Chapter Four
“S hut up! No, he didn’t!” Soph cried. She had been here most of the day and I should have gone to my room to rest, but I couldn’t sleep a wink.
“Yes, he did,” I said. “Believe me, the sight of Liam in his altogether is forever burned on my retinas.”
The two of us were in the kitchen hunched over mugs of Soph’s banana tea while Em visited with Babs. With my sleep rhythm wonky from night duty, and now with the added vision of sexy, naked Liam in my head, there was no way I was ever going to sleep. Ever.
Soph had cut the ends off a banana and then boiled it, peel and all, in water for about ten minutes. She then strained the hot liquid into a mug and topped it with a sprinkle of cinnamon. She assured me it would knock my ass out. I was so tired I’d have taken a fist to the temple if it meant I could be blissfully unconscious, but this seemed worth trying first.
“Was he, you know, happy to see you?” Soph asked. “He was, wasn’t he? No, don’t tell me. I’m married. I shouldn’t even be thinking about another man’s magic wand.”
“Magic wand?” I snorted and very warm banana tea shot into my nose, making me cough and hack. The cinnamon stung.
“Sorry—the twins and I had one of our annual Harry Potter movie marathons the other night,” Sophie said. “Wand sounded much more genteel than dick.”
“Seriously?” Em strode into the kitchen. “Is that all you two talk about? Dude parts?”
Two spots of color blazed on my baby sister’s cheeks and again I felt as if we had let her down by not making sure she was properly educated and appreciative of masculine anatomy.
“Jules got to see Liam’s bits,” Soph said.
“Ha! Trust me when I say there was nothing bitsy about it.” I smiled into my mug as I took a sip.
Em’s eyes went wide, like tennis-ball size, as she stared at me in complete horrified amazement.
“Explain,” she said. “How did this happen? It’s not like a girl just stumbles upon a guy’s compass point and gets a good eyeful.”
“Tried that have you?” Soph asked and Em’s face went rashy.
“No!” Em said. “I would never!”
“Calm down, Em,” I said. “She’s just teasing.”
Em glared at Sophie who ignored her, which compelled me as the middle child mediator to divert Em’s attention by telling her what had happened between me and Liam.
“Well, that was pretty aggressive, don’t you think?” Em asked. “I mean, he just dropped trow right there in front of you, knowing you were watching?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure my watching was the whole point of him letting the man cannon loose.”
This time it was Soph who snorted banana tea up her nose.
“Whatever for?” Em asked, clearly not appreciating my witty way with words.
“I suspect to remind me of what I’ve been missing for the past nine years.” The memories hadn’t faded and nobody else compared.
“Thinks pretty highly of himself there, doesn’t he?” Em asked, as if indignant on my behalf.
“As he should,” I said with a deep sigh.
“I knew it!” Sophie banged her hand on the table and we all jumped.
Em shot her a dark look and tiptoed to the door to see if Babs was still sleeping. Thankfully, she was.
“I still say that was a pervy thing to do,” Em said. “Downright hostile, in fact.”
“Maybe.” I traced the grain of the wood table with my finger while I considered the different angles of what had happened upstairs. “But since the last time he saw me was right before I skipped town with his best friend, well, I can’t really say that I blame him.”
Silence reigned. The night I had fled our childhood home at the age of eighteen, without saying a word to anyone, was still one of the worst nights of our collective lives.
Babs and I had had the mother of all fights, and in a fit of hysterics only an eighteen-year-old can manage, I jumped into my friend Jessie Lopez’s Jeep and drove all the way across the country to New York City to attend school at my father’s alma mater, Columbia University.
It had been the plan all along, but I’d arrived a month early without a dime to my name and my poor heart all shrunken up like an apple head. Leaving like that, with no goodbyes, was not one of my finer life moments. Jessie and I found a crap two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that we shared with three other impoverished students, and jobs waiting tables at a Mid-Town restaurant. I hated everything about it, especially the way I’d left home, because I knew there’d be no going back.
“I remember the night you left.” Em’s voice was soft and sad. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mom so angry.”
“Yeah, well,” I said. “That makes two of us but it was a long time ago.”
