Undefeated

by Melissa Cutler

  “She told her of course they’d rent to Michael.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll fix that. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I wasn’t. Olivia and I already talked about it today. We got together this morning.”

  “You two go to brunch every Sunday, right?”

  It surprised her that he knew that. Olivia thought he preferred to ignore her existence. “We do. But this morning, I helped her prep for a teacher versus student science competition they hold every year. Have you ever been?”

  “Nope. Not gonna happen.”

  Marlena set her hand on Liam’s knee. “I want to understand why you treat her the way you do. You’re both important to me.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Did she put you up to this?”

  “No. This is all me.”

  He stood and tossed his crumpled napkin on the table, then eyed the wings buffet as though suddenly desperate for seconds.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” she said, “you’re a sore subject between her and me, too, so it works both ways.”

  He sat again, perching on the edge of his seat. “How about I tell you what I told her.” He held his hands out, palms facing each other. “There’s you and Olivia, and then there’s me and Olivia, and then way over here away from both of those relationships, away from everything else in our lives, there’s you and me.”

  Marlena tapped a celery stick on the edge of her plate, irritated by his answer, and not because he was being a dick about his sister. “Why does our relationship have to exist in a vacuum?”

  “Not a vacuum. Just away from all the shit. Please tell me you know what I mean.”

  She did, but she disagreed. They were both waist-deep in each other’s lives. Hell, he’d volunteered to put himself in the middle of her shit by coming to dinner with her family, and she was right in the middle of his shit—with the team, with Olivia, and with moving into the haunted apartment. “That’s not the way it is between us, though. And I wouldn’t want it to be because that’s not sustainable.”

  He rolled his eyes up from the table to meet her gaze. “We don’t need to be sustainable.”

  That shut her up fast. No, their relationship didn’t need to be sustainable. Burn hot, flame out fast—wasn’t that one of the laws of the universe? She shouldn’t have had a problem with Liam’s honesty. It should have been a relief to know exactly where she stood with him, because she’d been wondering. But acknowledging you were strapped to a ticking time bomb didn’t make the experience any less perilous—and her life was already shaken up enough by Michael’s return to Destiny Falls.

  The legs of her chair screeched along the hardwood floor when she pushed up from the table. “Finish your drink. I’ll take care of the bill. Then you can drop me off at my parents’ house and be on your way. If you want our relationship to exist away from each other’s shit, then that’s fine with me, but you shouldn’t come to dinner with my screwed-up family.”

  “Marlena . . .” he called, but she was already walking to the cash register at the end of the bar.

  She’d set her credit card on top of the bill when Liam appeared behind her. He flicked her card away and dropped two twenties on the counter.

  “I’ve never met the parents of a woman I was with, romantically. There’s a chance I’m a little twitchy about that.”

  She supposed that was an apology, though one wasn’t necessary. She turned her back to the counter as the waitress made change. “You said you had a nagging feeling about me, that you wanted to find out if there’s something between us, some kind of connection. There is. I hope you see that now.”

  “Of course I do.”

  His agreement caught her by surprise. She flinched before continuing. “But you were right, what we have doesn’t need to be sustainable. You don’t have to meet my family, and I won’t talk with you about your sister. We don’t need to be anything other than what we are moment to moment, no strings attached, and if we never exchange phone numbers or if I never find out where you live, then I’m okay with that. I really am.”

  She wasn’t, in actuality, but that was her problem, and her problem alone.

  She continued. “But the thing is, you throw every particle of my being into chaos. It’s always been that way for me with you, which is why I should never have allowed you to come with me to my parents’ house. Because what I need tonight to cope with my family isn’t quicksand or fireworks, but solid ground. And I’m perfectly capable of being my own solid ground.”

  With a blank expression, as though he hadn’t heard a word she’d said, he took the change the waitress set on the receipt and left a tip, then headed toward the door, his phone in his hand. Stewing about the return of his bullshit mind games, she walked to the bathroom and washed her hands, then blotted cool water on her neck, giving herself time and space to get over her irritation and re-center her energy.

