The Promise of Lightning

by Linda Seed

  “You want me to see if I can get somebody to come and replace it?” she offered.

  “Ah … no. I guess not. Screw it.” He tossed the remote onto the table beside his bed.

  Megan pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat down, her purse in her lap. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not too bad, I guess.” He rubbed at his face, which hadn’t been shaved since before the accident. “Considering. They’ve cut back on the pain meds, but I still feel okay, so I guess that’s gotta be good.”

  “Sounds like it. Have they told you when you can go home?”

  “Tomorrow, I guess, unless my leg falls off or something.”

  “You’ll be able to come to the wedding,” she said.

  “Yeah. But Colin’s going to have to get another groomsman, I guess, because I don’t think I’ll be up to standing for the length of a wedding ceremony.”

  “Oh, he’s got that worked out,” she said. “He wants you up there, so he’s going to give you a chair.”

  He squinted at her. “He wants to have me up there in front of the whole damned church in a chair, while everybody else is standing?”

  “Yeah. He does.”

  Liam rubbed at the back of his neck with his hand, and a slow grin spread across his face. “Well … Colin’s a good guy, I guess.” It was as close as Liam was likely to come to saying that he was touched by the gesture.

  He reached out and took her hand in his. “Listen, Megan. I’ve got something special in mind for the reception. I might have to do it on crutches, but I’m still going ahead with it. It might not go exactly as I planned, but …”

  Maybe it was the look on her face. Maybe it was the way her hand tensed in his. Or maybe he already knew, and something in her body language confirmed it. Whatever it was, he stopped in the middle of his sentence and looked at her—really looked at her for the first time in a while.

  “I thought … I thought you wanted a commitment. That the reason we’d been having problems was because I hadn’t—”

  “Oh, Liam.” Tears shimmered in her eyes.

  He let go of her hand and drew his away. “You’re not going to marry me, are you?”

  She shook her head, and the tears fell.

  “Well … why didn’t you tell me? If you knew, then why …?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.” Her voice was a whisper.

  He looked away from her, focusing his gaze on the darkened television. “You’ve wanted out for a while now, I guess.”

  She nodded. “When you moved out here from Montana to be with me, it was … We’d only been dating a few months. And it was moving so fast. We’d barely gotten to know each other, and you moved all this way, and I—”

  “And you didn’t want to be the bitch who said, ‘Hey, slow down, because I might not want to do this.’ ”

  “Well … yes. It all started happening before anybody even asked me what I thought. What I wanted. And then once it was done …” She shook her head and stared at her hands in her lap. “I thought, well, maybe it’ll work. Maybe we really are meant to be together.” She looked at him. “I tried, Liam. I wanted it to work.”

  Lines of tension formed around his mouth, his eyes. “Well, I guess if you have to try that hard to be with me …”

  “Liam …”

  “I guess you’d better go,” he said.

  “But … I want to be here for you while you recover, while you—”

  “I want you to go.”

  He wouldn’t look at her—instead, he focused on a blank spot on the wall.

  She stood up, put the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and walked out of the room, leaving him alone.

  She hadn’t wanted to do it like this, but at least he knew the truth now.

  Part of it, anyway.

  At least that was something.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It wouldn’t be like Liam to blurt out to everyone that Megan had dumped him. He was more likely to brood silently until someone pried it out of him. But someone must have pried, because Megan hadn’t been home for more than an hour before the phone calls started.

  Breanna. Julia. Sandra. And then Drew.

  She let them all go to voice mail. The women would want to talk about it, and she couldn’t talk about it right now. And Drew would want to be with her, would want to come over. And she didn’t think she deserved to be that happy after how she’d made Liam feel.

  It was late afternoon by now, and the shadows on the walls of her cottage had begun to lengthen with the waning of the day. She lay huddled on her sofa, a blanket over her, Mr. Wiggles snuggled up beside her. She’d been crying earlier, but not now. Now, she simply lay staring at the wall, feeling the vibration of the cat’s purr against her.

  It wasn’t regret she was feeling, not exactly. The breakup had to happen, and the fact that it had happened sooner rather than later was probably a good thing. But she’d caused pain for someone she cared about, and there was nothing to do but sit with the raw ache of that for a while.

  The ache gnawed at her, but under that was something else: a sense of freedom.

  She’d felt trapped by her relationship with Liam for so long now. Not trapped by him, exactly, but by her own need to be a good person, to be loyal, to stick. Now that it was over, she needed a moment to regain her equilibrium before hashing it out with anyone.

  Especially Drew.

  She didn’t realize she was holding Mr. Wiggles too tightly until the cat meowed in protest and then wriggled away from her, jumping off the sofa and retreating to safety.

  Megan sniffled, then reached out to the box of tissues on the coffee table, plucked one out, and blew her nose. She was grateful that, other than the C-section, she didn’t have to work today.

  Oh, shit—work.