“Sounds like it’s still pretty fresh for Liam,” Soph said. I frowned at her and she shrugged. “He showed up at my house the next day, looking for you. He was wrecked. Judging by his reaction to seeing you now, I’m guessing he’s still not over it.”
“You never told me he came to see you,” I said.
She gave me a tender look; the sort a mother gives a child. “No, you were hurting so much and Liam was a mess. I couldn’t bear to make it worse for either of you and I figured if you were going to work things out, you’d contact each other and not through me as a carrier pigeon.”
I flashed back to the intense pain of those first few weeks after I’d run away. The hurt, the longing, the desperate sadness, all of it. There were times I had been so sure I would actually die of a broken heart.
My feelings must have shown on my face because both Em and Soph reached for me at the same time, wrapping their arms around me and holding me tight as if they could buffer the storm that was raging inside of me.
A single silent tear dripped down my cheek as I clung to them. It hit me then how much I missed them, my sisters, how much I missed the girl I used to be, feisty and fiery, and how much I missed the boy I had run away from, the love of my life.
“It’s all right, Jules,” Soph whispered against my hair. “We’re here. We’ve got you.”
It was so reminiscent of what she used to say to me when I was little and in trouble with Babs for one reason or another that it made my throat tighten. I pushed past the knot and said, “Thanks.”
My sisters released me just as we heard a moan come from the other room. Babs. I glanced at the clock. The doctor had put her on a schedule for her pain meds. She was due for another dose now.
“I’ve got it,” Soph said. “It’s Friday, so Harry and Hannah don’t need to be up for school tomorrow. I can take the night watch and then go to Harry’s soccer game since Stan can’t make it. You two go get some sleep.”
I was too wrung out from memory overload to argue.
“Come on,” Em said. “I’ll walk you up and make sure no man junk jumps out at you.”
I barked a laugh and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “I appreciate that, Em. But what would you do with it if it did?”
She turned a hot shade of red when I gave her side-eye and Soph laughed.
“I hate being the little sister,” Em said. “I’m always the butt of the joke.”
“Don’t say that.” Soph’s expression turned serious as she smoothed Em’s hair back from her face. “You’re the best of us. Never forget that.”
Em shook her head as if shaking off the praise. The three of us left the kitchen and walked into the great room. I paused beside Babs to kiss her while she dozed, just a gentle peck on her perfectly coifed hair before heading upstairs. Since yesterday, Babs resisted leaving her favorite divan to sleep in her bedroom on the first floor, and we all agreed that it wasn’t worth the fight to make her move. If the divan was the hill she chose to plant her flag on, who were we to deny it?
Babs blinked at Em with a wan smile, but as soon as Soph gave her the pain meds, she eased back to sleep. Soph settled into the reclining chair beside her.
“Come get me if you need me,” I said.
Soph waved me away and Em and I continued to our rooms. When we reached my door, Em strode inside and looked across the yard at Liam’s window. The light wasn’t on. She stared for a moment as if she expected him to appear. He did not. Satisfied, she lowered the shade.
“You know, we could switch rooms if you want.” Em’s lit up as if she really liked the idea. “That’d teach him.”
“Yeah, but it might scar you for life,” I said. She frowned. “It’s okay, Em. I think he made his point, as it were, and I doubt I’ll be seeing any more of him.”
“Oh.” She considered this with a frown. “That’s for the best, right?”
“Yeah.” I made it sound as if I meant it. I totally didn’t. I was the lyingest liar of all pants-on-fire liars.
“Okay, then, sleep well,” she said.
After our last awkward hug, we hadn’t attempted another embrace and Em didn’t now, sending a nod before she disappeared out of my room. I was left alone, staring at the drawn shade, and wondering what it said about me that I was going to open it and hope I saw Liam again. It didn’t require much thought; I knew what it said about me. I was pitiful, straight up pitiful.
I took the day watch with Babs, so that Soph could attend her son’s soccer game. Much like the prior shifts, I worked, Babs napped, and we watched the fashion channel. She looked smaller than she had the day before, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were watching her shrink into nothing. The realization made my chest ache. Now that I knew she hadn’t asked for me and didn’t care if I was there or not, I supposed I should have cared less. I didn’t.
