Literal Lyric was hard to crack.
“Lyra is the root of my name … Lyra—Lyric.”
He pegged her with a stare. She wasn’t the type to choose a tattoo based on a romantic yet disgusting myth, even if it was her name. She was practical … down to the core. There was a reason she had that tattoo, and it had nothing to do with nymphs or gods or little boys—thank God. His hamburger threatened to come back up on him again just thinking about it. “And?”
She shifted uncomfortably, like she was trying to decide what she wanted to say. Or, more precisely, how much she wanted to say. As he turned the car onto Knickerbocker Road—the street the hospital was on—he all but saw the wheels turning in her brain. But then she stiffened her shoulders and firmed her mouth.
Whatever she had to say, she was going for it. “I got it to cover up a scar I’ve got on my inner thigh. I fell on some barbed wire on the ranch when I was little and it made a weird triangle shape. The shape of the tattoo covers the whole thing.”
Something niggled at the back of his brain as he pulled into the hospital parking lot. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew if he waited long enough, it would come to him.
“That’s cool.” He’d heard worse reasons for getting tattoos. One of his buddies had a particularly ugly one of a worm drinking a bottle of tequila that he’d gotten on a dare in Cancun. “I have a few scars of my own. Some of them are pretty ugly—maybe I should think about doing something like that.”
If he tattooed a football on his knee, would that cover the damage so that no one would notice that it didn?
??t work anymore?
Lyric nodded, a little awkwardly, it seemed to him. “Yeah. It didn’t even hurt that much because of the scar tissue.”
He pulled to a stop in front of the hospital’s front doors. “Do you want me to come in with you?”
“No. I’ve got it.” She took a deep, bracing breath, reached for her purse, and opened the door. “Well, thanks, Heath. For the ride. I really appreciate it.”
“It’s not a problem, darlin’.” And it wasn’t. Not when he’d finally gotten to glimpse the girl he used to know. For that, he’d drive a hell of a lot farther than a couple hundred miles. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come in?” He was strangely reluctant to let her go. Even though he knew her family was waiting inside for her, he didn’t want Lyric to have to face whatever was in there alone.
“I’ve got this.” She smiled at him, and then she was stepping out of the car and slamming the door behind her as she all but raced into the hospital. He should have stopped her then, should have followed her, but something about that scar was still bugging him. He just wished he knew what it was.
Preoccupied with trying to remember he didn’t know what, he started to pull away from the curb. But the farther he got from the hospital entrance, the harder it was to keep going. Lyric didn’t need him—she’d made that abundantly clear—but he wasn’t sure he could say the same about himself needing her. Being with Lyric, laughing with her, even listening to her ridiculously grim statistics, was the most fun he’d had in a long, long time. Even more, worrying about her had kept his mind off his blown-out knee … and his blown-out future.
Now that she was gone, those thoughts were starting to crowd back in, making his stomach sink and his head throb. But even more than that, driving away from her now made him realize just how much he’d missed her all these years. And just how much he didn’t want to walk away from her again.
He might have spent his adolescence in love with Harmony, might have spent the years after she dumped him going from one one-night stand to another, chasing the feeling he’d had with her that one perfect night. But now that he was a grown man, watching the grown-up version of his best friend walk away from him yet again, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d spent all those years worrying about losing the wrong sister. Couldn’t help wondering if he’d spent the better part of his life in love with the wrong woman.
* * *
Chapter 9
* * *
Lyric tugged at the hem of the gray compression T-shirt Heath had lent her, trying to wriggle one more inch of coverage over her TexAss boxers. The electronic front doors of the San Angelo Community Medical Center shushed open, and a wall of air-conditioned air smacked her in the face.
She glanced down at her phone. According to the latest text from Harmony, Lyric was to take a right at the gift shop, hang a left at mammography, and follow the signs to ICU. This being San Angelo, the medical center only had two floors, and since the second floor housed mainly doctors’ offices, it didn’t really count.
Lyric didn’t exactly sprint down the corridor past the gift shop to get to her daddy, but her gait definitely qualified as racewalking. As she reached the double doors for the ICU waiting room, she leaned down, placed her Loubies firmly on the linoleum tile, and slipped her feet into them. When she faced her mother for the first time in too long, at least she would look presentable from the ankles down.
On the other side of this door was good news or bad, hope or despair, one final good-bye or a decades of hellos. She still wasn’t sure if she was ready to find out which one it was going to be.
For a moment, she imagined standing here forever, in the limbo of denial, where the glass was always half full.
But she hadn’t raced all the way here from Hawaii to languish in a hallway forever. It was time to put on her big-girl panties and woman up—and if those panties were men’s boxers, then she’d just have to tug at the hem a little. Rolling her shoulders, she took a deep breath and pushed into hell’s waiting room. The tiny room smelled of rubbing alcohol, apple juice, and expensive perfume.
She’d definitely found the right spot. Her mother wore Chanel No. 5 like a knight donned his armor.
Livinia Angleton Wright sat directly across from the double doors, legs crossed at the ankles, black designer silk pantsuit pristine and free of wrinkles, her ash-blonde hair French twisted to within an inch of its life.
“My dear.” Her mother’s perfectly arched eyebrows flickered—and probably would have bounced off her hairline if the two facelifts and regular Botox injections hadn’t taken away her ability to frown—while her eyes narrowed with the focus of a predator. Her mother was a panther poised to pounce. Too bad the only gazelle in the room was wearing boxer shorts, a man’s T-shirt, and no bra.
Suddenly, Lyric’s big-girl panties were giving her a wedgie. Desperate for a distraction, she stomped loudly. At least she’d get credit for the shoes.