Things We Never Said: A Hart’s Boardwalk Novel Read online

  That pain in my heart twisted even tighter at the memories of all of us together.

  My muscle memories automatically led me to the bedroom I’d shared with my sisters growing up. I’d already opened the door and was about to step inside when I remembered I wasn’t sleeping in there.

  My breath caught. Mom hadn’t changed the room. Tears filled my eyes as a sick sensation took up residence in my gut. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d kept Dillon’s side of the room the same and emptied mine, but my side hadn’t been touched either.

  I could still see the photos pinned to the wall by my bed.

  Unable to look at Dillon’s space, I tentatively walked in, my heart thudding hard in my chest as I gravitated toward the photos. My walls were covered in them and pieces of paper with my old sketches and paintings. The dresser at the side of my bed was still littered with old perfume bottles and makeup. I sat slowly down on the bed, a lump forming in my throat, as I gazed at the photos.

  Some were of my family and me. Davina and I at the kitchen table with Darragh standing at our backs with his arms around us. Dad and I outside Fenway. Dermot and I in his car after I’d gotten my driver’s license. My heart squeezed at the sight of my head tucked against my big brother’s chest and the bright, beaming smile he was giving the camera.

  Then everything within me locked tight when I saw the picture of Mom and me. The photo was taken when I was sixteen, dressed for a formal dance. It looked like she was hugging me to death in the picture and we were both laughing into the camera.

  Unable to bear it, I dragged my attention to the next lot of photos. Memories assaulted me. They were all of me, Gary, Michael, Dillon, Dermot, and our friends.

  My eyes stopped on the lone photo I had of me and Michael. We were sitting in Angie’s Diner off Main Street, and he had his arm sprawled along the back of the booth where I was sitting. Always drawn to him, without even realizing it, my body was curled in toward him. Someone had taken the photo—I think it was Dermot—when we weren’t looking, and we were talking to each other. When I saw that photo, I’d kept it.

  Because of the way Michael was looking at me. The way I was looking at him.

  God, I closed my eyes. Had we really been that obvious?

  When I forced my eyes back open, they shot to Dillon’s side of the room. She had posters of the bands she’d loved on the walls, piles of romance books on her dresser, and makeup everywhere.

  Suddenly I could see her, clear as day, as the memories flooded me …

  Following my little sister into our room, I didn’t feel the happy exhaustion she seemed to feel after the party we were returning from.

  “Ssshh,” I hissed as her singing got a little louder. I closed the bedroom door behind us. “Do you want Mom to hear?”

  Dillon shrugged and grinned as she sat down on the bed to take off her heels. “I’m nineteen, and I was out celebrating my big sister’s twenty-first birthday. Not a crime!”

  I laughed softly. “Shut up.”

  “What’s up with you tonight? You act like you turned forty instead.”

  Slumping down on my bed, I stared at my bedroom ceiling and contemplated the disaster that was my birthday party. It had been an overcrowded gathering in one of Gary’s friend’s apartments in Southie, and my boyfriend was already drunk by the time we got there. First, he’d been all publicly handsy, and Michael had to pull him off me when he saw how uncomfortable I was getting. Then Gary had flirted with another girl for most of the night when he wasn’t acting like a dipshit frat boy. I hated when Gary got drunk. He was like a different person.

  I’d had a good time though. I’d spent most of the night in a corner with Michael laughing and talking. Dillon had hung out with us too, but there were times it was just the two of us and it had been great. In fact, I’d wanted the whole room to disappear and leave me alone with Michael.

  He’d gotten the night off work especially to be there for my birthday.

  I felt that low, deep flip in my belly whenever I thought about him. It occurred too whenever I was with him, and he gave me that focused, boyish smile of his.

  Guilt swarmed me. Guilt I tried to rid myself of because I was pretty sure Gary, my boyfriend of eight months, was cheating on me.

  There were secretive texts and phone calls, and he’d started “working late” at the garage a lot.

