Liam tries the door, and it opens. “Must be our lucky day.” He grins. “Ladies first.” He stands aside, gesturing me through.
Even though being here is hard, it is impossible not to smile at him.
We venture into the library, which is empty, except for us.
I head straight for the book stacks with Liam following behind me.
“Do you read much?” I ask him as we walk beside the shelves, my fingers trailing over the books stacked on them.
“Not as much as I should.” He chuckles. “You?”
“I try to.”
“I haven’t seen you with a book in your hand since you’ve been here.”
I give him a glance over my shoulder. “You’ve been keeping me busy.”
“True.” He gives a wicked grin.
“I studied English lit during my undergrad,” I tell him.
What I don’t tell him is how I ghosted through those years, living in the stories of others, just to get through each day. I only went to college because I had applied and been accepted before my family died.
“Following in your dad’s footsteps?”
“Mmhmm.” That was true a long time ago. I wanted to be an English professor like my dad.
That option isn’t available to me anymore.
“So, when you go back to Boston, that’s what you’ll do—get your master’s and become a professor like he was.”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I lie. I stop and turn to him. “Shall we go find the Department of Politics now?”
He steps close, cupping my face with his hands. He brushes his mouth over mine. “If that’s what you want to do.” His voice and breath are gentle against my lips.
“It is.”
Turns out that the politics department is on the same street as the English building.
We walk around the empty building, and I imagine my mom rushing through the halls with books under her arm. She was always rushing, always busy. But never too busy for us. She always made time for me, Parker, and Tess.
There’s not much to see inside the building, and I don’t see anything related to my mom here, not that I thought there would be. I just hoped, I guess.
Liam and I walk back outside, following the path.
There’s a bench that overlooks the grounds with a bush surrounding back edge of it, pretty pink flowers filling it.
“Sit?” I suggest to Liam.
He nods.
I take a seat on the bench. Liam sits beside me.
“Those flowers are pretty,” I say to him.
Liam glances back at them. “Peonies,” he tells me.
“You a secret gardener?”
He smiles. “My grandpa likes to garden.”
He reaches back and plucks a flower from the bush. Then, he brushes my hair behind my ear and places the flower there.
“Almost the same color as your hair,” he says softly, his fingers lingering on my face.
I take his hand and kiss the tips of his fingers. “Thank you…for bringing me here.”
His eyes stare into mine. “Boston…I told you…it’s important to you; it’s important to me.”
And there it is again.
My heart sings, and my head weeps.
Letting his hand go, I pull my eyes from his and stare ahead.
This is the place where my parents met and fell in love. It feels magical to me. But even more so because Liam is here, sitting beside me.
I force my thoughts onto my parents, and closing my eyes, I let their meeting play out in my head—my mom rushing around on her bike, crashing into my dad.
If they’d never met…then I wouldn’t be here.
I would never have had the privilege of knowing and loving them.
But if they had never met, they would never have had me. I would never have been the cause of their deaths.
I don’t know which I would want more.
To have had my parents as I did, for the time I did…or for them to have never met.
But then Parker and Tess would never have been born.
And that is inconceivable to me.
I can’t allow myself to think those kinds of things. I can’t change what was.
But I can change what is to be.
So, I let my mother’s voice into my head, and I listen to her as she once again tells me their love story.
“You okay?” Liam’s voice is quiet beside me.
“Yeah.” I open my eyes and turn my face to him. “Just thinking.”
“About your family?”
I look away and nod. It’s too hard to stare into his eyes and talk about them.
“I’m sorry you lost them…your parents…and your brother and sister.”
I press my lips together and move my head forward slightly, acknowledging him.
Silence falls between us.
Liam breaks it. “My mother died when I was ten.”
His words surprise me. Because I had no clue. No clue at all.
I turn in my seat to face him. My knees press up against his thigh. I stare into his face.
Liam brings his eyes to mine. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love, Boston. Maybe not to the extent you have…but I do know.”
“I’m sorry.” I reach for his hand, and he lets me take it. “I’m so sorry that you lost your mom. How did she…die?” I immediately regret asking because I’m prying.
When Liam asked me about my family’s passing, I tore into him.
“My mother was…” He looks away from me, his eyes focused on the grass beneath our feet, and he takes a deep breath. “She was murdered by her boyfriend.”
“Oh God, Liam. I’m so sorry.”