Page 7 of Harboring Secrets
“He’s fine.” Kieran leaned in and lowered his voice to a whisper. “He really wants you to like him.”
“You said such nice things about him, eventually. I feel like I already know him. It’ll be easy to like him. Will he like me? I sort of crashed into his life unannounced.”
“Don’t worry about that. I think the two of you will get along just fine. Now,” Kieran took a breath and shifted his position so that he was turned more toward me. “Tell me what happened. Not even a week ago you were having the time of your life. You sounded happy.”
“I was and then I wasn’t, and I just wanted to come home.” Home to people who wouldn’t leave. To people who had to stick around because this was home for them. People who wanted me around. I kept in near constant contact with Mom and Kieran, and more sporadically Shane. Shane never quite got the hang of making the transition from big brother to a friend I happened to be related to and his need to have an opinion on everything made it hard for the two of us to connect.
Kieran was quiet for a minute. From the corner of my eye, I watched him push his dinner around with his fork, giving the impression that he was eating. “I’m sorry you were hurt.”
“Ugh. Am I that transparent?” I both loved and hated that Kieran knew me so well. There was a certain comfort in knowing there was a person who could look at me and understand that I was hurting. Even if he didn’t know specifically why, he knew what to say and do to make me feel better in the moment.
“I know what a heartbroken Brodie looks like, remember?”
“Ew, don’t remind me.” I bumped Kieran’s knee with mine and gave him the best smile I could muster. “I’ll be okay. I think I’m going to stick around home for a while this time. I think I’d like an actual routine again.”
Honestly, I had no idea what I was going to do. Even when I was with Liam, it had all been this daydream perfect bubble of overinflated happiness that we’d lived in. It wasn’t real life and the fear that nothing we shared had been real cut me to my core.
Suddenly without an appetite, I put my container down on the coffee table. “I’m going to shower the airport off me and then sleep until the day after tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
“I’m glad you’re home, Brodie. Even if the reason sucks, it’s good to see you.”
“You too.”
I towed my suitcase to the bedroom and dug out a pair of sleep pants. In the bathroom, I stood staring in the mirror for a few minutes before I snapped out of my stupor and started the water. My brain wouldn’t shut up about Liam.
The next few days were going to be filled with a series of depressing firsts and I hated them more because I hadn’t known things were ending. But that was the way of it. One day you had something and the next day you didn’t, and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it besides go to bed and wake up, and do that again and again until you got used to not having that thing anymore.
This was my first shower without Liam and when I got into bed, it would be the first time I’d slept in a bed without him since the day we met. At least I had exhaustion and jet lag on my side to drag me under into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 4
Liam
I’dmanagedtomakeit almost all the way through the whole event without being left alone with John and Marsha. It was hard to think of them as my in-laws when Piper wasn’t here to tether us together. I missed the people they were before her death. Before, they weren’t fond of me, but after they were more brittle. Abrasive. And I had less of a reason to want to deal with them. I missed the person I used to be before her death too.
Most of all, I missed the person I was when I was with Brodie. And wasn’t that the most unfortunate, uncouth thing to realize at the grand opening of a cancer wing in honor of your dead wife? Her absence would always be a hollow spot in my heart, a hole that would never be filled. A light that would never again shine.
But Brodie was still here. Nothere,but on the planet. It was shit of me to stand here and cut ribbons and talk about how brave Piper was, how hard she fought, how much this wing would have meant to her and all the good it would do for people who weren’t Piper.
“Can we talk to you about something after this?” Marsha put her hand on my arm, her manicured French tips digging into my arm through the fabric of my suit. “It’s important.”
“Marsha, I’m not sure today is the right time.” John put his arm around his wife and tugged her away from me. He pressed a kiss to her temple and shot me a sympathetic look. “Plus, we haven’t decided if that’s what we really want to do.”
“But, John,” Marsha started. Grief had torn Marsha apart at the seams and remade her without an instruction manual to follow. The result was someone who looked like Marsha, but frail. She was a carefully stacked house of cards and I didn’t want to be the one to kick that first card out from under her. But I already knew that whatever she wanted, my answer was no.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Marsha. I plan to leave after this and go straight to the airport.” A lie, but they didn’t know that.
“I only need two minutes.” Marsha pressed on, despite John’s whispered warning that now was not the time or the place. I was definitely team John. “Piper had those eggs frozen and…”
“No.” Horror slashed through me. “Absolutely not.”
Piper had desperately wanted a baby, and I’d desperately wanted Piper to be happy. But after trying the old-fashioned way and nothing worked, we’d opted to try medical intervention. Piper had just had her eggs harvested to prepare them for in vitro when she got sick. When it became clear she wasn’t going to make it, I asked her what she wanted done with the eggs.
“I can’t bear the thought of someone raising my baby, Liam. Living my life. I can’t.”
Even now her words rang in my head, shaking the way they had when she’d spoken them. Barely a whisper because she was so weak at that point.“Once I’m gone, I want them gone too.”
“We could do it now,”I’d offered, sick to my stomach from the whole conversation.
