Tell Them Lies (Three Little Words Book 3) (5 page)

"
R
achel
, you're not putting enough glue on that."

The wide brush halted in the air where Rachel held it over a small white vase. Liz watched her cut her eyes over to where Casey was settled on the couch.

"I know what I'm doing. I do this for a living. Are you seriously going to tell me that I'm not putting enough glue on?"

Casey held up her phone, where she was watching a YouTube video. "You didn't even watch this, did you? I made up a mock vase, which I clearly told you to look at before you started making one. If you don't evenly coat the glue, the glitter won't stay on the vase and my reception tables will be covered.
Covered
."

Rachel rolled her eyes, then continued to brush glue on the ceramic vase in a coat that was quite obviously uneven from where Liz sat next to her on the floor.

Their Ladies Night's the past few months, when they did manage to have them, were pretty well centered around Casey and Jake's upcoming wedding. It would be an event that could probably win Pinterest awards, if there was ever such a thing. Casey's parents certainly weren't skimping on the budget, given that they only had one daughter's wedding to pay for, but in customary Casey fashion, she had to put her fingerprint on everything.

Everything.

Including the creation of small vases that would soon be covered in even coats of gold glitter, eventually used to hold white tulips on the candy bar table.

Liz finished rolling the bottom of her vase on the wide plate holding all the glitter, and then held it up for Casey's inspection.

"Perfect. Because you put enough glue on it."

"Oh bite me, Steadman," Rachel grumbled from where she was attempting to get her vase covered completely. Attempting and failing. Liz pushed out a laugh, even though she was about puking from nerves. And they hadn't even noticed that she was practically sweating through her long sleeved white shirt. How on earth did she think she could get away with this? Pretending like she was having an entire relationship that neither of them knew about.

Swallowing past the angry hornet's nest in her throat, Liz stood and held out a hand for the vase Rachel had just finished. Holding them carefully from the top, she went and set them down on the wide granite island in the middle of Rachel and Tate's kitchen.

"Where's Tate tonight, Rach?" Liz asked, smiling at some new pictures of Asher covering the fridge. He was still wonderfully toothless, and his wide, gummy smile was about the most adorable thing she'd ever seen.

"I told him he had to stay downstairs unless otherwise instructed."

Casey laughed. "And he listens? Man, you have my brother so whipped."

"Pfft, this coming from the woman whose Army man fiancé has agreed to wear a light pink tie at his wedding? Do you really want to compare who's got their man whipped?"

From the opposite side of the room, Liz watched them laugh and tease each other about their respective significant others. Because why wouldn't they? They'd both had these natural, normally progressing relationships. Liz had watched each of them unfold over the last two years. The organic and instinctual dance of two with common interests, with a mutual attraction.

And what was she about to do?

Open her mouth, and insert her fabricated beau into their lives. It actually hurt to think about lying to them. To purposely set out to deceive them. But she'd promised. And he'd done the same.

"So, I have something I need to tell you guys," Liz said as she made her way back to where Casey and Rachel were still giggling.

Rachel stretched and raised her eyebrows. "Uh oh. The last time one of us said those words, I was admitting that Tate done knocked me up on accident. You're not pregnant, are you, Blondie?"

A strangled laugh slipped out of Liz mouth, because that visual was enough to force her into a padded cell.

"No, there's no way I can top that one, Rach."

"Good," Rachel replied. "I like holding the title of the most dramatic announcement at Ladies Night."

Casey rolled her eyes, and then looked up at where Liz was gripping the back of the couch. "What is it, Liz?"

"Umm, I know I haven't given you my RSVP card yet."

With a dismissive wave of her hand, Casey looked a little confused. Yeah. She might want to wait a few seconds before pasting that expression on her face. "It's fine, Liz. I know you're coming."

Oh, oh she couldn't do it. But she had to.

"Yes, but, I'm bringing a date. And I just hadn't let you know that yet."

Their jaws dropped in perfect unison. And then silence.

