It was bigger than the pictures Liam used to show me. Or maybe it was just that I didn’t have the imagination required to come up with a house like this. It would have been easy for me to believe the Mulligans had bought someplace new. But when the motion lights had snapped on, I saw the deep gash hacked deep into the wood by the side of the basement entry.
“I told him I had no idea how it got there,” Liam had confessed. He’d come over to use the wheezing, ancient laptop he’d lent me freshman year and had just finished sending off a very long email. He snapped it shut and then leaned back, lacing his fingers on top of his head. He’d smirked when he saw me staring at him. “Stop looking at me like that. He’s never going to find out.”
“Are you sure?” I shook my head. “No, I don’t like it, Liam. Your dad…”
“I’m already taller than my dad by five inches,” he’d spat. “Beating the crap out of me to turn me into the son he’d always wanted isn’t going to work anymore.” He hissed with such vehemence I had no problem imagining him sinking the ax head deep into the side of his father’s beloved “cabin.”
And now I was here, seeing that same mark six years later. I wondered why Bill Mulligan had let it stay there this long. A man that fastidious about image, that concerned about putting forth the perfect front at all times shouldn’t have been okay with letting a mark like that go for so long.
Unless? Unless he’d never noticed it.
I was making a note to tell Liam since I knew he’d probably take some perverse pride in knowing it was still there, when Cooper butted into my thoughts.
“Liam never took you here?”
He hadn’t. I told him that. But he didn’t seem to want to believe me. And every version of the truth - that I was looking at the ax mark - would lead me down a path I couldn’t go. He’d want to know why Liam was angry enough with his father to do something so drastic. Then he’d figure out that in order to do that, Liam would have had to be here without his parents. Which meant I’d have to dance around who he was with.
The strangest part was, I kept trying to tell Cooper. But no matter what angle I approached it from, I still couldn’t find a way around to tell him without betraying a promise I’d made a long time ago.
So I kept silent. Which pissed him off even more.
And as much as I hated doing that, at least then it was over. He went stalking up the steps by the side deck, leaving me behind. Which was fine. I was fine, after all. I didn’t even need to be here with him. This was silly.
The main entryway was at the end of a long, low staircase made of stone in varying shapes and sizes all fitted together by someone very skilled and very, very expensive. I lifted my foot to take the first step.
A sharp pain burst bright and hot under my ribcage. A yelp escaped my lips before I could catch it and to my horror, Cooper turned back to me. “You okay?”
I didn’t want him looking at me. I wanted him angry and giving me the silent treatment. That felt like something I could understand. But this new concern was throwing me. Making me lose my footing - “Shit!” Another bright burst of pain made me stumble.
“You okay?” Cooper was coming back for me. Dammit.
“Ribs,” I said brusquely, figuring he’d just nod.
But he didn’t, he stood there watching, his expression hidden in shadow, so I had no idea what he was thinking. I had no warning that he would come charging forward and lift me off the ground. I only knew that one minute I was picking my way carefully and painfully over the rocks, cursing under my breath, and the next minute he was carrying me like I weighed nothing at all.
I’d seen his arms as he stood at the side of my hospital bed. But to be in them, to feel like... Like he had me…
It was too much. Too overwhelming for nerves I hadn’t realized were frayed to the breaking point until I’d already started crying. “Why are you crying?” he scoffed as he set me back down again.
Being with him was like getting whiplash all over again. One minute he was badgering me, accusing me of lying and storming off, the next minute he was tenderly carrying me to the threshold of the house like that ring on my finger actually meant something.
It was too much. “Look, I know you don’t like me,” I tried to say. It was almost a plea.
But instead of taking the bait and agreeing, he did the worst possible thing.
“What makes you think I don’t like you?”
And just like that, I was exhausted. Feeling more bruised and battered than I had when I woke up after the accident, I turned on my heel and silently walked to the front door. I stood there, stock still, while Cooper rummaged around under the deck for the spare key, and deliberately turned away from him when he came to open the door and disable the security alarm.
“Nice place,” he murmured as we walked into the huge open room, but I didn’t answer. I just turned and walked up the floating staircase to the second floor and into the first room I saw, then shut the door behind me.
A sleigh bed, a bearskin rug, a set of darkened glass doors no doubt leading out onto a private balcony. I took note of all of these things dully. Below me, Cooper rustled around, his footsteps carrying, echoing against the lofted ceiling outside. It was like he was right there in the room with me.
Quickly, I went over to the bed and pulled back the covers. I moved to take my clothes off, then winced.
“Shit,” I hissed, remembering that Chrissi the nurse had helped me dress this morning. I couldn’t get out of my clothes without help.
I climbed into bed fully clothed, expecting the quiet of the mountains to unnerve me.
I was asleep in seconds.