Chapter 2 #2
His search did, however, lead him to four half-sisters.
Three who were older, all from his dad Michael’s wife, Teresa.
Phoebe, Pippa, and Paulina were all married and had kids.
Liam also had a baby sister who was three years younger than him named Poppy.
Her mom, Kerri, and his dad had an affair for over two decades, so Kerri grew up knowing their dad.
All of Liam’s siblings had gotten the opportunity he hadn’t, to know their father.
Out of all his sisters, he was closest to Poppy.
They were both the outsiders, having been conceived from extra-marital affairs.
Poppy worked at the hospital with him in the radiation department.
It was a total coincidence that she’d also gone into the medical field but not a coincidence that he’d settled in Pine Ridge or ended up at Pine Ridge General.
He moved where his sisters’, husbands, and their kids all lived after he got out of the Navy.
The entire family, including his dad’s widow Teresa and Poppy’s mom Kerri, who was now friends with Teresa, had all welcomed him with open arms.
He took a detour around a cluster of medical students, glancing at his watch, then at the row of patient rooms with their churning problems. After being on shift all night, the sharp edges of caffeine withdrawal and the first tug of paperwork purgatory were closing in on him.
The end was not in sight, there was no light at the end of his tunnel.
Through the frosted glass of the break room door, he saw a silhouette—small, hunched, with a chunkier shadow that could, perhaps, be a car seat.
He squared his shoulders and pushed open the door.
Inside, the room’s overhead lights glared in clinical solidarity with the ones in the ER, but the air felt softer, and the energy was insulated from the beeping of monitors and the metallic shuffle of gurneys.
Liam’s half-sister Phoebe was already rising from the battered vinyl couch, a diaper bag slung over her shoulder, and five-month-old Bristol propped in her car seat on the coffee table beside an opened box of vanilla wafers.
His entry was met with a double eyebrow raise and a crossed arm combo that said, “I know what you did, and I want answers.”
“What’s wrong with her, Dr. Dreamy?” Phoebe demanded, using the nickname the nurses or patients or someone had given him there about a year after he started, skipping hello, how are you, or any polite sibling greeting.
She said it the way a prosecutor would deliver a closing argument—certain, brisk, and deliberate.
He closed the door behind him. He wasn’t a fan of audiences, and the last thing his private life needed was more gossip. His nickname was bad enough. Speaking of, he hoped his nickname wouldn’t follow him to the family practice he was setting up.
“Who?” Liam played dumb.
“Don’t. I know you’re busy, and I’m supposed to be meeting Poppy for coffee, but I had to stop by here to find out why your head is shoved up your ass.
” His niece chose that moment to toss her pacifier onto the floor.
Without missing a beat, his sister bent down, picked it up, grabbed a wipe from the diaper bag, sanitized it, and popped it back into Bristol’s mouth before she’d finished her thought.
“So, what is wrong with her?” she repeated.
Liam wasn’t in the mood for his sister’s interrogation. He’d worked fourteen hours and was looking at being there at least another six. Maybe if she’d caught him at the beginning of his shift, but at this point…
“Norah is a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model.” She ticked off on her fingers. “She’s a child psychologist, runs three different mentorship programs, and volunteers at a women’s shelter, a homeless shelter, and, in her free time, an animal shelter.” She cocked her head. “She’s perfect!”
He let the words hang, knowing she’d fill the silence so he didn’t have to.
She did. “She likes hiking, going out, or staying in. Reading and dancing. And, I don’t know if you noticed, but she’s actually funny. Like, made me pee my pants funny. Yes, I had just given birth, so my pelvic floor was shot, but still.”
All of that was true. Norah was objectively perfect—charming, competent, even-tempered, but not boring, and had a really good sense of humor. On paper, she ticked all the boxes, as the kids on Love Island said.
“What is it? Are you allergic to happiness? I have set you up with amazing women. So have Pip, and Lina.” Phoebe sighed. “Seriously, Liam, why didn’t you ask her out on a second date?”
Frankie’s face staring down at him flashed in his mind.
It was the night of his mom’s funeral. He sat on the edge of his childhood bed wearing black slacks, white shirt, loosened tie, and rolled-up sleeves.
The day was a blur. The house was filled with relatives and his father’s work colleagues, but it felt empty—there was noise, but all he heard was silence.
He knew there was air, but he was suffocating with grief.
Time was nonexistent to him. He’d lose entire blocks of it.
He didn’t remember going to his room. One moment he was in the kitchen, the next he was sitting on his bed.
His head throbbed with exhaustion and the sting of too much whiskey, but he couldn’t sleep.
He was sobbing, but no sound was coming out, the way men who have spent a lifetime trying not to cry sob, his chin down, and his fists balled in his lap.
The window creaked behind him, and a figure slipped through, silhouetted by the moonlight.
A tiny shadow at first, then a familiar curse as she banged her shin on the windowsill.
Frankie Costas. The usual oversized shirt and sweats she’d worn when she’d climbed in the window at least a hundred times for nightmares, or a dozen other reasons when she was a kid, were replaced by a scoop-neck black dress that hit her mid-thigh.
Without saying a word, she padded over barefoot and stood in front of Liam. He’d always been her safe place. The person she confided in. She came to him when she was in trouble or needed help. But now, now he needed her.
She stepped between his knees and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
He buckled into her, letting his head melt into her stomach, breathing in the familiar vanilla and wildflowers of her shampoo and lotion.
She held him, her fingers threading through the back of his hair the same way his mom used to do when he was young.
He didn’t know how long he stayed in her arms, but the tears eventually ran dry, and his breathing evened out.