  She’d barely considered what the breakup would do to her veterinary practice. She’d been the go-to vet for the Delaneys since shortly after she’d moved to town, and what was going to happen with that now? Would they stop using her, in solidarity with Liam? And if they didn’t, how would that be? What would it feel like when she went to the ranch to care for an animal and had to deal with Liam standing there glaring at her?

  And what about the Delaneys? Would they still be her friends—her second family?

  What about the wedding? Was she even still invited?

  It was all too hard to think about. She hoisted herself off the sofa and went into the kitchen to see if she had any ice cream, because ice cream was the one thing a girl could count on in the event of emotional upheaval.

  To her disappointment, all she found was crappy diet ice cream—the kind with unpronounceable marvels of chemistry in the ingredient list instead of actual foods like milk, cream, and sugar.

  Deciding it was better than nothing, she pulled out the carton, grabbed a spoon from a kitchen drawer, and dug in.

  She was just scraping the last bits from the bottom of the carton when her doorbell rang.

  Well, at least she could be sure it wasn’t Liam, since he wasn’t ambulatory.

  She tossed her ice cream carton into the trash, went into the living room, and peeked out the window next to the door, trying not to be obvious when she pulled aside the curtain.

  Her heart did a little leap when she saw Drew standing on her doorstep, looking uncertain and impossibly appealing.

  She closed her eyes and took a moment to breathe.

  What was she supposed to do? If she opened the door, she would fall into his arms and become so consumed with lust that she would forget everything else.

  And oh, God, did she want to forget everything else.

  But it didn’t seem right. Not right for Liam to be nursing a broken leg and a broken heart while Megan was lost in sexual abandon with another man. Not right for her to be so happy while Liam was so miserable. Not right to move on to someone else so soon—so immediately—after leaving a long-term relationship.

  “Go away,” she said, through the closed window.

&n
bsp; At first he didn’t seem to know where the voice was coming from. Then he spotted her in the tiny space where the curtain had been pulled back.

  “Megan, open up.”

  “No. You have to leave.”

  That just seemed to confuse him.

  “This is … Come on. Open the door. Please?”

  She dropped the curtain, went to the door, and opened it a crack—enough so he could hear her, but not enough that he could pull her into a kiss and break her resolve.

  “Drew, I can’t let you in. You have to go. Please.” She didn’t want to look at his face, because that would make it so much harder to turn him away. So instead, she focused on the top button of his shirt.

  She was expecting a protest, but instead, he said, “I heard about you and Liam.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he went on, “Liam told Colin, and Colin told Julia, and Julia told me. “I thought we could talk. I thought—”

  “We wouldn’t,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “We wouldn’t talk. I’d open the door, and you’d come in, and in under five minutes we’d both be naked and that would be that. I can’t imagine much talking in that scenario.”

  “Well … would that be so bad?”

  Indignant, she forgot to look at his button and focused on his face, instead. Which was a mistake, because she wanted to kiss it, touch it.

  “Yes!” she said. “Yes, it would be bad! Because poor Liam is in the hospital with his broken leg, and now on top of that he’s got to deal with me and the breakup, and … and it just doesn’t seem right for us to sleep together with him feeling all of that!”

  She watched his face as he processed that. First he seemed puzzled, and then his features smoothed as he seemed to accept it. “Okay. But can’t we just talk and not sleep together? That’s not wrong or disrespectful to Liam, is it?”

  “No. It wouldn’t be. Except that if you come in here, we won’t just talk.”

  “You could come out here,” he suggested. “We could sit on your porch or take a walk or something.”

  “No, Drew! Because if I take a walk with you or sit on the porch with you, I’ll be happy! And I don’t deserve to be happy right now.”

  He was quiet for a moment while he considered that. Then he said, “How about if you sit down just inside the house, and I’ll sit down out here, and we can leave the door open a little …”

  “That’s dumb,” she told him. “That’s a really dumb idea.”

  He nodded. “Well, you might think you deserve to be unhappy, but I don’t agree. Still, I don’t want you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. I’m just going to go.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, turned, and went down the porch steps toward his car.

  She knew that him leaving had been her idea. And yet, she couldn’t quite bear to see him go.

  “Drew!” she called out to him. He stopped and turned to look at her. “Maybe we could try your idea. Just for a little bit.”

  Drew sat on the floor of Megan’s porch with his back against the wall next to the door, his long legs stretched out in front of him. It wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he came over here, but he could hear her talking to him, so it was a damned sight better than going home.

  “I didn’t mean to do it right then, with him lying there recovering from surgery,” she said. “I thought …. I don’t know what I thought. I guess I thought I could just get him through this and then deal with everything later. But he must have seen it in my face or something, because he was about to tell me about his plan to propose. And then he just knew I was going to say no.”

  “That’s why he was going to tell you,” Drew said. “He could see that it was just about over, and that was his Hail Mary play.”

  “So then, before I even knew what was happening, I was telling him that I couldn’t marry him, and he was asking me to leave.”