  Inside her purse, her phone vibrated. She dug it out, saw an unknown number, and so replaced it in her purse. Bracing her hands on the sink, she took a few calming breaths. Okay, Universe, what’s the lesson you’re trying to teach me tonight? “Beside the fact that boys are stupid,” she added aloud.

  The universe didn’t answer, but the clock ticking on the bathroom wall told her that it was time to face an evening with her parents. Thank goodness she’d brought along hot sauce.

  As she left the bathroom, her phone rang again. The same unknown number.

  “Answer your phone,” she heard Liam say.

  She looked up to see him standing at the entrance, his phone to his ear. They were maybe twenty feet apart, from the bar to the door. She looked away, collecting herself, taking a breath. How did he have her number? Only one way to find out.

  “What?”

  “There,” he said. “Now you have my number, too. Before you ask, your number was on your lease agreement and I violated all kinds of privacy laws by entering it into my phone, but I wanted to be able to call you if I got in an accident on my way to pick you up or if there’d been heavy traffic or something. But for the record, I don’t enjoy talking on the phone, so you’re probably better off not having any expectations about that.”

  The evening had started out so well, but he couldn’t stop acting like a jackass. Without responding, she started to lower the phone, but he waved his palm at her.

  “Wait. Don’t hang up yet.”

  She put the phone to her ear again and met his pensive gaze.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m going to be your solid ground tonight. That’s why I insisted on coming to dinner in the first place. I knew that’s what you needed, but you mentioned Olivia and that puts me on a warpath. Letting your comment get to me was a mistake on my part, because I was already twitchy about meeting your parents, but I’m over myself now. The rest of the night is about you.”

  Despite his jackassery, he was still the man she’d been attracted to for nearly two decades. The out-of-reach boy, but older, with the stories of his past and his trauma reflected in every scar and wrinkle, in the hard set of his brow and the angle of his jaw. Those blue eyes would never be charming again like they were in high school, and he now had the body of a cage fighter with the tattoos to match, but he would always be—as he ever was, even at his most charming—unbearably sexy, oozing raw, dangerous masculinity.

  Except now, they were arguing about commitment. They’d slept together a lot, and danced. They’d done yoga. He had her phone number programed into his phone. And she was becoming intimately aware of the ticks and private, constant pain of his PTSD, and he with her difficult past. All that connection, all that history—and yet, he wasn’t interested in a sustainable relationship. Was she? What did she want from him?

  What, Marlena?

  “Are we good?” he asked.

  She searched his expression for integrity. For solid ground instead of quicksand. She searched for that ticking time bomb that would hurt her. It was there. It was always there because, as he’d warned her, he was no
t okay. Could she live with that?

  She cleared her throat. “Yes. We’re good.”

  Because, like him, she wasn’t okay, either. She’d thought she was fine, right up until she was standing at the foot of her brother’s hospital bed in the emergency room. No, that wasn’t true. She knew she wasn’t okay in the aftermath of her freak-out on the night of Liam’s first massage. Seeing her brother again had only driven the point home. She wasn’t okay, and Liam wasn’t okay, and somewhere in all that quicksand and muck was the messy truth that they were what each other needed right now—even if that didn’t make them sustainable.

  “You want one last cinnamon whiskey shot before we go? Some last-minute spicy fortification?” Liam said.

  She shook her head.

  “You want to go do handstands in the parking lot? Or maybe some warrior poses?”

  The beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she shook her head. “We can go to my parents’ house now.”

  “All right. Good.”

  He held the door for her and when she tried to pass, he stopped her with a kiss. His hand cradled the side of her head, gentle, intimate.

  The night of his first massage, she’d shouted at him from across the parking lot that she could have been the one part of his life that wasn’t a battle. How ironic, then, that when he touched her like this, when he kissed her, their relationship felt like the one thing in her life worth fighting for.