He felt her cheek press the crown of his head, her hands tracing idle shapes on his back.
When he finally looked up, she was watching him, eyes dark and gentle.
She cupped his jaw with one hand, thumb brushing the hollow beneath his cheekbone, and for a moment all the years between them shrank.
She wasn’t the little girl who he’d watched grow up.
She was the young woman he’d come home to, the one he’d seen on her eighteenth birthday months earlier.
He didn’t remember moving, but the next thing he knew, he reached for her, palm against her cheek, and pulled her down to him. He’d always been so careful with Frankie—treated her so delicately despite her being tougher than anyone gave her credit for. She was so precious to him, so sacred.
Their lips met, hers tentative and searching.
He eased into the softness of her kiss, absorbing the sweet, irreverent, slightly dangerous energy vibrating through her.
He allowed her to set the pace, keeping his primal urges at bay until he couldn’t stand it anymore.
A soft moan vibrated from deep inside her, and it snapped something inside of him.
Without running it past his conscience, he deepened the kiss.
His tongue pushed past her lips as one hand tangled in her hair, the other steadying her hip.
She kissed him with a fierce, hungry tenderness, and he went back to being a passive participant because he didn’t trust himself not to need her too much.
When her knees buckled, he gripped her hip and pulled her onto his lap.
Her legs settled on either side of him. She began to grind against him, and his fingers dug into the bare flesh of her thigh.
She may have legally been an adult, but it was still wrong.
He didn’t want to think about what happened next.
In fact, he’d spent the better part of eleven years refusing to think about it.
Every bit of him wanted to edit the memory, skip the next part, but some things were so vivid, so seared into his lived experience, they were un-skippable.
So, his mind played the reel anyway: the way she’d whispered his name, the heat of her core, the softness of her flesh, the way her body trembled, the way she’d slept beside him, curled against him, and how he’d watched her for hours, afraid that if he closed his eyes she’d vanish.
But ultimately he was the one who vanished, and he had to live with his choices.
He blinked hard and forced the memory away, pushing it back into the box he’d promised himself he would never open again and taping it back up.
“Hello, Earth to Liam!” Phoebe waved her hand in front of Liam’s face. “Why didn’t you ask her on a second date?” she asked, now balancing Bristol on her hip.
He hadn’t even noticed her take the baby out of her car seat.
Liam cleared his throat, trying to infuse his tone with clinical detachment. “No spark,” he said, his voice so flat it could’ve belonged to a different man.
Phoebe’s jaw literally dropped. Her mouth hung open with cartoonish exaggeration. “No spark?!” she repeated with the same disbelief most people reserved for hearing someone tell them they were abducted by an alien.
Bristol began fussing at the same time Phoebe’s phone started ringing. She pushed the baby at him and began digging for her phone. As soon as he took Bristol, she instantly melted into his arms and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Did you miss Uncle Liam?” he cooed quietly against her head as he patted her back.
He’d always loved kids. Adults, not so much. But babies and kids were great.
Phoebe answered the phone. He knew it was Poppy, from the side of the conversation he could hear. His older sister was asking if everything was okay and saying that she could wait and then saying that it was fine, but she sounded worried.
By the time the phone call ended, Bristol was sound asleep.
“Is she okay?” Liam questioned.
Phoebe shrugged, concern brimming in her eyes. “She said she is running late for an appointment, so she had to take a raincheck, but I could tell she’d been crying.”
“An appointment here?” Liam had seen her truck in the staff lot.
Phoebe shook her head. “No, she’s not here, that’s why she said she’d take a raincheck.”
She lied. Why would she lie? What could she have to lie about?
Phoebe shook her head, as if to put it out of her mind.
“You are a natural. You’re the baby whisperer.
Duane can’t even get her to settle like that.
And it’s not just Bristol, you’re great with all the kids!
Speaking of the kids, you’re coming to Finley’s birthday on Saturday, right?
” She pointed at him in an accusatory fashion.
“Yes.” Phoebe’s oldest daughter was turning eight on Saturday, and he wouldn’t miss it for the world.
His pager buzzed, and he saw he was getting paged to trauma bay two. His patient was ready to be discharged, and his ride was there.
“I have to go.” He gently handed Bristol back to Phoebe. As he did, Bristol woke up and reached for him. He kissed her sweet head and told her he’d see her Saturday.
“See, you need to have your own babies,” she stated as if a baby reaching for him was proof he needed to procreate.
“But you’re never going to do that if you don’t have a spark with a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.
” His sister followed him as he left the room and stood in the doorway calling down the hallway.
“You’re not getting any younger. If you want to start a family, you need to figure out how to spark! ”
He did want a family of his own, which was the reason this was his last week.
That wasn’t going to happen if he worked sixty to eighty hours a week.
Between his department and covering other departments, that was what he averaged.
Pine Ridge General was nestled in the Sierra Nevada.
It was a relatively small hospital that served a large area of rough terrain populated with a dozen or so towns that attracted high volumes of year-round tourists who flocked to the mountains, eager to partake in activities like skiing, hiking, and water sports, some of which they weren’t qualified to do.
In those cases, it inevitably ended in gnarly injuries and fatalities.
If he remained living in Pine Ridge and working at the hospital in the emergency room, he would be on a hamster wheel that he’d never get off. So he’d made big changes. He’d bought a house. He was opening a family practice in a small town, because that’s what he wanted, a family.
There was only one problem: the only person he’d ever seen himself having that family with was engaged to his brother.
Clearly, he didn’t have it all worked out.