Prologue
Liam
Three months ago…
With a deep sigh, I drop my head into my hands and try to calm my breathing before looking back to my uncle. It’s been over a year since I’ve seen Uncle Stanley and his family, but age has started to wear on him.
We look similar enough that I could be his kid, rather than nephew. We have the same sandy blonde hair and bright blue eyes, unlike his own children who take after their mother’s darker hair and eyes. There are new sunspots on his cheeks and the lines around his eyes are deeper, visible when his smile isn’t. Most concerning is how the hollow of his cheeks are a little more pronounced, and the newfound rasp to his voice—the one that somehow never plagued him in all the years of smoking cigarettes.
“Dad,” Lucas, my business attorney and cousin, treads lightly, “how much has your health declined recently?”
The pain in Lucas’s voices is clear, mimicking what I currently feel in my own chest. Out of all the reasons I could have been called to Southern California, I never expected it to be forthis.
Uncle Stanley shakes his head at a loss for words. “It’s nothing I need you boys, or any of your sisters, worrying about.”
Lucas and I are the only boys out of the cousins, but his sister Mia is the oldest of all seven of us.
She’s not going to be happy about this.
None of us are.
Father and son stare down at each other, waiting for the other to break first. There’s fire burning in Lucas’s soil-brown eyes but it isn’t melting the icy hardness of Stanley’s. Both are stubborn as hell, so we could be here all day.
“Be honest with us,” I cut in. His gaze slowly slides to mine. “Please.”
He lets out a deep sigh and folds his arms on the table in front of himself. “You both know I was diagnosed with coronary artery disease a few years back.” We both nod silently, suddenly feeling like young boys in the face of reality. “The stress of the job, and all those years of smoking when Willa begged me to stop, have finally caught up with me. I need to step back.”
“Did something happen?” Lucas asks.
It seems unlikely that Stanley could have a huge health scare without his children finding out. Lucas and Mia live in Amada Beach and work at their mom’s law practice, preparing to take it over soon.
Looking back at my uncle, I wonder if they’ve noticed the changes in him—if they see the evidence of time across each inch of his light complexion. Or are they too close to him? They see him so often that they’ve missed these changes as they happened gradually?
“Nothing has happened but the doctors are concerned about it progressing. I have an unstable angina, which has been causing some worrisome pain in my chest.” At the shock on our faces, he adds, “The doctors are confidentthat I have a few good decades left in me but only if something changes. Soon.”
He holds eye contact with me, so many silent questions swimming behind the deep blue irises that mirror my own. He’s worried I’ll change my mind, that it’s too soon and I’m not ready to leave Portland five years before planned.
I ended my engagement over a year ago, so there’s nothing holding me back anymore. Even if there were, it wouldn’t stop me now—not when it comes to Uncle Stanley’s health.
I don’t give a fuck about changing the plan my life has revolved around—I’ve learned to not grow too attached to anything that isn’t concrete. What I do care about is my family.
Setting my elbows on the table and dropping my forehead onto my knuckles, I shake my head and tell my uncle, “Of course I’m not going to walk away from this. And if your heart condition is getting worse, I want to be close by.”
Lucas lets out a deep, relieved sigh from next to me. I’m only a year older than him, and distance has never torn us apart. I need to be here for him too.
“Take time to think about it,” Stanley encourages.
Straightening my spine, I firmly promise, “I don’t need to think about it. I can be out here in three months.”
His head rears back in surprise. “That soon?”
I nod. “That soon.”
Silence falls around us as we let the reality of the situation sink in for a much needed moment.
The rest of our (first of many) meetings wraps up in fifteen minutes. Stanley’s quick out the door, and neither of us gets in his way. He needs some time to lick his wounds—it must be hard for a man as proud as Stanley—and I’m willing to offer him until the end of May, when I move to Amada Beach.
As Lucas locks up his office, he glances over his shoulder. “Do you want to come for dinner? I think it mightjust be pizza tonight but…” he shrugs, as if that’s answer enough. From the content look on his face, it is.
