Page 83 of I Can't Even

“Just promise me you’re not jumping naked out of a plane or anything,” I said.

“I’m not...not tonight anyway,” Em said. Then she smiled.

I snorted. My kid sister, the rebel, I gotta say I never saw that coming.

“Are you going to be okay?” Em asked. I had told her about the Liam debacle while we cleaned.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”

Em studied me as if she knew I was lying and wished she knew what to say to make it better. There was nothing anyone could say. I had lost the love of my life twice and both times it was my own stupid fault for not telling him what was going on before it was too late. I really was too stupid to live.

“I’m sorry,” Em said. “I wish I could fix this for you.”

“Me, too, Em-ergency.” I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze as she walked by.

Em paused and then leaned over my seat to give me a hug. I hugged her back. Coming home had been brutal in so many ways, but the one thing I held dear was that the bond with my sisters was growing stronger every day. Oh, how I had missed them. Em planted a kiss on my head and then disappeared into the house. I couldn’t help but wonder what that girl was up to now.

Chapter Twenty-five

I sat outside by the fire pit, mulling over Soph, Em, and me. I tipped my head back and studied the sky. There wasn’t as much light pollution in Gull’s Harbor as New York City, so the stars were bright and twinkled down at me in eternal optimism. I had always loved stargazing. They reminded me that I was really just a teeny tiny bit of cosmic dust in a vast universe and from that perspective, my problems became miniscule, too. I found comfort in that.

I heard a noise. It was a soft thump, like the sound of a footstep of a person trying to sneak up on someone. I whipped my head in the direction of the house. I didn’t see any movement. Still, my skin prickled with unease.

“Who’s there?” I called out. No one answered, which, if I’m being honest, was much less scary than if an unfamiliar voice had said, I am.

For a second, I wondered if the presence I felt was the guy in the hoodie and the aviators. No, I had no proof that he’d been following me, just a gut instinct that something with that dude was not right and that his interest in me wasn’t normal.

Mercifully, I did not see a shock of blond hair, a blue hoodie, or aviators. In fact, I saw no one. The hair on the back of my still prickled, however, and that had me moving toward the house at a pretty fast clip for a girl who had just been stargazing.

Habit had me glancing over my shoulder at Liam’s house. It was dark, presumably no one was home. My heart sank at this observation. The reality was that even if Liam did come back right now, I wasn’t sure I was up for taking on Courtney’s sloppy seconds not when I’d had so much to tell him, and he just refused to listen and then left—with her.

For the first time in days, my sadness was replaced with something else. It took me a second to identify it, but yeah. I was kind of pissed. Sure, I had left town with Liam’s best friend, Jessie, years ago, and, yes, it was all hush hush, mostly, to keep Liam’s butt out of jail because my mother was a crazy vicious shrew, or she had been. Now she was dead, and not actually my mother, which I was still processing.

But that wasn’t the point. The point, and I really did have one, was that after the past few weeks of finding our way together again, instead of giving me even a nanosecond to explain, Liam had stormed off with some other woman wrapped around him like a dollar-store necktie. Well, I was done!

I snatched up the dinner cartons and slammed into the house, locking the sliding glass door behind me. If Liam wanted to call it quits, fine. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need anyone. I never had and I never would.

And as for Babs, well, the heck with feeling guilty about that relationship, too. If she’d wanted me to remember her nicely, then she should have treated me better when she was alive and not just in the final hours before she kicked the bucket.

The woman had never admitted that she was wrong and had never apologized when she’d put me through some serious shit in my life. Saying she wished she could make it right hours before she died did not make it okay, and I was tired of feeling like I was supposed to be all forgiving and loving about her. And the same thing held true for my birth mother. She gave me up for money, so fuck her, too.

Granted, I should have told Liam what Babs threatened to do that night so many years ago. I should have told him that I was sorry for the choice I made at the time, but I was eighteen. Give me a break for not being mature and all-knowing at that age. I did what I thought was best for him, for me, for our futures, and frankly, I had to get the hell away from that woman for a while.

I blew out a huge breath. Babs was dead but the things she had done hadn’t changed and I was no longer going to pretend that they had. I could still grieve for what could have been without pretending she was more to me than she was.

I tossed the remainder of the Thai food into the garbage and went upstairs. I paused to check on Soph and was relieved to see her asleep in her bed. Feeling as if I bore a passing resemblance to myself for the first time since I arrived, I climbed into my bed and slept the peaceful, exhausted slumber of a person who has shrugged off all her burdens, at least temporarily. It was a lovely sleep right up until Meatball landed on my chest with a thump and a yowl, demanding his breakfast.

“Get off,” I said. He flattened himself more fully on my chest. “Can’t breathe.” He did not care.

I turned my head and found myself forehead to forehead with Spaghetti, who showed his affection with head butts. He bumped his nose into mine about three times before he finally gave up and patted my face with his paw. This was the signal that I needed to be upright and filling their bowls pronto before they got really annoying.

“Fine, fine,” I mumbled. I rolled, dislodging Meatball. He hopped off the bed as if this had been his intention all along and Spaghetti followed him, tails in the air as they marched and waddled, accordingly, out of the room. I listened to them scamper down the stairs, okay, it was more galumphing on Meatball’s part but still down they went.

I didn’t bother to look in the mirror and instead shrugged on a comfy sweatshirt against the morning chill and made my way to the kitchen. I was mentally high fiving myself for not going to the window to see if Liam was home. What the hell did I care? I didn’t. Boom. Yay, me!

When my feet reached the first floor, I heard whistling. Happy, off-key, annoying whistling. Em did not whistle. Neither did Soph. I followed the noise.

I entered the great room and stumbled to a halt. I squinted at the faux blonde standing by the window with a measuring tape in hand. My cousin Paisley. What the hell was she doing here?

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