CECILY HELD LIAM’S hand as they walked through the Central Park Zoo, meandering their way through the small crowd of tourists that bunched together around the sea lion exhibit, watching the animals lounge on rocks and dive into their glassed-in pool. Above them, the late afternoon sun sank closer to the horizon, and the sky was perfectly blue, with barely a cloud in it. It was an abnormally cool June day, a breeze making the afternoon feel particularly welcoming.
But all Cecily could think about was Liam’s bombshell news. She’d no idea he was related to those Langes. Lange Communications touched nearly every household in America.
“So why didn’t you tell me about your family before?” she asked him, as they both watched a sea lion swim past, seeming to grin at them both as he glided along the glass. She pressed her hand against the glass, awed by the quick, graceful animal.
“It’s the kind of news that usually doesn’t go over very well.” The loud bark of a sea lion claiming one of the high rocks above them caught their attention. Liam frowned at the big guy making a show of owning the rock. “Besides, my half brother, Wilder, is a lot like that guy.” He nodded in the direction of the fat sea lion, who nudged another lion trying to claim the top rock out of the way. The animal bellowed again, mouth open wide in a defensive stance.
“He wanted to be king of the hill?” Cecily asked.
“Yeah. King of everything.” Liam sighed. “When my father died, I was still a kid, barely a teenager. Wilder was much older. He took over the family business, cut most everyone else out.”
“How could he do that?” Cecily looked appalled.
“My father wasn’t there to stop him. And my mother tried to fight him. But she had a drinking problem that just got worse when my father died. And Wilder said there was a new will. The court found it valid, but then, Wilder could afford better attorneys.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, but the worst part is, my mother didn’t want to let it go. She’s still fighting him. My brothers are trying to stay neutral. Wilder bribes them with gifts and money—it’s less than they deserve, but they don’t care. They’re fine with that.”
“But not you.”
“I had to withdraw from high school. There was no more money to pay my tuition. No college fund, either. There would have been if I’d kissed Wilder’s ass harder. If I’d signed away my seat on the board. Everything came with strings. I didn’t feel like being tied up by them.”
“That’s terrible.” Cecily remembered Rebecca’s line of questioning. How she’d asked him what happened to him after ninth grade. “What was it like? Leaving high school?”
“Embarrassing. I still remember the looks of pity and derision. Some people knew why I left. Others didn’t.”
“Like Rebecca,” Cecily said.
“Exactly. It was just too embarrassing. I told everyone we were moving. It seemed easier. And it wasn’t exactly a lie. Mom couldn’t afford her penthouse anymore. She’d sold the furniture out of it, but eventually there was nothing else to sell. Wilder took it all over then, bought it out from under her. We did have to move to a cramped apartment in Brooklyn.”
Cecily could see the pain in Liam’s face, and could only imagine what it must have been like to grow up wealthy, with every advantage, only to have all of them stripped away without warning.
“Why didn’t Wilder help?” Cecily asked. She didn’t want to believe the worst in people. She always wanted to think there was more to the story.
“I don’t know. He hated me? Hated my mom?”
“What did you do after Wilder turned his back on you?”
“I graduated from a local public school. Took a few college classes, but, honestly, the tuition was too much. I’d been working summers helping a local roofer named David Garcia. He took me under his wing, made sure I got the training I needed. He was more a parent to me than my parents were. And now I work honestly, for everything I get.”
Cecily was suddenly grateful for the man.
“And the more I worked with my hands, the more I understood the value of money. And I knew that too much of it, well, it just corrupts people. Makes them crazy.”
They walked away from the sea lions then, and toward the grizzly bear exhibit.
“So you didn’t want to challenge Wilder? If he was wrong, then...”
“You’d need an army of lawyers to do it,” Liam said. “And my mother...well, she decided it was best not to fight him directly, and to try to outmaneuver him. Keep her seat on the board. Play her games.”
“And you?”
“I kept my seat on the board out of principle. I felt like Wilder was trying to bribe me to give it up, but I wasn’t going to.”
“I get it. I think there’s something noble in that.” She paused, considering.
“Is there? I mean, I’m broke.” Liam laughed then. Cecily tucked her arm in his.
“Everything you earn is yours. And you don’t owe anything to anyone. That’s something to be proud of.”
“Well, I know Wilder and my other brothers think I’ve...fallen. That I’m lower than my potential.”
“Why? Because they had everything handed to them? You’ve made your own way. There’s no shame in that.”
He flashed a grateful smile that made her belly warm. If possible, she was falling deeper in—like? love?—with Liam right at that moment. Could she be falling for this man she’d just met? Yet, she couldn’t help but admire that he had principles. That he stood by them, even at great personal cost. That he wanted to live his life a particular way, and had done it, even if that path was scary and uncertain. She thought about all the many kinds of people she’d met in her life and she knew they wouldn’t have had the courage to do what Liam had. To walk away from a fortune because he thought it was the right thing to do.
“You know,” Cecily said, as they walked along the winding concrete path, the sun moving closer to the horizon and their shadows growing longer. “You might be one of the bravest people I’ve met.”
Liam just laughed. “Brave? How so?”
“Because you didn’t just talk about the right thing. You did it. Even if it was scary and new and terrifying. You did it.”
Liam shook his head. “I’m just a stubborn SOB. That’s all.”
“You’re more than that.”
Cecily turned to face Liam, his strong jaw, his determined brown eyes. He wasn’t just stubborn. He was something special. And Cecily knew it right in that moment. The words I love you bubbled up in her throat, wanting to leap out into the air, but she caught them just in time. She couldn’t get attached. It would be crazy. She couldn’t offer him what he deserved: a future.
