Olivia’s chin raised a notch as though she’d relocated her backbone. “I think you’re a mean son of a bitch and she deserves better than that.”
Marlena did deserve better than him. There was no doubt. But she wanted him anyway, and he wanted her, and so the whole complicated mess boiled down to two very simple, mutual desires.
“Get this into your head.” He held his hands up, palms facing each other. “There’s you and me, and then there’s you and Marlena. And way over here, away from all that, is me and Marlena. See if you can visualize the walls that are between all these different relationships. You don’t talk to me about Marlena and I won’t talk to you about her, either. And we can pretend this conversation, right here, never happened.”
“Don’t see her again.”
Time for Olivia to leave before the argument got out of control. He turned his back to her and picked up the tape again, knowing that ignoring Olivia was the best way to force her to disengage, as juvenile as that seemed.
The trouble was, Olivia wasn’t getting the hint. She stomped to the window and turned to face him, forcing him to deal with her and her drama. “If you hurt her, I swear to God, Liam, I will never forgive you.”
“Why you gotta make such a big deal out of everything? Why can’t you just let things play out and see where the ride takes you?” That was a term Marlena had used when they were at the bar. He liked it; he liked the idea of strapping into a situation and letting it go where it would.
“Because I love you and I love her, and I want you both to be happy and healthy, just like I want Mom and Dad to be happy and healthy. I’m doing my best with Mom and Dad, but I’ve already lost you, and I won’t lose Marlena, too.”
He didn’t see what their parents had to do with any of this, and he wasn’t about to ask. She did have a point, though—an infuriating, but valid, point. As uncomplicated as he wanted their connection to be, the reality was that it was anything but simple. Not just because of Olivia, but because their families knew each other; they traveled in overlapping circles of friends and lived in the same town. Hell, he was going to be her landlord soon. The frustration of it all tore through him, snapping his control.
“You haven’t lost me. I’m standing right here, and if you’d just back off and give me some fucking space, you and I would be fine.” He kicked the bin of paint supplies. “And if you lose her, it won’t be because of me. It’ll be because you won’t stop trying to control the people in your life. God knows that’s why I can’t stand to be around you.”
Her eyes turned glassy with tears.
Shit. Liam ground his molars together and stormed past her into the living room. He shook out a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and had it lit before he’d reached the patio’s sliding glass doors. Marlena was just going to have to deal with the lingering stench because he needed a smoke to help him get a grip. How could it be that his sister, the person he was supposed to be closest to in the world, was the one who brought out the worst in him? How could it be that the only person he shared DNA with was the one he was compelled to hurt until he drew blood?
He felt Olivia’s eyes on him, though she didn’t move or speak. A glance her way told him she was standing in the same spot, crying silent tears. Wincing, he returned his focus to the horizon.
She was right. He was a mean son of a bitch. Odds were, he was going to hurt Marlena. Not physically, and not because he was an abuser, but because he couldn’t be what women needed. He couldn’t care more, or talk about his feelings more. He had zero desire to accompany his girlfriends to family get-togethers or to bullshit with their parents or friends, or take them to the movies, or out on double dates with their best friends and their boyfriends. Hell, he’d never once invited any of them to his apartment because that was his private sanctuary.
He hated those kinds of boyfriend duties, and so let himself off the hook from doing any of them, because Liam wasn’t a man who did things he didn’t want to do.
Except Friday night with Marlena, his conscience reminded him. That night, he’d made a lot of compromises he’d never been willing to make before.
“I miss the brother I had before you enlisted.”
Goddamn, she just had to go there. He dropped the cigarette to the patio floor and ground it out with his boot. “Then you might as well grieve for him because this, right here, is all I am anymore. Whoever you’re looking for, you’re not going to find him in me.”
Chapter Nine
On game night, Liam arrived in the Iceplex two hours before the scheduled start. Puck Norris, their opposition, was already on the ice conducting a last-minute warm-up practice. He watched them for a few minutes, studying the goaltender’s movements, before heading to the Bomb Squad locker room. He was no more than two feet in when Theo stopped him.