No one said the C word aloud, as if it would get worse if we mentioned it, but the disease that must not be named was clearly killing Mom. Dr. Patel, when pressed, would not confirm or deny that it was cancer but he did tell Sophie, when she had a complete meltdown on him, that there was no treatment that could help Babs’s condition at this stage. The most we could do was keep her comfortable and say whatever we had to say to her now before it was too late.
When we told Em what the doctor had said, she blinked at us as if uncomprehending. Then she sat on the floor, right in the middle of the kitchen, drawing her knees up to her chest. She looked like she was five instead of twenty-five.
“But I’m not ready,” Em whispered. “I’m not ready to be in a world without her.”
Soph held her while she cried, while they both cried. My world hadn’t had Babs in it for a long time. But I understood. Even I wasn’t ready to see the sun rise without Babs telling it how brightly to shine. It seemed inconceivable.
When she’d calmed down, Em took the early evening shift as Soph was leaving and coming back later since she had an event to attend with her husband. I hadn’t seen her husband Stan since I’d been back. Hannah and Harry had come by a couple of times to see their grandmother and me since I hadn’t seen them since their last visit to New York. Stan hadn’t bothered.
I knew he and Babs had never gotten along, but I would have thought that being a doctor, Stan would take an interest in his mother-in-law’s care. Soph had mumbled something about him feeling that as a dermatologist he couldn’t really be of any help. I would have argued that since Babs refused to tell us what exactly was wrong any medical input would have been welcome, but I sensed it would hurt Soph and, really, we were suffering enough.
As I climbed the stairs to my room to catch up on some work, I wondered if the window across the way would remain dark. I glanced at my phone. It was ten minutes until Liam’s usual work out time, but he’d been absent since our last encounter, so I had no idea if he had decided to work out elsewhere.
Anticipation, or maybe hope, thrummed through me, although judging by its point of origin, it was more likely lust that ricocheted around my insides like a pinball lighting up targets and ringing bells. I forced myself to walk rather than run to my room.
Given that the jig was up, there was no reason not to turn on the light. Still, I stood by the door, debating. Did I flick the lights on and potentially frighten Liam away? Or did I lurk in the dark like a creeper and hope for another eyeful of man candy?
Feeling bold, I snapped on the light. I strode across the room toward the desk, trying not to glance at his window. If he was there, I wanted to appear cool, casual, collected. In other words, the exact opposite of how I felt.
I kept my eyes down, knowing the disappointment of him not being there would be deep. Finally, when I had turned on my computer and futzed around my desk as much as I could, I glanced up.
Liam’s window was dark. I felt myself deflate all the while realizing this really was for the best. Damn it. Using his hotness to distract myself from the familial misery I was drowning in was bad form. I knew that. Still, I longed for the sight of him just like I had longed for dandelion fluff wishes to actually come true when I was a kid.
Just then his light snapped on, and there he was, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, almost as if...as if he’d been waiting for me, too.
My heart did its usual stop-stutter-start thing and I leaned against the desk to keep myself upright. He was shirtless, again, and he didn’t uncross his arms as he stared back at me.
The intensity in his eyes reminded me of the first time we were together, yes, in that way. Liam had held my gaze as he’d slid into me that first time, never looking away, making sure I was okay with every millimeter of me he conquered, never leaving me to find his own release, never letting me go. Instead he had kept his gaze locked on mine, absorbing every bit of emotion I offered and returning it with his own. In all my life I had never felt as powerful a connection as I did in those glorious moments with him.
The memory made my insides clench with longing and not just for the physical but for the soul connection we forged in blood, sweat, and tears. I had never managed to replicate it with anyone else, not once, not ever. How could nine years have passed and with one look he reduced me to a void of desperate aching need?
As I stared, incapable of looking away or moving, he gave me one brusque nod. I raised my eyebrows in question. What did he want? He didn’t make another move but just stood there, patiently waiting for me to figure it out.
With his hot gaze moving all over my body, I caught on pretty quick. Without moving a muscle or saying a word, Liam Mahony made it clear that he expected me to strip for him.