The Promise of Lightning

by Linda Seed

  “Ah …” He lowered himself into a chair, set his crutches aside, and rubbed his face with his hands. “No. I just … I thought we should talk about, you know … everything. It all happened pretty suddenly, and I feel like my damned head’s about to pop off.”

  “Okay.” She nodded her head and sniffled.

  She knew she looked awful with her puffy, red eyes, her Hello Kitty pajamas, and her hair piled messily atop her head, loose strands flying everywhere. But her appearance was the least of her worries. She deserved to look like shit.

  “Megan … How long have things been going on between you and that guy? Did you start seeing him before we broke up?”

  She nodded mutely, and fresh tears flowed onto her cheeks. She wiped at them with the wad of tissues.

  “Really.” He seemed to be saying it more to himself than to her.

  “I never meant for this to happen.” But that was what everyone said, wasn’t it? It was the all-purpose cliché excuse. I never meant to do it. She couldn’t imagine that it offered much solace to anybody.

  “Well … what the hell?” Liam seemed more puzzled and hurt than angry. “Were you that miserable with me?”

  “No! No. I mean … I knew that things weren’t right between us. And I knew we needed to end it, because I just wasn’t ready for marriage, or living together, or … or any of it.” She looked at her hands in her lap. “But that’s not why I got involved with Drew.”

  “All right. Then why did you? Explain it to me, because I don’t understand. Why did you have to start up with him before we were even through? And why my cousin, of all people? Why him?”

  How could she explain the immediate, undeniable chemistry she’d felt with Drew? How could she make Liam understand that she hadn’t had a choice? What could she say to make him see that things with Drew had taken on a life of their own, out of her control, from the moment they’d met?

  She couldn’t. So instead, she said one word.

  “Love.”

  “Love? Are you kidding me? Fucking love? You’ve known him, what, a week?”

  Liam seemed outraged, and she got that. Outrage was the only logical response to what she’d told him.

  “I always thought love at first sight was a myth,” she said. “I thought it was something from Disney princess movies and romance novels. But it’s real, Liam. I can’t explain it. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the first time I saw him, but it was really soon after that. I knew. I just … knew.”

  “You knew,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He let out a sigh and looked at the ceiling. “You know how much that sounds like pure bullshit?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  He let out a harsh, humorless laugh.

  “I never meant to hurt you, Liam.”

  “Yeah, well. You did.”

  “I know.”

  They sat there for a moment, together but apart, considering the scope of human heartbreak.

  “Well … where is he, then, if you two are in love?” He said the word scornfully, as though the very thought of it were offensive.

  Megan shrugged and laughed bitterly before dissolving into tears again. “Who knows?”

  Liam’s forehead creased in either confusion or concern. “What do you mean, ‘Who knows’?”

  “I mean, he’s gone. He checked out of his hotel. I guess he went home.”

  “You guess? Didn’t you talk to him?”

  “No!” she wailed. “I went to his hotel after … after what happened in the barn … because I thought we should talk! I thought we should discuss what happened, and how to deal with it, and where things are going from here! But he was already gone.”

  “Wait. Wait just a fuckin’ minute. Are you telling me that you fell for this guy—really fell for him—and he just skipped town without even a goddamned word to you about it?”

  Megan nodded miserably. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Liam stood up, grabbed his crutches, and hobbled toward the door, muttering words that sounded like asshole and dickhead and kick his goddamned ass.

  “Liam? Where are you going? What are you going to do?” She jumped up from the sofa and followed him toward the door.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Don’t worry about it’? Where are you going?”

  “I’ll see you later.” He went out the door and clomped down the porch steps. For once, Megan was glad that nobody knew where Drew was, because if Liam found him, things were likely to get bad fast.

  “Oh, God,” Megan said. She closed the door and leaned back against it, wondering how she’d gotten herself into this.

  Love sucked.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It had taken Liam just ten minutes on the Internet to find out that the next flight to anywhere that connected to Vancouver didn’t leave until the next morning. After that, it took just fifteen minutes on the phone to find out that Drew was staying at the Motel 6 in San Luis Obispo. He might not have found him if Drew had decided to drive up to San Jose and fly out from there, or if he was taking a road trip all the way to Canada.

  But he hadn’t done those things, and so locating him was easy. It was harder to persuade his father to drive him down to SLO to confront the man, so he went to work on Ryan.

  “Just give me a goddamned ride, would you?” he said to his brother on the front porch of Ryan’s house on the Delaney Ranch property. “Or do you have something better to do?”

  “I do, actually,” Ryan said mildly. “I do, indeed, have something better to do than driving you halfway across the county just to get beaten to a pulp.”

  Liam scoffed. “What the hell are you talking about? When have I ever lost a goddamned fight?”

  “Never, when you’ve had use of both your legs. But in your current condition, I figure he might have the upper hand.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” Liam said, his face set in determination. “You just let me worry about that.”

  Ryan considered that for a moment, then went inside the house and came back outside with his jacket. “Well, I guess it’s probably better if I’m there for this. You’re gonna need somebody to drive you to the hospital afterward.”

