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His last words.
His dying blessing.
My chest tightens at the memory, and I inhale a pained breath as I nod. “You know, I wish I could tell you this was just some fleeting fixation, something perverse and temporary…an itch I want to scratch,” I tell him, my tone low and gritty. “Would that make me a twisted creep? Probably. But at least it wouldn’t hurt half as much as it does right now, being desperately in love with her, unable to see a future with anyone but her…not being able to live a normal, healthy life as a single man because I already belong to someone I can’t even touch.”
A lump thickens in my throat as emotion floods me.
When I look over at Kip, he’s staring at me. His brows are pinched together, his jaw twitching with a similar sentiment. My words hover in the air, sounding louder than the aimless chatter and seventies music playlist filtering around us.
“My real name isn’t Kip,” he finally says.
I give him a curious frown, not expecting that reply. I blink. “What?”
“It’s Lance. Lance Kipton.” He looks away, pinning his eyes to the grass beneath our bare feet. “Before I became a cop, I worked as a mental-health case manager. I was on call a lot, visiting different psychiatric units, substance abuse clinics, in-home care. There was a hospital I visited frequently…and at that hospital there was a woman. A nurse.” He smiles with whimsical affection. “Her name was Elloine—pretty name, huh?”
I fold my hands together in my lap, giving him a small nod.
“Anyway…she called me Kip. A nickname I grew to crave almost as much as I craved my visits to that hospital. She was beautiful, of course. Black hair the color of coal, and pale-green eyes. She had a softness to her—an aura you just wanted to keep and protect. The patients were drawn to her, the staff was drawn to her…and so was I.”
“You…fell for her?” I deduce, noting the hint of torment in his tone.
He nods. “I did. Easily. Effortlessly,” he says. “Unfortunately, everything past that was anything but. She was married.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” Kip murmurs, rolling his tongue along his teeth. “He was an abusive son of a bitch, so I felt like that gave me some kind of permission to get involved with a woman who wasn’t mine. A woman I couldn’t have. She was off-limits…forbidden.”
He looks at me pointedly, and the correlation sinks in deep.
“But we fell in love. We fell madly in love, and once it starts, it’s really damn hard to stop.” Kip takes a moment of silence, tapping his index finger against his beer bottle, his muscles tight and twitching. “I told you that my parents died in a boating accident years back. It’s what gave me a new purpose, a new direction, and drove me to become a cop. I wanted justice. I needed it…and not just for them.” He glances my way, his eyes glazed with deep pain. “For her, too. For Elloine.”
My breath stalls as his words settle in, sluicing me with daunting realization. “She was on the boat?”
Kip pulls his lips between his teeth, holding back tears. “Yeah, she was. It was my boat, and I took Elloine out on the water with my parents that day, introducing them to her.” He closes his eyes, dipping his head. “A fire broke out near the engine. Detectives found it suspicious—discovered evidence of tampering. It reeked of arson, and I knew it was her piece-of-shit husband. I knew it…but I could never prove it, and the case went cold,” he says. “I was the only survivor.”
Jesus.
My heart thunders with grief. Kip has lost so much. He’s been through absolute hell. I run a hand down my face, sighing heavily as his story reverberates through me, sticking like sap. “God, I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine.”
“Yeah…it’s hard to imagine that I’ve lived through the unimaginable,” he replies, biting his lip and shaking his head. He takes another moment, then glances back up at me. “So…when I tell you to be careful, I’m telling you that from my own very relatable and very tragic experience. Be really fucking careful. I understand that need, that all-consuming fire that turns all good reason into ash. I’ve been there, right in the hot center of the flames.
“But I’ve also been there when everything burns down and you’re standing all alone amid the devastating ruin, when all that’s left is soot and kindling and billowing smoke. I’ve breathed in that smoke. I’ve choked on it. And I’m not saying your situation is the same… I’m not saying you’re destined for tragedy.” A smile blooms on his mouth, a little trace of empathy through the agony. “I’m just saying, friend to friend, that there are worse things than loving the wrong person.”
I stare at him, waiting, my stomach twisting into knots.
“And that’s losing them.”
An hour goes by of stewing in Kip’s words, picking at my burger, and mingling mindlessly with an assortment of Kip’s friends and coworkers, and then I realize I haven’t seen June since she disappeared with Celeste to grab food.
The girls rode over with me, so I know they’re around somewhere.
Excusing myself from a casual conversation, I toss my empty beer bottle into a trash can and saunter into the older trilevel house, recently upgraded on the inside. The screen door slides open, leading through a quaint kitchen and dining area, and I’m instantly flooded by the sound of June’s laughter trickling up from a downstairs den.
My feet carry me to the doorless doorway, then down the stairs and into a furnished den, where I discover June and Celeste chatting with two male friends of Kip’s.
I stop at the bottom of the staircase, watching for a moment as one of the men curls his hand around June’s hip, a gesture of flirtation. She’s wearing denim shorts over her swimsuit bottom, but she’s still only clad in her bikini on top.
And that’s exactly where his eyes are fixated.
