Page 56 of Harboring Secrets
“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.