  Chapter Eleven

  The home Marlena had grown up in was a dark one-story, three bedroom cookie cutter house in the middle of a quiet residential street four blocks from Destiny Falls High, but more than two miles in the opposite direction from Marlena’s studio and her soon-to-be apartment in Liam’s family complex.

  From the moment she and Liam arrived, her parents acted like hyped up versions of their usual selves, her mother more animated, her father more distant and almost a caricature of stereotypical manly stoicism. So far, dinner had been a cringe-worthy affair that mostly consisted of her mom babbling on with awkward stories of Marlena and Michael’s youths or her friends at church, and Marlena cutting in occasionally to provide some variety.

  Michael was quiet, so subdued that Marlena scolded herself for turning the event into a Big Deal with a capital B. There were decent odds that Michael would drift away to his room after dinner and any of the traumatic triggers Marlena was anticipating wouldn’t come.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she studied Liam as she sprinkled hot sauce on the beef stew her mother had made. The dish was too heavy for the temperate late-May weather, but it was Marlena’s favorite food that her mom made because it complemented all varieties of hot sauce perfectly.

  Liam had been almost as quiet as Michael since their arrival, but also polite in the way that soldiers were polite, with yes, ma’ams and short answers said in a hushed, respectful tone as he sat with stiff, perfect posture. Clearly, he hadn’t been paying lip service to her when he’d confessed to being nervous about the dinner.

  She held the hot sauce bottle out to him in offering. With a skeptical raise of an eyebrow, he leaned in and said in a quiet voice for her ears only, “On a scale of one to the Fifth Circle of Hell Hot Wings sauce, how does this rate?”

  “About a seven. Right between Pancho Pete’s habanero salsa and their Death by Fire sauce, which is a few shades milder than the Fifth Circle of Hell sauce.”

  “Woman, you’re crazy,” he muttered with a smile on his face as he took the bottle from her and sprinkled a few drops on his stew.

  “I don’t understand how you young people can eat that stuff,” Marlena’s mom said. “It would give me heartburn for days.”

  “Has she always been like this about hot sauce, Mrs. Brodie?” Liam asked, his first question of the evening.

  “Not that I remember. We never kept spicy sauces around the house and I certainly didn’t cook with them.”

  “I developed a taste for it in high school when I was a hostess at Prater’s Family-Style Buffet,” Marlena said.

  Liam stretched an arm across the back of Marlena’s chair, looking more relaxed by the second. “I know that place. They closed down while I was in the army. You worked there? I would’ve thought I’d have remembered that.”

  She didn’t bother to point out that, in high school, the only time he noticed anything she did was when she got a new zit or gained five pounds, or if the weather was particularly humid and her hair got frizzy. They’d both come a long way since those painful and awkward years. “It was a brief employment, one summer. They let employees eat for free, but the only way I could stomach the food was by slathering it in hot sauce.”

  “Sounds like the army,” Liam said. “But the hot sauce we had doesn’t even rate compared to this stuff.”

  Marlena’s mom beamed at the two of them as though she was watching her favorite television show. “Liam, do you want kids?”

  “Mom!” So much for Liam letting his guard down and relaxing.

  Mom stretched her chin up in a show of stubborn indignation. “I’m allowed to ask.”

  “On what planet? Liam’s here as a friend. Nothing more.”

  Liam’s hand found Marlena’s knee under the table. “It’s okay. No, ma’am. I don’t want kids. There’s nothing wrong with it, but, uh, I have enough on my plate just taking care of myself, if you know what I mean.”

  Marlena schooled her features lest her relief show on her face. It shouldn’t have mattered to her one way or another what Liam’s opinion was about having kids, especially after their fight at the Wing Palace.

  Her mother threw up her hands at his answer, an edge of frustration in her eyes. “What is it with this generation? Thank goodness you’re only here as Marlena’s friend. Someday a man needs to talk some sense into our Marlena or I’m never going to get any grandkids.”

