“Kate didn’t seem to care about any of that. She just liked me. And I was dazzled by her. I was never really in love with Kate. Not like I should have been. It took me a long time to realize that.” His eyes connect with mine for a time. Then, he looks away. “With Kate, at first, it was lust. I was nineteen, and she was hot. And then, as time went on…I guess I loved the idea of Kate more than I did her.”
But you asked her to marry you.
I bite my tongue to stop from speaking. I literally bite it, and I get the sharp metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
“We graduated and moved in together. It was what she wanted, and it seemed to be the logical thing to do. So, I went along with it to keep her happy. I was in the process of setting up Hunter Airways and that was taking all of my time. I needed easy at that time.” He sighs. “But it wasn’t easy. She was always bitching that I was never around, that I never had time for her, that the business was more important to me. To a degree, that was true. I did care more about my business and having it succeed. I didn’t want to be like my father, a fucking leech. I wanted to prove that I could make something of myself.”
“And you have,” I say softly.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “But back then, that was all that mattered. Still does now, to a certain degree.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having passion for your business.”
“I guess not.” He blows out a breath. “Kate didn’t see it that way though. Right from the beginning of our relationship, she always said that I was distant, that I never let her close. She was right about that, too. I do have a hard time with letting people in.”
You’ve let me in. You’re doing it right now.
I don’t say those words because making him aware of it won’t help things. It won’t help me.
“So, one night, after I got back late from a business trip, I went home. I walked in the door, and her suitcases were packed and waiting by it.”
“Was this your home with Kate?” My eyes look around his bedroom.
“No.” He softly shakes his head. “I couldn’t afford a place like this back then. We had a small apartment in West London.”
“Oh.” I’m glad for that. I guess I would’ve felt a little weird, spending time here…sleeping in the bed…that was his home with Kate. “Did she leave?” I ask.
I’m guessing she came back if he asked her to marry him.
“No. I didn’t see it, but it was a way for her to get what she wanted from me.”
“Which was?”
“Marriage. Kate knew that I had abandonment issues. She knew I didn’t want her to leave. And she also knew I didn’t want to get married. Not to her or anyone. I’d always been clear on that. Still, she was always bringing it up, hinting about it. And I was always avoiding the subject. So, she threatened to leave me to get what she wanted. But I just couldn’t see that at the time.”
“But you asked her to marry you when you didn’t want to. You must have loved her, Liam, to sacrifice your own wants like that.”
He shakes his head. “I thought I was losing her. And, back then…I didn’t want to lose Kate. Things with her…they were easy. Comfortable. Safe. I guess that was the problem all along. But, back then, I needed the stability she was offering me. So, I knee-jerked and asked her to marry me to make her stay.” His gaze lowers as he lets out a soft breath. “I guess…I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to come home every night after work to an empty apartment.”
I can understand that.
“And she stayed?”
He lets out a humorless laugh. “Yeah. And, like the idiot I was, I couldn’t see that I’d just been manipulated. If Kate had really wanted to leave me, if I’d made her that unhappy, then she’d have left, no matter what I’d said. But she stayed. Why? I’ll never know. Sure, I had money, but no more than her family had back then, and most of mine was invested in the business. I didn’t have the money I have now.”
How can he think that? That someone would want him only for his money. How can he not see his own worth?
“But after I asked her to marry me, she was the happiest I’d seen her in a long time. Yeah, I guess that made me feel good, like I’d done something right for once. And things were good for a while. Kate was planning the wedding, and I was working hard to grow the business.” He rubs his hand over his face. “Deep down, I knew that marrying someone I wasn’t in love with wasn’t the best idea, but I wasn’t ready to lose another person from my life. I might not have been in love with her, but Kate was my friend. I guess, at the time, she was my best friend—or so I’d thought.”
“What happened?”
He lets out a laugh. It’s not humorous. It’s tortured.
“She died.”
Then, I remember that night in the pub and Cam saying something about a funeral…Kate’s funeral. Shit, how did I not remember that?
Oh God.
His fiancée. And his mother.
They both died.
And I’m dying.
He might not love me like he did them. But he does care about me.
What have I done? What am I doing?
I can’t hurt him.
“Liam…I’m so sorry.” I reach out and wrap my hand around his wrist.
What am I sorry for? My own betrayal? Or their deaths?
Both, I think.
He stares down at my hand on his arm. Then, his eyes flick back to mine. “Don’t be. I’m not. I know that sounds harsh, and I am sorry that Kate died, for her and her family. But the Kate I thought I knew wasn’t the person she was. The Kate who told me she loved me. The Kate who wanted to marry me. Yeah, I didn’t bury that Kate. I buried Kate, the liar. Kate, the cheat.” His eyes move from mine. “She’d been having an affair with Jeremy.” His eyes come back to mine. “And not just a one-off fling. They’d been sleeping together pretty much from the time she and I’d gotten together.”
“Jesus Christ.” The breath rushes out of me.
“Six years, I was with her. Six years, she was sleeping with him and lying to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
He lets out a humorless laugh. “I didn’t for a long time. But I guess she wanted her cake and to eat it, too.”