  “Seriously, Dahlia, what’s up?” Dillon asked. “I’m worried about you. You spent the whole of your birthday with Mike and me instead of Gary.”

  I groaned. “You saw how drunk Gary was.” I sat up, needing to talk to someone so badly and since Davina was working crazy hours at some finance company, my little sister had become my closest confidante. “I think he’s cheating on me.”

  Dillon wrinkled her cute little nose. “With that trashy girl he was flirting with tonight? No, he was just drunk.”

  “No, not her.” Although who knew? “He’s been acting weird lately. Hiding his phone when he gets a text, working later and later at the garage when he’s supposed to be hanging with me.”

  “Oh.” Dillon sighed. “You should talk to him about it, then. Eight months is such a long time to be with someone without talking about it.”

  I almost laughed at that. Eight months was nothing in the grand scheme of things. “What about the way he was acting tonight? He sat on a guy’s face tonight and farted.”

  Dillon gave a bark of laughter. “Okay, I admit, that was nasty.”

  “Nasty? Dill, this is a twenty-two-, nearly-three-year-old man we’re talking about.”

  “It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”

  I had.

  Turning around I looked at the photos on my wall, my eyes drawn to the one of Michael and me at the diner. Dermot took it a couple of weeks ago. How could no one see what I felt for my boyfriend’s best friend? It was blazing out of my eyes. And if that photo meant anything, if tonight—or any of the times Michael and I had found ourselves alone—meant anything, he felt the same way.

  I knew he did.

  I was totally and completely in love with my boyfriend’s best friend.

  Surely if Gary was cheating, then all bets were off, and Michael wouldn’t feel bad about dating me then, right?

  This longing inside of my chest was almost too much to bear. Tears filled my eyes at the thought of never getting to be with Michael, and I was not the crying type.

  Oh God, I was so completely and utterly in love with him.

  We’d connected from the moment we met in the gallery.

  “You’re going to dump him, aren’t you?” Dillon asked.

  Biting my lip, I turned back around to face her. “First, I’ll prove he’s cheating and then, yes, I’m going to break up with him.”

  “Good. You deserve better than him.”

  I smiled wearily at my sister, still feeling sick about the whole thing. I hated confrontation. I was good at it, especially with people I didn’t really care about. However, confrontation with loved ones was hell on the heart.

  “Speaking of deserving good things …” Dillon gave me a wide-eyed, excited grin. “I’m going to ask Mike out.”

  What?

  I shook my head, sure I’d heard wrong. “You’re what?”

  “I’m going to ask Michael out.” She pulled on her pajama shorts and a tank, before getting into bed. So casual. Like she hadn’t just rocked my entire world.

  “Why?” I whispered.

  Dillon chuckled. “Why? Uh … because he’s gorgeous and funny and nice. And I’m pretty sure he likes me back.”

  No. No. NO! NO WAY!

  Michael didn’t like Dillon.

  No.

  What the hell?

  “Isn’t … Isn’t he a little old for you?”

  My sister huffed, “Dahlia, he’s twenty-three.”

  “He’ll be twenty-four in June.” June 26 to be exact. “You’ve only turned nineteen.”

  “That’s not a big age gap. And you know I’m mature
for my age.”

  No, I knew she thought she was mature for her age.

  Panic seized my chest, and I couldn’t move.

  “Don’t worry, this won’t affect you breaking up with Gary. In fact, I think Mike thinks you should break up with him. He was so pissed on your behalf tonight. I mean, Gary passed out on your birthday night, and his best friend had to drive you home. So wrong.”

  No, what was so wrong was my little sister having a crush on the man I was in love with.

  As Dillon’s snores abruptly filled the bedroom, I got up, feeling like a Mack Truck had hit me, and slowly changed into my pajamas. Once in bed, I stared at my ceiling for hours, desperately trying to fall asleep. Sleep only claimed me when I convinced myself that there was no way Michael Sullivan would date my sister.

  No way.

  “Bluebell, wake up.”

