Chapter 1

I walked through the door and saw the love of my life.

Not the man I had married twenty-five years before, the man who’d fathered my children, the man whose name I’d taken even though I’d always sworn I would keep my own. I’d left that man at home. No, I walked into the recreation room in the basement of the lodge at Douglas Lake and saw the man who’d been with me when the worst had happened.

Tom Williams, my brother’s best friend.

Tom and I did not rush to greet each other. We never did. He looked at me from across the room as he tipped a bottle of beer to his lips, and his dark eyes snagged mine for the span of a single heartbeat before he turned it back toward the woman he’d been talking to before I arrived. I didn’t recognize her, but I knew they weren’t together. Not like that. Tom wasn’t with anyone. My heart would’ve told me, if he was.

“Eliska!” My dad’s grin welcomed me with a warmth I could feel even from a distance. He waved me over. “You made good time.”

I looked away from Tom. There’d be time later for our reunion. There always was.

My dad pulled me close for a hug I wanted to melt into but forced myself to accept for only the briefest moment. I didn’t want to start off the trip by sobbing on my dad’s shirtfront. The way things had been going lately, I might never stop.

“I got lucky with the traffic.” I’d driven twenty, thirty miles over the speed limit for most of the ten-hour trip, not in an eager rush to get here, but in a fury to get away from home.

“You want something to drink? Let’s get you a drink.”

“Of course I do. Something cold and fizzy and strong.”

My father grinned, and I saw myself in that smile. I’d always favored my dad, something my mother never failed to point out. “After that drive, you deserve something festive. I’m glad you’re here. It’s been too long.”

I rarely came home to Ohio, and my parents never visited me in Delaware. We spoke often on the phone, but hardly ever saw each other in person. This was my first time back in…I couldn’t recall how long it had been.

“Come on.” My dad pulled me toward a group of older people standing around with mixed drinks in their hands. “Come say hi to your cousins.”

They were actually his first cousins, their children my second cousins and mostly strangers now that we’d all grown up and moved off to our own adult lives. We were all here for my niece Britney’s wedding tomorrow, Sunday, and the week-long family reunion that officially started after that.

We made a pitstop at the bar, where I accepted a sweating glass brimming with gin, seltzer, and lime. I grimaced as that first sip hit my empty stomach and a boozy glow spread immediately all through me. I’d made the drive with as few stops as possible, and that meant not drinking anything. I was dehydrated, my stomach mostly empty. This drink would hurt if I wasn’t careful. On the other hand, it might help.

“Where’s Mom?”

“She’s with Aunt Lou. Over there.” Dad pointed toward his sister and my mother, heads bent together as they laughed about something.

I hadn’t realized I’d been tensed and holding my breath until my body relaxed at the sight of her. “She looks good. Is she good?”

My father’s natural smile had always been wide and bright. This one looked a little strained. “She’ll be fine. There’s a lot going on this week. But she’ll be okay.”

I didn’t have time to ask him anything more specific than that. The cousins welcomed me with open arms, literally and figuratively. The drinks had been flowing for a few hours by the time I got to the resort, but that was only part of the reason why they all greeted me with such enthusiasm. That’s how our family was — we might not speak to or see each other for months or years, but when we got together, we knew how to have a really good time.

They all asked me what I’d been up to, and I told them the edited-for-TV version while the drinks flowed and the laughter swelled up all around us, waves lapping at a shore, and Tom and I threw glances at each other from across a space that seemed to get smaller every time we looked.

An hour passed, and the two of us ended up next to each other at the bar. Tom ordered another bottle of local beer. I got a second Gin Rickey. He tried to pay for my drink, but I didn’t let him, and we argued about it for half a minute until laughing, I conceded. We took our drinks to a quieter corner, out of the way. We didn’t sit, as though settling in would somehow make this conversation more permanent. Standing, I could pretend I was a few steps away from leaving him behind.

“Hey,” I said, and he replied with the same single word.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Tom added, tipping his bottle in my direction.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.” I sipped my drink, savoring the crisp bubbles and tangy lime. I took this one slower. Savoring it. I didn’t want a hangover.

“Did you know I was going to be here?” Tom asked.

“Kathy told me you were invited.” The bride’s mother had dated my brother for half a year one summer three decades ago but had been a part of the family ever since. She’d kept me up-to-date on all of the wedding plans.

“Told you? Or warned you?” His laughter, low and husky and familiar, burbled up from his chest.

That laugh warmed me, or it might have been the night coming on, the full room, the alcohol, the four hours of fitful sleep I’d had the night before, the butt-numbingly long drive I’d made to get here. Menopause. Hot flash. A flush rose up my throat and into my cheeks. I tasted sweat when I licked my lips. Tom noticed. I noticed that he did.

“It’s hot as balls in here,” he said with a grin that hadn’t changed over the years, even if so much else had. “You want to go outside?”

I drained my drink and stood to toss the plastic cup into the trash bin. “Yes. I’m suffocating.”

“This place sure has changed since we were kids, huh?” He gestured over his shoulder as we went out through the sliding glass doors and onto a stone patio below the large deck overhead.

Douglas Lake had started life as a spring-fed pond back in the twenties, when local families had built their “camps” on its shores to find relief from the hot southern Ohio summers. Developers in the fifties had expanded it by damming the small creek that gave the pond its overflow. The borders on the low side of the pond spread, and they brought in sand to make a beach for swimming. Docks for boating. A snack bar, picnic grounds. The land on the far side of what by then had become a lake, the higher ground, was bought up by people who still wanted their summer escape, but what had once been crude cabins for “camp” became bigger houses. Grander. By the eighties, when Tom and I were teenagers, the resort side of Douglas Lake had gained a reputation for pay-by-the-hour motel rooms, illicit goings-on, and rumors of a man with hatchets for hands who’d prey on those unwary enough to go parking there.