“No, Liam.” I stare into his eyes. “I mean, I don’t understand how someone could have you and want anything else. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Something flickers in his eyes, and it has my heart beating faster. But it’s gone as quickly as it appeared, and he’s no longer looking at me.
“Clearly, I wasn’t enough for Kate. Maybe she wanted Jeremy right from the start. Maybe I was a way to get close to him. I don’t know. What I do know is, Jeremy wasn’t willing to give her the things she could get me to give her—marriage…and kids as well, I’m assuming. She always was good at manipulating me into giving her what she wanted. Apparently, she was in love with both of us—or so she claimed.”
“How did you find out?”
“If you’re thinking Kate or Jeremy told me, then you’d be wrong. If she were still alive now, I’d probably be the dumb fuck who knew nothing—married to her, giving her half of everything I’d worked hard for. And she’d have still been fucking him. No, I found out after she died. The night before her funeral.”
“Jesus, Liam.” I can’t think of anything else to say.
“It was six months before we were supposed to get married. She’d gone to Switzerland on a skiing trip with her girlfriends. I was in America at the time—Boston, of all places.” He looks at me. “I was setting up the office we have there for the airline. I got the call in the early hours of the morning. She was an experienced skier, but she took a hard turn. She fell off a ravine. She broke her neck. They say she died instantly.
“I flew straight there. I packed up her things in her hotel room, but I didn’t go through them. I just packed, and then I left. I arranged everything else. I brought her body back home, so her parents could bury her.
“The night before
her funeral, I was going through her things. I guess…I was missing her. Her phone was in her bag. She’d left it in her room. The battery was dead, so I plugged in the charger. There was a bunch of text messages. Some were from friends after she’d died, just saying how much they missed her. I scrolled back to see if there were any from before she died.
“There were two texts sent before she died while she must have been out skiing. One was from me, saying that I’d call her when I woke up. The other was from Jeremy. It wasn’t odd to me, that they texted, as they were friends, just like she was with Cam and Eddie, too. But this text was different. It said for her to call him when she was back. His dick was hard because he was thinking about her. He missed fucking her.
“I opened the message and then started reading back through their string of messages. There was…a lot of things said, and there were pictures.”
I close my eyes, feeling his pain like it’s my own.
“I got obsessed with finding out how long it had been going on. I knew, if I asked Jeremy, he’d just fucking lie. He’d been fucking my fiancée and lying to me about that, so I wasn’t going to believe shit he might have to say. So, I got into her emails. There was more in there. She had a secret folder, but I found it. And there it all was. Emails between them, dating back years. I read each and every email. They’d started sleeping together not long after she and I started dating. From what the emails said, he wouldn’t give her what I would. A few times, they’d called it off. But then, it would start back up again.
“By the time I was done reading the emails, it was morning, and I had to go to her funeral. So, I got showered and dressed. I climbed into the funeral car, sat next to her parents, and rode to the church. And I stood there at the funeral, staring at her coffin, and when the time came, I stood up and read my eulogy. All the while, I knew what she’d done to me. How she’d lied and betrayed me for all those years.
“And he was there. Sitting in the pew, acting the part of the supportive and grieving friend. I couldn’t look at him. If I had, I’d have lost it, and I didn’t want to do that to her parents. They’d always been good to me.
“And when her funeral was over, I had to go back to her parents’ house for the wake. And I was so fucking ready for it to be over. But I went because, if I didn’t, I knew it would raise questions. So, I drank and talked to people and avoided Jeremy. Then, the stupid cunt just had to come over and talk to me.”
He lets out a hard laugh. “He stood in front of me and told me how he was there for me, no matter what. How sorry he was that I’d lost Kate. How he missed her, too.” Liam blows out a breath. “I fucking lost it. I hit him. He went down from the one punch. If he hadn’t, I’d have pummeled him to death. Then, I walked out of her parents’ house, and I didn’t look back.”
“What happened after that?”
Liam huffs out a breath through his nose. “He rang me. The stupid fucker would dare face me, so he rang me. He knew. He saw on his phone that the last message he’d sent to Kate had been finally delivered. Maybe he was just hoping her phone had died along with her. But he was smart enough to figure out I was the one who had seen his text message. He even tried to lie to me then. Said it hadn’t been going on for long. That they’d only slept together just before she went away to Switzerland.
“I told him that I knew everything. I’d seen the texts and pictures dating back a few months that she had on her phone. She hadn’t even felt the need to delete them in fear of me seeing them. She had known I was that fucking trusting and gullible. I told him that I found out it’d been going on the whole time she and I were together. I told him that she’d kept the emails they’d been sending all that time. Guess she was fucking sentimental in that respect. Shame she didn’t feel the same way about me.
“He cried. He actually cried. Begged me to forgive him. Said he was sorry. I told him that he was as dead to me as she was. Then, I hung up the phone, and I haven’t spoken to him since. Well, not until last week when I saw him at Cam’s.”
