Chapter 5
Liam’s headlights swept up the long, sloping drive, carving two pale tunnels through the dense, inky blackness of the mountain night.
He’d stayed late at the ER, catching up on paperwork and eating vending machine peanut butter crackers for dinner.
The hospital’s fluorescent buzz followed him all the way home, sticking to the lining of his brain like a fog.
He been awake for thirty-six hours and should be exhausted, the kind of exhaustion that flattens you—except instead he felt wound up, itchy, like something unfinished was stretching his skin from the inside.
He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d had since his visit with Taylor.
He reached up and placed his hand in the center of his chest, where the heart was actually located behind the sternum, despite the commonly held belief that it was on the left side of the body. The Pledge of Allegiance contributed to the misconception.
His palm pressed against the cotton of his white button-down shirt.
Beneath the material was the tattoo he’d gotten six months after his mom’s funeral.
After graduating from medical school, some of the people in his class were going out to get the year tattooed on them to commemorate the accomplishment.
He went along with the intention of getting a tattoo in honor of his mom, which he did end up getting later.
But when he walked into the shop and saw the flash on the wall, he chose something else.
He got a simple outline of Mighty Mouse flying with his fist in the air, located directly above his heart.
It was a nickname he’d given Frankie when she was five.
Growing up, he always had a special place in his heart for Frankie.
She and her brothers, AJ and Niko, were basically siblings to him.
Which made what happened the night of his mom’s funeral even worse.
He’d always been more protective of her than the three boys, but she was a girl, and tiny.
He always liked being around her more than Niko or Tristan, but that was because they never shut up.
AJ didn’t say much, and he was smart, so he never minded hanging with him.
Frankie talked a lot, but he could listen to her all day.
She was never annoying. She talked because she had something to say, not just to hear her own voice.
She was opinionated, smart, funny, and he never knew what was going to come out of her mouth.
Most people were predictable, but he was always surprised at the things she came up with.
But that night…everything changed. They’d kissed. And touched. And if he hadn’t stopped, they would have done a lot more. He wanted more. And that scared the shit out of him.
Ever since that night, she’d haunted him.
Those huge hazel eyes, the sprinkle of freckles scattered over her turned-up nose, and her long, silky strawberry blonde hair.
Whenever his mind was quiet, she was there.
Her smile. Her eyes. Her laugh. Holding her.
Kissing her. Feeling her body quiver as she came apart in his lap.
He’d tried to forget the brief indiscretion they’d shared. He’d done everything in his power to scrub his mind of the memory, apart from a lobotomy. He was embarrassed to admit it, but he’d even attempted hypnosis to erase the night from his recollection, it didn’t work.
For some reason, after stopping by to see Taylor, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Frankie.
She was always on his mind, in the background, like a constant hum of white noise that was never silenced.
The only constant in his life, really. But now that volume was turned up to blaring.
He couldn’t drown it out. But he had to, because she was engaged to marry his brother.
He sighed as he ran his hands through his hair in frustration and stared through the windshield at his new house.
Lauren Harrison, who also happened to be Caleb Harrison, Hot Pastor’s cousin, sold him the house and always referred to it as a “home,” as if using four letters could bless the place with warmth or history.
It was a five-bedroom, six-bath transitional home, which she explained was a mix between modern and traditional.
“Perfect for entertaining,” she’d said, as if a thirty-three-year-old bachelor doctor with his family estranged, no social life to speak of, no pets, and basically no friends would suddenly develop a taste for hosting dinner parties.
He’d bought the house for one reason and one reason only.
He hadn’t even seen it before he put in the offer and went under contract.
When he hired Lauren, he told her he didn’t care about price, location, bathrooms, bedrooms, square footage, or lot size.
All he wanted was a room with the following specifications: it had to have floor to ceiling windows that faced north, sealed cement floors, at least one brick wall, and be at least five hundred square feet.
She’d asked if she could ask why, he’d told her no.
It was personal. It was clear from the look she’d given him she thought the ask was impossible, but a few months later she texted him with a video of the perfect room.
He offered ten thousand above the asking price without even stepping foot on the property they closed two weeks later.
He moved in months ago, and the place still felt like he was living in a large hotel room.
The only time he felt like it was a home was when he went into the sunroom, and that had much more to do with the contents than the room itself.
He climbed out of his SUV and walked up to the front door, typed in the code, and stepped into the cold welcome of an empty house.
The alarm system beeped its recognition, then there was total silence.
He dropped his keys on the custom walnut table in the hallway, the only new purchase he’d made since moving in.
The rest of the furniture was recycled from the condo he owned that was a quarter of the size of this house.
He toed off his shoes and lined them up beside his Tom Ford slides and Ferragamo running shoes.
He typically got in five to ten miles before each shift.
He needed those miles to have a clear head, otherwise, the fast pace and chaotic environment proved to be too much.
Once he lined up his shoes, his next stop was the kitchen.
His kitchen featured state-of-the-art stainless-steel appliances, a ten-foot island with a waterfall marble countertop that continued throughout the kitchen, dark navy lower cabinets, white upper cabinets, white subway tile backsplash, white oak floating shelves, and a copper vent hood.
The kitchen looked like it belonged in Better Homes & Gardens, but when he looked at it, he felt nothing.
He was grateful to have a kitchen, but it didn’t feel like home.
It felt empty, just like the rest of the house did.
The fridge was a graveyard: half a gallon of oat milk, a single sad lemon, expired Greek yogurt, and five different varieties of craft beer he’d bought out of obligation to support the local microbrewery.
He inhaled deeply and reached for the only thing that wouldn’t require a PhD in culinary improvisation, his last Factor ready-to-eat meal: sweet potato grits, sage chicken, honey-roasted carrots, and green beans.
He’d signed up for the meal delivery service because he was sick of fast food and never had time to cook.
He removed the sleeve, punctured the film, and popped it in the microwave for two minutes.
As he waited, his mind wandered back to Frankie.
Someone who was in that room must have used the same shampoo and lotion combination as her.
The problem with that theory was, her mom used the same shampoo and lotion as she did and never smelled like her, and so did several of her friends.
Did someone have the same pheromones as her?
Was that a thing? There were regular doppelg?ngers.
Were there scent doppelg?ngers? That wouldn’t explain why he’d sensed her when he was trying to defuse the situation with the code white.
The timer beeped. It was a shrill, impatient sound—snapping him out of his daze, a microcosm of his whole life, really. He felt as if he were sleepwalking through life, while the universe or God or whoever was pulling the strings was continually Cher-slapping him and telling him to snap out of it.
He popped open the door and then shut it with unnecessary force after dumping the tray onto the counter.
With a fork and knife, he carved the chicken into ten pieces.
His sloppy work caused the grits to spill into the carrots and green beans section.
He didn’t care. He stabbed at the mess with a fork, leaned against the marble island, and chewed with the mechanical dedication of a man determined to nourish himself with the bare minimum required for survival.
That lasted exactly four bites before he was over it. He had zero appetite. There was just too much on his mind.