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Her relieved smile after he left, the one that showed the tiny gap in her teeth, wasn’t anything special. It didn’t turn my heart over because it was from her.
It was just ... adrenaline.
“Earth to Burke,” my sister said, snapping her fingers in front of my face.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Your phone is trying to get your attention.”
I’d tossed it on the counter because the last thing I needed was Tansy thinking I was waiting for another text from Charlotte. When I glanced at the screen, my eyes narrowed at the unknown number.
Unknown number:I’m gonna call you and you bloody well better answer, you asshole.
Unknown number:It’s Liam. Davies.
Unknown number:I’m serious. I’m calling right now.
“Shit,” I muttered. Liam Davies was Chris’s friend in the pros that I was in college. If Chris had adopted me at Michigan, recognizing a guy who needed a friend, then he’d done the exact same thing for Liam.
A British transplant to the States, playing a game that no one in his family understood, Liam was an absolute monster on the field.
He was fast and strong and the crankiest motherfucker I’d ever met. He barked at everyone on the team, and for some reason, every single guy who played alongside Liam would take a bullet for him.
We’d met on the field, of course. But I’d hardly gotten more than one grumbled word in greeting. The only time I’d heard him string together a full sentence was when we were at Chris and Amie’s house for their wedding reception. At the funeral, we’d both acted as pallbearers, exchanging one long, heavy look before we stood opposite each other around Chris’s coffin. Then around Amie’s.
I excused myself from the family room, and just as my bedroom door was closing, the phone rang.
“Davies,” I said.
“I know you got that invitation. Why haven’t you RSVPed?” he barked. “I just got off the phone with some lady at the school asking me if I was friends with you, and I told her no fucking way I’d call you a friend of mine.”
“Nice to talk to you too.” I sat on the edge of my bed and sighed. “And I didn’t answer because I don’t know if I’m going.”
The thick cardstock, stamped with the deep-blueMof my and Chris’s alma mater, sat untouched on my nightstand.
“Why the bleeding fuck wouldn’t you?” Still barking. I held the phone away from my ear. “This is the kind of shit that we have to do for Mira, whether we want to or not.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Mira?”
He went quiet. “You didn’t hear.”
“Hear what?”
Liam sighed, slow and steady. “I’m one of her guardians. Thanks for giving her all that extra money, by the way. Didn’t think you were that nice.”
My mouth fell open. “You?”
“Don’t sound so shocked, you prick.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Wait ...you’rethe other person they chose to take care of her? You and the best friend?”
Liam mumbled something, an impressive assortment of curse words—some British, some American—and I whistled.
“Going well, then, I take it.”
He sighed again. “I loved Chris like a brother. But I could kill him myself for not explaining this beforehand.”
I exhaled a humorless laugh under my breath. “Same.”
