Broken Read online

“No,” he says, his voice going hard and angry. “I don’t want to tuck my tail between my legs and scamper off so I don’t have to deal with anything.”

  “So what’s your plan then, Michael? You want to keep trying to pretend everything’s like it was? Even my dad knows something’s up, and he’s not exactly Mr. Observant.”

  “We don’t need to hide it, Liv.”

  “There is no it.”

  There’s a flash of pain on his face, and the part of me that used to be best friends with this guy wants to hug the hurt away. But we’re not friends anymore. And the last hug that we shared…I can’t even go there. Not with a hundred people downstairs.

  “You need to get out of here,” I say.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be? I’m the one that gets kicked out of the group? I get to be the bad guy?”

  I want to shout at him that he is the bad guy. I want to blame it all on him. But deep down, I know I can’t.

  “I just don’t want to be in the same bedroom as you,” I say through gritted teeth. “That didn’t work out so well for us last time.”

  Michael moves even closer, leaning in so his face is just inches from mine. “Yeah? Seems to me that it worked out really well last time.”

  I close my eyes to push away the mental image, and when that doesn’t succeed, I reach out and literally push him away. His nearness brings back the very memories that are driving me to my self-imposed exile in the first place.

  My push is only strong enough to rock him back on his heels, and his eyes search my face before his features go closed and hard.

  He begins to walk away, his expression full of disgust. “I know what this bullshit Maine excursion is really about, Olivia. It won’t give you what you’re looking for.”

  My stomach clenches. “You don’t know anything,” I say.

  “You’re looking for forgiveness,” he says, turning back in the doorway. “So am I. But it’s not in Bar Harbor, Maine. You’ll come find me when you realize that.”

  Our gazes hold for several more seconds, and for a moment I think it might be longing that I feel, but deep down I know it’s only regret. I’ll never be able to give him what he thinks he wants.

  But whether or not we’re right for each other, Michael does know me. He knows that the reason I’m fleeing New York has nothing to do with the goodness of my heart and everything to do with the wretchedness of it.

  Caring for a war veteran isn’t about philanthropy.

  It’s about penance.

  Chapter Two

  Paul

  Those who think 11:14 A.M. is too early in the day to start drinking haven’t met my father.

  Hell, those who think any time of day is too early to start drinking haven’t met me.

  “Adding alcoholic to our résumé, are we?” Dad asks, glaring at the tumbler of bourbon in my hand with disdain.

  I rattle the ice in my glass at him without bothering to move from my slumped position in the leather club chair. It’s an effort, making my body go all careless and don’t-give-a-shit, but I’ve learned it’s a necessity around my father. If he sees the real me—the version of me that’s always thirty seconds away from punching something—he’ll have me locked up. “Relax,” I sneer. “At least there’s an ice cube in there. When I start drinking it neat, then we’ll have a problem.”

  My father’s stony expression doesn’t waver. Why would it? It’s been locked in the state of disapproving since the day I told him I was enlisting in the Marines instead of becoming his lackey at the company.

  If you’d rather get sand up your ass and your damned head blown off than accept your responsibilities, go right ahead, but don’t expect me to give your cold body a hero’s welcome when it gets shipped home in a wooden box.

  Ah, that’s my dad. Always one step away from begging me to toss a baseball around or go fishing together. When he’s not telling me to follow my dreams, of course.

  It gives me a modicum of satisfaction to know that he was only half right. The sand up my ass definitely happened. But I didn’t get my head blown off.

  It was my leg.

  Well, actually, that’s melodramatic. My leg is still attached. But for as much use as I get out of it, the damned thing might as well have been blown to bits. Just like everything else good in my life.

  The anger of it all threatens to choke me. It’s been two years since I got back from Afghanistan, and the anger isn’t fading. If anything, it’s gotten worse.

  But there will be tomorrow and every day after for self-pity. Now I focus all of my attention on figuring out what my father’s current game is. It’s not every day that the illustrious Harry Langdon makes the trek up to Bar Harbor, Maine, to visit his only son.

