Page 124 of Heartbeat

“It’s funny.” I furrowed my brow. “I keep finding pictures I didn’t even know he had.”

“I love you in these. Especially this one.” He leaned forward and put the tip of his fingers on a photo of me, sitting on the asphalt with my legs stretched out and a cigarette in between my lips.

“I remember that one. We were coming back from some club, and there was this huge line at a pizza place we stopped to eat at. I got bored and sat on the street.”

“You look hot,” he said, smirking.

“I look drunk, actually. But, speaking of which, what do you say we order some pizza?”

“Are you planning on getting drunk again?” he asked, standing up.

“After last night? No, thank you.”

Before reaching the door, he turned, waiting for me. I looked at Liam’s mural for a few moments, then carefully removed that photo of me from it. I stretched out my arm, handing it to him.

“What’s this?” he asked, looking at but not taking the picture from my hand.

“Didn’t you like this photo?”

“Yes, but—it was his.” He reluctantly took it.

“Now, it’s yours,” I said before walking out of the room.

Ever since Liam died, my family created a tradition of sorts. On the anniversary of his death, my parents went to the house on the lake, Noah had a sleepover at a friend’s, and I stayed home. Basically, Dad drank, Mom cried, Noah left, and I stayed behind. It was how the Harts operated.

Usually, I ordered pizza from Liam’s favorite pizza place, drank his favorite beer, and spent some time in his room, looking at his memory wall. This year was no different. I did all those things. Except, I wasn’t alone. I spent the third anniversary of my big brother’s death with Ethan Cooper, and it was the first time I was able to feel something other than pain.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Conflict

I should’ve known by the way Dr. Foster made me wait before getting started that something was wrong.

“We need to discuss a few things,” she coldly stated, giving up on her usual routine, which involved asking how I was feeling and how I’d been handling the side effects of the drugs I was taking.

“Sure,” I said, sitting in my usual spot.

“Would you like a cigarette?” she asked, straight up.

“Uh, no. No, I’m good. Would you like one?”

“No. Not today,” she told me, still looking serious.

It quickly started to make me nervous. The only other time I’d seen Dr. Foster looking so solemn had been when I woke up at St. Yve’s, tied to my bed.

“I debated having this conversation prior to talking to your parents, but I think it’s best if we can talk about it freely, just you and me, before making any decisions.”

It was beginning to sound awfully similar to an intervention, which made very little sense to me. I started thinking back, trying to go over our last few sessions in hopes of finding something I might have said or done which could somehow account for what, to me, was a sudden change in dynamics.

I couldn’t.

“Did I do something?” I asked her, beginning to think that cigarette she suggested might actually not be such a bad idea, after all.

She crossed her legs and folded her hands over her lap. “No, Thomas. You haven’t done anything.”

“Then why do I get a sense some orderly is going to pop out from the kitchen at any minute and ask me to accompany him to a ward at St. Yve’s?”

She chuckled, which was not something I’d ever seen her do. Dr. Foster could smile, and even smirk at times—but never chuckle, not like that. It only made things even stranger.

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