Healing Hearts

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Trent

M y phone is face up on the table when it vibrates with a message.

My Emily is on my screen as the sender, and I’m sure Carrie, my date, has seen it when her eyebrows go up.

She gives me a furtive glance, probably because she knows I don’t have any sisters.

We did the idle chitchat while we ordered and waited for our food to arrive.

She knew who Grady, my brother, was when she asked me out.

Honestly, having a super famous brother hasn’t been so bad for getting dates. Fame adjacent appeals to a surprising number of women.

We’ve been having an okay enough time, but I’m pretty sure no matter what Emily has said, this date is going to end early.

“Who’s that?” Carrie asks, clearly trying to read whatever Emily has written.

I put down my fork and pick up my phone without letting my internal sigh out.

My Emily has been saved as her contact for a while.

We were all drinking and hanging out when my drunken self inputted it as a joke, along with My Lila , which turned out to be less of a joke when Lila took it a little too literally.

Thankfully, Emily has not.

“I hate to do this,” I hedge as I read Emily’s, clearly, drunken text message that is a mash-up of gobbledygook.

She either needs to learn how to use voice-to-text better, or she really does need glasses, like I suggested last time she sent me something that almost required me to download a translation app.

She claimed her incoherence was because she was speaking instead of typing—basically blaming her tech.

Even I know you gotta proofread that shit before you hit send.

I check Emily’s location on my phone and pull out my wallet to put some bills on the table. “I’ve got a friend in need.”

“Is ‘friend’ code for girlfriend? Are you one of those guys?” Carrie glares at me, already deciding I’m guilty.

“Nah,” I say. “Em’s my buddy, but I do admit I have a soft spot for damsels in distress.” I don’t suggest we can redo our date again sometime. If a first date leads to accusatory and possessive behavior, that doesn’t bode well for the casual relationships I enjoy most.

After my brother, Grady, met the last woman I went out with a handful of times, he told me that for a guy who claimed to dislike drama, I certainly liked fucking it.

His comment gives me a brief moment of pause now every time I find a woman attractive or get hit on by someone.

Given my history, marriage and kids isn’t exactly the goal, so high-drama women in short stints is entertaining, at least. But even I know those relationships aren’t sustainable long-term. That’s kinda the point.

“Guys like you don’t put ‘my’ anyone in their phone if they don’t mean it,” she says, rising from her seat in a huff. “Don’t insult my intelligence. You’re clearly lying.”

“You can finish your meal,” I say, gesturing to her half-eaten fish-and-chips dinner.

There's no point in trying to convince her that a tattooed ex-con like me is exactly the kind of guy who’d put “my” in front of a good friend.

I did it as a joke after Emily and Lila said I was the softest tough guy they’d ever met, but I kept it because the label is true.

There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the Sullivan women, which included Lila until it couldn’t anymore.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you? I’m not going to sit here and eat alone.” She hitches her purse on top of her shoulder and storms out, her strong, syrupy perfume or body spray following behind her. “Worst date ever,” I hear her grumble before throwing open the door to leave.

I double check the amount I put on the table, and then I toss a few more bills, just to be sure.

I can hit a drive through after I pick up Em from.

..I scan her location. The Flirty Englishman…

again. I know the guy and his wife who recently took over ownership of the bar—Kai and Makenna—so at least I can say a quick hello to them while I scoop up Em.

When I step outside, a blast of late-October wind hits me in the chest, and I hunch my shoulders, zipping my bomber jacket.

Once I’m in my truck, it doesn’t take me long to get to The Flirty Englishman . It’s my favorite pub and the one I introduced Em and Lila to more than a year ago when we were planning the Small-Town Saviors show, which was a benefit for my hometown of Little Falls.

At the long bar, Kai is chatting to a regular, and his wife, Mckenna, is probably supposed to be waiting tables. Instead, I can see her at Emily’s table, an uncertain smile on her face. When Em gets drunk, her topics of conversation are unpredictable.