  If I’ve learned anything in the past two years besides how to be myself, it’s how to accurately predict what these little visits will entail.

  No warning call first. Check.

  No greeting beyond a half-second glance at my left leg to see if it’s magically quarterback-worthy again. It never is. Check.

  Avoidance of looking at my face. Check.

  Passive-aggressive comment about my drinking. Check.

  Which meant that next up on the agenda would be…

  “Beth called me,” he says. “Says the latest one didn’t even last two weeks.”

  Ah. So that’s why he’s here.

  I give a rueful shake of my head and glance down at my whiskey. “Poor Beth. It must wear on her that her little care-for-the-meek underlings don’t have the stamina to make it out here in the wilderness.”

  “It’s not—” Dad breaks off and raps his knuckle sharply against the ancient wooden desk in irritation. He doesn’t yell. Harry Langdon never yells. “It’s not the wilderness, for God’s sake. It’s a nine-bedroom château with two separate guest houses, a gym, and a stable.”

  I hear the censure in his voice. I understand it, even. From where he stands, I’m a spoiled brat. But it’s easier to let him think that I’m a pampered pansy than to let him see the truth…which is that I wouldn’t care if the whole place went up in flames. That I hope I go up in flames with it.

  Because if my dad finds out how truly dead I am inside, he won’t be satisfied with sending the token caretakers my way. He’ll have me committed to some crazy-person facility where I’ll have to drink out of paper cups and use plastic silverware.

  I let my face slip into its default sneer. “Well,” I say, lazily climbing to my feet and hobbling over to the sideboard for more bourbon, “perhaps this Gretchen—or was it Gwendolyn?—wasn’t the equine-appreciating type. And besides, she had the voice of a hyena. She’d scare the horses.”

  “It’s not the horses that scared her,” my father says, his knuckle hitting the desk harder this time. “It’s you. You ran her off, just like you ran off the seven people before her.”

  Eight, actually. But I’m not about to correct him. Not when he’s in sanctimonious lecture mode.

  “So how many is it going to take, Harry?” I ask, dropping another ice cube into my drink, bracing my hip against the sideboard, and turning to face him.

  “Don’t call me that. I’m your father—show some respect.”

  “Mr. Langdon,” I say, bending forward slightly, but keeping the bow small enough to be insulting. “How many?” I ask again. “How many babysitters have to come all the way out here only to scamper away when they find out I don’t need anyone to wipe drool off my face or read me a bedtime story?”

  “Damn it, Paul—”

  “Ten?” I interrupt. “Fifteen? I mean, you could keep them coming indefinitely, but eventually you’re going to run out of available caregivers, right?”

  He continues to rap his knuckle softly against the wood, but he’s no longer glaring at me. He’s looking out the window, where the harbor’s just barely visible through the trees in the late-morning light.

  I guess it’s a pretty enough sight, but I prefer the view in the late afternoon, when the sun’s just disappearing. Mo
stly because it means the day’s over. At least until it all begins again. And it always does. Begin again, I mean. No matter how much I may wish otherwise.

  “I hire them to help you,” he says, this time hitting the desk with a full palm.

  I take a large sip of the whiskey, letting it burn my throat. The shit of it is, I think the old man really does think he’s helping. He thinks that having some overweight, overperfumed wannabe nurse hovering around will somehow erase everything that happened. I just don’t know how to get it through his head that there are some things that can’t be fixed and can’t be erased. My leg, for instance. And my face.

  And definitely not all the things that went fifty ways of fucked-up inside my head while I was in that godforsaken sandbox on the other side of the world.

  “Dad,” I say, my voice a little rough, “I’m fine.”

  He pins me with a stare, his eyes the same pale blue I see in the mirror. Back when I looked in the mirror, anyway.

