Free Softer Than Steel (A Love & Steel Novel) by Jessica Topper Page B

reconsider our current arrangement, yes.”
    “So why not make it a quick, small thing and be done with it?”
    “Believe me, I suggested that. He’s the one who wants his mother and Natalie, and my family and
all
the friends, mutual and exclusive, together for one big shindig.” She squinted out to where the late-day sun was bouncing blindingly off the water before turning back to Rick. “Adrian may say it’s me who wants the fairy-tale wedding, but it’s really him.”
    “He always did like tales.” Rick smirked. “But they usually had bloodletting and gore and medieval weaponry of some kind.”
    “I don’t care if he shows up for the wedding in full chain mail, carrying a cat-o’-nine-tails. As long as he comes home with me at the end of the night as my husband.”
    Kat’s comment caused the tension in Rick to break like the tiny whitecaps rushing to the shoreline. An unbridled laugh escaped. “You really do love the hell out of him, don’t you?”
    She responded, just as Adrian had happily reported she had after he proposed to her using just a Sharpie marker, an antique emerald ring and two stone lions as his witnesses. “YES!”
    * * *
    25 May
    It’s evening, my love. I’m in bed in a stranger’s room, staring up at a photo collage of twenty-five-year-old me. It feels very odd—not so much that I’m in a strange bed; I’ve gotten used to that again. No, it’s the fact that I have no recollection of even being present when these pictures were taken, let alone printed in magazines for the world to see. I’m wearing that shirt you gave me, the loud tropical one I never liked, but you loved. As if you foresaw us destined for Hanalei one day.
    The purple naupaka on the
mauka
side of the house was blooming like mad when I left for our European tour. I hacked away the lot last year, but it all came back with a vengeance. Its half flower shape saddens me, and they still smell like you. Impossible to think a flower could mimic a person’s scent, but I swear on my life, these do.
    There’s a picture of you and me with Miles up here on the wall as well. Remember our sound engineer? We lost Miles this spring—prostate cancer took him quick. Did you know he was Jewish? I didn’t. We never talked about that kind of thing on the road. The family needed a minyan, so yours truly got a starring role. I recited the Mourner’s Kaddish, like I do for you each year.
Yitgadal v’yitkadash . . .
    Fuck cancer in its motherfucking arse.
    I’ve almost filled a notebook, writing to you since the tour started. Ever since I found those postcards, I’ve felt compelled. I cannot believe you saved every single one.
    I should’ve written you more, Simone. Out of the blue, just because. Love notes for when just walls, not even continents, separated us.
    * * *
    Feck. It was happening again. Starting like a seedling. Nudging, itching at the back of Rick’s brain. Waking him with a jolt. Cold dread iced up his spine, nourishing the fear in his head until it became a reedy whip of a sapling. It smacked him with horrible thoughts of
this may be it, this may be the big one, are you ready for this, you’re going to die, you’re dying alone, it’s here.
When he tried to shake away the thoughts, his mind began to buzz like an amplifier. Rendered helpless, unable to think logically with all the static and feedback.
    Then the sweating began, flashes of toxic heat irradiating his entire six-foot frame. The bowels in an uproar. He vaulted from the attic bed to the bathroom and back again.
Lie down. Calm down. It’s nothing. The doctor checked you out before the tour started. You’re fine.
His heart blasting beats as quick as Lars Ulrich on the double bass drum pedals.
    Why me? Why now?
    Stress. Don’t they call it the silent killer?
    Rick cursed himself. He should never have stepped off that bus in the first place. He should be in Boston with the others, not stuck with the consolation prize of Adrian and Kat’s company as