I saunter over, taking my time. Em looks fucking gorgeous with her hair in waves past her shoulders, makeup mostly still intact.

She used to have the best shade of strawberry blonde before she started messing with it by adding so many highlights that’s it’s basically blonde.

Her expression is soft with whatever story she’s telling.

Probably about Omar or her dad. Those always come out after a few drinks—her grief unmasked.

I slide into the seat across from Emily, and when she turns a glassy-eyed stare toward me, I grin.

“Hello, My Emily. You texted me a bunch of garbage, and I came to make sure you hadn’t been kidnapped by aliens.”

An answering smile spreads across Emily’s face, her light brown eyes bright with a hint of mischief. “The text asked you to come get me, so I guess you must read alien.”

“Seems like,” I agree. “Definitely wasn’t English.” Turning to Mckenna, I ask, “Is the kitchen still open? I haven’t really eaten yet.”

“You haven’t eaten?” Emily squints at her watch and then tries to get it into focus by moving it closer and further from her face. Her nose is adorably scrunched up in confusion. “Why not?”

“Well, I was eating fish and chips down the road, but then I got a distress signal and dropped everything to make sure you weren’t being beamed up or the aliens weren’t being abducted by you .

Which, let’s face it, is probably just as likely.

You and your sister, Maggie, would love to do alien experiments. ”

“Oh my god,” Emily wails. “I ruined your date. How could I forget you had a date?”

“If you’d been about twenty minutes earlier for this date,” Mckenna says to me, “you could have ruined her date too. He was pretty awful, though. I think I would have had to get drunk too.”

McKenna is not much of a drinker, despite being an owner of this pub, so that’s saying something.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” I say, “and I’m sorry I didn’t beam myself over here twenty minutes ago to intimidate the shit out of your internet date.”

“Internet dates,” Mckenna says with a shudder. “Those words are enough to inspire PTSD.” She takes a deep breath. “What did you want to order?”

“Sausage and chips,” I say, and then I eye Em across from me. “She needs black coffee, water, and she’ll eat all my fries, I’m sure.”

“I won’t eat them all, ” Em says, waving me off. “I’ll leave you half.”

When Mckenna leaves, I focus on Emily. The last few weekends, this has become a routine.

It doesn’t bother me that she calls, but it’s starting to feel like there might be more going on under the surface.

Over the last year and a bit, she’s been a casual drinker, but lately, she’s turned getting drunk into her weekend profession.

“I’m starting to wonder if an alien species invaded your body, actually,” I say, grabbing the glass with what’s left of her shandy and tipping it back.

God knows Emily doesn’t need more to drink.

Sprite and beer isn’t my favorite combination, but Emily has taken a shine to it. “What’s going on with you?”

“What do you mean?” Emily asks, her words slightly slurred.

“The last… I don’t know—three, four weekends, you’ve gone on a date with some guy you met on the internet from Utica, gotten very drunk, and then called me.”

“Shit,” Emily whispers, “I knew I should have called someone else. But Maggie is out of town, Tyler has the baby, Lila moved to New York City, and my mom has Amir.”

“My little buddy is sleeping over at grandma’s tonight?” I ask, keeping my tone light.

“Yeah,” Em says, searching the crowd, probably for Mckenna and her coffee and water. “I’m sorry I ruined your night.”

“You ruined nothing. I like taking care of you, Em. I just want to understand what’s going on.”

“The dating pool is shallow and putrid,” she says. “So stinky.” She plugs her nose and groans. “But I promised my mom I’d get back out there.”

“Your heart isn’t in it,” I say.

“It’s been four years, and I don’t have a clue where my heart is. Half of it’s buried in the cemetery with Omar’s name on the headstone, and the other half is dedicated to our little boy. I don’t wanna date .”

“What do you want?” I ask as Mckenna returns with water for both of us and a coffee for Emily.

She gives me a faraway stare. “I don’t know. I wish I knew. I’m not really happy. I know that.”