  Liam’s head whipped around to face her. “Really? I thought for sure you’d be into kids.”

  Marlena couldn’t help it; she wrinkled her nose. “Nope. No kids for me.” She had nothing against kids or people who chose to have kids, but she’d known from the first time she babysat in high school that being a mother wasn’t something that called to her. “But I can’t wait to be the fun auntie to my friends’ kids someday.”

  Olivia’s kids, specifically, because Olivia had known she wanted to raise a family since around the same time Marlena had figured out that she didn’t.

  Mom waggled a finger at her. “I’m not giving up on you, yet, Missy.”

  Marlena sprinkled a fresh round of hot sauce on her stew, then shoveled the bite with the most red sauce pooling on it into her mouth and gave her mom a cat-eating-a-canary grin.

  Mom gave her the evil eye before shifting her focus to Liam. “Liam, I hope you don’t mind if we talk business for a moment.”

  Liam’s posture went stiff again. “Not at all, ma’am.”

  “Your family owns an apartment complex, and I spoke to your mom about finding a unit for Mikey to move in to.”

  Liam wiped his mouth with a napkin. “My mother told me you two spoke. I’m sorry, but we don’t have any apartments available at the moment.”

  Mom’s shoulders sagged. “Did Marlena get the last vacant apartment?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Michael’s face snapped up. For the first time that night, he looked directly at Liam. “Is it on the ground floor?”

  Liam seemed to hesitate, as though he was trying to glean the reason behind Michael’s question before deciding how, or whether, to answer.

  “Yes,” Marlena said. To Liam, she added, “Michael doesn’t like to sleep on the ground floor.”

  “It’s the Foreign Legion. They can get to a person too easily if they’re on the ground floor. That’s why I can’t stay here. The apartment you’re living in right now, that’s on the third floor.”

  A tingling skittered up the backs of her arms. “You haven’t been to my apartment, so how would you know that?”

  Her mom was aghas
t. “Don’t be rude, Marli. He’s your brother, not some stranger. Of course he knows where you live. We pointed it out to him so he’d know where you were if he needed you. And we were thinking . . .” She twisted her cloth napkin between both hands. “Maybe he should come stay with you.”

  Marlena’s hand tightened around the hot sauce bottle. “What?”

  “He’s not happy here. It would only be until we find him his own place.”

  “I went to see you on Friday night,” Michael said. “I wanted to stay with you because you’re on the third floor and I can’t . . .” Overcome with emotion, he paused, swallowing. “I can’t stay here because the Foreign Legion already knows. But you weren’t home. I waited until Mom made me come back here. I didn’t want to. I was going to go back last night, but they were already outside, watching me, so I had to stay in the attic.”

  Liam shifted. The arm he’d slung across her chair settled, stiffly, on her shoulders.

  Marlena’s ribs were squeezing her so tightly, she could barely draw a breath. “You waited at my apartment for me?”

  Michael rose. The silverware on the table clattered. “I told you that already.” He pointed his finger at her and his volume got louder, angrier. “I waited, but you never came.”

  Liam pushed up from his chair, his focus solely on Michael. “Watch your tone of voice with her,” he said with a deadly calm.

  If Marlena still hadn’t been processing the discovery that her brother had hung around her apartment waiting for her, she might have better appreciated Liam’s chivalry, but all she could do was sit there and blink as Liam and Michael faced off.

  Marlena’s mom was next to rise. She patted Michael’s arm. “Oh, now, he doesn’t mean any harm. He’s a good boy. Michael, sweetie, how about I walk you to your room so you can take a break before dessert, hmm?”

  Michael wrenched his arm away from Mom’s grip. “I can take myself there.”

  Marlena’s dad pushed his chair away from the table and waddled down the hall. “I’ve got to take a leak.”

  “Will you take Michael to his room first?” her mother called after him.