“Heads up. Marlena’s here. Pregame massages,” he said in a loud whisper.
Liam glanced around. He’d forgotten that was part of her deal with Duke. “Here, in the locker room?”
Theo tipped his head toward the back corner. “Yeah. She set up in the last row with her massage table and everything.”
That didn’t make a lot of sense to Liam. Seemed to him that they were supposed to be charging up for the game, getting pumped, not relaxing with massages as though they were at a day spa. Then again, at least part of Liam’s reticence stemmed from the awkward truth that, despite his intentions otherwise, he’d neglected to contact Marlena since their night together the previous Friday.
As a point of pride, he didn’t care what other people thought about him. He didn’t hold himself to society’s arbitrary standards—except that, with Marlena, he hadn’t wanted to be that guy who slept with a woman, then never called. He didn’t want to cheapen what happened between them by giving the impression that seducing her had been nothing more than the thrill of the hunt for him. But, despite his best intentions, therapy and his fight with Olivia got the better of him, then he got busy with work on apartment 710 and the days kind of bled together.
Will lumbered into the locker room and dropped his hockey bag on a bench while Theo gave him the same hushed warning.
“Whose bright idea was it to bring a chick into the locker room? Does that mean we have to watch what we say? What about changing into our uniforms?” Will said.
Elijah and Dante grumbled in agreement.
“I promise not to peek while you’re changing, and you can talk however the fuck you want,” came Marlena’s voice over the lockers, her emphasis on the curse word.
Her attempt at a joke fell on grim silence. Then, Brandon swaggered into the center of the room wearing nothing but black boxer briefs. “There’s only one thing I like better than hockey, and that is having a beautiful woman’s hands all over me. You all are free to stay here and jerk off. That’ll just leave more time for her to rub me down.”
The man had a point.
Not five minutes later, a groan of pleasure floated over the air. “Yeah, just like that,” Brandon said, his voice husky. “Damn, that’s good.”
Will laughed behind closed lips.
“What the hell is she doing to him?” Gabe said.
As though in response, Brandon grunted, then moaned. Hushed laughter rippled through the room. Liam tried to resist, but it was damn funny, and exactly the icebreaker the team needed.
Elijah whipped out his phone. “I need to get those noises recorded. I think we just found Brandon’s new ringtone.”
The sex noises continued for another few minutes, during which the rest of the team did little more than listen and laugh. It’d been a while since the mood among Bomb Squad had been fun and relaxed. Liam hadn’t realized until that moment how intense and serious they’d all been for the past several months, in the weeks leading up to the Wounded Veterans exhibition game in April and then during the losing streak that followed.
He’d mistakenly assumed that what they needed to do before the game was tap into their balls-to-the-wall competitive streaks, but perha
ps laughing and joking around would turn out to be what they needed.
Brandon emerged from the last row of lockers with a huge grin on his face. “That woman can put her hands on me any time she wants. I call dibs on first massage next week, too.”
“Did she massage your stump?” Gabe asked.
Brandon shook his head. “My right leg is off limits. The nerves are wonky. Instant hard-on.”
Gabe snickered. “I thought that was the point.”
“Sexual harassment lawsuit,” Marlena called in a singsong voice.
This time, the guys laughed out loud at full volume.
“Wouldn’t be the first time for Brandon,” Will said. “During his bet with Harper, she threatened to sue him almost every week.”
“Gee, thanks for bringing her up and crushing my vibe, Will.” He gave Will the bird, then headed to his locker.
“Who’s next?” Marlena called.
Liam raised a finger as a signal to the team. “I claim next.”
Time to get their first post-sex face-to-face over with. Apologies weren’t in his repertoire—those were about as hard for him as hellos and good-byes, but he owed it to her to try.