She didn’t want to think of any of that right now, so she pushed that awful thought away. She just wanted to live in the moment. That was all. She didn’t want to think about tomorrow. Didn’t want to think about experimental treatments for cancer or any of it. All she wanted to do was think about his hand covering hers, and the whole evening ahead of them. How she couldn’t wait to get into his bed once more, because that was the only way she knew of to truly turn her brain off, to lose her worries beneath the careful attention of his expert hands and mouth.
She saw a stand selling ice cream and tugged him over to it, eager for a distraction. “Ice cream?”
“You read my mind.”
“Chocolate?” she asked.
“Is there anything else as good?” Liam teased, brown eyes looking almost amber in the late afternoon sunlight. He ordered two chocolate soft serves and handed her a cone and then took his. The two lapped at their cones as they headed on to the bear exhibit. The bear was lounging on one of his rocks, napping in the sun.
“He looks comfy,” Cecily noted, licking the sweet chocolate and trying to savor the moment. In the sun with Liam, she felt like any other girl on a fantastic date. Just a normal girl, having a normal date, in a completely normal life. With the most extraordinary man she’d ever met, she reminded herself. Gorgeous, brave and serious, a man who didn’t take things lightly. And she appreciated that. Admired it.
“Easy to rest when you’re at the top of the food chain,” Liam noted. He tackled his ice cream with gusto, and Cecily remembered the night before. How ravenous he’d been for her body—all her body. The thought made her belly grow warm as they walked. A small toddler wandered over to the bear exhibit in front of them, pressing his face against the glass. The parents, busy with trying to strap in his younger infant sister into a baby carrier, had their backs turned. The toddler, wearing a check white-and-blue shirt, ambled over to them, stopping in front of Cecily.
“Ice cream?” he asked, hopeful, raising two pudgy hands toward her cone.
“Oh, I’m sorry, this is mine,” she said, just as the dad realized his son had wandered away.
“So sorry,” he said, whisking his toddler son into his arms.
“It’s no trouble,” Cecily said, shrugging. “It’s hard to resist ice cream.”
The dad gave her a grateful smile. Liam tightened his grip on Cecily’s hand as she watched the family move away. She might never have a family of her own. It hit her, suddenly, as these thoughts do. She was still dealing with her own grief about her diagnosis, and these terribly dark thoughts popped up without warning. Suddenly, she felt bone-tired and a little bit dizzy.
“I think I need to sit down,” she told Liam, whose brow instantly furrowed with worry.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she managed as Liam steered her to an empty bench nearby. “Just tired.” Suddenly, she didn’t have much of an appetite to finish her cone. She tossed what was left of the bottom of the cone into a nearby trash.
“Dizzy like last time?” he asked.
“Just a little. But...” She glanced about, getting her bearings. No stars clouded her vision. She wouldn’t faint. Not this time. “Maybe I just need to rest a second.”
Was her strength already starting to falter? Was the cancer already catching up to her, choking her body? She didn’t want it to be this soon. She didn’t want to face the reality. Not yet.
“Let’s sit, then.” He took a seat next to her and held her hand. He ate the last bit of his cone, and sat next to her, his attention focused like a laser on her. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I just always wanted kids,” she said, nodding at the retreating family, the toddler pointing at a nearby balloon vendor.
“Maybe you can still have them.”
“Come on.” A rueful laugh escaped her lips. “Be serious.”
“I am. Maybe, with this experimental surgery... Maybe you will.”
“I can’t afford it. And neither can you.” Hurt clouded Liam’s eyes for a moment. Instantly, Cecily felt like she’d said exactly the wrong thing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. No one has that kind of money.”
“I know someone who does.” A muscle twitched in the side of Liam’s jaw.
“You can’t be serious. You can’t seriously be thinking of asking your brother.”
“Half brother,” Liam corrected.
“You don’t have to ask him. You promised yourself you wouldn’t, right? That you wouldn’t go back to the family? You stood by your principles.”
“Right,” Liam said, squeezing her hand. “But suddenly principles seem pretty cold and lonely.”
“You don’t have to for me,” she said. “We don’t even know if the experimental surgery would actually work. It’s experimental.”
Liam glanced at her, brown eyes serious. “I could ask him. See if—”
“No.” Cecily squeezed Liam’s hand. “No. Absolutely not. I won’t let you do this.” She didn’t want to see Liam betray his own principles, or to see him beg for something from someone who’d hurt him and his family so much. “We can find another way.” She wasn’t at all sure they could, but she couldn’t ask Liam to make this kind of sacrifice for her.
“Maybe,” Liam said, not quite convinced. “Maybe.”
“You know, this doesn’t have to be your fight.”
Liam glanced sharply at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I know I don’t. I just want you to live, okay? Is that so wrong?” The way he said it, exaggerated, made her almost want to laugh. Except nothing about this was funny.
“Do you have a thing for lost causes or something?” she asked him, trying for a joke, but even to her ears, it came out sounding a bit lame.
“No,” he said, dark eyes serious. “I’ve got a thing for you.”
She glanced up then, sharply, and saw no guile in his expression. He was serious. She felt rooted to the spot then, struck speechless. Things felt so serious suddenly. And could she even do serious now?
“You just met me.”
“I know you better than you think,” he said. “And I think you’re incredibly brave.”
“How do you know? Maybe lying in the fetal position is what I do in my free time?”
Liam chuckled, flashing his even white teeth. “No, it’s not. You’re fierce. Why else would you burst into that dive bar?”
“Because I was moody and desperate, and because maybe that was my version of a pity party.”
“Well, I’m glad you decided to come inside.” He met her gaze and pulled her close for a kiss. Their lips met, and in that moment Cecily forgot all her worries. Forgot about pity parties and the lack of children in her future, and the experimental surgery, and everything else. When Liam kissed her, she felt like maybe, just maybe, everything would somehow work out.