Liam tugged on Gwen’s arm and pulled her toward the door. He grabbed his cane as she opened the front door for him. Not releasing her, he led her through the doorway and guided her to her car.
He didn’t let go until after she opened the passenger door for him and he got in, where he winked at her. “Let’s go.”
She cast a nervous glance at the front door, where her parents stood, staring at them.
Her tears hit a block from their house. She pulled over into a parking lot and cried with her forehead on the steering wheel until she laughed, then cried again. “What the fuck, Li? You told them about Amy!”
He rubbed her shoulder. “Well, I figured hey, it would take some of the sting out of me coming out to them and telling them about us moving. It worked, didn’t it? They didn’t even complain about the move.” He shrugged. “Besides, serves Amy right for sleeping with Ruthie’s husband.”
She spied his playful smile, which started her laughing again. She leaned over and they hugged for a long time. “Well, now you are really stuck with me,” she said.
He patted her on the back. “Yeah, well, if you think I’m going to let my baby sister move halfway across the country without me where I can’t keep an eye on her, think again.”
They both sat back. Gwen found a napkin between the seats and blew her nose. “So what now?”
He laughed. “I’d suggest a bar, but that might get us in trouble. How about over there?” He pointed down the street, to a liquor store.
She nodded and shifted the Element into drive. “Damn fine idea, bro. Damn fine idea.”
Chapter Thirteen
“You and your stupid fucking ideas.” Blurry-eyed and hung over, Gwen sat at the kitchen table with a steaming mug of coffee in front of her.
Liam didn’t look much better. “Hey, you were the one playing Mad Scientist Bartender last night. I thought I taught you better than that. Never mix grape and grain, that’s what I said.” He smiled at her then eventually laughed.
She couldn’t help it. She smiled and laughed with him despite her pounding head. She didn’t want to check her e-mail, knowing, yet again, there wouldn’t be any messages from Tim.
Then again, what had she expected? She had told him not to contact her out of respect for Jack.
God, I’m such a fucking moron. Why had she pushed Tim away just because Jack rejected her?
That hurt almost as much as her hangover.
Liam reached across the table and gripped her hand. “Partners, right? Laurel and Hardy.”
“Abbot and Costello.”
“Ponch and Jon.”
She grinned. “Bugs and Daffy.”
“Pinky and the Brain.” He squeezed her hand. “You okay, Pinky?”
Gwen nodded with a smile that eventually faded. “Yeah. It feels weird though. In a scary, freeing sort of way. Like there’s nothing left to lose. Nothing left to be afraid of.”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he softly said. “That’s exactly what it feels like for me, too.” They stared at each other for a moment. “I want to show you something,” he said. He got to his feet and, without his cane, slowly but steadily walked to his room. He returned a moment later with several sheets of paper and sat beside her. “What do you think?”
She looked through them, print outs from a local RV dealership website. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Look, here’s my idea. We get an RV, I’ll put the down payment on it and hell, I’ll even make the payments. We get a tow dolly for your car. We pack up the house and my shit and we put it in storage. We rent out your house, use an agent to manage it for you. That way you don’t have to commit to selling it right now and it’s still making money to pay the taxes and insurance and stuff. We spend a couple of months driving around, wherever we want. California. Florida. Maine. Hell, we can go up to Canada or down to Mexico if we want. An RV is small enough I can get around in it okay, maybe even easier than a damn house. Neither of us are pack rats. We stay in a place for a few days or weeks, we both work during the day, hang out at night and whistle at cute guys.”
She smiled at his hopeful grin. “You do realize the majority demographic of RVers tends to be retired married couples, right?”
“That’s why we keep the Element and tow it. Then we can go cruising together.” He grabbed her hands. “Remember when we were kids we talked about traveling the world together? We were going to climb Everest and Kilimanjaro. We were going to see Paris and Tokyo. We were going to take a cruise and all that shit. Remember that night before I graduated high school?”
She remembered, but hadn’t realized he did. They’d lain outside on a blanket in their backyard, just the two of them, her cuddled against her big brother and staring up at a beautiful full moon in a cloudless sky. They’d talked about seeing the world together, inseparable. She’d worried his graduation was the loss of her brother, her best friend. That he’d go to college and she’d hardly ever see him.
That she’d be stuck there at home, with her parents, and facing her father’s scowling face alone every morning before school. A father who chastised her for “wasting time” taking creative writing classes and who always glorified Amy’s stellar math scores.
Liam had spent that evening alone with her, instead of with his friends, assuring her nothing could be further from the truth. That he would never abandon her.
He never had, either.
She looked at the papers again. He let her think and didn’t interrupt her.
“You can’t drive an RV to Tokyo,” she teased to break the tension.
He grinned. “I know. Fuck Tokyo. I want to see Key West. Heard there’s lots of hot guys there.”
She laughed. “I assume San Francisco’s on the itinerary, too?”
He shrugged. “Why not? We don’t have to travel forever, you know. Let’s give it six months. An extended working vacation. Hell, you can set up book signings and we can deduct it. If we like it, we go another six months, and so on. We don’t like it, we pick somewhere, anywhere, and settle down and have our stuff shipped to us.”
“I feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff.”
He stroked her cheek. “I’ll catch you, sis. I promise. I wubs you.”
She felt tears again and threw her arms around him. “I wubs you too, bro. Okay. Let’s do it.”
Jack worked a lot of overtime starting from the day Tim returned to Rapid City for the next couple of weeks. He couldn’t bear the hurt and pain in Tim’s eyes. When Tim tried to discuss Gwen, he shut him down.
He couldn’t bear it.
Yes, he loved her. But that was stupid, because he barely knew her. Maybe the only reason he reacted the way he did to her was her uncanny resemblance to Mel.
And that wasn’t love. That was bullshit. It wasn’t fair to her, and it wasn’t fair to Tim. How long before the resemblance wasn’t enough to make up for the differences in her personality from Mel?
After a few weeks, he and Tim settled into some semblance of normal, but he noticed his lover was more subdued, less playful.
Morose.
Tim looked and acted like Jack felt.
Miserable.
Missing Gwen.
There were plenty of times he contemplated sending her an e-mail, or asking Tim to go ahead and e-mail her regardless of what she’d said to Tim, but then he’d chicken out. What if she’d already moved on? What if he was wrong and she had only been in it for the fun? If she really wanted them, wouldn’t she have tried harder to hold on to them?
It wasn’t worth the heartache. The new heartache, that was.
He was already used to heartache. Tim didn’t call him Stoneface for nothing.
Jonathan, Markham, and Shelaine didn’t waste any time. The men stripped first, and helped Shelaine out of the remainder of her frocks before collapsing to the soft, down-stuffed mattress.