Rachel sputtered and Casey's eyes widened until Liz thought they would overtake her face completely. Maybe she could explain it to them. About Kieran's mother and how they'd met. They would understand. Casey would probably love it, actually. Yes. This was a much, much better plan. Liz’s heart fell back into a normal rhythm and the pitch of her stomach righted itself.

Of course they would understand.

Then Casey pumped a fist into the air, grinning over at Rachel. "Yes! I win. Pay up."

Well. That was... unexpected. Rachel grumbled and flipped off Casey, who was pretty much bouncing in place.

"Who is he?"

"Wait," Liz said, trying to clear her head. "
You win?
"

With a groan, Rachel stood and walked over to grab her purse. Fishing around for her wallet, she gestured for Casey to explain. And someone had better. Liz felt uncomfortable. For the first time
ever
around her friends.

"It's nothing bad," Casey started. "Rachel and I bet ten bucks that you wouldn't have a date to the wedding. And I totally knew you could make it happen. Or at least, I hoped you would."

From behind Liz, Rachel walked back towards them, wadded up the ten dollar bill and chucked it at Casey's head. But she couldn't even laugh with them, because her head felt dizzy. Like it wasn't connected to her neck anymore. It wasn't meant to be painful, what they'd done. She was sure of it. Because she knew enough of these two incredibly wonderful women that they would never be malicious or purposely embarrass her.

But it
felt
embarrassing. The thought of them sitting around and discussing whether she'd be alone at another social event, again, was incredibly mortifying.

"Come on," Casey squealed. "Who is he?"

"Yeah," Rachel agreed, finally looking excited. "Who is he?"

The arm of the couch caught her when she sank down, thankful that there was something capable of catching her weight. She cleared her throat and pushed a tight smile on her face at their matching looks of unbridled curiosity.

"His name is Kieran Carter."

"Oooh,
hot
name," Rachel interrupted and Casey smacked her arm. "What? It is."

"Where did you two meet? How long have you known him? What does he look like?"

"And you hit
me
for being intrusive?" Rachel asked, staring over at Casey.

This time the laugh was unforced, and it helped Liz breathe a little easier. This wouldn't be so bad. A lot better than admitting the phony relationship after money had been exchanged at her ability to get a date or not.

"We met at the grocery store actually. He umm, he started talking to me in front of the ice cream."

Casey sighed and slumped back into the couch cushion with a pleased expression on her face.

"How long ago was this?" Rachel asked.

"Umm," Liz hedged, "it was a while ago. I just didn't say anything because I didn't know what would happen from it."

"That makes sense," Casey said with a nod, casting a narrow eyed look at Rachel. "Especially considering that Rachel here managed to keep it from us for
months
that she'd slept with Tate. Let's not forget that, oh sister-in-law of mine. It's fine that you didn't want to tell us, Liz."

"I guess," Rachel reluctantly agreed. "Soooooo, what does he look like? He's totally geek chic, isn't he? I can see you with a total Clark Kent type. Bow tie and super chiseled body underneath that argyle vest."

"Umm, not exactly."

"So what's he like?"

Liz shrugged a little, going for nonchalant, even though her heart started racing quiet inexplicably when a picture of Kieran's face zipped through her mind. "Dark hair and dark eyes. Kinda scruffy."

"Umm, you could be describing a Chocolate Lab right now. What does he
look like
?"

"He's tall, probably six three. Very sharp facial features, you know, his cheekbones and his jaw are...chiseled. And umm, he has tattoos."

"What?" they screeched in unison.

"Oh girl," Rachel said, a hint of admiration in her hazel eyes, "you've got some serious talking to do. Case, go grab those two bottles of wine from the fridge. We're gonna need 'em both."

Liz groaned and hid her face behind her hands. She was going to hell. For sure.

