12. CHAPTER 12
Livia
Miller and Cherry Parks live in Lake Oswego, twenty minutes south of Portland. Wide streets lined with mature trees, manicured lawns behind black iron fencing, stone mailboxes standing like sentinels at every driveway. Their house sits back on the property, all pale stone and windows.
The driveway is already full when I arrive, so I find a spot along the curb, check my appearance once in the visor mirror out of habit, and grab the bottle of wine I brought as a thank-you gift for the invitation.
While I’m doing my main Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, I budgeted time to stop by this team event of appetizers and fellowship before everyone goes off to other celebrations.
Also… I want to be there for Locke should he show up as promised, although part of me wonders if he’ll bail.
The main floor is open and already packed with people—players and partners and a few staff members moving through the space with drinks in hand.
“Hello,” a stunning woman with lustrous red hair says, appearing out of nowhere. “I’m Cherry, Miller’s wife.”
“Hi,” I say with a smile, handing over the bottle of wine. “I’m Livia Cross.”
“Ahh,” she says in recognition of my name. “The new team shrink.”
“Um… well, that’s not really—”
But her attention is on a couple arriving behind me, and she squeals in delight. “Tanya… Jordie… you made it.” She starts to move away, but almost as an oversight, she glances back at me. “Thank you so much for the wine. Do you mind dropping it in the kitchen for me?”
“Sure,” I mutter.
I move through the house, nodding at people, accepting hugs from those I’ve established relationships with.
Someone—most likely Cherry—has done a great job with the décor. There are candles everywhere, autumn arrangements on every flat surface, and through the rear wall of windows I see a large tent set up in the backyard with round tables for people to congregate.
In the kitchen is an array of caterers arranging platters of finger foods and I promise myself not to overindulge since I’ll be eating my mother’s fine cooking in a few hours. I deposit the bottle on a butler’s pantry counter and grab a glass of wine from a waiter who is pouring.
Juno finds me before I find her, appearing at my elbow like a vision. She’s in a deep burgundy dress, her hair in a sleek twist at the back of her neck.
“You made it,” she says, and we give one-armed hugs because she’s holding a glass of wine too.
“I made it.” I clink my glass against hers.
She tips her head toward the far corner of the main room where a cluster of people have claimed a section of furniture away from the traffic flow.
I follow her through the crowd and find Crosby first, looking relaxed as he holds a highball glass with amber liquid.
Arch is beside him in a lightweight dark sweater and charcoal dress pants.
And standing to his left is a woman who can be none other than Crosby’s sister, Birdie.
She’s around my height, all soft curves in a fitted dark green dress.
She looks just like her brother, but where Crosby’s stillness reads as contained, hers is coiled.
Like she’s about three seconds from saying the thing everyone else is only thinking.
She has a drink and is mid-sentence when I approach, gesturing with her free hand to make a point that has Arch laughing with an accompanying eye roll.
“Livia.” Juno touches my arm as we approach. “This is Birdie.”
Birdie turns and her face opens into a grin that is instantly and completely disarming. “Finally. Juno has said approximately five hundred things about you.”
“Good things, I hope.”
“Mostly.” She winks before taking a sip of her drink and I like her immediately.
“I’ve heard things about you too,” I say.
“Also mostly good, I assume?”
“Well, I know you’re a commercial saturation diver. You work at two hundred feet on offshore oil platforms.” I pause. “I don’t know that good is the word I’d use. Impressive, maybe. Slightly terrifying.”
She laughs, genuinely delighted. “I love her,” she announces to the group.
“And I can’t wait for our girls’ night out Juno promised.”
“Obviously,” Birdie says. “I’ve been living with my brother for far too long while I’m in between contracts. I love him, but I need to be in a room with people who don’t leave their gear bags in the hallway.”
“I leave my gear bag in the hallway,” Arch says.
“You don’t live there.”
“I’m there four times a week.”
“Which is not the same as living there.”
“Functionally—”
“Arch.” She turns to look at him with an expression of elaborate patience. “Functionally is doing a lot of work in that sentence and I need you to let it go.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Takes a drink instead.
These two bicker like players on the ice trying to outdo each other and I find it a fascinating dynamic. I know that Arch and Crosby are best friends, so it stands to reason Arch knows Birdie pretty well.
I take a sip of wine and relish the ease of people whose company I enjoy.
“Okay,” Birdie says, turning back to me as she changes gears. “I have a question. As the newest person in this organization—what is your read on the Cherry situation?”
