Page 27

Chapter 27

Brodie

We were still naked and twined together in what was clearly our bed. Liam liked the left side and I’d taken the right, as we’d done when we traveled together. Even though he’d made it abundantly clear that he had no intention of leaving me behind, part of me still wanted to cling to him like a barnacle.

Liam traced feather-light circles on my back, completely unaware of my continued turmoil. I’d acted like an idiot and my embarrassment made it hard to think straight.

“Should we get curtains?” Liam asked as though I wasn’t having an existential crisis.

“Curtains?” I asked stupidly.

“Window coverings. We have a lot of windows.”

I looked at the wall of windows. It had been one of my favorite things about the house. That and the color scheme that made me feel like I was living in a sunset. The back yard was protected by a privacy fence.

“No one can see us,” was my answer.

“I saw one designer take someone’s vacation photos and turn them into slides and they fashioned them together with silver rings and made a curtain out of that.”

“That sounds like a lot of work. Besides, I took lousy pictures.”

A laugh rumbled out of Liam. “I know. I swear you did it on purpose.”

“Well, sometimes, yeah. Like, I’m sure that the other two thousand people who all hiked up the same trail to look at the same view all took very lovely pictures. But I wanted one that suited my experience and when I got to the top of Mount Zas, I felt half dead. Hence the selfie of me stretched out in the dirt. I did manage to get a shot or two before hiking back down.” I nestled closer to Liam. We needed a shower and a change of sheets, but that could wait. I wanted to bask in this closeness a little while longer.

“I never worried if the pictures I took turned out good. Besides, I had my postcard collection accumulating back home.”

“Can I see it?”

I wriggled around until I was able to prop myself up on an elbow and look him in the eye. “You want to see?”

“I’ve always been curious about them. I want to know where you’ve been.”

The postcards were in a box in the walk-in closet with the word postcards scrawled across it in Kieran’s tidy printing. I retrieved it from its place on the shelf and sat down next to Liam. He looped an arm around me and waited for me to open the box.

“It was in plain sight the whole time. You could have looked at them whenever.”

Lips brushed against my temple. “It’s not the same as being invited.”

Kieran had put the postcards in an old shoe box arranged by date. With no regard to his careful organization, I took the lid off and upended the box, spilling them onto our laps.

Liam grabbed one and smirked at it, then at me. “This looks familiar. I didn’t know you were a fan of Game of Thrones .”

“Maybe I went to Croatia for other reasons.” Arguing was pointless when I couldn’t wipe the smug look off my face. “Okay, so I went specifically because it was filmed there. But I also went to other famous locations, like the Chateau D’If from The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s a real prison, but Edmund Dantes wasn’t a real prisoner, of course. But they have a cell you can go visit that they say is his cell.” I glanced at Liam and gave him a smile. I felt suddenly foolish about my bout of excitement so I paused to explain. “I was one of those kids that other kids picked on in school. For whatever reason, people didn’t like me. Having two older brothers helped stop the more physical stuff, but it didn’t stop the taunts.”

“I’m sorry. That sounds rough.”

I loved that I could tell how sincere Liam was. That these weren’t just platitudes that he felt like he had to say.

“I’d see these places on TV and in movies and I’d imagine going to see them. I started keeping a list. It was always a pipedream. There was no way I’d be able to see any of them, but it was a nice dream to have. And then Shane won the lottery. A multi-million dollar windfall. After he collected and talked to Kieran about how not to go dead broke in a couple years’ time, he told me to get my passport sorted.”

“Did you get to see everything on you list?”

I scoffed. “No, but only because the more I saw the longer my list got. But after a bit, the thrill of always being on the go had started to wear off. I’d come home for a little while to see the family, but then Shane would be all excited about another place he could send me and I’d be gone again.”

“He cares about you.”

I put the postcard down and sifted through the others. “Shane cares about everyone. It’s his greatest strength, and also his Achilles’ heel. It’s why he keeps Kieran in on all his money plans. Shane dreams up the ideas and Kieran tells him if it’s financially responsible or not.”

I envied their closeness, but I had no way of fitting into that dynamic with them. I had neither the money sense or the philanthropic knee-jerk response to things that Shane had. Shane was a lot like Mom. They saw problems and immediately thought of how they could help solve them.

“Green Gables?” Liam said, breaking my concentration.

“It’s from a famous Canadian book series. Anne of Green Gables . It’s on Prince Edward Island. I’d never read the books, but I was looking for places to visit that had been in television series or movies. It’s one of the places I’d like to go back and see again. Not everything warrants a second visit, but I loved it there.”

