

The cancer had taken her fast. She fought as hard as she could, but some battles weren’t meant to be won, she told me. She’d have hated having her name on a building, but Carol was right. She wouldn’t have hated the rest of it.

A black Escalade waited at the curb and I pulled the back door open, ushering Carol inside before sliding in next to her.

“I hate this for you, you know,” Carol said after a few minutes of awkward silence. “I tried to reason with them and asked them not to call you home.”

I smoothed my tie because I couldn’t smooth all the rough edges inside me. “It’s fine. I should be here.”

“You were finally moving on.” Carol glanced at my naked ring finger. “I don’t want you to go backward.”

She had no way of knowing that would never happen now. Behind me was Piper and our short marriage and the forevers we’d never have. A box of memories left behind. A wedding picture on my dresser, face down.

For a brief glorious moment, I’d found something special. Something important. Someone who shone as bright as Piper had shone. That’s what had drawn me to Brodie to begin with.

I wished I could say we met in some romantic way or that I hadn’t been an absolute ass to him. But the way we met was so quintessentially Brodie that the memory warmed me now.

The rain was unexpected that day. The forecast had been woefully wrong and no one expected the microburst. I had managed to duck into the lobby of a hotel just as the rain started. A few others followed me inside to take refuge from the sudden downpour.

And ten minutes later, a man came charging inside, laughing his fool head off. He burst through the doors, bringing rain and wind and laughter with him. He’d raked his hands through his hair like his soaking fingers would do anything to the drenched strands other than spray the water on me.

“Why don’t you just shake off like a dog?” I told him, annoyed that he’d sprinkled my shirt with the tiniest bit of water.

Then he looked at me and smiled, and my heart stopped. My pulse quickened. He was gorgeous. Even looking like a drowned rat. Maybe especially since he was soaking wet, head to toe. Because he didn’t let it upset him. He almost seemed to enjoy it.

One of the employees rushed over to him carrying a towel.

“Thanks.” Brodie took the towel and dried his hair. He turned his gaze to me, probably because I was gawking at him. I’d learn that Brodie had a million different smiles and he showed me another. “Sorry I disturbed you.”

“You looked like you had quite a good time.”

“It’s not the first rainstorm I’ve been caught in, but it’s definitely the most impressive.”

“You make a habit of getting caught in the rain?”

“Not a habit, really. I just don’t try to avoid it as hard as other people do.” He dried his hand off on the towel and stuck it out for me to shake. “Brodie Taggart.”

“Liam Lawson.”

Brodie’s lips quirked. “It’s good to meet you, Liam.”

Carol’s voice brought me back to the present. Away from Brodie. Again.

I hated how I’d left things with him. Hated how much about myself I hadn’t shared. Maybe he’d have understood why I’d left things the way I did. Maybe if I’d have been honest, I wouldn’t have had to leave things like that at all. What I did was cold and Brodie didn’t deserve it. But in those moments I’d been stricken with panic. My two worlds—two lives, old and new—came crashing together and I’d smashed Brodie’s heart on the rocks of my ruined life.

Had I told him, he’d have understood. I knew that. But I’d been lost in a daydream. Lost in the idea that I could move forward with my life. And then my past dragged me out of the clouds so swiftly that I did the unforgivable. I hurt Brodie.

“For what it’s worth, I am glad to see you’re moving on.” Carol glanced at my left hand again.

“Not everyone will share your sentiment.”

The Escalade pulled up outside the hospital I’d purposely avoided since Piper’s death. There was a shiny new cancer ward now. It looked like it had a thousand windows. Like it was more glass than brick. Piper would have liked it.

Carol fell into step next to me; even with her heels she was still a few inches shorter than me. “Don’t let them bully you, Liam.”

“They’re not bullies. They’re grieving.”

“They use it as a weapon. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it, instead of on your much-needed vacation.”

I grit my teeth and didn’t answer her. I was here because they’d called and Piper’s mom had been in tears. Her mom was frequently in tears. It was her dad that put the final nail in the coffin, though. Sure would mean a lot to us, son, to have the family back together.

My own parents were never really the affectionate kind, but Piper’s were. What my parents lacked in warmth, Piper’s had it in spades and they gave it freely and willingly. Though I never felt quite like I fit in, they were good people and they doted on Piper.