  Her voice sounded impossibly sad, and he wanted to hold her, or at least hold her hand. Instead, he sat there and listened.

  “But it’s for the best, right?” he said. “I mean, you were going to do it sooner or later. It just turned out to be sooner.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t want it to happen like this.”

  “You weren’t doing him any favors stringing him along if it wasn’t working,” Drew said. “I mean, if he was wasting his time, it’s better to know. It’s damned frustrating putting your time and effort into a relationship and then finding out later that it was doomed.”

  He hadn’t meant to bring Tessa into the conversation, but suddenly, there she was.

  “Do you think your marriage would have worked out if you hadn’t gone through everything you did with Redmond and your mother?” Megan asked.

  He’d thought about that many times, and he was certain about the answer.

  “No. No, it wouldn’t have worked. We might still be together, but we’d be on our way to a divorce anyway.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He took in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “Two things. One, if she were the right person for me, she’d never have given up on us. And two”—he turned his face toward her, even though he couldn't see her where she was sitting behind the door—“I’d have met you eventually. And that would be that.”

  “You’d have left your wife for me,” she said, as though she were trying to be sure she understood what he was saying to her.

  “I’d have known that she wasn’t the one for me. Because you are.”

  Her hand popped out of the doorway, and he took it in his. They sat that way for a long time, together but not together, holding onto each other but keeping their distance.

  “So, what happens now? Between us?” he asked.

  She squeezed his hand a little. “What happens is, we wait. A little while. Because I can’t be that person who goes from one man to another in the same day.”

  “All right.”

  “And then, we see what happens.”

  “See what happens,” he repeated.

  “Yes.”

  They sat together for a long time as the sky darkened and night fell. When it started to get cold, he got up, walked to his car, and drove back to his hotel.

  He could wait as long as he had to.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Of course, it was impossible for Megan to attend the rehearsal dinner now that she’d thrown over Liam for another man. Even if the part about the other man wasn’t yet public knowledge.

  She couldn’t face any of the Delaneys, so she texted Breanna to tell her that she wasn’t going to come. Breanna tried to call her, but Megan let the call go to voice mail.

  Then Julia tried to call, and she let that go to voice mail, too—until she reminded herself that she was in the wedding party, and a bridesmaid couldn’t just drop out of the ceremony without at least talking to the bride.

  Sitting cross-legged on her sofa with Mr. Wiggles in her lap, she stroked the cat a few times to calm herself and then picked up her cell phone and called Julia back.

  “You’re still coming to the wedding, right?” Julia said before Megan could even speak. “I mean, I’m really sorry about you and Liam. Really sorry. But you’re still going to be a bridesmaid, right?”

  Megan didn’t know what to say. She felt tears pooling in her eyes and blinked a few times to clear them. “Do you even want me to? Because Liam—”

  “Of course I want you to!”

  “Oh. I thought that everyone … I thought …” She couldn’t finish her sentence through the emotion lying thick in her throat.

  “Megan, I get that it might be awkward for you to go ahead with the wedding, with all that’s happening between you and Liam,” Julia said. “But you’re still a part of the family. You’re still my friend.”

  “Oh.” She blinked hard and swallowed. “Oh. That’s … Thank you. I hope the others feel the same way.”

  “Liam is probably going to take it hard at first. I mean, of course
he is. But I think everyone else saw this coming.”

  That wasn’t what Megan had expected to hear, and her eyebrows scrunched in puzzlement. “They saw what coming? What do you mean?”

  Suddenly, Julia seemed to be sorry she’d said anything. “Well, I mean … It’s not my place to say, but …”

  “Julia, what are you talking about? They saw what coming?”

  Julia sighed. “I think everybody knew that you and Liam were on the outs,” she said finally. “Well, except Orin and Colin, probably, but they’re guys. Guys never know what’s going on with women.”

  “But—”

  “And then there’s the thing with Drew,” she went on.

  “Wait. What thing with Drew? Did he say something to you? Because—”

  “Megan. God. He didn’t have to. When you two are in the same room together, you’ve got more electricity than the Las Vegas Strip. I’m not blind, and neither is anybody else around here.”

  Megan felt a sinking sensation in her chest. “Do you think Liam noticed it, too? He wanted to propose out of nowhere, when he knew things between us weren’t right …”

  “Claiming his territory,” Julia mused. “He was perceptive enough to know he was losing you, I guess, but he’s still Liam, so he didn’t know how to deal with it.”

  Megan flopped back against the sofa cushions, Mr. Wiggles curled up beside her. “Yeah. I guess that’s right.”

  “So … what’s going on between you and my brother?” Julia said.

  “Nothing! He didn’t … It’s not …”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Julia said, not unkindly. “The chemistry, remember? It’s like a damned electrical storm whenever the two of you are within fifty feet of each other.”

  “Oh, God,” Megan said miserably.

  “So? What’s the story? Not that it’s any of my business, except that I’m his sister and therefore have a right to poke around in his life. Plus, he never tells me anything, so I have no choice but to poke.”