“Are there other places you want to revisit?”

The place I wanted to return to the most was out of reach. Though I could travel the world, I couldn’t travel through time, or I’d go back to that night when everything went wrong. I’d do it over again and get a better ending.

“I don’t know. I’d have to think about it,” I said instead of admitting my childish fantasy. “You can read them, you know. They’re not top secret or anything.” I noticed that Liam wasn’t reading any of the things I’d written on the back.

“Where was your favorite place?”

I settled in against him as he carefully picked up each postcard and looked at them one by one. “I feel stupid saying that home ended up being my favorite place. I’ve seen the sunset in countless different countries and on a few different continents. But home is my favorite place to be now. But if I had to pick somewhere that wasn’t here, I’d probably pick Scotland. It’s so green and rainy. It’s a whole vibe and I love it. Where’s your favorite place?”

Liam picked up a postcard I’d sent from the Maldives. “I haven’t been many places. I was always chasing the next goal post. High school. University. Marriage, etcetera.”

“I never understood why people did that.”

“Did what?” Liam asked. He’d gone through a good portion of the postcards by now and was still flipping them over to read the back.

“Have kids and then pigeonhole them into the kind of life that the parents think they should lead.”

“There are worse fates. My parents weren’t responsible for all my decisions. I wanted to make them proud. I thought maybe they’d notice me more if I did things I thought they wanted of me.” Liam paused and flipped over a postcard. “Today I met a gorgeous man.”

“That’s the day I met you.” He’d notice eventually that most of my musings after we met were about him. About places we visited together and things we did. Sometimes it was just a little line he said that I wanted to remember.

I sat up and started going through the remaining postcards. Ones that weren’t about him went into the box and the others I made into a small stack.

“Maybe someday I’ll put all of them in order, but these are enough for now.” I tucked the rest of them away and settled back in against Liam. His arm came around me and he sat, silently waiting for what I would say next.

“Okay, so you saw the day we met.” I flipped the next postcard over and looked at the date and read the caption out loud. “If one more cabana boy flirts with Liam, I’m going to scream.”

He let out a roaring laugh. “I didn’t know you were the jealous type. Besides, they weren’t flirting with me.”

“I’m not jealous. But you didn’t see the way they looked at you.”

“That’s because all my attention was on you.” Liam plucked the postcard out of my grasp and dropped it into the box. “What’s next?”

I turned over the next card, a picture of a sun setting over the water from Kalamata. “The sunset was spectacular, so I heard. I only had eyes for Liam.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks and I tried to tuck the card into the box with the others, but he plucked it out of my grasp and looked at it, furthering my embarrassment.

“That’s sweet.”

“I sound like a love-sick teenager.” I handed the rest of the cards to Liam, unsure if I wanted to stay there while he continued to scan through them.

“If it makes you feel better, I felt like a love-sick teenager. I couldn’t breathe without thinking about you. I wanted to chain you to my side, but that’s probably frowned on in a lot of places.”

“Sounds kinky.” I took a breath and rolled out of bed. “Shower with me?” The afterglow had officially faded and I wanted to get clean, and maybe dirty again.

Liam put all the postcards back in the box and set it aside to follow me. The bathtub was big enough for both of us, but I preferred to shower most of the time. I started the water and after making sure it was set at a good temperature, I stepped into the spray.

Less than a minute later, Liam was in the shower with me. He stood behind me and pressed his chest against my back. His arms wrapped around me and he buried his face in the curve of my neck. His lips grazed over my skin.

“When do we leave?” I decided to ask about it now while I facing away from him. I still felt foolish about my mini-meltdown.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Liam told me. “I don’t want to rush you, and there’s nothing there that needs my attention that urgently.”

“We should go soon. Get it over with. Plus, you’ve met my family; it’s only fair that I get to meet yours.” I tried to sound nonchalant about it, but Carol sounded like a force of nature and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly intimidated with the prospect of meeting the most important person in Liam’s life. And then there was his best friend, Oren. The sooner I met everyone, the less time I’d have to conjure up doomed scenarios in my head.

“We should go tomorrow. Or the next day. But soon.”

Liam kissed my shoulder. “You don’t have to be nervous; they’ll adore you.”

“I’m going to be nervous anyway.”

“Then I’ll book flights when we’re done in here.” Liam’s hand snaked down my body. I leaned against him and closed my eyes.

“And when might that be?”

Liam chuckled in my ear and kissed water drops off my skin.

“Eventually.”