My heart gives a painful squeeze in my chest. There’s no way she’d admit that if she was sober. The Sullivans are experts at pretending they’re fine until all hell breaks loose.

Emily’s expression and the way she said it remind me so much of her younger sister, Maggie, who wore the same helpless sadness like a cloak the night we first spoke in high school.

Back then, I’d told her I could rescue her from the mean girl clique who had targeted her, and I had.

I wish Emily’s problem right now was as easy to solve.

“But I don’t get the luxury of falling apart, because I have Amir. I won’t be a mess for him, you know. I’m all he’s got.”

“Just so you know,” I say, “you can fall apart every Saturday night, and I’ll happily pick up those pieces and keep them safe.”

“You’ll hold them for me?’ Em asks, her gaze softening.

“Until you’re ready to slot them back into place.”

“All right, folks, I’ve got sausage and chips,” Mckenna says, sliding the plate in front of me and setting down a folded set of utensils.

“Oh,” Em says, her eyes sparkling at the sight of food.

These dates she schedules seem to require a liquid diet—no actual food—which doesn’t seem healthy.

“We’re going to need a second set of cutlery,” Emily says.

Mckenna pulls one out of her apron and slides it over, and when she glances at me, I wink. Mckenna laughs, and I grin. After a couple weeks of this routine, we all know our roles.

Though, Emily’s confession about being unhappy, a little directionless, is new, and it’s playing through my head, a movie on a loop.

Emily digs out the knife and fork from the napkin, and I slide the plate closer to her so it’s more on her side of the table than mine. She cuts into the sausage and looks around for ketchup. I grab it and squirt a line on her piece.

“For the record,” she says, “I actually do think aliens exist.”

“As long as the real ones are hot, I’m happy to believe in them too,” I say, picking up a fry and sticking it in my mouth.

She’s going to eat most of the plate, and when we leave here, she’ll realize she should have brought a jacket, and I’ll end up giving her mine then picking it up tomorrow.

These dates are also one of the few times when Emily, who’s normally extremely organized and efficient, is a bit scattered.

“I want the aliens to be intelligent,” she says.

“Of course you would.”

“They could come here and solve all the diseases we have.” She cuts another bite of sausage, and without her asking, I apply the required amount of ketchup.

I know that’s also weighing on her mind—that was last week’s confession.

She hasn’t decided yet whether to get her son, Amir, tested for ALS, the same disease that killed her husband.

When Omar died so young from it, she did a deep dive into his family history with the help of his parents, and it seems likely that other people in his mother’s family had suffered from ALS, perhaps hidden or undiagnosed.

So last week when I came to rescue her, Emily made me a pros and cons list on a napkin to decide whether she wanted to get Amir’s genetics checked or not. Her writing was completely unreadable, but talking out her feelings seemed to make her feel better.

I wouldn’t even know how to handle that result if it didn’t go the way I needed it to.

Amir isn’t even my son, and I know I’d be devastated for her, for him, for a life that would be cut short.

We’ll all die someday, but I don’t think I could handle seeing the clock, watching it tick down to nothing.

“You picking Amir up in the morning from your mom?” I ask, trying to shift from the things weighing her down.

“Yeah,” she says, cutting the last piece of sausage and waiting for me to put ketchup on it.

I do and then say, “There’s a fall fair in Mohawk tomorrow. One of the guys at work told me they have kiddie rides with an all-you-can-ride pass on Sunday. I could meet you and Amir there?”

“Would you?” Her expression brightens. “He’d love that, and I’d love it too,” she says. “You’re ridiculously thoughtful sometimes.”

Given how emotionally fragile Emily has been the last few weekends, I need to ramp up that quality for the next little while. Maybe I can’t dig her out of her hole, but I don’t mind the dirt, so I’ll climb down there with her and see whether I can bring a smidge of light with me.

“Just with you,” I say, offering her the last fry on the plate.

She takes it and pops it into her mouth, a hint of contentment in her expression, and as a starting place to slotting her back together, that’s not so bad.