Juno makes a sound and Crosby heaves out a sigh.
“What?” Birdie looks at her. “She’s going to find out eventually. Better from us.”
I look between them. “I’ve gathered there’s a history.”
“History is one word for it,” Arch says.
Crosby utters a low warning. “Birdie…”
“Cherry Parks,” Birdie begins, intent on delivering a briefing while ignoring her brother, “was previously engaged to our darling Crosby. Three years ago. He ended it. She handled that with complete grace and maturity.” She pauses, shakes her head.
“Okay… I’m lying. She did not handle it with grace or maturity. ”
“To be fair,” Crosby says, “it was a long time ago.”
Birdie gives him a look that is pure older sister. “You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Give people more credit than they deserve.”
“Or exactly the credit they deserve,” he says mildly. “Depending on how you look at it.”
Juno is watching him with an expression she probably doesn’t know is completely transparent.
“The short version,” Arch says, taking over with the efficiency of a bystander who has heard this story enough times to edit it, “is that Cherry married Miller, Miller got picked up in the expansion draft, they ended up here, and Cherry decided the best use of her time was convincing Miller that Crosby was still carrying a torch.” He glances at Crosby. “Which—”
“Was not the case,” Crosby says flatly.
“Was spectacularly not the case,” Arch confirms. “Crosby is many things. A man pining for his ex is not one of them.” He glances toward Juno.
“It created problems,” Juno says carefully, and I can hear the documentary filmmaker in her choosing words. “For Crosby. For Miller. For team chemistry.” She pauses. “Patrick handled it.”
“Patrick handled it,” Birdie echoes, and that tells me everything about what it means when coming from the franchise owner.
“Miller’s a good guy,” Crosby says. “He got fed a version of events that wasn’t real and he believed it because—” He stops.
“Because Cherry is very convincing when she wants to be,” Birdie finishes.
“And because he loves her,” Crosby adds. Which is generous enough that Birdie visibly recalibrates her expression. “Whatever else is true, he loves her. I don’t hold that against him.”
“I met her for all of twenty seconds when I walked in,” I provide, but I keep the weird wine situation to myself.
“She seems different tonight,” Birdie says on a confused huff. “I’ll give her that.”
“She warmly greeted both me and Crosby,” Juno offers. “All water under the bridge.”
“It’s a little like watching someone hit their marks,” Arch says, not unkindly. “But she’s hitting them.”
“Then we give her the chance to keep hitting them,” Crosby says simply.
I see something in my peripheral vision—the front door opening, a figure coming through.
Locke Donovan stands just inside the entrance, still in his coat, holding a bottle of wine at his side. He looks on guard, like he told himself he wasn’t going to come and yet somehow showed up.
I suppress a smile at what I recognize as an Arvendale bottle in his hand. I sent him a quick reminder text last night about today’s gathering and suggested he might want to bring a gift for the hosts.
As if on cue, Cherry appears and forces air-kisses on Locke, who, to his credit, accepts them and offers up the bottle. He’s in tailored brown trousers and a deep navy dress shirt, collar open at the throat. He’s freshly shaved, which I’ve yet to see, and God, is he gorgeous.
I take exactly one second to notice and then I firmly redirect myself.
Cherry moves off and Locke scans the room—quick, comprehensive, probably cataloging exits and threats and then calculating the distance between himself and everyone else. When his gaze finds mine, I feel something pass between us.
Not relief, but maybe… recognition of someone who gets him.
I raise my hand, motion for him to join us, and he walks our way.
“You came,” I say with a smile when he reaches our group.
“Didn’t really have a choice, did I?” he says with a devilish smirk, a reminder this was a bargain.
“You always have a choice,” I say. “Glad you made the right one. And I see you followed my suggestion and brought wine.”
“Well, you said it was good manners to bring a gift.”
Locke glances around at the group and lifts his chin at Crosby, who returns it like they would communicate on the ice—without words. His eyes move to Juno and Arch, both of whom he sees daily.
Then they land on Birdie.
“Birdie Hale,” she says, extending her hand. “Crosby’s better-looking sibling.”
Crosby doesn’t react and I’m betting he’s heard some version of this his entire life.
Locke shakes her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Birdie tilts her head slightly, studying Locke with discerning eyes. “Is that a Boston accent?”
Locke looks mildly surprised, which for him means one barely perceptible blink. “Yeah.”
Her face lights with joy. “I love Boston. Spent eight months there on a harbor infrastructure contract two years ago. Charlestown, mostly.”
