IRL: In Real Life (After Oscar, #1)(67)

“I’ll meet you in there after I park.”

I raced past the welcome desk to the elevators and made my way to the right floor. When I finally got to her room, I could hear soft music playing. Bill must have remembered to bring her Bluetooth speaker. She’d been hooked on a soothing Spotify acoustic channel before I left on my trip, and from the sounds of it, she was still enjoying the same playlist.

“Hey,” I whispered, pushing the curtain aside. “You awake?”

Although she looked pale and small, my mom had her usual bright smile for me when she saw who was visiting her.

“Conor, you’re back.”

The familiar sound of her voice soothed me more than any acoustic music ever could. “I come bearing millions,” I teased softly, pulling the visitor chair close to the edge of the bed so I could sit and hold her hand.

She pressed her palm against my cheek. “While I’m not going to turn away the millions, what matters is that you’re here now.”

I could feel tears threatening and was afraid that once they started, I’d never be able to stop them. The wound from Wells’s betrayal was still too fresh. So I swallowed around the burning in my throat and forced a smile. “You had one job while I was gone,” I told her, laughing. “Stay out of the damned hospital.”





26





Wells





I had fifteen tabs open on my browser. Two of them were for airlines with flights to Asheville leaving in the morning. Five of them were for flower shops and chocolatiers. And the rest were too stupid to mention. I’d just opened a new tab, intending to find a charter jet company who could fly me down to Asheville tonight when the door to my apartment swung open. I didn’t even have to turn from the wraparound kitchen bar to know who it was. Both Deb and my sister had a key to my apartment, but it was only Win who walked with such purposeful strides. Deb was stealthier than that.

“Well, you’re alive, then,” my sister said as she crossed to where I sat.

I didn’t look up from my computer. “Was that in doubt?”

She tossed her purse and coat onto one of the chairs and stood, arms crossed, facing me. “Deb called me. Said you hadn’t come in and weren’t responding to her texts or calls. She sounded pretty panicked.”

I felt a moment’s concern for causing Deb to worry. But I didn’t let that stop me from reaching for my phone to call the charter plane company.

Before I could dial the number, Win’s hand closed over mine, tugging the phone from my grasp.

I stood. “What the fuck, Win?”

Her eyes traced over me, her expression morphing from mild annoyance to concern. “I could say the same to you. You look like shit. What happened?”

I held out a hand for my phone. “Give it back.”

“I will in five minutes.” She pointed to me. “Now sit. Explain.”

“None of your business,” I growled.

But it didn’t matter because by that point she’d seen the windows open on my laptop, the top one belonging to a women’s magazine sporting the title “Lost your man? How to win him back in five easy steps!”

I waited for her to laugh. Instead her forehead creased with sympathy. “Oh honey.” She reached for me, squeezing my upper arm. “What happened?”

My throat tightened. For a moment I wanted to let her pull me into a hug and tell me it would be okay like she had when we were kids. But instead I dug my fingers into my hair and stood up to pace. “I think…” My voice cracked and I swallowed. “I think I fucked up.”

“Well, that’s not surprising,” she said with a sardonic laugh.

I shot her a mock glare, and she shrugged. “What? I’m your sister—you want me to lie to you?”

“No I want…” I blew out a breath and let my hands fall to my sides. I felt utterly defeated. “I want you to tell me how to fix it.”

She gave me a long look, then nodded. “Have you eaten?”

I rolled my eyes. There wasn’t a problem in the world my sister didn’t think you could cook your way out of. “I’m not hungry.”

She waved a hand and started for the kitchen. “You’ll eat anyway. Now,” she said, digging into the pathetically bare refrigerator, “tell me what happened.”

So I did, while she chopped an anemic-looking bell pepper and a carton of very sad mushrooms and added them to a sauté pan. She was in the middle of beating several eggs together when I got to the part about Conor finding out the truth about Trace’s identity, and she paused, sucking in a breath. “Wow, you really did fuck up, didn’t you?”

I sunk back down onto one of the barstools ringing the kitchen counter. I felt totally deflated. “I did. But if he would just listen he would understand. Yes, I hid that one little detail from him, but I also provided for him,” I argued. “I gave him financial security. That’s what should matter.”

Win set down the bowl and turned to me, her expression full of pity. She stared at me in silence long enough to make me itch.

“Oh honey, he wants your love, not your money.”

I blinked at her, not sure how to respond. She leaned forward and took my hands between hers. It was the same gesture I’d seen her pull with my niece when she wanted her complete focus to explain an important lesson. “Look, Wells, you’ve been very generous to me and my family, and I can never express my gratitude enough. Because of you, we have complete financial security, which is a real gift. But that’s not how I know you love me.”