The Ending I Want(58)

I press my lips together. Emotions are choking me. I clear my throat. “Sounds perfect.” Like you.

Liam opens his door and climbs out of the car. I follow suit. Leaving my handbag behind, I meet Liam at the front of the car. He locks it using the key fob.

Then, he puts his hand out for mine. I place my palm against his. Liam threads his fingers through mine, and the riot of emotions I was feeling calm at his touch.

It surprises me. Nothing has been able to calm the way I feel inside when it comes to my family. But with the simple touch of Liam’s hand, the pain that always comes when I think of them seems manageable in that moment.

The sign says the building is called the St. Cross Building. Liam and I walk up the steps. I think of my dad walking up these steps every day, going to work.

Liam tries the door. It opens. He gives me a smile of success.

I follow him into the building. The smell reminds me very much of a library filled with old books.

It reminds me of my dad.

“Where to first?” Liam asks.

“Let’s just…walk,” I tell him.

So, we do. We just wander the halls, and I think of my dad being here.

Liam opens the door to a lecture theater just a crack. “Empty,” he tells me in a whisper.

“Why are you whispering?” I whisper back.

“I have no clue.” He laughs.

He opens the door, letting me in first.

It’s a large lecture theater, and we’re on the ground level.

I look at the floor before me and the row of seats going up, wondering if my father ever lectured in here. I close my eyes and let myself hear his voice.

“Taylor, words and the ability to write…they are the guide in life that God gifted us with.”

Liam’s hands touch my shoulders from behind. I open my eyes and look back at him.

“Okay?” he checks.

“Yeah.” I lift my lips into a half-smile. “Just remembering.”

We leave the lecture theater and come across the library.

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.