Locke’s expression shifts, less closed than it was. “Charlestown’s a good neighborhood.”
“It really is.” She settles back with her drink. “I was staying in the North End though, which was either brilliant or stupid, depending on how you feel about never being able to find parking.”
“The parking’s always been a disaster. You learn to stop caring.”
“That’s what my neighbor told me. Retired longshoreman, seventy years old, had lived on the same block his entire life.” She smiles at the memory. “He told me parking in Boston was God’s way of keeping the weak out.”
Locke makes a sound that is almost—not quite, but almost—a laugh.
I notice it. I notice that I notice it.
“What were you doing in the harbor?” Locke asks.
“Risking life and limb,” Arch says gravely, and I can’t tell if he’s genuinely worried or reclaiming the conversation.
“Don’t be a drama king,” Birdie chides with a brief glance at Arch. “I’m a commercial saturation diver. Deep-water infrastructure work.”
“How deep?” Locke asks.
And there it is. A question. Voluntary, no hesitation, genuine curiosity moving through it. I file that away in the part of my brain that is always filing things about Locke Donovan.
“Depends on the contract,” Birdie says. “Harbor work is shallow by my standards. Fifty, sixty feet maybe. My offshore work runs two hundred plus. Gulf of Mexico mostly, oil and gas platforms.” She speaks about her job the way people describe their work when it stopped being remarkable to them a long time ago.
“And what exactly is saturation diving?” Locke asks.
“Oh, it’s the best kind,” she says, eyes lighting with passion.
“It means you live in a pressurized chamber for weeks at a time, so your body stays at depth pressure. You eat there, sleep there, decompress there. You go down to work and come back to the chamber. You don’t see actual surface conditions for sometimes thirty days straight. ”
The group is quiet for a beat.
“It’s insane,” Arch says.
Crosby nods. “Completely insane.”
“It is a little,” Birdie agrees pleasantly.
“And you chose this,” Locke says. Not judgmental. Just—processing.
“I did.” She smirks at him. “I like being somewhere most people aren’t. I like the quiet down there. And I’m genuinely good at it, which helps.”
“Seems pretty niche,” Locke observes.
“There are about three hundred and fifty saturation divers working commercially in the world right now. I like those odds.”
“Three hundred and fifty,” Locke repeats.
“Give or take.”
“Very impressive,” he says with genuine respect.
“Boston though,” she says, steering back. “I loved it. If I were ever going to stop moving—” She glances around the group with an expression that says this is a hypothetical she doesn’t fully believe. “That might be the place to settle down.”
“You will never stop moving,” Arch says with complete certainty.
Birdie looks at him. “Probably not,” she agrees. “Favorite thing about the city. Go.”
Locke considers it, which is notable. “November,” he says finally. “The way it looks in November. Before the real cold sets in. The light off the harbor is unmatched.”
I have to force my jaw not to drop. He’s having an actual conversation and I’m not sure why it shocks me so much. I’ve taken his aversion to socializing with his teammates as an aversion to people in general. But I think I might have gotten that wrong.
Birdie doesn’t make anything of it. “The light off the water,” she says simply. “Yeah. I get that.”
The conversation keeps moving and Locke is still here, still talking, fractionally less armored than he was twenty minutes ago.
I look away from him and find Arch watching Birdie with an expression that’s there and then gone so fast I almost convince myself I imagined it.
But I didn’t imagine it.
Interesting.
I file that away too, in an entirely different folder.
Before long, Cherry appears at the perimeter of the room, a warm smile in place that almost reaches her eyes.
“Everyone,” she says, her voice carrying enough to be heard over the din without being loud. “Food is ready. Please help yourselves—everything’s set up in the kitchen and dining room and there are tables in the tent out back.”
Our group begins to shift and move, and I catch Crosby watching Cherry with an expression that has nothing left in it except detached goodwill. Whatever he felt about any of this, he’s put it down. That’s an emotional maturity I find quietly impressive.
Birdie links her arm through Locke’s, chattering away about Boston. “Tell me your favorite restaurants. The seafood there is unmatched.”
Locke laughs, and this time it’s full and genuine. Another jolt of surprise hits me, because… in my mind… he doesn’t laugh.
Is it Birdie?
Is he interested in her?
Because this is not the taciturn man I’ve come to know. A new layer for me to consider. It also tells me that whatever pain he’s concealing deep, it’s definitely focused on the team dynamic.