Page 3 of Harboring Secrets
Sorrier than I’d ever been.
I packed my things like he’d done and checked out of the hotel. The woman at the front desk looked sad when I went to give her my credit card.
“It’s been taken care of, Mister Taggart.”
“Can you just… please?” I put my card on the desk and slid it across to her. “Please put it on my card.”
She met my gaze and gave me a little shake of her head. She explained that it wasn’t possible. That was fine. I vowed then that I’d take nothing more from him. Not his time or his energy. Not his money. No one was sorrier than I was that I loved him.
I went straight to the airport from the hotel. There were still things that I’d wanted to see and do, but they’d lost their appeal. I found myself empty, all my previous enthusiasm gone like Liam had taken it with him. Maybe I’d feel better when it wasn’t so fresh. Maybe I’d feel worse.
I sat in the airport for hours. I didn’t eat, but I made myself drink water and I watched the planes take off. I imagined each of them to be the one that Liam got on. Every takeoff was another goodbye, but I couldn’t stop watching them until finally it was my turn and I was the one taking off. The one leaving. I wondered if he’d watched the city disappear and said his own goodbye to me.
I pulled the shade down over the window and leaned back, wishing I was already home.
Chapter 2
Liam
“Youlooklikeshit.”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.
