by Taylor Hart
Leaving.
Her mother moved back to the kitchen counter and picked up her Postum cup. She took a sip. Her father nodded and Savannah watched him look at her mother, then mimic her actions. They spoke their own language, always had. Something passed between them.
He put his cup down and smiled. “You’re right. We’ll just enjoy our daughter and stay completely out of her business.”
Savannah took her computer bag and moved toward the door. “That’s good news. A lie, but good news.” She tossed her bag over her shoulder. “I’m going to the coffee shop to work for a few hours.”
“You have a wonderful day, sweetie.” She gave her a wicked grin. “Don’t worry, you just live your life and I’ll stay out of the way.”
Ten minutes after arriving at the coffee shop, Savannah was just getting settled in when the door dinged and Beth called out, “Hey, sis.”
Savannah glared up at her.
Beth put her hands on her hips and obviously didn’t care that she was sweaty and her ponytail was mangled, with half her hair hanging down and pushed behind her ear. Beth had always been sportier and “above” fashion, considering it annoying. “What happened with Todd? He avoided me at the gym this morning.” She scowled at her. “And what’s this message about us going to dinner tonight?”
Sipping her coffee, Savannah didn’t rush to answer her. Beth was in trouble in her book.
Beth obviously picked up on that fact, because she put her hands up in surrender. “Todd informed me he left your butt at the marina because you were being rude, and I gave him an elbow to the gut.”
Savannah spat the rest of her hot coffee all over the top of her computer case. Swiftly, she and Beth grabbed napkins and began mopping the case up. “What?” Savannah stared at her sister incredulously. “He told you I was being rude? The man is an ape. He grabbed me and—”
Beth put on her “gotcha” look and sat back, holding the stack of napkins in her hands all bunched up. “And that’s when our friend Luke showed up.”
Savannah’s heart rate went up a notch. “He’s not my friend. And how did you know that?”
Beth crossed her arms, the napkins still in hand. She crossed her legs, too. “Michael Hunter was with Todd, remember?”
Of course. Michael was one of her classmates. If Todd told him what happened, then Michael would tell everyone about her and Luke. “Small towns,” she muttered.
Beth nodded. “Yep, welcome home. Continue.”
“I’m not home!” she snapped. The feeling of walls closing in on her intensified.
“Sheesh.” Beth gave her a what are you freaking out about look. “What’s your deal?”
Savannah gave up, relating the whole story to her. “First of all, Todd is a pig. You said he was a good guy but he seemed to think the whole matchmaker interview really meant I wanted to date him.”
“I’m sorry, he is a pig.” Beth rolled her eyes.
“Yet you sent me out there.” Savannah couldn’t believe it.
“Hey, a guy like him needs a matchmaker.” She frowned. “He told me he wanted to hire you. But I’m gonna go kick his butt.” She stood.
Savannah knew that if she wanted her to, Beth would find him and give him a piece of her mind. “No,” Savannah said shortly. “Sit.”
Beth cocked an eyebrow, but sat. “I’m sorry. He’s hot.” She shrugged. “I thought he’d be a good client. I see him at the gym every day when I teach spinning, and he seemed fine. You’ve been complaining you need clients and he mentioned he needed a date for a couples thing at the lake.”
“Hot does not equal a good client.”
“Yeah, he’s gonna pay for treating you like some call girl.” Beth pounded a fist into her hand.
Savannah relaxed, knowing Beth would make good on making him pay. Beth was good like that. “And yes, at the height of Mr. Pig manhandling me, Luke showed up.” Her voice went sour. “Like some freaking knight in shining armor.”
Beth squinted at her knowingly. “You don’t seem happy about seeing Luke?”
“I’m not.”
“Why? The man is rich and single.” She gestured to Savannah. “You should think about getting back into the dating game yourself.”
Savannah rolled her eyes. “He was my husband’s best friend.”
Beth hesitated, then leaned back in her chair. “I know you miss Sean. I know that. But, it’s been a year.”