"
M
a
, you ready to go?" Kieran called out as he shut the front door to his mom's house behind him. The click of the front door echoed through the still living room. From down her hallway, he saw a faint light, so he tossed his keys onto the entry table and walked towards it. "Come on, you're going to be late for your appointment. And you know those judgey nurses will think it's my fault if you don't show up on time."

The door to her office was halfway open, and he could see her staring at the glow coming from her computer. And he could tell she was reading something by the way she was peering over the small glasses perched at the tip of her nose.

"Dude, what are you doing? We gotta go."

"Don't call me dude, I was in labor with you for eighteen drug-free hours."

He plopped into the dark leather chair in the corner across from her, then reached forward to snag a piece of chocolate out of the crystal bowl she always kept on the edge of her mahogany desk. While he was unwrapping the light blue foil, he saw how quickly she clicked out of the window on the screen she had been reading.

"Well, aren't you being secretive? You on a dating website or something?"

She snorted, turning to face him, eyes surprisingly serious.

"I canceled my appointment."

Kieran worked to swallow the bite of milk chocolate, taking the few seconds of time it took to get it down with choking to try and gauge her face, her tone.

"Okay," he said slowly, "why did you do that?"

"I don't want any more chemo."

One tiny needle of ice pushed through his chest, right through the space between his ribs, and slid into his heart. This was it. He'd kept waiting to hear it, after every single appointment.

She was done. The cancer had spread to a place that would take her. What an idiot he'd been, thinking that the lack of growth of the tumor in her lung was somehow a
good
thing. His mouth opened to ask a question, any question, and she lifted a hand to stop him.

"My doctor fought me on that decision. But I can't keep doing this to my body, I'm too old, too tired. I don't want to be puking anymore. That stuff, that poison they're pumping me full of? That will kill me long before the cancer will."

"Mom," he started, shaking his head, "so just like that? You're done?"

The breath she pulled in was deep and measured. "With chemo, yes."

Pushing up from the chair, Kieran paced the small room, stopping in front of a framed picture of the two of them when he was five. The bowl cut of his hair was ridiculous, and his red corduroy overalls made him look like a complete chump, but it was his mom's favorite picture.

She'd taken him to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, the four hour drive from Grand Rapids costing a veritable fortune for them at that point in their lives. His dad had decided to simply not come home a couple weeks earlier, done with the responsibility of a young wife and toddler. And to make
Kieran
feel better, she'd taken precious hours off of work to spend the day with him looking at tank after tank of sea creatures. A stranger had taken the picture for them just outside the entrance, and instead of the typical cheesy smiles aimed at the camera, the young woman had captured the moment before.

His arm was hooked around his mom's neck, and hers was wrapped around his waist, and they were both laughing. Why couldn't he remember what had been so funny?

"Damn it," he whispered, feeling something hot and uncomfortable push at the back of his eyes. Pulling both hands on the back of his neck, the pressure centering him a little bit, he finally turned to look at her.

And umm, she was smiling.

"This is funny?"

"Maybe you should let me finish talking before you write me off completely." She waved a hand again. "Sit down."

"I don't feel like it," he snapped. Yeah, snapped at his dying mother. Prize-winning, grade A douche, right there.

"Kieran James Carter, sit your ass down and let me speak."

So did he sit? Hell yeah, he wasn't an idiot. Once he was settled back into the chair, she stared at him for a few charged seconds.

"You ready to listen?"

After drawing a finger across his lips and then throwing away an imaginary key, Kieran sat back and folded his arms across his chest.

"I want to find a new doctor. Someone with a different approach." Immediately, he leaned forward in his seat, but she pointed a finger at him before he could say anything. "Something holistic. Something that won't rip me up from the inside out. And I was doing some research before you got here."

Mind racing, he held out his hand for the stack of papers was that next to her keyboard. She pushed them across the shining surface of the desk. This was...unexpected. And weird.

