I stretch out on a lounger, next to the pool. It’s quieter than the beach and I’ll end up with less sand in my privates. I’m a little hungover from last night’s celebration, but nothing bad enough to stay inside and nurse. I haven’t seen any of the other bridesmaids yet. They’re all probably curled up with their significant others having morning sex. Am I the only one not getting any?
The real reason I chose the pool is that the groomsmen seem to be using this area to meet up and I want to run into Liam. I want some answers. I figure, I’m more visible here. I really thought when I got on the plane to fly to this paradise the day before yesterday, I may still have a chance with him. After all, I wasn’t the one who leaked his brother’s story to the press, and he flew all the way to Minnesota to ask me to come to the wedding. I thought Jon gave us his blessing to be together when he sent him with the apology letter. But now, I know I was wrong. Liam lied about talking after we got sleep. He ignored me yesterday.
It was as if he was avoiding me even as we walked arm in arm through the crowd at the end of the wedding ceremony. I kept thinking, why isn’t he looking at me? He wouldn’t look at me. The custom gown formed to my every curve and he never acknowledged it. I felt radiant in it and he never made the effort to see it. We shared one dance, the one required of a bridesmaid and groomsman who are paired, but that’s it. His solemn mask was up the entire dance. He didn’t even smile. As the night progressed, I thought I felt his eyes on me a couple of times, but when I turned to catch him, he was always looking the other direction. It was just wishful thinking on my part. I guess now that the wedding is over, he’s no longer obligated to talk to me.
It doesn’t take long before the guys notice me. As I’m pulling my sunscreen from my bag, Hayden Nappo plops down on the chair next to me and immediately offers to help apply it to my back. He’s probably the least noticeable of Jonathan’s groomsmen. He’s good-looking by anyone’s standards with spiked, bleach-blond hair and a well-groomed beard, but next to the other guys in the group, he fades into the background. I had a good conversation with him last night at the reception, though, and danced with him a couple of times. He’s really funny, and I take him up on his offer for the sunscreen. There’s no sign of Nordstrom and a girl’s got to prevent burning—especially in this equator sun.
He taps out a beat on the sunscreen bottle as he squeezes it out into his hand and it reminds me that he’s the drummer in a band. I’m sure he’s had his share of women.
“I’m going to undo these strings.” He pulls on my bikini strings, laying them gently by my sides. “You don’t want to get tan lines.”
I’m positive I’m showing some serious side boob, but I don’t care. I know these guys see way more than I’m showing, all the time. He smooths the lotion onto my back and even gets the back of my legs and arms, which I am grateful for, because now that my suit is untied, I can’t reach back to do it myself. He’s gentle and respectful of my body, not trying to cop a feel like I’m sure Nordstrom would and before I know it, he’s done.
“How’s that?” he asks, setting the sunscreen on the cement near my chair.
“Great. Thank you.”
He lies on the chair next to me and asks, “Are you staying the whole week?”
“I had planned to, but now I don’t know. Are you?”
“No. We’ve got to leave tomorrow. We’re still touring and people get suspicious when one of your best friends is Jonathan Williams and you reschedule a week’s worth of shows. It’s a dead giveaway that it’s for his wedding. We have to play Plano, Texas tomorrow night. There are only so many days we can take off without inciting riots.”
“At least you got to come.”
“I’d never miss Jon’s wedding. Hell, I wouldn’t miss any of the guys’ weddings. When we were in high school, the guys—Jonathan, Chris, Liam, Nick, and I made a bet. We each put a thousand bucks in and we had Nick’s dad invest it in his record label. The last one of us boys to get married gets the pot. The profits are valued around a million right now. Since Chris and Jonathan are already out, by the time I wait out Nick and Liam, the investment should be double that. If any of us miss another’s wedding, we forfeit our winnings.”
“Do you have to get married to win?”
“Yep.” He nods with a big smile.
“Do you really think you can wait out Nick?” I ask, because of all the groomsmen, he seems the least likely to settle down.
“Nick will be the next one to jump. He’s been engaged three times already. Liam is going to be the tough one to wait out. He doesn’t have a committing bone in his body.” He pauses and adds, “If you’re not doing anything in ten years, want to get hitched?”
