Sometimes I studied the sky and wondered about the order of it all. Who would I be if I hadn’t lost my mother and been forced to grow up at nine years old? What if I hadn’t been forced to grow all the way up at seventeen when my father kicked me out of the house? Would I be standing by while my brothers filled their lives with love and happiness and meaning? Would I still be negotiating the lesser evils of loneliness and limp dicks?
“Shannon,” he repeated, his tone more abrupt than I’d ever heard before. “Could you join me out here?”
Abandoning the wine in the kitchen, I rounded the corner and found Gerard in the front hallway with the door open. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see past the door.
“There’s someone here to see you, Shannon,” Gerard said, and my stomach dropped into my shoes.
Nothing good ever came from an unexpected visitor at ten thirty on a Monday night, and I realizedthiswas what the universe had been warning me about all day. Not a dead phone, not a showdown over yogurt. This.
I closed my fingers around the edge of the door and pulled it open, and then air was gone.
Even in a dark hoodie and jeans, even with a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, even with a clean-shaven jaw, even after all these months. I knew him. I’d always know him.
“Shannon,” he said, his voice deep and commanding and filled with too many memories to manage in this moment.
Before I could stop myself, a broken, breathy sob escaped my lips. It was equal doses of hell-sent anger and the kind of affection that drained oceans, moved mountains, and slowed time.
I wanted to hold him close, so close that he melted into me and we couldn’t tell one from another, and then I wanted to slap the shit out of him.
“Will,” I said.
Part One:
THEN
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
—T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Chapter One
WILL
Eighteen months ago
Imissed theocean so much it hurt.
When the plane descended below the clouds and I caught my first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean in almost three years, I damn near cried. The only body of water I’d seen in months was the Kabul River, and that wasn’t intended for surfing.
I took my time wandering through the Boston airport. I still didn’t understand how my little sister Lauren—she’d always be Lolo to us—was gettingmarried.
Thisweekend.
To aman.
We last spoke in August, around her birthday, and she wasn’t seeing anyone then. Fast forward a few months and some highly covert ops, and I’m being shoved on a transport plane to appear at my sister’s wedding.
How the fuck did all that happen?
Unsurprisingly, my mother was stationed on the other side of the security checkpoint. Her fingers were flying over her smartphone, and I realized I hadn’t read her blog in months.Shit.As far as my mother’s affection for her children ranked, it was Lo, the blog, me, then Wes.
Allegedly, my younger brother Wes was a real asshole while he was a toddler. Thirty years since the terrible twos ended, and my mother was still reminding him about that.
Mom startled when I dropped my backpack beside her, but that shock transformed into a wry frown. “Oh for the love of Pete, William, would it kill you to groom yourself once and a while?”
Apparently thirty-four wasn’t too old for my mother to scold me for messy hair and an overgrown beard.
My mother’s fingers fluffed my hair before they fisted, and she yanked me down for a hug. “I’ve been a little busy with the global war on terror and all,” I said. That, and a certain amount of shaggy scruff was essential in my line of work. “And one of these days, you’re going to have to tell us who this Pete guy is, Judy.”