She wanted to see a quack who would, what? Stick needles all over her body? Chant over her while dousing her with essential oils or some crap? But flipping through some of the pages, he saw a lot of unfamiliar wording, but things about clinical trials and shark cartilage and bovine cartilage and injections and administering by mouth and reduction of cancerous cell growth. Flipping his eyes up to her, he finally saw relief in her lined face.

"So, how did you hear about this stuff?" he asked, jerking his chin down to the stack on his lap.

"One of my friends from church. Ardith? I don't know if you remember her. Well, her sister-in-law did this shark cartilage treatment, and she felt better than she had since her diagnosis."

Diagnosis. He fu- effing hated that word. It was like someone could say one stupid word and flick the switch on how every day that after it was viewed.

Was that before her diagnosis?

Oh, what happened after her diagnosis?

Is she stage three? Oh...she's a four. I'm sorry.

Like every other part of that person was suddenly insignificant, because they'd had this giant ass label glued to their forehead. In fact, they weren't even really a whole person anymore, they were a
diagnosis
. They were their disease. And it pissed him off so freaking badly that he wanted to demolish something. Something fragile that would splinter into a million un-fixable pieces.

But instead of taking that heavy crystal bowl sitting in front of him and heaving it through the window behind his mother, he stretched a smile across his face.

"That's great," he managed. "Do you have a doctor picked out?"

Briefly lifting her eyebrows, like she knew exactly how fake that response was, she shook her head. "I have it narrowed down to two. One is here in Grand Rapids, the other has an office in Holland, so it'd be a bit of a drive. But she's got great experience with people who have the same diagnosis as I do."

He couldn't breathe. Someone had dropped an anchor on his chest.

"Good. That's...good."

"Mmmhmmm. It is. I thought maybe you could call Hailey, isn't she really into holistic stuff? She might have a recommendation for me."

Hailey. Who the hell was Hailey? Kieran blinked, finally pulling in some oxygen. Oh yeah. His employee Hailey.

"Yeah, I'll give you her number. She's off today, so you could probably get a hold of her if you wanted to get a name right away. And you know what questions to ask. Makes more sense than me doing it."

Plus, he absolutely did not want to talk about it with Hailey.

"Thanks, honey."

"Sure." He stood, feeling like the ceiling of the room had shrunk four inches since he walked into the room. Were the walls closer than before? "I uhh, I need to go."

Pulling his phone from the front pocket of his pants, he rattled off Hailey's number for her and turned to go. He stopped before he cleared the room, and quickly walked back, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. "Love you."

"Love you too. Hey, bring that beautiful girlfriend over soon, okay? I need more than two minutes talking to her."

Walking out of her house didn't even register. And once he was behind the wheel of his car and backing out of her driveway, he had no idea where in the hell to go.

That beautiful girlfriend.

A glance at the clock on his dash read 4:02 pm. With no idea whether she'd actually be there, Kieran whipped a U-turn on the empty street and steered his car straight towards the library. The entire fifteen minute drive through town was a blur, and he had a fleeting thought that maybe he shouldn't even be driving given his frame of mind.

In the far corner of the L-shaped parking lot framing the brick building, Kieran saw Liz's car and felt a slight lessening in the pressure banded around his chest. It was warm out, with a perfect, cloudless blue sky, and kids ran in the expanse of grass next to the library, disappearing over the gentle hills towards the park that sat behind.

But to him, it could have been sleeting onto his bare skin for all the pleasant weather actually registered in his mind. When he pushed through the second set of doors into the main library area, his eyes scanned over the people wandering through the bookcases. Behind the main desk, a heavyset man was shifting through a bin of books.

No Liz.

Spearing a hand through his hair, Kieran blew out a breath, feeling the slight edge of panic roll through him at how badly he wanted to see her. He'd spoken to her three times. Touched her twice. That's it. But there was something inside of him that was roaring to be around her.

He felt crazy.
Actually
insane.

"Kieran?" her voice came from behind him and he sagged in relief. When he turned, she was holding an armful of thick reference books, and the confusion in her blue eyes felt oddly reassuring. Because she didn't look mad. Or disappointed. "What are you doing here?"

