by Holly Renee
But once he was gone, I was completely aware that only Liam and I remained.
“Why didn’t Jase and Sophie come again?” I picked up my bag and opened it like I was going to find something inside to save me.
“They couldn’t get out of work. That’s the sucky part of having a nine to five, I guess.”
I picked up my phone out of my bag. “Oh. I think Kennedy called. I better call her back.”
Liam pulled my phone from my hand before tossing it back down in my bag. “You’re not getting out of this, Brooke. Get your ass out of those clothes and let’s go.”
He sat down directly across from me, as if he was waiting for a show, and I hated that I somewhat felt self-conscious in front of him. I didn’t do self-conscious.
Not anymore.
I pulled my shirt over my head before tossing it in my bag, and I could feel Liam watching my every movement. I was wearing a red strapless bikini. It was modest to some, bordering on obscene to others. But I didn’t care.
I pulled my shorts down my legs then faced Liam with my arms crossed. “I really don’t think me getting in that lake is a good idea. I can’t even touch here.”
His gaze was lazy as he drug it from the tip of my toes all the way up until it reached my eyes. “Are you scared of the water?”
“No.” I pointed out toward the lake where everyone else was swimming without a damn worry. “But I can’t see through this water and something could eat me.”
He grinned, a huge, annoying grin. “There’s nothing in this water that will eat you.”
He stood up and I watched as he put the float in the water right in the front of the boat.
“Alligators.” He was crazy if he thought an alligator wouldn’t eat me.
“There are no alligators in Tennessee.”
Hmmm, I wasn’t sure if he was being honest or not. “Fish?”
“They might nibble on you, but they’re not going to eat you.” He grabbed a small cooler and set it in the center of the float.
That sounded terrifying.
“I didn’t think you were scared of anything.” He turned back toward me and tugged on my ponytail. “Get your ass on that float or I’ll throw you in.”
I turned my face to look at him in shock, but it was a mistake. His face was so damn close to mine, his lips barely a whisper away. It was probably the heat that was causing me not to think clearly, because all I could think about was pressing my lips against his.
“Liam, are you and your girl coming or what?” someone yelled from the water, and I was thankful for the distraction from his lips.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, and I wondered if he was just as distracted as I was. “We’re coming.”
He jumped in the lake, splashing cool water onto the boat, and as soon as he came up, he patted the seat of the float. “Let’s go, babe.”
I walked to the edge of the boat, and I looked out. I could see half the people watching us, and the other half pretending that they weren’t. I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his friends, but wasn’t he the one who said they all shouldn’t like me so much.
I pressed a toe against the float, and it seemed pretty wobbly.
“Just get on the damn float, Brooke. I’ve never known you to be a chickenshit.”
I narrowed my eyes at him behind my sunglasses. I hated that he knew how to push my buttons, but I refused to let him win. I bent down, pulling the float closer to me, and I climbed on while silently praying I didn’t fall in.
My butt touched the cold water along with my feet, but miraculously everything else stayed on the float.
“Was that so hard?” Liam flicked some water at me, but I ignored him and leaned my head back into the sun. If I was going to be out here, the least I could do was get a good tan out of it.
The float started moving, hard, and I gripped the nonexistent handles while Liam started climbing onto the float with no care if it tipped over or not.
“I swear to God, Liam, if you tip this over.”
He plopped into the seat without an ounce of grace and looked over at me with a smile on his face and water trickling down his neck. “What? What will you do?”
“Something.” I pointed my finger at him, but he only laughed.
He wasn’t scared of me in the least.
He started paddling, moving us away from our boat, and I laid back, not helping him at all.
There were at least ten other boats tied up alongside ours and probably forty people swimming and hanging out on the boats. It was odd. I had never been to a floating party like this in my life.
Several people yelled their hellos and welcome homes to Liam, and I wasn’t surprised to see how many of them were vying for his attention.
“So, Brooke. What do you do?” one girl who was sitting on the edge of a boat with her feet splashing in and out of the water asked. I had already forgotten her name.
“I run a salon. You?”
Liam was talking to some guy at his side and paying us no attention.
“I’m a bartender.”
She was hot, and I was sure she made tons of tips, so I told her so.
“I bet the tips are good.”
“They are.” She smiled. “It’s the only reason I haven’t quit yet. Oh. Hey, Katie!”
She was waving at a girl on a boat that just pulled up, and I wouldn’t have paid her any attention if she wasn’t so pretty and the guy who was supposed to be my boyfriend didn’t tense up like someone had just yelled that there was a shark in the water.
I looked over at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was bouncing back and forth between the guy he was talking to and the brunette on the boat.
She was gorgeous, in that effortless beauty sort of way. Her dark hair was tied into a bun on the top of her head, but soft curls had fallen out and framed her face. Her nose was covered in freckles from the sun and good genetics, and if Liam didn’t seem so affected by her, I would admit that she was by far the prettiest girl out here.
“Hey!” Katie waved over at the group with a huge smile on her face, but I caught the moment it faltered. The moment her eyes landed on Liam.
