Gunshots clamored inside my skull.
My hands began to shake. Coffee sloshed over the rim and singed my skin. I set my mug down and dried my fingers on my napkin just as the front door opened, letting in a gust of frigid air and the scent of . . .
Liam stepped into the kitchen doorway and removed his baseball cap. “Hi.”
I lowered myself from my seat.
His dark eyes sparked as I approached. Little did he know I wasn’t going to him. I limped past where he stood, my knee purple from where Camilla had hit it with the butt of her rifle. I clung to the handrail, using it to hoist myself up the stairs and back into my bedroom.
Hushed conversations erupted in the kitchen. My father, forever the homemaker, asked Liam if he wanted anything to eat. Liam turned him down. Mom asked after Storm. Did he need help later on? I cinched my lids shut, hoping he’d refuse. I wanted to see Storm but if he called me mama, it’d rip all the tape I’d pasted on my heart.
I leaned against my bedroom door, curling my shaky fingers into fists.
The stairs creaked, and then Liam’s smell billowed around the edges of the wood.Nikki, can we talk?
I closed my eyes.
“Nikki?”
“Go away.”
“Babe, please.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.
His frustrated sigh seeped into the wood. “I just want to talk.”
“And I just want to be left alone.”
Silence settled between us, as thick and heavy as the heat hissing from my radiator.
“When?” Liam added no other word.
I licked my bottom lip. Still a little swollen. “When what?”
“When will you be ready to talk?”
“To you? Possibly never. I’d rather save my breath for people who actually listen.”
The floorboards creaked outside my bedroom. “I deserved that.”
I pushed away from the door and went to stand by my window, my socked feet skimming the pull-out mattress on which Adalyn had spent the night. She’d claimed it was tradition to avoid the groom until the wedding night, but I knew this had nothing to do with a time-honored custom.
Nikki?
I didn’t answer this time. I’d told him I didn’t want to talk and yet I’d talked. I was done talking.
After several long minutes, he loosed another breath and left. He must’ve felt my stare on him as he walked away from the house, because he turned around and craned his neck. I backed up. When my calves hit the mattress, I sank onto it.
* * *
A knockon my door diverted my attention from the play of shadows across my striped pink-and-beige rug. “Honey, can I come in?”
“Sure, Mom.”
She entered, holding a steaming mug of tea and my handbag. “Nate and Bea brought this back.” She put it on my desk chair. “And they drove your car back.”
“How is she?”