  “You’re not fine, Paul,” he replies. “You can barely walk. You don’t leave this house unless forced to. All you do is read and mope—”

  “Brood. I prefer brood. More manly than mope!”

  “Damn it, don’t be cute! You lost the right to be cute after you—”

  “After I what?” I push myself upright, careful to keep all of my weight on my right leg so I don’t lean to one side. Or worse, wobble. “At what point did I lose the right to be cute? Was it after this?” I point to my leg. “Nah, that wasn’t it. Then it must be this.” I point to my face and am oddly satisfied when he looks away.

  “It’s not about your leg or your face,” he says gruffly. “It’s how they came to be that way that you need to deal with. And you know it.”

  I do know it.

  I just don’t believe for one damned second that an outsider coming in here and trying to coax me into the gym to do lame-ass physical therapy exercises or asking me every five minutes if I’ve eaten is going to fix anything.

  “Lindy is here,” I grumble.

  “Lindy is here as a housekeeper. She’s here to wash the sheets and make sure the glasses are clean for the alcohol you drink all day long, not to ensure you don’t do something idiotic. And before you start, I’m not asking Mick to do that either. He’s a chauffeur.”

  “Yeah, he seems to be staying real busy with that, what with your bimonthly visits.”

  “He’s not here for my benefit, he’s here for yours.”

  I move back toward my leather chair, too tired of this conversation to even try to hide the limp. “Well, if that’s the case, get rid of him. I have nowhere to go. You know, there are worse things I could be doing than staying out of your hair and staying out of the public eye. Do you really want all of your colleagues and country club friends in Boston to see me?”

  “You’re the one who exiled yourself up here. Not me.”

  “Exactly! So quit trying to coax every nanny and nurse in Boston to take care of me.”

  “Fine,” he says, his head nodding once.

  I open my mouth to argue before his word sets in. “Wait. Really? So you’re done trying to—”

  He holds up a finger, and his eyes go stone-cold, and I realize abruptly that I’m no longer dealing with Harry Langdon the father figure. This is Harry Langdon the hotel magnate. The man who’s been described by Forbes as hard-hearted and relentless.

  My father was forty-seven when I was born, which put him in his mid-sixties when I was in high school, but nobody ever made the mistake of thinking he was my grandfather. Partially because everyone knew him. And everybody who knew him knew that he’d married a woman twenty-two years his junior, knocked her up, and then divorced her before I was potty-trained. But mostly they never mistook him for a grandfather because he’s never looked like an old man. He’s always had the power and energy of men half his age.

  But sometime in the past couple of years his age has started to show in the stoop of his shoulders, the sag of the skin under his chin, and the bags under his eyes. The man beneath the failing body hasn’t softened, though. I can see it in the hard set to his mouth and the ice in his eyes.

  Instinctively I brace myself for what’s to come. He and I have been playing the same game for a while now. He sends a dumpy caregiver my way; I snarl and throw things and curse until she leaves. Repeat.

  After the first round, I got a pissed-off email from him. The second woman I ran off warranted a phone call. By the fourth, my father had actually visited, issued a couple of warnings, and left the same day.

  Then the fifth caregiver showed up—a man that time—and I ran him off too. I got an email and a phone call after that one.

  And so it went. It’s nothing but a ridiculous game we play, all so he can pretend that he gives a shit.

  This time, however, I sense a change in the rules, and I brace for it. It’s taken twenty-four years, but I’ve finally started to figure my dad out. Instinct tells me he’s about to switch tactics.

  I take another sip of my drink—a big one—and slump farther into the chair, letting him know that no matter what he throws at me, nothing will change. Nothing can change.

  “You get one more shot,” he says.

  I don’t bother to disguise my snort. I was expecting better from him. “Isn’t that what you told me last time? And the time before?”

  He moves faster than I thought a seventy-one-year-old could and snatches the whiskey out of my hand. I glance up in surprise. The amber liquid’s all over his hand and on the rug, but he doesn’t seem to register it, because he’s too busy looking at me like he hates me.

