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ChapterOne
“Are you finally going to tell Sullivan you’re in love with him?”
Lilly Ferguson jumped on her bar stool, startled to hear the words normally spoken by the voices in her own head actually stated out loud by someone else entirely. She turned and saw Sullivan’s father, Liam O’Toole, watching her with an expression of sympathy.
That was just fantastic. Her best friend, who she had been in love with for years, had no clue how she felt but hisdaddid?
She gave a nonchalant laugh, but it sounded nervous and rusty to her own ears. She quickly sipped her craft beer. “Why would you say that?”
Liam stroked his beard and sat down next to her at the bar. He had owned Tap That bar for as long as Lilly could remember. Since before Sullivan and Sloane’s mother had run off on him and left him a single dad. Lately, he’d given more and more of the bar responsibilities to Sullivan, and seemed to spend his own time dating or babysitting Finn, Sullivan’s son. He’d always been nice to Lilly and she’d spent a fair amount of time at the O’Toole house growing up.
“Lilly.” Liam gave her a look that said he knew she was full of shit. “You never date. Not once have I seen you date. Not a man, not a woman.”
She didn’t really have much of a response to that because it was true. She cleared her throat. “The dating pool is small here in Beaver Bend.”
It took a monumental effort not to let her eyes wander back to Sullivan, who was tending bar and talking to a blonde who was everything Lilly wasn’t. Short, big-chested, angelic in appearance. The blonde laughed behind her and Lilly felt her nostrils flare as she focused on Liam.
Nothing ever changed. Another day, another dollar for every time Sullivan chose a random stranger over her for his attention.
Liam’s eyebrows rose. “Look. My son is an idiot. You’ve stood by him through hard times and all his bullshit. You’re beautiful, loyal, generous, and frankly you deserve better than him.”
“I…” She wasn’t sure what to say to that. She was just as much of an idiot as Sullivan was, though for different reasons. She was an idiot because she sat around waiting for something to change and Nothing. Would. Ever. Change. “Thank you?”
“Why don’t you tell him how you feel?”
The blonde laughed again and Lilly briefly closed her eyes. She could continue to protest but Liam was clearly on to her. She sighed. “Because he doesn’t see me that way and I don’t want to ruin our friendship.”
“Your very one-sided friendship, where you give and give, and he takes. You don’t want to ruin that?”
Ouch. Liam was dropping some truth bombs on her and she was taking emotional shrapnel. “I don’t think that’s true. Sullivan is good to me.”
He was. Did he take her for granted? Probably. Was he a little selfish? Maybe. But he also always made sure she had a ride home, he cut her grass at the dance studio, he invited her over for every holiday so she wouldn’t be alone, and he brought her ice cream when she had her wisdom teeth removed. It wasn’t a totally one-sided friendship.
“So that doesn’t bother you then, that he’s making plans to have sex with that woman at the end of the bar?” Liam tilted his head, indicating what was going on behind her.
She tried not to look. She really did. She wrestled with herself for at least three seconds. Who was she kidding? It wasn’t even a fight. She couldn’t resist turning anymore than she could stop herself from loving Sullivan. It was the way it was, and that just sucked.
“Damn it,” she said, annoyed with herself as she turned and saw that Sullivan was handing his phone to the blonde and she was smiling and giggling and clearly entering her number into it. “Yes. Fine. It bothers me. I want to strangle him with his bar towel and tell him he’s an idiot and that he’s going to get some random woman pregnant and pile more shit onto his plate and that if he does I’m not going to babysit this child like I do Finn because at some point it’s just too much. Even I have my breaking point.”
Liam nodded in approval. “Good for you. For the record, I totally agree with you. Maybe instead of strangling him you should tell him that, though.”
“I actually have. I’ve told him he can’t chase away pain by sleeping with every woman in town. He didn’t speak to me for three days.”
After her best friend and Sullivan’s wife, Kendra, had died four years earlier, Lilly had understood what he was doing. Staving off grief was a common enough thing. But now it seemed like it was more a habit than anything else. Sullivan seemed to like the flirting, the chase, the hookup. It was an adrenaline rush for him and he gave no indication he was ever stopping.
“I’m not one to tell anyone how they should deal with grief but it’s been four years since Kendra passed. I’ve been thinking about my son, and I’ve been thinking about you, and I know you would be good for him. He’s just too stubborn to admit it.”
Lilly made a noncommittal sound, running her hand down through the condensation on her beer mug. “There’s the problem. And here I sit. And there he flirts.”
“I have a plan to get him to see what is right under his nose.”
A plan. Curious, she looked at Liam. “What is your plan? Because I’m pretty sure I could walk naked past him and he wouldn’t even notice.”
“That’s not the plan. Becauseeveryonewould notice that.” Liam shook his head and reached for his beer. “And I’m getting too old to kick a bunch of guys' asses.”
That made her laugh. “You could probably take half the guys in this place.” It was true. Liam was no dad-bod guy. He was on the young side for having kids that were Sloane and Sullivan’s ages. Sloane had been born when Liam was a teenager and now he was a bearded, heavily-inked, confident man with a lot of hours logged at the gym. He made guys half his age look soft.
“Only half?” The corner of his mouth lifted up. “I’m insulted.”