“When I found out that Brit and Ben were getting married here….” I shuddered and glanced over my shoulder to make sure nobody was close enough to hear us. “I’m glad to see it’s so much nicer than I remember it. Didn’t you have your senior prom here?”

“It was a real dump back then. Half the class got food poisoning.” Tom kicked at some gravel on the path.

I coughed out a chuckle. “Let’s hope they have a different caterer.”

One branch of the path led away from the lodge and toward the cabins, while another sloped toward the beach. We took that one, both of us weaving a little. Small pebbles slipped out from under my heels, but I didn’t worry that I was going to fall on my ass because Tom took my elbow to keep me upright. Then, he took my hand.

I let our fingers link for only a few seconds, squeezing before releasing his. I was still trying to convince myself I was totally sober by the time we got down to the sand, but the truth was that I would have been intoxicated even without a single sip of alcohol. I was made drunk, as always, by Tom’s touch. The smell of him. I could catch a whiff of that cologne on a stranger in a crowd, and I would look for him, always, even when I knew it was impossible for it to be him. I was drunk on knowing that he was going to kiss me underneath the stars, and if he did not, I was certainly going to kiss him.

“We’ll talk more when you get back,” Paul had said through the driver’s side window of my car as I was trying to leave without a confrontation.

“We’ll talk” had long been my husband’s shortcut for “I’m going to dismiss all your concerns and tell you why you’re wrong.” I was done with it. Paul could think what he wanted; when I got home the only talking I’d be doing would be to discuss the divorce settlement.

Now by the water’s edge, I slipped off my sandals and wriggled my toes in the cool, damp sand with a sigh. The breeze off the lake lifted tendrils of hair that had been sticking to my cheeks. I pulled at the neckline of my dress to let in some air, but it didn’t do much. The humidity was horrendous.

Tom watched me, bemused. “Why don’t you just take off your sweater?”

“Because then I’ll probably be too cold.” I laughed with a shake of my head. “And then in the next minute I’ll be too hot again. But it’s nice out here. Just let me regulate.”

“Regulate, girl,” he said in a dipping-low voice that rippled over me as easily and smoothly as the water stretching out in front of us licked at the sand.

Across the span of water, lights from the expensive homes winked at us through the trees. Most of them sat back from the water, on higher ground to showcase the views. Steep and narrow staircases led to private docks, some with fancy boathouses fitted out with kitchens and plumbing so their owners could entertain down by the water. To our right, the beach curved around in front of the lodge and the swimming area, along with the dock for launching kayaks and canoes. To the left, it moved into shadows and marshy patches where the woods came almost right down to the water.

We moved to the left with an unspoken discussion about heading into the darkness together. As the strip of sand grew narrower, Tom took my hand again. This time, I didn’t drop it.

What would you do if the love of your life pressed you up against a tree and unerringly, without hesitation, found your mouth with his? If he pried open your lips with his tongue and plunged it inside to stroke your own? What would you do if he took your hand and cupped it between his legs so you could feel his hardness through his jeans?

I let him kiss me, and I let him make me touch him, and I let my head fall back so I could look up at the stars while his lips and teeth moved along the sensitive skin of my throat, and I shivered, I shuddered, I trembled with the icy heat of lust.

Breathing hard, Tom put his forehead to mine. His eyes were closed. His breath smelled of beer, but it was a good smell in the way that everything about him smelled good to me. His big, strong hands and calloused fingers gripped my hips and held me steady.

“Hey,” he said after a moment. It was what we always said to each other. Our own secret code, a single word with many meanings.

I nuzzled at his cheek and put my arms around him, drawing him close. “Hey.”

“You smell good.” He licked my cheek. “Taste good, too.”

“Sweaty.”

We kissed again, softer this time. He stepped back and pushed some strands of hair off my sticky face. Light from a few of the cabins filtered through the trees and glimmered in his eyes and on his straight, white teeth, even as the rest of his face remained in shadow.

“Are you here for the whole week?” I stretched out an arm to toy with the buttons on the front of his pale blue shirt. I was used to him in jeans and t-shirts, work boots and A-line tanks, not khakis and a button-down. Under my fingertips, his chest was rock hard. My hands were greedy for him.

“Nah. Just for the wedding. I’m out of here on Monday morning.” He paused. “I’m not a Pasternak, remember?”

“You might as well be. You should stay.” Before a few minutes ago, I hadn’t even considered that Tom would stick around for the reunion. Now, the thought that he would leave and I would stay for another whole week was unbearable.

Tom laughed with a duck of his head, the same one I’d always found charming and irresistible or annoying as fuck, depending on the day and sometimes both at once. He slanted a sideways gaze at me. Pursed his lips. “I don’t have a place to stay past tomorrow night. I just got one of the single rooms in the lodge for tonight and tomorrow.”

I’d looked at those. The lodge accommodations were spare, like dorm rooms. Cheap. I’d booked the most expensive cabin at the resort. I liked my comforts.

“I have a whole cabin, all to myself,” I told him. “Two bedrooms. Kitchen. Waterfall shower. And a private hot tub.”

Tom pulled an impressed face. “Faaaaancy.”

“Do you want to come see it?”

He took another step back and scrubbed a hand over his mouth for a few seconds while he turned to stare out at the dark and rippling lake. “You know I do. You know I will, Eliska.”

A soft huff slipped out of me. Have you ever heard the up-and-down syllables of your name said as though it tasted like the best meal a man has ever eaten? It had been so long since anyone had said it that way. Actually, no other man ever had. Only Tom.

Forever, Tom.

𓆩♡𓆪

Coming Up For Air