Yes, loved.
She still loved her beefcake.
Lying in his arms, listening to the water, she’d pictured their forever life.
A life with Sebastian and their friends.
A life where Anders and Alec would visit, and they’d dwell in a cocoon of Pun-chi yoga bliss with donkeys grazing in the yard. On the sandy beach with the ocean stretched before them, everything had made sense. A beautiful symmetry had taken hold.
Little did she know that the balance had hinged on an unsteady precipice. It teetered on a rocky foundation like what she’d experienced after her mother passed, and her father’s broken promises had stacked up, one on top of the other.
Her happily ever after with Raz was contingent on him beating the Irish Snake.
His rules, not hers.
And there was no guarantee that if he won, he’d finally find peace.
That wasn’t love. It was torture.
“Have you spoken to Raz?” Harper asked, pulling her from her thoughts.
Libby stared ahead, her vision going blurry. “No, he made it clear that his priority was to win and that he didn’t want me to get in the way of his training.”
Did it hurt to hear him say that?
Yes, like nothing she’d ever known.
“I’m not sure it’ll make you feel any better, Libbs,” Charlotte began with a crease to her brow, “but no one has heard from him. Oscar and I got together with Callista, Calliope, and Sebastian yesterday and took the boys to the zoo. The girls told me that, as far as they knew, Raz was either at Augie’s place in Denver or sleeping on a cot in the gym. He hasn’t returned any of their calls or texts either.”
“And Rowen says that he’s not responding to their group chat,” Penny added.
Harper blew out an audible breath. “He’s gone dark.”
H was right—and not only when it came to shunning communication.
Even separated, she could still feel him and sense his energy like she could with her friends, her brothers, and even Sebastian. When she pictured Raz, he wasn’t surrounded by the blue-violet aura. Conflicted and laden with anguish, his light had dimmed to a murky, desolate gray—just like her light had. They’d become the black-and-white versions of themselves, barely surviving, their chi as balanced as a stormy sea.
“It’s what he thinks he has to do to honor the memory of Sebastian’s mom,” she explained, but she couldn’t believe that Meredith would want this for the man she’d loved.
At night, when she was helping Sebastian prepare for bed, she’d gaze at Meredith’s picture in the pocket watch to get a feel for her.
And she had.
There was no malice in the woman’s eyes, only love and kindness. She couldn’t imagine Meredith wanting Raz to harbor such pain.
But he’d chosen to embrace the darkness and bask in agony.
She’d sensed the shift in the man the moment Silas had evaded his punch.
Near palpable doubt had flooded the man’s psyche, his aura instantly blackening. But it wasn’t only doubt in his abilities as a boxer. The seething emotion had caused him to question their connection—their love. She’d felt it like a prick to her heart.
It really sucked to be highly intuitive some days.
“That’s some heavy stuff,” Penny replied.
“That episode at the airport really threw him for a loop,” Charlotte offered.
“And Silas Scott is a real asshat—like a topnotch sleazeball. No wonder they call him the Snake,” Harper growled.
“Believe me,” Libby said, hating to hear the defeat in her tone. “I’d love to give Silas Scott a swift kick to the chakras, but it wasn’t Silas Scott that made this happen. Sure, the fight at the airport messed with Raz’s head, but cutting everyone off in a quest to win is his choice. Just like it was my dad’s choice to keep moving the goalposts, keep making and breaking promises.”
“What happens if Raz wins the fight?” Charlotte asked.
“I keep asking myself the same question. He wants to honor his wife’s memory. I understand that. I do. But will winning this fight be enough? Will he decide he needs to fight someone else even if he wins? Will he ever win enough to fill the hole inside of him?”
There it was.
The crux of it all.
Penny leaned forward. “What are you going to do, Libbs?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’ve been hiding out in your fiancé’s building,” she answered through a sad little chuckle when her cell pinged an incoming text, and the breath caught in her throat.
Char gasped. “Is it Raz?”
Libby checked her phone, heart pounding. “No, it’s Hash Pants, my old landlord. Remember him? He’s the guy who sublet his great aunt’s apartment to me.”
“I call him Smash Cakes,” Harper chimed. “And he’s set up a meeting with our Libbs and his aunt Ida.”
“It’s probably nothing,” Libby countered. “Ida found something in the apartment that the movers didn’t put into storage, and she wants to give it to me in person at the rec center.”
“Picking this rec center is sort of strange, don’t you think? Of all the places in Denver to meet, she chooses a place close to your heart,” Penny mused.
It was a little odd, come to think of it. This rec center was a good twenty minutes from her old place. But hadn’t she seen Ida here? Hadn’t she caught a glimpse of a woman resembling Ida entering the building?
“Do you want us to come with you?” Char asked, snapping her back.
Libby stood and pocketed her cell. “I’m good. I’ll be okay on my own. With my luck, she probably found a forgotten vibrator.”
“Or ten,” Harper teased. “You are the queen when it comes to battery-operated boyfriends. Even people floating around in outer space know it,” H finished, gifting her with a grin, but there was concern in her sassy friend’s eyes.
Penny rested her arms across the back of the bench and eyed Charlotte. “We’ll hang out here and reminisce about the time Char forgot she was wearing a skirt, hung upside down from the monkey bars, then flashed half of the boys in our fifth-grade class.”
“That wasn’t me,” Charlotte shot back, her red hair whipping over her shoulder as she gawked at Penny. “That was Harper.”
“Oh, no, that was you, Char,” Harper corrected. “Wait, no, I think it was you, Penn.”
Penny’s jaw dropped. “Oh my gosh, it was me, wasn’t it?”
Libby drank in her girls, and her battered heart took comfort in their presence. “I love you guys.”
“We love you, too, Libbs,” the girls replied as the foursome embraced.
“Now, go get your ten vibrators,” Harper directed. “We’ll be here to help you carry the load.”
They would. They always would.
Libby gave her friends one last look, then headed toward the rec center, listening to the girls go back and forth over the case of the fifth-grade flashing, so grateful to have these women in her life. But as the sounds of the playground and her besties’ chatter faded away, a strange sense of déjà vu set in.
She came around a gentle bend and spied a stack of rocks and her heart ached. “How is this the right path?” she whispered to herself as a black blur flashed in her peripheral vision.