Don't touch her. Don't touch her.

"I just needed to see you." There was so much truth in it, he didn't even think twice about saying it. And the way her eyes scanned his face, she must have seen it too. She simply nodded and walked over to the large curving counter next to the entrance and set down the stack of books.

"Mark, if you're good, I'm going to head out a couple minutes early. See you tomorrow." If the man behind the desk noticed that Liz was leaving with a stranger, he certainly didn't show it. What was wrong with this guy? Kieran could be a serial killer, and this moron was just letting her walk out the door? Alone?

When Liz gently touched his arm, he snapped out of his completely psychotic train of thought. It was broad daylight. There were like, a hundred people around. Of course she was fine to leave by herself.

With a gesture for her to leave in front of him, Kieran dragged his eyes from the top of her head to the bottom of her heels and back up again. Today she was wearing skinny black pants and a loose fitting rust colored shirt, something silky that draped around her slim shoulders. Her hair was pulled back in a complicated looking bun and he caught a tiny whiff of something warm and sweet. Maybe the skin under her ear would taste like caramel if he tasted her there.

Once they cleared the door into the entryway, Liz asked him to wait while she grabbed her purse. Clenching his hands into tight fists to try and alleviate the
thing
that was building inside of him, Kieran focused on every breath that sawed in and out of his lungs. When the click of her heels sounded down the hallway, he closed his eyes, not really feeling like he could watch her walk towards him without doing something crazy.

Like kiss her. Or smell her hair. Or wrap his arms around her just so he could
feel
her.

The sound of her steps came closer, and out of sheer self-preservation, Kieran turned and pushed out of the building in front of her, holding open the door open for her.

"What's wrong?" she asked, stopping just past the door when it swung shut behind them. He finally looked at her. Really looked in her face, the delicate curve of her jaw, the slope of her straight nose, the absolute flawless blue of her eyes, and he felt his heartbeat slow and steady.

"It's my mom."

Liz stepped closer to him, drawing a hand from his elbow down to his wrist and just left it there. Her fingers felt cool and firm. "Is she okay?"

"She's...uhh, stopping chemo. Wants to try some quack treatment that won't do jack shit for her."

"What's the treatment?"

With a short, hard exhale, Kieran shook his head. "I don't even remember. Everything she told me after 'I'm stopping chemo' feels a little hazy. I basically threw a phone number at her and ran out the door. I can't even manage to listen to her correctly, damn it," he ground out, taking a tiny step away from Liz when he felt like he needed to punch something.

One thing he needed to do for his mom was listen to her. And he screwed it up. Again. She was going through probably the scariest shit a person could go through and he couldn't even remember to ask her why she wanted to do this.

Liz opened her mouth to respond and he backed up again, holding up a hand to stop her.

"Do you know what a better son would have done?" Both of his hands wrapped around the back of his neck, hanging there uselessly, exactly how he felt. "He would have sat his ass down next to her, and dug through all those pages of research she had. A better son would have wanted to know
why
she wants to make this decision. And I can't even do that for her."

A young woman hurried past them, giving Kieran a confused look before she went into the library. Great, now he was scaring the locals. Liz would probably tell him to get his ass in his car and never come back.

"Come on," Liz said quietly, tilting her head towards the back part of the building. "Let's go over here, it's more private."

Orrrr she could do that instead. Yeah, it was quite possible that he'd follow her just about anywhere she asked him to go. Especially given his current frame of mind, like he was one second, one breath, one heartbeat away from losing his ever-loving mind. Her shoulder brushed against his as they walked down the wide concrete sidewalk.

The back of the building opened up to acres of park, the green of the grass finally starting to show up after heavy rains from last week and the bright sun they were experiencing today. Muffled sounds of children laughing and playing bounced off the brick wall, so they didn't feel completely isolated. But from there, the two cedar-stained picnic tables on a square cement pad, he couldn't see a single other person.