  I groaned, coming out of a deep sleep at the sound of my dad’s voice. Blinking into the dim darkness, I turned my head and saw my dad standing over me.

  “Daddy?”

  Sadness filled his eyes. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Huh?”

  Realizing where I was, that I wasn’t dreaming and that I’d fallen asleep in my old room, I sat up too fast, and the room spun.

  “Come on, Bluebell. Let’s get you to bed.”

  I hugged into my dad’s side, still lost in that halfway place between sleep and consciousness, and I let him lead me into the boys’ old room. He pulled back the duvet on Darragh’s old bed and helped me in, drawing the covers up to my neck. He kissed my forehead and whispered good night.

  I think I mumbled a reply before I gratefully let sleep draw me back under.

  The computer screen blurred before his eyes and Michael pinched the bridge of his nose as if it would somehow relieve the ache in his sinuses. Why did he think switching to night shift was a good idea? It was now 6:00 a.m., well past the end of his shift, and he was only just finishing his report on the homicide he and his partner Davis had ended the night with.

  It looked like it would be a rare open-and-shut case.

  They’d been called to an apartment in West Roxbury where a seemingly normal twenty-eight-year-old woman had announced she’d shot her boyfriend in the kitchen.

  Fuck, it had been a mess.

  She’d shot him in the head.

  Hours later in the interview room, she’d told Michael and his new partner on the night shift she’d suspected her boyfriend was cheating, he’d confessed when she interrogated him (her words), and she’d lost her temper and shot him in the head with her .380.

  She’d been chillingly cool, and Michael didn’t know if it was shock, if there was ultimately more to the story, or if she was a psychopath. He’d arrested her, written the report, and they’d wait to see if forensics corroborated her story.

  “Mornin’, Detective,” a bright, cheery voice called.

  He looked past his computer and saw the young redheaded administrative assistant smiling at him from the coffee machine. He couldn’t remember her name. Amber or Ashley or something. Giving her a fatigued nod, he turned back to his report and saved it.

  “I think she likes you.”

  Michael glanced over his shoulder and up. Christ, he was so tired he hadn’t heard anyone approach. Getting his body used to a new shift pattern was harder now than it used to be when he was younger.

  Nick Bronson stood at his desk. He and Bronson had come through the academy together.

  “You look too fuckin’ awake,” Michael groaned.

  Bronson clapped him on the shoulder. “Maybe the redhead will wake you up.”

  Michael gave him a look. “She’s too young.”

  His friend smirked. “She’s twenty-three.”

  “You already checked?”

  “She told me.”

  “Then you date her.” Michael wanted to date like he wanted a bullet in his head. Sex, on the other hand, would be nice. Very nice, but not with young things working in his office.

  Bronson lost his smirk. “Speaking of … can we talk?”

  Michael wanted nothing more than to go home, but his friend sounded serious. Nodding, he grabbed his car keys and his jacket and followed Bronson through the office to an empty interview room.

  “What’s going on?”

  Bronson looked weirdly uncomfortable. He exhaled heavily. “I don’t know how to say this without getting punched in the face.”

  Just like that, the weariness started to slide off Michael. Alert, he leaned against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. “Spit it out, whatever it is.”

  “I’m dating Kiersten.”

  For a moment, Michael thought he’d misheard. “I’m really fuckin’ tired this morning so you’ll need to repeat that because I thought I heard you say you’re dating my soon-to-be ex-wife.”

  Bronson winced. “That’s what I said.”

  “Are you shittin’ me?”

  “Look, man, I didn’t expect it to happen. Okay? We bumped into each other two months ago—you guys had decided to separate for good. It wasn’t a date at first. We were just hanging out, talking about our divorces.” His expression turned apologetic. “I care about her, Mike. And Kiersten feels the same way. But I wanted you to find out from me before we go public with it.”

  Jesus Christ. His wife was barely out of their bed, and she was already shacking up with someone new. And not just anyone, his goddamn friend. Michael knew his marriage was a mistake, and he’d known that for a long time, but that didn’t mean this didn’t sting.