Savannah felt herself tighten up. “You don’t understand.”
Beth took a sip of her drink. “I want to.”
They sat for several seconds saying nothing, Savannah took in long breaths, trying to calm the familiar unrest inside of her when it came to thinking about Sean’s death.
“Let me see your phone.” Beth held out her hand.
“Why?”
“Because I want to show you a couple of dating apps I use. I think they would be great for your business, or for you.” Beth cocked an eyebrow.
She scoffed. “Right. No.”
Beth took it off the table next to her computer and began tapping the screen. “You really need a code on your phone to protect your privacy.”
Savannah tried to reach for her phone, but Beth kept swiping it away and tapping the screen. “Give it back.”
“No.”
Not wanting to cause a huge scene, Savannah waited. “I don’t use apps for dating stuff. They don’t get the results, I do.”
Beth turned around and handed her phone back. “Just check them out later. I think you’d like them.”
Savannah glared at her. “No.”
Beth glared back. “What happened with Luke?”
“What?” Now she picked up her cup and held it like a shield, studying it before she took another sip.
“I may have only been fifteen, but I remember the summer of death. What happened?”
Savannah leaned back into her chair. “I hate being here.”
Beth reached forward and held her hand. “What? I just remember Luke that summer and then you eloped with Sean, but something wasn’t right.”
“Nothing.”
“Cut the crap, it’s been ten years.”
Savannah frowned.
“I loved Sean.” Her chest tightened.
Beth sighed. “I always thought you’d marry Luke. When you eloped, it surprised me more than anything.”
Savannah hesitated, but knew it didn’t matter anymore. Sean was dead. It was all in the past, and she wanted it to stay there. “Things were complicated.”
Beth pulled back. “You just didn’t seem that happy sometimes, ya know?”
Savannah’s temper flared. “My husband was gone a lot.”
“I know.”
“And you know there were other things.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, refusing to give in to the crap of the past ten years.
“I know.” Beth eyed her. “But every holiday or every time I saw you two together, it just felt strained.”
“Can I just leave the past in the past, please?”
Beth sighed. “Fine, but you better tell me what happened yesterday when you saw Luke.”
In shame, she knew she was blushing. “He kissed me.”
“What?” Beth sputtered out coffee she had just taken a sip of.
“After I slapped him …”
Beth threw her hands back as if this news was a physical blow. “This is insane.” She grabbed napkins to mop up coffee splatters on the table.
Savannah regretfully laughed at how crazy the whole thing sounded.
“You kissed him? You slapped him?”
“I slapped him first. Then he chased me down and kissed me. I did not kiss him.”
Beth could only stare, wide-eyed.
“But it was nothing…” A round of angry tears fell down her cheeks, catching her by surprise. She hadn’t even realized they were there. “It didn’t mean anything.”
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s …”
Savannah shook her head. “Please, don’t. This w
hole thing just proves I can’t stay here, Beth. I know you guys want me to be here, but I can’t.” Her mind was spinning, had been spinning since she’d seen Luke yesterday. It’d never stopped. All the old feelings—the old feelings of hate, of love, of guilt and regret—were too much. Pinching the top of her nose, she sighed. “I just …”
Beth’s hand grasped hers. “No, no.” Her voice was quiet, but firm. “You are here. Do you hear me?” She flashed a grin at her unintended pun.
It made Savannah give her a half smile. It was Beth’s thing, always had been—wordsmithing words, finding puns. “You’re silly,” she said weakly.
“You’re my sister, and you’re home. Okay?”
“No, I’m only here for the summer.”
Beth rolled her eyes. “Fine, but you are here right now. Let’s focus on that.” Beth and her mother had worked very hard to convince her to come for the summer. It had also helped she could crash at her parents’ place for a few months and save money, though she had the little problem of getting more money saved. For that she needed income, and for income she needed some clients.
When Savannah didn’t respond, Beth cocked an eyebrow at her again. “Are you still thinking you want to settle in Los Angeles?”