Whatever was going on between them or had gone on between them, it had affected them both, and it was complete bullshit that something I didn’t know a thing about, had no business knowing, seemed to be affecting me too.
She seemed to catch herself and the way she was staring at Liam as some guy took a seat next to her. She looked up and shared a sweet smile with him before she finally looked at me.
She still had a smile on her face, and I had a feeling that she rarely let that smile slip. It looked too practiced and perfected, almost exactly the way Liam’s was. But her eyes were pinched in the corners, and I knew she wanted to know who the hell I was as badly as I wanted to know the same about her.
She stood, jerking her gaze away from me as if she couldn’t take another second of it, and I watched as she jumped into the water without a second of fear.
Whoever this girl was, she had meant something to Liam or she still did, and I couldn’t stop watching him as he watched her.
Eight
My Girlfriend, Brooke
Liam
If I had known that Katie was going to be here, I would have never brought Brooke. Hell, I wouldn’t have come at all.
I hadn’t seen her in so long I was a little shocked looking at her. She looked almost exactly the same as the day I left, but she looked so different as well.
So much had changed.
We had both changed.
When Tucker and I decided to move away from Tennessee, I had thought Katie would be coming with us. She went everywhere with me. She had for years. While my focus was completely on her, I was a fool for not seeing that hers was on someone else. The same someone else that was now helping her back into his boat.
“Who’s that?” Brooke’s voice startled me, and I realized I had barely taken my eyes off Katie since she arrived.
Shit.
“That’s no one.” I took a long pull from my beer and tried to settle the small ache that still echoed in my chest.
“It’s definitely someone.” She said the words for only me to hear, and I wondered if I was crazy for thinking there was a bit of jealousy in her voice.
“Liam, it’s been a while, man.” I looked up at Brad as he pulled Katie into his side and wrapped an arm around her.
“It has.” I nodded my head. “I’ve been busy.”
“You here for the wedding?”
Fuck, I forgot that douchebag was friends with my cousin. I prayed him and Katie weren’t going to be there. Sitting through another boring damn wedding was bad enough.
“Yeah. My mom would have killed me if I didn’t come.”
“How is your mom?” My gaze finally met Katie’s as those words passed her lips. She didn’t get to ask me that. She didn’t get to pretend like she cared.
“She’s good.” I nodded just as Brooke’s hand slid into mine.
I looked over at her, a little startled by the gesture, but I could see it in her eyes. She knew. She didn’t have a clue who this girl was, but she knew that I was somehow bothered by her.
“Katie, this is my girlfriend, Brooke.” I didn’t take my eyes off her. “Brooke, this is Katie and Brad.”
Brooke turned away from me and lifted her hand over her eyes to block the sun as she looked up at them. That one simple move did amazing things for her breasts, and if I didn’t know any better, I would say she knew that too. Not that her damn breasts needed any help. I knew from the moment she pulled off her clothes and revealed that tiny red bikini beneath, I was in trouble.
“It’s so nice to meet you both. I love your suit.” She motioned toward Katie’s frilly white bikini.
It wasn’t lost on me how different the two of them were.
Katie was soft and meek, and Brooke was so far from the two of those things that I couldn’t even fathom describing her in that way. She was hardheaded and in your face and completely unapologetic about who she was.
Katie looked so pretty, she had always been so beautiful, and her pretty white swimsuit only seemed to reiterate that fact. Brooke, on the other hand, wasn’t pretty. That seemed like far too delicate of a word to describe her. She was fire. So damn hot, and impossible not to watch.
She was beautiful in an unforgettable sort of way. It wasn’t just her looks or her perfect damn body. It was the way she was always laughing or how she made everyone around her smile. Even on the shittiest of days. When I looked at her, I felt a bit frantic because I knew I would never see beauty like this again. She was terrifying and exhilarating at the exact same time.
Because I knew getting my heart broken by a girl like Brooke would be nothing like what happened with Katie. Brooke would destroy me piece by piece, and I wasn’t willing to give her the chance to do so.
I wasn’t a complete and total idiot.
“Thanks.” Katie was watching Brooke closely. “You too.”
I grinned because I knew it was a lie. I knew Katie enough to know that she fucking hated Brooke’s suit, and not because she didn’t like the color or the cut. She hated it because Brooke looked so damn effortlessly beautiful in nothing but a scrap of red fabric and Katie was threatened.
Katie was always threatened.
Right on cue, she turned toward Brad, eager to kiss the guy who did nothing but drink beer with his boys and watch football ninety percent of his life, and she kissed him like she hadn’t seen him in forever.
I rolled my eyes at the effort.
It wasn’t fucking needed.
It didn’t bother me. It seemed to bother Brooke though.
She squeezed my hand, bringing my attention back to her, and honestly, I’m not sure how I ever looked away.
“She the ex?” She gently nodded her head toward Brad’s boat.
“That’s the one.” I was staring at her lips as she licked them.
“No wonder you’re scared of relationships. She looks like she’s probably as good at fucking as she is at making you jealous.” She ran her hand up my chest and I laughed as I watched the movement as if she was a viper about to strike at any moment. “Which is not at all, right?”