  “Guess the part where she told me my job was part of the reason our marriage didn’t work was a lie, huh?”

  Bronson frowned. “She said that?”

  You bet she’d fuckin’ said that. And that was when he worked the day shift. “Yeah, warning you now, Kiersten isn’t the kind of woman who wants to know about your day.”

  “The shit I see? I wouldn’t put that on her anyway.”

  Yeah, Michael hadn’t either. But Kiersten didn’t even ask him the simplest “How has your day been?”

  Maybe that was just their relationship. Perhaps she’d be different with someone else.

  And, truthfully, Michael wanted that for her. It was unexpected that she was trying to find it with a friend of his, and so soon, but Nick was a good guy.

  He should be more upset than he was.

  Part of him was almost relieved.

  Did this mean he didn’t have to feel so guilty anymore?

  Exhaustion deflated him. He held out his hand to Bronson, who took it, relief relaxing his features. “Take care of her.”

  “Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it.”

  “Well, I appreciate you telling me.”

  They shared a nod and Michael left his friend, his tired brain now wired with this new information. As he drove home to his one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, he thought of all the shit Kiersten had spewed at him during their many arguments. His job was depressing. He worked too many hours, and the pay wasn’t even that great. They needed more money. They needed a bigger house, nicer things.

  Their house had been in Everett, and despite all the crap she’d given him about money, Kiersten wasn’t vindictive. She knew he couldn’t afford to keep up mortgage payments and get an apartment near the city. Instead, she’d gone back to her parents’ house in Southie, and they’d put the Everett house up for sale. Any equity would be split between them.

  Michael sighed, feeling a weight compress his chest.

  He’d never understood most of Kiersten’s complaints but at the base of them was her foremost: that he was distant with her. That he kept putting off having kids with her.

  At the time, Michael hadn’t delved into it. He thought he was doing his best as a husband. After that ill-timed vacation in Hartwell to fix things between them, he realized all the crap Kiersten had been giving him over the years came from that belief—that he was distant with her.

  That he didn’t love her the way she loved him.
/>   Seeing his reaction to Dahlia—finding out who she was—it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  They’d gone home the next morning, and Kiersten packed a suitcase and left.

  The weight tightened like a vise around his ribs, and he squeezed his hands around the steering wheel. Of all the places to bump into Dahlia McGuire, it would be on fuckin’ vacation.

  Seeing her had messed with his head. He’d thought he’d get over it like he did her leaving in the first place, but the memory of seeing her in that bookshop lingered. The stricken look on her face kept replaying over and over in his head.

  She had to be as beautiful as he remembered, didn’t she? She couldn’t have gotten bitter and old-looking. No, that would be too fair. His own bitterness twisted in his chest. Michael hadn’t even known it was still there. He’d thought meeting Kiersten four years ago, settling down with her, meant he’d moved on.

  Clearly, he hadn’t.

  But Michael would not make the same mistake twice.

  The woman Michael had fallen in love with had died when Dillon died, and the person left behind in her body was a coward who’d proven she didn’t love him the way he had loved her.

  Michael pulled up to the triple-decker that had been converted into apartments and stared up at the second floor where his small one-bedroom was housed. Thirty-four years old and he was staying in a fuckin’ bachelor pad, starting over again.

  He thought of Bronson and Kiersten. His wife wasn’t a stupid woman. She was strong and opinionated, and he’d always thought she was up-front about how she felt. But if she was now dating Nick after telling Michael for months that his job was the problem, then she’d been lying.

  Michael rubbed a hand over his face, remembering their argument in their hotel room in Hartwell after he’d told her who Dahlia had been to him.

  “All this time, Mike? All this time and I thought it was your preoccupation with your job. I hated your job. I blamed everything about it on why things between us weren’t right. But it wasn’t the long hours or that look you’d get on your face that told me you’d just seen something awful again, or that we couldn’t afford a bigger place on your salary. All of that was shit.