Until There Was You(108)

“I just thought we could hang out.”

He looked down, not sure he wanted her to know how much he’d missed her. “That’d be great.” Why the lessening of hostilities, he had no idea, but such was the way of the teenager. The knot that had been living in his gut lately loosened. “You hungry?”

“Not for any of that crap you have in the vending machine.” She gave him a pitying look—fathers, such idiots—and took an apple out of her backpack, along with a thick red book and a notebook.

“Geometry?” he asked.

“Physics. It’s easy, though.”

“Because you’re smart.”

“Thanks, old man.” She smiled—Emma’s smile—and it caught him in the heart. When Nicole had her first fever at four months old, she would only sleep if he rocked her, and even so, only in fifteen-minute installments. On the third day, Emma had come in from school, seen them both dozing in the rocking chair and said, “That baby is holding you hostage.”

Hadn’t stopped since.

Liam had received the letter from the Tates’ lawyer this week, gone to Allan Linkletter, who assured him that the odds of him losing full-time custody of his child, who was almost old enough to be emancipated in the eyes of the law, were very small.

They just weren’t small enough. The Tates had a lot of influence in the old-boy world around here. Liam could afford a good lawyer, that wasn’t an issue, but what if the judge was an old crony of George’s? What if Liam had slept with the judge’s daughter in high school?

Just last night, Liam had bolted awake from a recurring dream…Nicole calling him from far, far away, asking if he’d come get her. In the dream, he’d jumped on the Triumph and headed toward her, only to realize he didn’t know where she was. Then the dream changed, and it was Cordelia he was supposed to pick up. But she’d been waiting a long, long time, and by the time he got there, she didn’t remember who he was.

It felt like he hadn’t smiled in a lifetime. The slow evaporation of his wife’s love, the wasting sickness and endless, bleak months that followed, Nicole’s grief, then the accident and all its consequences…and now this. Now his damn in-laws and all their drama.

That little window with Cordelia seemed impossibly bright. The idea that a couple of weeks ago, he’d had someone to kiss, someone who made him laugh, someone who fell asleep against him as they watched a movie on the couch…someone who had told him not to sell himself short…that seemed like it had happened to someone else.

Best not to think of it.

“You have a game tonight, right, Dad?” Nicole asked.

Ah, crap. “That’s right.” A game against Cordelia’s team, no less. So much for not thinking about her.

“Can I come and watch?” Nicole asked.

“Sure.”

“Daddy, you seem sad,” Nic blurted, her own eyes filling.

“Oh, no, honey. I’m fine.”

“Do you miss Mom?” Her voice sounded so small.

“You bet.” He missed her, all right. He’d been missing her for a long, long time.

“Tell me something nice about her,” Nicole said.

It was something he’d done the first year or so after Emma died. Every day, he’d tell Nicole a story about her mom. The sweet things, the funny things, the normalcy that, before marriage, Liam had only ever seen on TV—pancakes on the weekends, family movie night, dinner together, every day. No matter how mundane the story, Nicole loved hearing about her mom—the way Emma insisted that they all floss nightly. The hot-water bottle on which she’d drawn a smiley face. The way she’d leave notes under Nicole’s pillow if she had to go away on business.

Then, when the story was over and Nicole was in bed, Liam would write that story in a notebook, his hand cramping, his head aching from the effort of keeping the letters where they should be. But when the day came for Nicole to leave home, he’d give her those notebooks, and she could take a piece of her mother with her, recorded in her dad’s careful handwriting, like a shield against the world.

“Okay.” He took a deep breath and told Nicole about seeing Emma for the first time. How the light shone on her hair, how her laugh floated across the courtyard. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, that beautiful, perfect girl who seemed to glow from inside, and when she’d finally looked over at him, she smiled, and all the other sounds fell away.

Nicole’s face was glowing when he finished. “That’s so romantic, Daddy,” she said softly.

Liam didn’t answer. He’d described that meeting a hundred times, and while he’d told his daughter what he’d seen and heard, he never did tell her how it felt. Because when Emma Tate had met his eyes, it felt like every bad thing Liam had ever done—the fights and suspensions, the petty crimes that had landed him in juvie, the many girls he’d led on and slept with, the beers and the drag racing—all of that was about to be forgiven. That this perfect, radiant girl was some kind of angel about to change the soul of no one from nowhere, to see him as someone worthwhile, more than the hot guy with the bad rep, one small misstep away from being just like every other loser his family had ever produced.

But Emma didn’t change him.

Nicole was the one who’d done that.

But still, that moment—that golden moment of seeing the girl who’d become his first love—it had been…amazing. A shimmering, perfect moment.