Liam’s reaction makes a whole lot more sense to me now. How he was so territorial and possessive over me while Jeremy was there.
“They were both fools. And I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but Kate was a bitch, and she never deserved a second of your time. You were too good for her, Liam.”
Just how I don’t deserve you. You’re too good for me, Liam Hunter.
I swear, if Kate is in heaven, when I get up there, I’m going to kick her ass all the way to hell.
I rest my palm against his cheek again. He takes my hand and presses a kiss to my palm.
Then, something occurs to me, making me frown. “But Cam and Eddie are still friends with Jeremy?”
Liam brings my hand down, holding it to his chest. I can feel his heart beating strong and well.
“They don’t know the truth. I didn’t tell them. The only person who knows is my grandpa.”
“Why didn’t you tell them?” My frown twists into confusion.
“Because…I guess a part of me was embarrassed that it had been happening under my nose for so long, and I didn’t know.”
“Do you think they knew?”
“No.” He vehemently shakes his head. “Jeremy was always a selfish fuck, so his behavior wasn’t completely surprising. But not Cam and Eddie. If they’d known, they would have told me.”
“I’m glad. But you still should’ve told them.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m glad you had your grandpa to talk to about it.”
He gives me a half-smile but doesn’t say anything.
He lets go of my hand and strokes my face with his fingers, running my hair behind my ear. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says softly.
I flatten my palm on his chest, moving my fingers through the soft hair there. “I’m glad I’m here, too.”
But I don’t deserve to be.
I’m lying to him. Like Kate did. Maybe not in the same way or for the same reasons, but I am deceiving him.
And deceit in any form is just the same at the end of the day.
Lies. They cause the same horrific damage.
Liam doesn’t deserve to be lied to anymore. And he doesn’t deserve to be hurt—far from it. He deserves everything good that life has to offer.
But how can I tell him that I’m dying? That I want to die.
I can’t. Because I’m afraid.
I really am as selfish as I always believed myself to be.
If I were a better person, I would tell him. But I’m not a better person.
I’m Taylor Shaw, the coward. The selfish bitch.
The destroyer of lives.
But I don’t have to be that person anymore. I can leave him and clear my conscience, knowing that, while I was still breathing, I didn’t fail at the last thing I did here on earth.
I could tell him the truth.
Be worthy of the time and care he’s given to me.
But then I fear that he would try to talk me out of my decision.
He could only talk me out of it if I wanted to be talked out of it.
And I don’t. I can do this.
I can tell him.
The words are there. Right on the tip of my tongue.
It would be so easy to tell him…well, not easy, but right. And freeing, not having to lie to him anymore.
I can tell him the truth, tell him everything. About my family. What I did to them. How their deaths are on my hands. Tell him that the tumor is back. But that it’s okay. Because I want to die. I want to be with them.
That this tumor is setting me free, so I can be with them.
But then he moves closer to me, pressing his body to mine, and he kisses me.
I let him. And then I use that as the excuse to let the truth stay locked in my mind.
And when he breathes against my lips, “I want you,” I tell him to take me.
I say nothing when he lifts my leg, placing it over his hip. Tilting me back slightly, he pushes his leg beneat
h mine on the bed, putting my other leg between his. Keeping us both on our sides, our bodies pressed together, eyes locked on each other, he slowly slides inside me.
“You’re so wet already,” he whispers.
I shut out the voice in my head that’s yelling at me to stop this. Urging me to tell him the truth.
“Because I want you.”
And I do want him. That’s the problem.
I want him badly. Enough to keep me selfish to hide the truth from him.
Because, deep down inside, I know that, if I tell Liam the truth, I’ll let him change my mind. The weak part of me…my heart…she wants him so very badly. She wants to stay here with him, like this, forever.
And if I give her that window of opportunity, she’ll take it, and I won’t be able to stop her.
But I can’t do that.
I can’t stay. I have to go.
I owe my family that much. I need their forgiveness. I need to hear them say they forgive me.
So, I’ll keep lying to Liam, which means I can be with him during the time I have left.
Selfish Bitch Taylor.
Maybe when I get to heaven and kick Kate’s ass to hell, I’ll take my own selfish, lying ass there, too.
Holy God.
Liam is standing outside my hotel room door, wearing one of his three-piece suits. It’s blue, his shirt is white, and his tie is red. Like the colors in his company logo. His hair is all slicked back and parted over to the side. He looks hot and sexy and gorgeous and a million other adjectives that describe how amazing a person can look.
Liam wearing a suit isn’t something new to me. But with the way he’s wearing his hair, the tender smile in his eyes, the colors of his clothes…the very colors that I have branded on my skin in the form of his name…he just looks different somehow.
I lift my eyes heavenward. God, you did really good when you made Liam Hunter. Really, really good.
I bring my eyes to him and smile. “Well, look at you, all handsome and hot.”
He catches me around the waist, pulling me to him. “You look beautiful and hot and sexy. I want to lift this dress up and get down on my knees, so I can put my mouth on your pussy and taste you right now,” he whispers over my mouth before pressing his lips to mine.
The Ending I Want Page 26