“Look, let’s talk about something else.”
Beth sighed and checked her phone. “So explain what this message about going out tonight is ?”
Savannah thought of her mother’s dinner party. “Mom wants me to do a dinner party with them at the Charlestons.”
“Oh.” Beth’s eyes widened. She let out a derisive laugh. “Yeah, not gonna happen.” She pulled her hands together and leaned forward across the table. “I have an idea. I was in the middle of my shift yesterday and a baby came in.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. Beth was a nurse and took her job very seriously.
“Okay.”
“A baby that had been abandoned. And after we did blood tests on this eight-month-old baby, who looked pale and thin, we discovered the baby had cancer and had been getting treatments.” She blinked, but her eyes were fierce. “So apparently the parents of this baby had been getting the baby treatments, but then decided they couldn’t face it. They just left him in a car seat by the emergency room doors.”
Savannah thought of how there were so many more important things on her sister’s mind than getting her ponytail to look good, and wondered at how tough her sister was to deal with this kind of stuff every day. She felt her own emotion gathering thick in her throat again. Hearing this truly put her problems in perspective.
“So now there’s a baby at the hospital in with the newborn babies, who is waking up today and looking around and probably wondering where his mother’s smell is. Where his father’s big hands are.” Her eyes fluttered, but her mouth split into a wide grin. “So, want to go hold a baby?”
At the mention of a baby, all the struggles of trying to get pregnant assaulted her. She hesitated. “I don’t know, Beth.”
“C’mon, I know you’ve struggled trying to get pregnant … but there’s a baby who doesn’t have anybody.”
Guilt surged inside of her. And she didn’t like guilt. Plus, she hated all the rage that tended to come out when she got to thinking about people like this baby’s parents; ones who could have babies so easily and then walk away from them. When she hadn’t been able to have one. “No.”
Slowly, Beth picked up her drink and took a sip. “Has dad ever told you the reason he thinks he had cancer?”
This took Savannah by surprise. “No.”
Frowning, Beth placed her cup back on the table. “He told me one time he thought he had the opportunity to go through having cancer … because, at his most vulnerable time, he felt the love of God like nothing else he ever experienced in his life.”
Savannah’s heart began beating wildly.
Tears moistened Beth’s eyes. “And when they brought the baby in last night,” a tear slipped down her cheek. “I just kept thinking that I have to believe that baby feels so much love right now. Right?” She wiped her face as more tears poured down her cheeks. “And maybe all of us are part of that miracle. Part of helping that baby feel loved.” She smiled. “And maybe you can even feel some love, too.”
Warmth rushed into Savannah and she blinked.
Beth let out a long breath. “Plus, you keep talking about letting the past stay in the past and starting fresh, this might be a good way you could prove to yourself that you’re ready to do it.”
A wild west standoff, that’s what Beth made her feel she was in. Who would pull the trigger first?
Reluctantly, she shut her computer and forced a smile. “Tell me where this baby is.”
Beth grinned. “That’s my girl.”
3
Luke flew into the hospital parking garage and took a space without even reading the placard on the wall. Nick had been shot in the line of duty.
He saw the door for the hospital stairs and flung it back, going up the stairs two at a time. Damon had called him.
Every time he heard about a case where someone was shot or a fire in town … there was the nagging fear.
That this time would be it.
He would lose one of them.
Three-fourteen. The number of the room Nick was in.
Stabs of guilt cut through Luke. He’d been in a grueling six-hour meeting with the main players for his new billion-dollar project, but upon hearing the message from Damon, he’d immediately left the office and come screaming to the hospital. It felt like a personal affront to him that someone would shoot his brother. How dare they? Anger welled inside his chest, and his need to pound someone’s face pumped his adrenaline hard through his body.