The massage table had been set up over the slim wooden bench running down the middle of the aisle. Marlena was dressed in tight clothes—black leggings and a high-neck cotton top—that didn’t reveal a glimpse of cleavage but outlined the shapes of her breasts like a second skin. Strapped around her hips was a belt with a holster that held a bottle of massage lotion. Judging by the look on her face, she couldn’t decide if she was happy to see him or if she was pissed that he hadn’t been in touch with her that week.
He cleared his throat, opting for levity. “That’s a good look for you, with the holster. You’re like a Wild West massage sheriff.”
She flashed him a look that was more cringe than smile. “God, that was a lame joke.”
“Yeah. It was.” He leaned against the table. “I didn’t call you this week. I’m sorry about that.”
Note to self: apologizing wasn’t as hard as he’d built it up to be in his mind.
“That’s understandable. We’re both busy. Your focus tonight should be on the game, and part of my business arrangement with Duke is to help you prepare for that. Get up on the table, stomach down and your face in the hole.”
It was a nice try, attempting to mask how pissed she was at him with that cool, all business tone. Any other situation, with any other woman, he would have shrugged off any further responsibility to make things right, especially after he’d put himself out there by apologizing. But he knew on an instinctual level that if he didn’t figure out a way to get himself out of the dog house with Marlena, he might never get the chance to see her again, romantically. Now that he knew what it felt like to kiss her, how she tasted, and how she moved on the dance floor, the idea of not seeing her again was absolutely unacceptable.
He pushed away from the table and crowded against her, his lips close to her ear. “Let me be clear: my lack of communication this week wasn’t a signal of my lack of interest, despite what it probably looks like from your perspective.”
“It doesn’t look very good from my perspective.”
He slid his hand from her waist to her ass and brushed his lips against her earlobe. Her ass was as juicy and fine as it ever was, and her skin smelled as sweet and tempting as he remembered. “Believe me when I say that I’m barely holding back the urge to prove my interest in you by backing you into the lockers and very quietly, very deliberately, bringing you to orgasm with my hand while the rest of the team preps for the game a few feet away.”
She flushed pink from her cheeks to her chest, highlighting the previously faint freckles on her skin. Gorgeous. Damn, he lusted after this woman. What an idiot he’d been not to show up at her door every night that week.
He lowered his mouth toward hers, but she stopped him with a finger to his lips. “I don’t believe you’ve earned that right.”
“Then I guess I’d better work on earning it back tonight. You want me to take my shirt off?” he said. She opened her mouth as though to speak, but nothing came out. Her pink skin turned two shades darker. “For the massage,” he added, pleased that he’d flustered her.
“Whatever you’re most comfort—” she started to say, but he was already stripping his shirt off.
He worked hard every day at his home gym and with yoga to keep his body in top form, and he liked it when girls noticed. He liked it even more that Marlena did tonight. Her gaze swept from his shoulders to the top of his hockey shorts at his belly button.
“On the table,” she repeated.
Liam had managed to avoid professional massages his whole life. Even overseas or when he’d been stationed in South Carolina and the guys in his barracks walked to the Asian massage parlor a few blocks outside of base. He’d had a few girlfriends who’d faked a massage pretty good as a way to straddle him and rub their hands all over. He was all for that, but this, with all her clothes on and nothing sexual happening, he didn’t much see the point of.
Still, he followed her instructions, sticking his face in the padded donut at the top of the table. “What do I do with my arms?”
“Along your body is fine.” She set her hand on his back, right at the nape of his neck, then sucked in a sharp inhale. She brought her other hand to his back, splaying both hands out along his shoulders. Not massaging him, but holding very still. “What happened to you this week?”
She sounded aghast, as though she’d found some big, gory bruise on his back. Maybe, being the new age guru she was, she felt all the painful shit he’d gone through with P.E.T. and Olivia.
“It wasn’t a very good week.” That was an understatement, but what was he supposed to say?
