CHAPTER FOUR

When he was nineteen, Liam fell in love. The girl was called Opal, and she was as beautiful as her name, with iridescent eyes and silvery hair. He had read all of Tolkien as a young teen, and she made him think of Galadriel, the queen of elves. They met in a bar one July night during his winter break from uni, where he was dutifully and without excitement studying architecture. She was a restless backpacker from some suburb of Paris and had been on the road for nearly a year. She'd just landed in Auckland, and Liam was more than willing to play guide to her New Zealand travels. For a month, they wandered north and south, Liam leaning on a small stipend he'd inherited from his grandmother in Brisbane, Opal working in cafés and bars.

He was drunk on her. Her small, tanned breasts and musky scent, the lyrical song of her accent. She was aloof, ungiving, and it only made him work that much harder. They had a lot of sex, urgently and often in places where they risked discovery—bathroom stalls and gardens and once in a darkened doorway along a street in Wellington.

They smoked a ton of weed and drank way too much. It began to make him feel lost, unsure where he began and she ended. She absorbed him, and he was willingly sucked in, happy to become the sweat of her pores, the curve of her waist.

His best friend Krish grew increasingly freaked out. He showed up in Queenstown to try to talk sense into Liam, but he was too far gone. Krish stormed away, vowing he'd never speak to his friend again.

A year later, Opal abandoned Liam in Rishikesh for a deer-eyed Indian who swept her off to Delhi.

He was on the floor. Lost from the long sojourn into drugs and booze and love addiction, he wandered for another year, bouncing through one thing after another—a guru, a game, a lover, a promise.

Until he landed, quite by accident, in a Buddhist monastery. He was sick with withdrawal and despair, and they cared for him for three months, curing his physical ills, then curing his spiritual ones by teaching him the path of the Buddha and mindfulness.

Krish had found him there. Brought him home to Auckland, where Liam began teaching meditation, finding a large pool of hungry millennials. It was Krish who suggested the meditation app, well before apps for such things were common. As a result, they got in on the ground floor, and the app, with Liam as the host with his good looks and smooth voice, was a staggering hit. They'd hit a million followers within two years.

That had been seven years ago, and the business had grown into an empire.

Tonight, as he carried Tillie to her bed, he thought of what Krish would say about her. His attraction to her, more to the point. Her raven-black hair spilled over his arms. Her head fell on his shoulder. He thought she'd wake up once he got her on the bed and pulled off her boots, but she only murmured, a small noise of pain.

Her legs were clad in green tights. He lifted her knees and scooted her bottom sideways, then covered her with the duvet. She stirred, took his hand. "I'm afraid," she said.

"What can I do?" he asked quietly. Her lashes were dark against her pale skin, her mouth wide. She didn't seem to be in distress that he could see. Her respiration was even. Her skin wasn't too hot or too cold.

Again, he felt a ripple of recognition. He could swear he knew her, but he'd spent little time in the United States. How could they have met? Unless it was in another life, which many people in the world believed.

Her hand slackened in his, and he stood. Now that she was settled, he should go back to the hotel, get ready for his gig tomorrow. There would be nearly three hundred people waiting to hear from him, and he liked to spend an hour in deep meditation before such events. He owed them his best, most-centered self. It wasn't always possible, but he tried, always.

But he didn't want to leave her. He could sleep on the couch, nearby in case she needed help.

Her phone had fallen on the floor when she fainted. He picked it up and placed it nearby her on the bedside table so she wouldn't worry, then curled up on the sofa. The painting he'd noticed earlier kept watch, a naked woman and a wolf pup, savage and nurturing at once. This, too, triggered something just out of reach, but he couldn't draw it in. He closed his eyes. He'd just rest for a little while, then check on her and go back to his hotel.