  It was late by the time Drew heard the knock on his motel room door. He hadn’t told anyone he’d be here, and it was a Motel 6, after all. A late-night knock at a Motel 6 usually didn’t mean anything good.

  “Who is it?” he called through the locked door. He peeked through the peephole and saw Liam and Ryan standing there in the glow of the parking lot lights.

  “Open the door, asswipe,” Liam said.

  Drew’s adrenaline surged. Refuse to open the door? Open it and end up fighting Liam? Call the front desk and ask them to send somebody to roust Liam from the property?

  There were two of them and only one of him, but he’d never known Ryan to be violent.

  “Drew, open up,” Ryan said. “I figure Liam has a right to have his say.”

  That was fine, if he only planned to talk, but somehow Drew doubted that. On the other hand, the guy was dealing with a substantial physical handicap at the moment.

  He opened the door just wide enough that he could look them both in the eye. “What are you guys doing here? Go home.”

  “I figure I’ll go home when I’m damned good and ready.” Liam put out a crutch and used the rubber tip to shove the door open, then he clomped past Drew and into the room.

  “Let’s not do this,” Drew said.

  Instead of responding to that directly, Liam took the conversation in another direction.

  “You’re an ass,” he said. “You’re a pussy, and you’re a coward.”

  Drew, feeling a little bit desperate, turned to Ryan. “Are you really going to let him fight me when he’s hurt?”

  “I figure I’m just here to clean up the mess afterward,” Ryan remarked.

  “Who said I was going to fight you?” Liam said. “You really think that’s what I’m here for? God,
you’re more of a dick than I thought you were.”

  Drew’s eyebrows rose. “Then …”

  “I came here to ask you what the fuck you’re thinking.” Liam lowered himself to sit down on the bed with some difficulty, then set the crutches down next to him. “A woman like Megan falls in love with you, and instead of being grateful, instead of thinking how incredibly lucky that makes you, you run out instead of even having the decency to talk to her. If I hadn’t broken my goddamned leg I’d kick the shit out of you.”

  This wasn’t at all what Drew was expecting to hear, and so it took him a moment to acclimate.

  “You … I …”

  “What was your plan?” Liam demanded. “You were gonna, what, get her into bed just to get back at me? Is that it? Then you were gonna dump her like a piece of trash you’re finished with?”

  Drew looked at Liam, and then at Ryan. “That’s what you think?”

  Ryan shrugged. “That sure is what it looks like.”

  “No. God … no.” Drew sank into the desk chair and rubbed at the back of his neck. Only now did he realize he wasn’t wearing anything but his boxer shorts. He’d been sleeping when they got here, after all. “That’s not what happened.”

  “Then what did happen?” Ryan said. He leaned against a wall, his arms crossed over his chest, legs crossed at the ankles.

  Drew rubbed his chin with his hands. “It wasn’t to get back at you. It wasn’t about you at all. In fact …” He sighed heavily. “In fact, I wish you hadn’t been a part of this at all. I didn’t set out to hurt anybody.”

  Ryan sat on the bed a couple of feet from Liam. “Well, I figure we’ve got all night if you want to set us straight.”

  Drew didn’t owe them an explanation for what had happened between him and Megan, and the explanation, such as it was, seemed unlikely to make anybody feel better.

  Still, they weren’t here to beat him up, so he guessed they deserved something.

  He turned to Liam. “Look … The first thing I want to say is that Megan cares about you, man. Despite how things might look. She really does care.”

  “Don’t tell me about Megan,” Liam grumbled. “I know Megan. Don’t tell me about her like you know her and I don’t.”

  “All right.”

  So instead of talking about Megan, he talked about himself. How he’d been intrigued by her from the first time he saw her. How he’d told himself not to get involved, because he wanted to make some kind of peace with the Delaneys, and he knew falling for Megan wasn’t going to get him there. How once he’d let the idea of her into his head, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. How something inside him just seemed to know her before he even knew her. Like they’d maybe been together in another life, as stupid as that seemed.

  He told them how he knew, in his heart, that she was the one, and yes, it was damned inconvenient that the one also happened to be involved with Liam. But the one only happened once, and a person couldn’t ignore it when it happened, no matter how inconvenient it might be.

  “I’m sorry you got hurt. But I’m not sorry that I met Megan, or that she has feelings for me. I can’t be sorry about that.”

  When he was done with his speech, which had turned out to be longer and more heartfelt than he’d expected it to be, he fell quiet and waited.

  Ryan was looking at him appraisingly, and Liam had the kind of pissed-off expression on his face that would scare small children.

  “So, what the hell are you doing in a Motel 6 with your damned cat?” Liam wanted to know.

  Eddie, as though he knew they were talking about him, went behind an end table to hide.

  Drew, embarrassed, looked at a cigarette burn on the carpet.

  “I just thought … after what happened in the barn … that maybe I wouldn’t be welcome anymore. It seemed like it would be better if I just left.”

  Drew looked up just in time to see one of Liam’s crutches flying at his head. He put up his arms to shield him, and the aluminum crutch bounced off his forearm and landed on the floor.

  “You goddamned fuckin’ … you shithead,” Liam said.

  “Like I said, it’s better if I go,” Drew told him.