“I can feel that.”
Breathing audibly with long, steady exhales that mimicked the sound of the ocean in a conch shell, she moved her hands over his body with a light touch. No vigorous deep-tissue kneading as he’d expected after Brandon’s moaning and groaning.
He was settling into the sensations of it, the nearness of her and the quality of her touch, when she paused her motion at his shoulder, near the base of his neck. One of her fingers pressed into a pressure point that sent a wave of melancholy washing throughout his whole body.
He grunted under his breath at the shock of it. Just when he didn’t think he could stand it anymore, her finger moved to a new pressure point, rubbing in small circle. The wave of emotion it brought was more intense than the last.
“Breathe it out with me,” Marlena said with quiet authority. “We’ve got to get rid of all this garbage in here, Liam, and it’s going to take more than tonight.”
“What are you doing to me? Why does it feel that bad? Jesus, this sucks.”
“I know. Breathe through it.”
The longer and harder she pressed her fingers on various places on his neck, shoulders, and jaw, the more he felt like crying, though he had no idea why or how the pressure of a single fingertip could lay such utter waste to his composure. He thought about the kid, and about how sad he’d been this past week, how frustrated he was with Olivia. But mostly, rather than specific thoughts, he just felt wave after wave of anguish.
He had no idea how much time had passed when her touch finally lightened. With that same audible breathing, she brushed her flattened hands across his skin as though sweeping something away from him. Then she draped her body over his back, her face close to his as she embraced him, which he was fairly certain wasn’t a massage technique.
He turned his head to the side so he could see her, which is when he figured out that his eyes and nose were watering. He couldn’t even wipe away the evidence because she had his arm pinned to his side with her body. “Let me sit up.”
She moved back a step so he could roll to his side, then sit. He grabbed his shirt and scrubbed it over his face. “No offense, but I don’t think I like massages.”
She gave him a weak smile. “You didn’t answ
er me before, so I’ll ask again. What happened to you this week?”
Normally, there’d be no way he’d spill his guts to a woman he wanted to sleep with again, but Marlena was different, somehow. She’d already sensed his deep pain and had forced it to the surface. “I’m in my third week of a prolonged exposure therapy cycle and it’s kicking my ass.”
“Tell me more about that.”
Geez, she sounded like Dr. Patel. “You probably already figured out that I have PTSD pretty bad. It’s getting better, but it’s not like there’s a permanent cure or something. It’s like alcoholism, I’ve been told. Once you have it, you’ll always have it. All that changes is your response to the poison in your brain.”
She moved next to him and leaned against the massage table, not touching him on purpose, but letting their hips brush as she listened with a serene expression. “That makes sense.”
“Yeah, so anyway, prolonged exposure therapy, P.E.T. for short, is something that’s helped me deal with some of my worst memories and the things in my environment that trigger the memories.” After a moment’s internal debate about drawing the connection from his illness to her own traumatic experiences, he pressed on. “That night at your yoga studio, I triggered something with you. Something that had to do with your attack by your brother.”
She stiffened, but didn’t pull away. “It’s hard for me to admit, but yes. You did.”
“I know, because I have all kinds of triggers. You triggered one of them that night, too. I can’t cope with loud shouting close by me.”
“I shouted at you that night. That was when you shut down. Oh wow, we triggered each other, didn’t we?”
He nodded, relieved that she was getting what he was trying to tell her. “Yeah, that was a bad beginning. I, uh . . .” He cleared his throat. They were getting into touchy-feely territory that he wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with. “It’s good that you gave me another chance.”
She pressed her hand to his knee. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
Okay. Enough of that. He pulled out his phone. “So, what I have to do for P.E.T. is meet with a therapist twice a week and retell the story of the memory that’s the source of the trigger in the present tense, like it’s happening right now, with my eyes closed, visualizing it. While I tell it to him, he makes a recording. Then I transfer it to my phone and have to listen to it five times a day, every day.”
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