“Right.” I nodded my head, but I could barely register what she was saying with the way her nails bit into my skin.
“Then don’t let it show, lover boy.” Her fingers reached my chin and she tilted it in her direction as she moved her face closer to mine.
I knew this was fake.
Everything about it was.
But the way she watched my mouth didn’t seem fake, the way her breath caught as her lips pressed against mine. She nibbled on my bottom lip, and everything was suddenly too real.
I ran my tongue against her mouth, and she let out the tiniest moan as she let me inside. The way she tasted didn’t seem fake. Neither did the way her hand wrapped around the back of my neck or the way her tongue was fighting with mine for more.
A loud whistle rang out and I barely registered it. It wasn’t until I heard Andy’s loud mouth say, “Well, ladies. Pack it up. It seems our golden boy, Liam, has finally found the one,” that some sense was finally knocked into me.
I pulled my mouth away from Brooke with a laugh, and I avoided her eyes as I smiled.
I may have been their golden boy, but I hadn’t found anything. I was going to keep telling myself that over and over until I finally believed it.
Nine
The South
Brooke
“Go to Tennessee with Liam,” they said. “It will be a good vacation.”
Vacation my ass.
Unless you considered getting whiplash from the resident golden boy a vacation. Which let me be clear, I didn’t.
I had just gotten done telling Kennedy that too. She wanted to know all about it.
Was I having fun?
Were we in love yet?
That girl, she had jokes.
No. I was not having fun. Okay. Technically, I was having a little bit of fun, but I didn’t know one moment from the next if Liam was going to be hot or cold.
It was confusing, and it was fucking with my head.
“Good morning.” Liam’s mom, Sarah, was sitting on her front porch when I walked outside. I had no idea where Liam was. I just knew he wasn’t in the bed when I woke up and that he had been acting weird ever since I kissed him yesterday.
“Morning.” I took a seat in the rocking chair beside her.
“Liam went to the store with his dad to get some things to fix that old fence.” She lifted her coffee cup in the direction of a fence that looked perfectly fine to me.
“Okay.” I pulled one of my knees to my chest and slowly rocked in the chair.
“Liam doesn’t let many women in, you know.” She had a gentle smile on her face as she spoke.
“I know.” I knew all too well. Liam didn’t let anyone in.
“When he told me he was bringing you home for the wedding, I just about fell out of my chair.” She laughed and looked out over the view of the mountains in the distance. “The last girl I saw him with just about broke his heart. Or maybe she actually did.”
“Katie.” I finally said her name out loud. She had been all I had been able to think about since yesterday. The way she looked at Liam, but more importantly, the way Liam looked at her.
“Yeah. He tell you about her?”
“Not really.” I was honest with the woman for once. “But we saw her yesterday, and I saw the way he looked at her.”
She nodded as if she understood without even having to experience it. “She was his high school sweetheart. It didn’t matter how much I begged him to slow down, he thought that girl was going to be his future.”
Her words were like a sharp knife to the chest.
“But I knew she wasn’t. She never looked at him the way he looked at her. She was always too busy looking somewhere else.” She turned her head and looked at me. “Not you though. You look at him lik
e he hung the moon and all the stars.”
I was a little stunned by her words. I looked at him like that? I wasn’t meaning to.
“Don’t look so shocked.” She chuckled, and I tried to school my face. “My boy looks at you the same way.”
“He doesn’t.” I shook my head. I could pretend to be his girlfriend, but the last thing I wanted was for her to think her son was madly in love with me when it was the furthest thing from the truth.
“He does, love. It doesn’t matter what that boy tries to hide. I’m his mama, and I know I’ve never seen my boy look at someone the way he looks at you.”
Yeah, because he was a damn good actor.
“What happened with Katie?”
She leaned her head back, and I had a feeling she hated reliving this story. She hated remembering how her son got hurt.
“He was in love with her. They had been dating since they were sixteen years old. He couldn’t see a future that didn’t involve her.”
Stab. Stab. Stab.
“When he decided to start a business with Tucker, he thought she would be with him. But then he found out that she was sleeping with Brad.” She shook her head. “I never liked that boy, and God knows he doesn’t hold a candle to my son.”
Hear, hear.
“She begged Liam to take her back. Right here on this porch.” She pointed down at the wood deck. “She was a blubbering mess and kept saying it was a mistake, but he didn’t budge. Thank God. Once he found out that she cheated on him, he was done. Then he ran out of town with Tucker as fast as he could go.”
I shook my head, trying to imagine a heartbroken Liam. I didn’t even like the thought. “I didn’t know.”
“I’m not surprised.” She gave me a weak smile. “That’s one thing about Liam. He’s always kept everything to himself.”
“Yeah.” I completely understood that. “He’s a hard one to crack.”
“He’ll crack for you though. I just know it.” She seemed so sure of herself, and I hated that she was so wrong. Not only because I didn’t want this whole thing to blow up and hurt her, but I was worried it would hurt me too.