  “Do you know Megan’s crying over you right now? That’s right, she is. Crying because you didn’t call her after the thing in the barn, and then she went to your hotel and found out that you’d left. That you’d checked out without even saying goodbye to her, or fuck off, or anything else. You claim to have all these feelings.” He put air quotes around the word feelings. “But if you had any damned feelings at all, you wouldn’t have done that to her, you worthless piece of shit.”

  Drew blinked a few times, surprised by the direction the conversation was heading. “I was going to call her once I got home.”

  “Once you were already gone and there was no danger of you actually getting into a meaningful relationship,” Ryan observed.

  “No, that’s …” Drew waved his hands in front of him as though that might clear the air among them.

  “Look. You wanted to run off and hide up there in Canada after you found out about Redmond, fine,” Liam said. “You wanted to go hide some more after getting your inheritance. That’s fine, too—no skin off my ass. But now you’ve got Megan in love with you, and you’re gonna, what? Hide from her, too? She doesn’t deserve to be something you hide from.”

  Drew felt a distinct sense of disorientation brought on by the fact that Liam seemed to be, in his own way, urging him to stay. “You … Are you saying you actually want me to be with Megan?”

  “Ah, fuck you,” Liam said, without much heat. “I care who you date about as much as I care about learning to speak Mandarin.”

  “Which is not at all,” Ryan clarified.

  “But I do care about Megan,” Liam said. “And she wants you, for some damned reason. So the least you can do is man up and stay here long enough to talk to her.”

  They were all quiet for a while as Drew digested what Liam had to say. Then he rubbed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair. “All right. I’ll come back to Cambria in the morning, and I’ll go to see Megan.”

  “Like hell,” Liam said, and stood up carefully with the aid of the one crutch he still had. “Pack your stuff and get your ass in the car.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  It was past eleven p.m., so Drew expected Ryan to drive him back to the Delaney Ranch. Instead, Ryan drove to Happy Hill, pulled his car up to the curb outside Megan’s house, and put Drew’s suitcase and his cat carrier on the sidewalk before getting back into the driver’s seat.

  “Get out of the car,” Liam told him.

  “Wait. You’re not going to—”

  “Get out of the damned car,” Liam said.

  He got out and stood next to his things, and Ryan drove off without saying another word.

  Drew turned and looked at Megan’s house. The lights were on, so that was something.

  Eddie meowed mournfully from inside the carrier.

  Drew was still standing there when the curtain in the front window moved. A moment later, Megan was on the front porch looking down at him.

  “Drew? What are you doing here?”

  “I … uh … Ryan brought me.”

  “Ryan? But …”

  “Can I come up and talk to you?” Then, in something of a non sequitur: “Eddie’s here.”

  Instead of inviting him inside, she grabbed a sweater from a hook inside the door, pulled it on, and came down the steps to stand before him. The neighborhood had no street lights, and most of the neighbors had turned off their porch lights by now. The street was dark except for the light from Megan’s window. The ocean air was cool, and a slight breeze ruffled Drew’s hair.

  “You didn’t leave,” she said. “I thought …”

  “I did, though.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I did. I went to the airport, but I couldn’t get a flight. Then Liam came and got me.”

  “Liam? Why would he—”

  “I’m sorr
y.” He could tell her the rest later, but he had to tell her that now. “I shouldn’t have run away. I told myself I was going because after what happened, nobody would want me here. But really, I was scared.”

  “Well … so am I!” She threw her hands up in frustration. “I’m scared, too! We’re all scared, all the time! You’d better figure out a way to get used to it!” Her voice broke, and she shivered a little in the evening chill. He put his arms around her, and at first she wouldn’t embrace him. At first, she kept her arms wrapped around herself, a tight bundle of resistance.

  Then, a little at a time, she relaxed and held him back.

  “I shouldn’t have left,” he whispered into her hair.

  “You can’t do that again, unless I know you’re coming back. You can’t.”

  “I won’t.”

  He kissed her, and then they walked together, with Eddie, to the house.

  She took him into her bed, but they didn’t make love. Instead, they lay side by side and held hands and looked at the ceiling, and talked about it: why he’d left, what it meant that he’d come back, and where they would go from here.

  “I was scared,” he told her. “Scared that the Delaneys would reject me for a second time. Scared that you might choose Liam after all.”

  “Scared that it might work out between us, and then I might leave you the way your ex-wife did,” she said.

  “Yes.” That, most of all.

  “You can’t judge me based on what she did, Drew. It isn’t fair.”

  He squeezed her hand and scooted an inch closer, so that their hips touched. “I know it’s not. It was just … instinct, I guess.”

  There was something else, too. Since he’d received his inheritance, he’d been so inundated by people who wanted to get close to him because of his wealth, that he no longer knew who was real and who wasn’t. But if Megan had been all about the money, she could have married Liam. She could have had her own piece of the Delaney fortune by now. But she’d given that up to take a chance on Drew.

  “She wants to come back,” he said. “Tessa, I mean. Because of the money. I guess whatever it was she couldn’t stand about me, it’s a lot more bearable when you add a few hundred million dollars.”