“Sure, if you split the winnings with me.” I smile. He’s easy to talk to, and we chat, soaking in the sun and recovering from last night’s partying, until some obnoxious asshole I’m pretty sure I’m falling for plops himself in my personal space—not just any personal space either. What the hell? He collapses on top of me with his head resting on my booty without saying a word.
Hayden flips onto his side facing me and asks, “Is he bothering you, Megan? I’m pretty sure I can get security over here and have him banned from this area if he’s a problem.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Liam announces as his hands fluff my butt like a pillow.
“Do you mind, Nordstrom,” I say, looking over to Hayden and rolling my eyes.
“I don’t mind. For as amazingly tight as your ass looks, it is actually quite comfortable.”
I reach back, flicking his cheek with my finger, and he pinches my butt in retaliation.
“Megan, don’t you see? He’s just marking you as his property, so the rest of us will leave you alone. I can smell the urine from here. He just peed all over you,” Hayden says as if it is completely obvious.
“I’m not marking her. Besides, she’s not your type.”
“You have no idea what my type is, Nordstrom.” Hayden stands, glaring at him, before walking off. Hayden’s a nice guy, but in a contest against Liam Nordstrom, he would lose. And, I am sure he knows that or he wouldn’t have left.
“So, it wouldn’t bother you if I hooked up with Hayden?” I ask, pulling at the fabric that covers my behind before it ends up looking like a thong.
“Why would it bother me? You and I are just friends and barely that after you blabbed to the world about my brother’s intervention. We’re not dating. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s gay.”
I want to buck him off me and scream I’m sorry for telling anyone, for trusting the wrong person with his secret, but I can’t because my bikini top is untied and my words wouldn’t be enough anyway. Instead, I focus on the last part of his statement, just to keep the knife he stabbed me with from doing any more damage. “You’ve been friends for years and you don’t know for sure if he’s gay or not?”
“I’ve never been close to Hayden and it’s not something us guys discuss.”
“Seriously? You discuss girls, right?”
“He never does. I don’t care if he’s gay. Statistically, one of us guys should be. That’s not the issue. I’m an actor—I have hundreds of gay friends. I just want my friends to keep it real.”
“So you think he’s lying?” In my head, all I can focus on is that the leak about his brother’s intervention ended my chances with the only guy in the world to excite me since Chase.
“I don’t know. It’s probably more of a personality conflict than anything. Let’s just say, if I played for the other team, we still wouldn’t get along.” He wraps his hands around my ankles and smooths his thumbs across the arches of my feet. Every single thought in my head is gone. I can’t even remember what we were talking about. Then his strong hands trail up my calves and I’m pretty sure he can hear me panting, but seems to ignore it.
“Hayden’s a storyteller. He tends to share more than I would about everyone else around him, but he keeps himself private. I don’t like that.”
I’m done talk
ing about Hayden. Nordstrom’s hands have rendered my brain mush. His thumbs are now brushing the tender skin behind my knees and I need to change something before I start moaning.
“Will you tie my suit string, so I can flip over?” I reach up and tie the top string, but with him laying the way he is I can’t reach the bottom without completely exposing myself.
“Why would I want to do that?” he asks, flipping over and resting his chin on my behind.
“Because you’re my friend and that’s the kind of thing friends do for each other.”
He huffs a hot breath through the thin fabric covering my backside and I close my eyes trying to stifle a whimper. Why did I have to talk to Alli about his brother? WHY?
“Fine.” He sits up, straddling one of my legs as he leans his hard body unnecessarily against me to refasten the string. I have to remind myself he treats all women like this. He uses his body as a weapon, like men are always accusing women of doing. It’s not personal, that’s just how he is. It’s probably why I’m so attracted to him. He climbs off of me and lies on Hayden’s vacated seat.
After flipping onto my back, I adjust my chair into a sitting position and turn toward him. Oh! Now that I can see him, I’m in actual physical pain. He’s wearing Caribbean Ocean blue swim trunks and nothing else. He looks even sexier than he did last night. And last night, in his tux, he looked better than any man I’ve seen in my whole damn life. I can’t help but imagine him waist-high in the water with nothing between us. Friends. We’re friends. I have to divert my eyes, looking instead toward the poolside bar, where Hayden is talking to one of the other groomsmen.