“It’s the least I can do,” I told Carol, using a tone I hoped she’d interpret as a plea for her to drop the subject.

“You still haven’t told me how your vacation was.”

“Because I just got back. Besides, there’s nothing to tell. I went and looked at old shit and got sand in my ass crack. Thrilling stuff.”

Carol’s eyes cut to mine when we stepped into the building. She didn’t believe a word I’d just said, but she had always been able to see through my bullshit. Even if no one else could. I wanted to tell her about Brodie, but she didn’t even know about my attraction to men. I wasn’t out. Even in the smallest way. Hell, until Brodie I hadn’t realized I could be so drawn in by a man that I could look in his eyes and see the universe. See the future. See the man I wanted to be looking back at me.

“This way,” Carol said, stepping off the elevator. I followed her purposeful steps down the hallway and into a new section of hospital that hadn’t been there before. A section that Piper’s parents had bought. The hospital had already had a good oncology ward, but now it had the best. And Piper’s name and face were on the wall. A larger-than-life portrait of her had me stopping in my tracks.

Carol put her hand on my arm. “Shit, I forgot to warn you about that. Her mom insisted.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t. Because I looked at the picture of Piper and I realized that I hadn’t looked at her picture in months. I’d avoided seeing her face for so long that it felt like I was seeing her again for the first time. But it was different this time. There was a sad sort of ache down inside me. We could have had a good life.

A good life. Guilt threatened to make my knees buckle, but I steeled myself against the sudden onslaught of emotion. I’d had years with Piper and a mere month with Brodie, but I was free with Brodie in a way I hadn’t managed to be since Piper. Before Piper died, I’d been close with her family, but their grief had changed them. It had changed all of us and now I found it hard to warm up to her parents. She idolized them, even when her mother tried meddling and sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Piper would smile and try to reassure me that her mother was only trying to do what she thought was right. Her father, John, was an okay guy, but too willing to go along with Marsha’s whims.

I wanted to talk to her now. To tell her about Brodie. Piper was so much more than my wife. She was my greatest and closest friend and I found that to be the thing I missed the most. I’d loved her with every fiber of my being. Every molecule that made up my body had loved her and everything about her.

“Liam,” Carol whispered. “Are you okay?”

I bit back a laugh. It was a stupid question. I wasn’t. But not for the reason she was thinking. Sure, I missed Piper. But I’d grieved her. I was still grieving her. But I ached for Brodie. I hated the look on his face when I ran from ghosts he couldn’t see and didn’t know existed.

We hadn’t talked about Piper, but even without sharing that part of myself, I felt like Brodie knew me better than anyone. Better than Carol. Better than Piper had known me.

Our parents were old when they had Carol, and older still when they had me. In a lot of ways, Carol was more like a parent to me than a sister. We didn’t quite have a brother-sister relationship, but it wasn’t like parent and child either. She was a best friend who could pull rank. Piper’s parents still had expectations of me. The grieving widower. The distraught son-in-law.

“Liam.”

John’s voice had me turning around. Piper looked like her mother, but she had her father’s eyes. She’d had his perception too. “Good to see you, son. It’s been too long.” John took my hand, though I didn’t remember offering it, and pulled me into a hug. The embrace was brief and it left me shaky, unsteady. “You look well,” he said to me.

“You’re a bad liar, John.” I managed to force a smile for him, but truthfully I felt like shit. I didn’t want to be here and not because I missed Piper. I did. I would never be done missing her. But leaving Brodie had torn out a part of me. I’d sat in the back of a cab on the way to the airport, looking for him. Telling myself that if I happened to see him, I’d stop the car and go to him. That it was a sign I shouldn’t leave.

I didn’t believe in signs.

But I believed that leaving Brodie was the biggest mistake of my life.

“Is there anything we can do for you?” John asked me.

The postcard in the inside pocket of my jacket tethered me to someone I never should have walked away from.

“Can we talk after?” I didn’t know what I wanted to say, what I’d be ready to admit. Not that I found someone else. Or that he was a man. Or that I’d rather be with him anywhere than spend one more minute with Piper’s ghost.