  Bring it on. I hate me too.

  “I mean it, Paul. This is your last chance to show me that you have any desire to continue with your life. Any desire at all to get your agility back, to learn to cope with your physical changes. I understand why you wanted to hide at first, but it’s been over two years. You’re done. You get six more months to get your shit together.”

  “Or what?” I ask, pushing myself to my feet and loving that the injury hasn’t taken away the fact that I’m still a few inches taller than him.

  “Or you’re out.”

  I blink. “What do you mean, I’m out?”

  “Out of this house.”

  “But I live here,” I say, not quite understanding where he’s going with this.

  “Yeah? You paying the mortgage? Or the utilities? Did you build the gym exactly as the physical therapist specified, or was that me?”

  I grind my teeth through my dad’s sarcasm. It was my dad’s idea to move me into a luxury home, not mine, and it shows how little he knows me. If he thinks kicking me out of the cushy mansion would mean anything to me, he’s dead wrong.

  He’s got an expectant look on his face, as though he thinks I’ll go along with his little plan so I can sit here in opulence and drink overpriced booze.

  I feel a little surge of satisfaction that he’s about to be disappointed.

  “Fine,” I say, deliberately letting my tone go careless. “I’ll move out.”

  He blinks a little in surprise. “To where?”

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  And I will. I don’t have much money to my name. I know that. But between the disability compensation I get as a veteran and my smallish savings account, I can get a little cabin somewhere.

  My dad’s eyes narrow. “What about groceries? Clothes? Essentials?”

  I shrug. “I don’t need gourmet shit and designer clothes.”

  My eyes catch on the label of expensive whiskey on the sideboard, but I don’t feel even the smallest pang of regret that it’ll soon be out of my budget. I’m in it for the numbness, not the taste. Cheap booze will do the trick just as well.

  “And your precious books?” he sneers. “All those first editions you’re so proud of?”

  I fix my eyes on the bookshelf across the room. He’s got his wing-tip shoe on my Achilles’ heel and he knows it.

  My father is ridiculously wealthy, and the
allowance he sends me each month is ridiculously generous. I don’t spend a penny of it on myself. Except for the books. After what happened over there, it’s easy to tell myself that I’ve earned the right to sit and brood with overpriced books.

  But the thought of losing my book collection isn’t what has my heart pounding in my chest. I don’t need the books. But I do need my dad’s money, at least until I come into the trust fund from my mom’s side when I turn twenty-five.

  The thought of continuing to take his monthly allowance, knowing that he thinks it all goes toward books and video games, makes me nauseous. I’d like nothing more than to tell him where he can shove those checks.

  But the money’s not for me.

  So I’ll continue to take it. Even if that makes me nothing more than a mooching cripple in his eyes.

  “What do you want?” I ask gruffly, refusing to meet his eyes. It feels cowardly, but hey, I’ve gotten pretty good at cowardly.

  He blows out a long breath. “I want you to try, Paul. I want you to at least try to come back to the living.”

  “I mean with the next nurse you’re sending up here,” I say, cutting him off. “What do I have to do so you don’t throw your pathetic son out on the street to become yet another begging veteran?”

  The word veteran hangs between us, and for a second I think he might relent, because if my Achilles’ heel is my dependency on him, his Achilles’ heel is my sacrifice for this country.

  But the man’s stubbornness has only increased with age, and instead of backing off, he turns toward the desk, dropping the whiskey glass with enough force so that the liquid sloshes over the sides and onto the wood. It’s an uncharacteristically careless gesture.

  “Six months,” he says. “You cooperate with this woman for six months. You do as she asks, when she asks it. She tells you to get to the gym, you get to the gym. She tells you to eat fucking broccoli, you eat fucking broccoli. She wants you to wear a tux for dinner, you’ll do that too. I’ll speak with this woman every Sunday, and if you’ve so much as looked at her funny, this all goes away.”