“So when are you heading home?” Liam asks.
“I was originally going to stay the whole week, but I don’t know if I want to now. How about you?”
“I’m flexible. Do you want to go for a walk? I feel like everyone’s staring at us here.”
I look around and the only people I spot are the other groomsmen at the bar. Oh. And the impeccably dressed, middle-aged guy, who is staring right at me. “Who’s that guy in the Polo and deck shoes?” I ask.
Liam sits up and says, “That’s Jim, my dad. He’s not really happy with you right now.” He stands up and waits for me to join him.
I lean over and pull my cover-up from my bag, slipping it over my head as I stand. “What did I do to Ji…?” I don’t finish my sentence because I know exactly what I did.
“Come on.” He motions toward the gate with the path to the beach and I gladly step in front of him. I can feel his dad’s eyes on us and it makes my stomach churn. As the gate closes behind us, and we head for the beach, I say, “So your dad hates me because of the leak about Seth’s intervention. Did you tell him it wasn’t me?”
“He knows the story. He’s Jonathan’s lawyer and was in the thick of it when it all went down with your friend Alli.”
“She’s not my friend. If he was there, then why does he still hate me?”
“He asked Alli about it and she denied leaking the intervention.”
“And he believed her? I’ll never believe anything she says again,” This has been a nightmare.
“She convinced Jim she wasn’t involved. He usually can read people pretty well.”
“Great. So what you told me on the plane was a lie?”
He shakes his head and shrugs. “I don’t know what to believe. I told Jon I’d get you to the wedding and I did.”
Well, that explains him ignoring me yesterday. We walk in silence until the beach ends at a rock cliff, which goes straight up with no way to pass. There’s nothing more to say. I don’t know why I continue to walk with him. He plops down on the sand with his feet almost to the water’s edge and takes a deep breath.
I sit down next to him. I want to say F-you, but I also want him to know it wasn’t me who sold his brother’s information. I dig my toes into the wet sand as I think about how to put it into words. “I’m sorry that I told Alli and Jessica about your brother’s intervention. I was just really freaked out at the time. I didn’t tell anyone but those two and I would never tell the vultures.”
He scoops moist sand into his hand, holds it up slightly and lets it drop, sifting it between his fingers. I can’t tell whether he believes me. He’s not even looking at me. When his hand is empty, he asks, “What had you so freaked out that you had to share what I confided in you.” He looks toward me, finally meeting my eyes.
Will it matter what I say? Will he ever believe me? I don’t really want to tell him the whole truth, but I know I should. My head shakes as I try to force my thoughts into words. “I told you my ex tried to kill himself after I did the intervention on him, right?” He looks away to the waves breaking about thirty feet out, but I continue anyway. “It was a bad time in my life. Sarah, Jessica, and the lying bitch were all there. They understood how messed up I was then. When you told me about your brother’s problem, I was brought back to that time. I trusted them or I would have never shared anything you said.”
I could have said more. More about my mom’s death, about how my world turned upside down inside a month of the failed intervention, but I don’t. I’m not going to delude myself into thinking anything with Liam Nordstrom could be more than a hookup. I may as well not torture myself.
“Seth is in rehab now, but who knows if he will make it through? He disappeared for three months. No one knew where he was. Nak and I found him in a heroin den two weeks ago. It was the scariest place I’d ever seen. But what scared me more was the thought of losing my brother. He stopped breathing. He almost died, so excuse me if I’m a bit pissed at you.”
I gasp. “I’m really sorry. I had no idea.” I close my eyes because I can feel them welling up. My carelessness almost killed his brother. “You have to know I never thought me sharing my problems would hurt him.” I suck in a shaky breath. I know I need to share Mom’s story with him. He needs to know why I had to talk to my friends about his brother, no matter how much it hurts me.
