Page 88 of Gravity of Love
Maybe not ever.
Zion lowered his forehead to touch hers. “Then you don’t have to, Mighty Mouse. I got you.”
For a moment, they just stood there, two co-conspirators in the world’s dumbest and most avoidable lie, until the noise from the dining room ratcheted up a notch. Yaya’s laugh echoed off the walls, and someone (probably Uncle Leo) was singing a very off-key snippet of Zorba the Greek.
“You ready for this?” Zee asked.
“No,” she said, but squared her shoulders anyway. “Let’s go.”
Zion grinned and offered his arm, which she accepted with exaggerated formality. They walked down the hallway together, the very picture of a couple in love, if love was a mixture of existential dread and best-friend solidarity.
As they reached the threshold of the dining room, Frankie slowed, then whispered, “Remind me, did it work out for Julia at the end ofMy Best Friend’s Wedding?”
“She was trying to steal someone else’s man.” Zee patted her hand, which was clutching his bicep like her life depended on it. “Liam has always been yours.”
“No, he—” her rebuttal was cut short when Zion placed his hand on her lower back and guided, aka pushed, her into the dining room, straight to two empty chairs at the cousins’ table. They slipped into the chaos of the brunch, the smell of syrup, and the sound of three dozen Costas’ all trying to out-shout one another like a physical force field.
Zion, whose father bought him season tickets to the Yankees when he moved to New York, got into the same debate, which always started off in friendly banter territory but typically ended up in talking-shit land, with her cousin Anthony, who was born and raised in Boston and was a diehard Red Sox fan.
As she looked around at all the family on her dad’s side who had shown up for her mom, it hit her just how important family was.
Family.
Was her mom right? Liam was already estranged from his dad, and this, if people found out about them… It wouldn’t matter that Tristan cheated first, the betrayal would be something she wasn’t sure they would ever heal from.
It didn’t matter that she loved Liam, that she’d loved Liam her entire life, or that she would probably never love any man the way she loved Liam, if her mom was right, this would cause too much damage, too much irreparable pain.
They had to stop this now, whatever they had was over. A tear slid down her cheek, and she quickly wiped it away before anyone saw it. It was over before it even started.
25
Seven years,Liam thought, as the buzz sounded and he walked through the double doors out of the Pine Ridge General ER for the last time, feeling the weight of his entire history there—all the gut-wrenching codes, resource shortages, seventy-two hours straight on call, eighteen hour shifts, systematic failings, administrative conflicts, patient loss, and death notifications—condense into a single long, sharp exhale from in his lungs. He’d just left the staff room, it hummed the way it always did at change of shift: tired laughter, Nespresso chugging, and the click of plastic badge clips as nurses traded stories or compared days. Someone had brought in two boxes of mixed donuts, with a pink sticky note—Good Luck, Dr. Dreamy!—and a lipstick kiss beside it. He smiled faintly and slid out a jelly. If someone told him, even six months ago, that leaving this place would make him feel something as trite as nostalgia, he would’ve laughed in their face.
But there it was. Nostalgia.
Before that, he’d made the rounds one last time, moving from department to department. A few of the surgical techs intercepted him in the corridor and forced him to accept a“World’s Okayest ER Doctor” coffee mug, which they’d had custom made, complete with his actual signature, apparently swiped from an old prescription pad, laser etched above a cartoon femur. The nurses on 2W baked a sheet cake, decorated with a Lego man who had a strong jaw, five o’clock shadow, and wore a lab coat. They made him slice it, and while everyone cheered, the chief of nurses, Linda, tugged him into a tight hug and whispered, “Don’t be a stranger, handsome.”
The goodbye celebration lasted about five minutes before they were called out on a code yellow. There was a car accident, and the driver was being helicoptered in with suspected internal injuries.
By the time he’d finished his shift, he’d replicated the goodbye routine at least a dozen times—accepting clumsy backslaps, “Don’t go getting soft on us” and “Remember us little people when you’re famous.” It was an inside joke because so many celebrities lived in Hope Falls that it was nicknamed the “Hollywood of the Sierra Nevada.”
All day, all he’d wanted to do was get back to Frankie. Leaving her in bed the second time was even more difficult than the first time he’d had to do it. He wondered if it would ever get easier. He was excited to find out, he thought as the sliding glass doors to freedom opened and one foot stepped out when he heard his name. He would have ignored it, but he recognized the voice and knew he couldn’t.
He turned around to find his sister Poppy. Donut in one hand, coffee in the other. She’d been a lab tech there for almost a decade and ran on caffeine, sugar, sarcasm, and deep, inexplicable knowledge of everyone’s business.
Her head tilted to the side as her eyes narrowed. “You look almost…chipper. Happy. Relaxed. It’s like your walls are down, or at least a few windows are cracked to your soul. Your guard isn’t up. It’s like you don’t have one foot out the door. Which,I realize, is ironic since this is your last day and I stopped you literally when you had one foot out the door, but I don’t know, you just seem… open. Present.”
She pretty much summed up how he felt most of his adult life—walls up, braced for impact, always. Guarded. One foot out the door. Ever since he got the call that his mom was sick, he had been different. Detached. On edge. He could pinpoint the exact moment when the tension started to bleed away. It was when Frankie had crashed back into his world, a hurricane in human form with sunset hair and yoga pants, upending every routine and expectation he’d ever set for himself. From the second she’d re-entered his life, all the years of anger, of hurt, of grief, of pain began to melt away.
He looked down at his sister, saw the complicated affection in her expression, and realized she was rooting for him in a way that went beyond family obligation, and smiled. This time he didn’t have to fake the smile.
Her eyes widened. “Who are you, and what have you done with my broody brother?”
“It’s my last day.” He attributed his expression, demeanor, and mood to his employment ending, but he knew the real reason was a five-foot-nothing redhead he’d left naked in bed.
“Hmmm,” she made a noncommittal sound.
“I need to go,” he stated.