He’d always been one to react with anger when he was afraid. Was it because he’d felt helpless when his mother died, wasting away from cancer? Or because he’d been abandoned by Damon after his father passed, left to carry on his father’s businesses and everything for so long? Or because Nick was his little brother? At the moment, he didn’t care. All he wanted was to see for himself that Nick was okay.
He got to three-fourteen and slowed his step, hearing the muffled voices of people in the room. He recognized some of Nick’s friends from the police squad. Taking a long draw of breath, he calmed himself, comforted that at least Nick was talking with people—that was a good sign.
As he entered the room, his eye caught Nick’s and then moved on to Damon, who sat on a chair next to him. He didn’t know why the smiles on their faces ticked him off so bad. Maybe because he’d been so upset, it was almost mockery to see them laughing and smiling with the guys.
“Hey, bro.” Nick pushed a button on the bed and it straightened him up. He winced.
“Hey.” One of Nick’s friends patted Luke on the back, which made him flinch.
“Hey,” he said, swerving away from the guy and keeping his eyes on Nick. Relief washed through him, but he couldn’t stop himself from putting a hand on Nick’s head.
Nick endured the head check. “It’s not my head, bro, it’s my rear.”
All of the guys laughed a bit.
Equal anger and disgust surged in him once again, until he noticed that Nick was halfway on his side. “Oh.”
Damon leaned back into his chair, cracking his knuckles. “Yep, it appears our brother has a hard butt.”
The others cackled, but Luke only wanted to pull up Nick’s sheet and inspect the wound, which he wouldn’t do at the moment in front of the guys. So he put on a rubbery smile, hoping he could calm himself. “What happened?”
Nick paused, looked at the guys. An unspoken conversation passed between all of them, and his partner, Harvey, cleared his throat. “We gotta run. We have an appointment at Antonio’s for the game.”
Nick let out a soft chuckle. “Go ahead and rub it in.”
All the guys laughed and waved as they left.
Luke waited for all of them to leave and then shut the door behind them. He spun back to his brothers. “What happened?” He didn�
�t like feeling vulnerable. He did everything in his life to insulate himself from vulnerability, but where his brothers were concerned, he was vulnerable.
Nick looked exasperated, and Damon let out a long sigh. “Don’t do this, Luke.”
“What?” Luke moved to Nick’s side.
Damon shot to his feet. “Act like you control the whole world. Some jerk shot him, okay? But he’ll be fine. Don’t act like it happened to you and your sensibilities.”
Luke clutched his hand into a fist and told himself, Not here. At some point when he wasn’t in the hospital room he’d have it out with Damon, but not now.
“Hold up.” Nick raised a hand.
Luke sucked in a breath and reminded himself that his brother wasn’t eleven, he was okay, and this was part of being a cop.
“Sit down,” Nick said, sounding weaker than when his friends were in the room.
Luke hesitated, but evaluated Nick’s face and noticed how pale it was. Turning, he pulled the chair from next to the sink to Nick’s bedside, taking care to sit in it more calmly than he felt. “Now would you please tell me what happened?”
Nick reached for a cup on the tray next to Damon, and Damon snatched it up and handed it to him. He took a couple of sips, then turned to Luke. “It was a routine domestic violence call. We’ve actually been to this house a couple of times. It’s a couple who live together. Both ski bum types, waitress or bartend in the off-season. The guy’s a piece of work. Every time she calls us, we show up and they’ve both been drinking. She is always hysterical, and we ask her to press charges and she always refuses. So it took my partner and I by surprise when the guy pulled out a nine millimeter when she said she would press charges. Of course we pulled out weapons, and then the guy ran out the back. Protocol is one of us stays and one of us pursues. I was pursuing and backed out of the door and ran to the side of the townhome, but the guy had already taken to climbing those stairs up to another level of the house.”
Luke nodded, his palms sweating at the in-depth detail of the situation.
“Anyway, I started up the steps and then felt myself falling. One of the steps gave way and broke. As I was falling, I grabbed for the rail and was off balance. The next thing I felt was like a scorching poker in my butt.”