“Within a few weeks’ time every hope and dream I had, shattered. First, I find out I meant less to Chase than a bag of pills. Every thought about he and I having a future together, every dream of us going to school together, sharing an apartment—gone. Then, when my mom disappeared, I was devastated even more. I wanted so much for it to be a hoax, for her to have faked her death to escape her boring unfulfilling life. But I knew when the words ‘they found the body’ came out of Braden’s mouth, there would be no happy reunion.” I avoid looking at Liam. I can’t watch his expression change as I mutter the words—she killed herself. The pity in his eyes will harden, turning to indifference as if her death no longer holds pain. All empathy vanishing because she chose to die and therefore doesn’t deserve his compassion. I’ve seen it for years. Every single time it comes up.
“Why weren’t my brothers and I enough to live for? Why couldn’t she see she could tell me anything? I told her everything about me. Hell, if she needed to escape so badly, we could have gone somewhere together. I would have left with her. I thought she loved me, us, my whole family. But it was fake. If she loved me, she never would have left.” I shake my head, trying to change the words I know are true.
“Mom had drugs in her system when they found her body.” I suck in another shaky breath. “The coroner said she took something that could have reacted with her antidepressants. She had to have gotten them from my purse. My ex was always stashing pills in there and I found an empty bag at the bottom after she disappeared. It was one of his. I’d completely ended it with him, stopped taking his calls, and changed my number. I was so messed up, I didn’t even realize it was there. And, I was so wrapped up in Chase’s problem, I didn’t see what was happening with my mom. If I’d only paid attention, maybe she wouldn’t have died. If I had just flushed the damn pills, she wouldn’t have gone out on the thin ice and maybe I would have had more time to get her help. If I had stayed with her or insisted I take her home, I could have saved her.”
My cheeks are soaked with tears.
I hate that I’m crying. He sits up and moves closer to me, wrapping an arm around me. His touch feels so good. I’ve told him bits and pieces about my mom, but I’ve never told him about her demise.
“My entire family blames me for her death. And they’re right. They just don’t know how right they are. I’ve never told anyone about the pill bag in my purse. Not even Sarah, so please don’t tell her.” I look to meet his eyes, dark but sympathetic, and he nods. “My friends had begged me to break it off with Chase long before the failed intervention. They pleaded with me. But no one could tell me anything. And it killed my mom.”
His thumb softly strokes my cheek, but he’s silent.
“She was working late at the marina, trying to get invoices out. I told my brothers I would stop and check on her on my way home. I was texting a friend when she asked me for some ibuprofen. I told her there was some in my purse, and to help herself. She must have found Chase’s bag.” The numbness is back. I can feel my brain trying to erase the memories. The feeling of guilt is overwhelming. Liam pulls me in closer and I rest my head on his chest. He smooths his thumb gently under each one of my eyes, and I start bawling. I’ve held it in for so long. I’ve never admitted to anyone her death was my fault. It’s like a muddy hole I can’t claw my way out of. The more I think about it, the deeper the hole gets.
“Meg, she chose to take the pills. You didn’t force them down her throat. You didn’t kill her. She did it to herself. Just like Seth—no one forced him to put a needle in his arm.”
There is something different about him, as if he believes me for the first time. His fingers comb through my hair as his eyes search mine. He looks relieved that I’m spilling my dark secrets. He always bugged me on the phone saying I was holding back. Just like Peterson had said. But I never felt comfortable telling anyone until now. I never wanted to tell anyone until now. It all comes rushing out and I can’t stop it.
“The night she disappeared I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. She seemed normal for her. Her medication kept her even, never too down and never too up. When I left, she seemed okay. But when my dad knocked on my bedroom door wondering if I knew where she was, I felt in my bones something was terribly wrong. I knew. She wasn’t home and wouldn’t answer her phone, so we drove down to the marina. Her car was still parked in the lot, but the office door was locked. My dad was convinced someone had abducted her in the parking lot. It had started snowing and thick heavy flakes erased any evidence of her existence. For weeks, her disappearance was all the news talked about. Her face was everywhere. It was my face. I looked like her and everyone thought it was me. Strangers would stop me in the check-out line to tell me my family was looking for me. Eventually, I just stayed home. I couldn’t leave the house and face them.
Between Friends (Between the Raindrops #3) Page 19
