“I hate the place, but I’ll go anyway. I’ll buy you some drinks and hang out with you while you do your thing.”
Walking in, she thought about holding his hand, but she could already feel him retreating into himself, as though he was gearing up his defenses in preparation for another battle. They hadn’t spent much time together in public spaces except faraway bars and dance clubs he’d chosen specifically to protect their anonymity. Confronted again with his aversion to physical contact outside of the bedroom or dance floor, she realized how much it bothered her. Perhaps more than his smoking.
She was a touchy-feely person. That was a huge part of her job and her spirituality. What had seemed so clear in his truck after listening to his P.E.T. recording now appeared in her mind as questions. Could she really be with a man she was so incompatible with in a real, long-term way? Was he worth it? Could they be sustainable?
Inside Locks, Marlena heard her name from the right and scanned the room until she saw Presley and Olivia waving at her from a table at which Brandon, Will, Theo, and a handful of their other friends and acquaintances also sat.
As she waved and started their way, Liam brushed past her. “Go be with your friends. Tell the waitress to put your drinks on my tab.”
“You’re not going to come hang out with us?”
It was a stupid question. The year prior, Olivia had been the first person to point it out to Marlena and the others that Liam had an aversion to sitting in big groups in public places like Locks, something about him feeling trapped. Since it’d been brought to her attention, Marlena had found that to be uncompromisingly true, but, silly her, she’d hoped he might have made an exception now that they were a couple.
“I’m going to go chat with Gabe,” he said, nodding toward a cluster of Bomb Squad players standing near the pool tables.
She reached a hand out to give his upper arm an affectionate squeeze, but he twisted away from her touch and walked away. The connection they’d forged that week was gone from his words and expression, and even though she understood that his behavior was only a temporary byproduct of his PTSD brought on by their surroundings and not some kind of personal affront to her—even though she totally understood where he was coming from—it still stung.
She returned her focus to her table of friends, and it was clear from Olivia and Presley’s expressions that they’d noticed the exchange. Marlena lifted her chin higher and smiled, determined not to let the complications of falling for a man with a damaged spirit spoil her night.
Around ten o’clock, a classic rock cover band started playing, and the noise level in the tavern ramped up. Marlena wondered if Liam would prefer that to the quiet since he felt so at home at the loud, crowded dance clubs he frequented. Off and on since she’d taken a seat next to Olivia more than an hour earlier, she’d felt his eyes on her. Most of the time, she held herself back from looking around the room to locate him, not wanting her friends to see her pining over the man who wouldn’t hang out with her. She didn’t want to give the impression that his choice bothered her, even though it did.
The band’s second song was even louder that the first, but “Don’t Fear the Reaper” was one of her favorite rock tunes, and one that she and Liam had danced to a remixed version of at a club last Saturday. He’d gotten on his phone right there in the club and purchased the song, and she might even consider it their song.
“I’ll be back,” she told the group, rising. She turned to seek him out, wondering if he was flashing back to the fun they’d had on Saturday, too, but she didn’t see him anywhere.
At the bar, she flagged Harper down. “Have you seen Liam?”
Harper’s shoulders sagged. She shook her head, pity in her eyes as she pointed to the exit. “He left about fifteen minutes ago. I’m sorry, sweetie.”
After everything she and Liam had become to each other and how overprotective he’d been since dinner with her parents, there was no way he’d skip out without letting her know. “He’s probably outside smoking. I’ll go find him.”
Without a glance at her friends, she strode through Locks and out the door.
Clusters of smokers loitered at the edge of the parking lot, but Liam wasn’t among them. She walked around the corner to the sidewalk in the direction his truck was parked, checking her phone as she moved. No messages. Then her eyes landed on the curbside spot where Liam’s truck was no longer parked. He really had vanished.
The clack of heels sounded behind her. She turned to find Presley, Olivia, and Harper watching her. She lifted her chin higher and schooled her expression.
“It’s intervention time,” Presley said gently, wringing her hands. “We care about you too much to watch you get hurt like this.”
“I’m not hurt.” Liam had promised her nothing and had continued to warn her away from him with brutal honesty, so how could she be hurt? Except that she was. She shifted her gaze to Locks’ wall, studying the pattern of crumbling bricks on the hundred-plus-year-old building.
“He ignored you all night and then he left without saying good-bye. Of course you’re hurt. Who wouldn’t be?” Harper said.
Olivia took Marlena’s hand. “This is what Liam does. It’s a thousand little insults, until your confidence is torn to shreds and you’re wondering who the crazy one is—him or you—and you’re not sure anymore.”
“She’s right,” Harper said. “I’ve seen him at Locks with a few girls over the past couple years, and I hate to be a downer, but he’s done the same thing to them.”
She fought to resist the kernels of truth in Olivia’s and Harper’s words, but the bottom line was that Marlena’s confidence was shaken. She did feel insulted—and cheap. She’d given him a blow job in his truck, and he hadn’t even found the wherewithal to order a drink for her or communicate that he was leaving. He’d left her behind to defend him and defend her desire to be with him.
This wasn’t high school, but she felt embarrassed in the same ways she so often had back then, thanks to Liam’s careless, and often cruel, treatment. Too many times to count, she’d been thrust by Liam and his bullying friends into the spotlight for unflattering reasons that weren’t her fault but felt shameful nonetheless. Just like tonight.
Presley bypassed Olivia and gathered Marlena into a hug. “We love you, Marlena. All we want is for you to be happy and find a man who’ll treat you right. You deserve that. We all do.”
Presley’s words jarred Marlena out of her self-pity. Liam did treat her right, everywhere but in front of their friends. He was patient and kind and an amazing lover. They had a lot of incompatibilities, sure, but when she was with him, when they were in sync, she’d never felt so alive and free and happy.
She extricated herself from Presley’s embrace and leveled a stern look at her friends. “We don’t know why he left, but I’m sure it had nothing to do with me or how he feels about me. The exposure therapy is rough, okay? He’s going through a lot right now.”
“What’s exposure therapy? Is that something he’s doing for his PTSD?” Olivia asked.
Marlena gaped at Olivia, stunned silent. Liam hadn’t shared the dominating force in his life with his sister. He hadn’t shared with her the courageous, painful steps he took every day to heal. Marlena had thought it before, and it occurred to her again—no wonder all Olivia saw in him was what was broken. It was yet another instance when his need for privacy had worked against him.
Then again, he didn’t care what people thought of him, not Olivia or Bomb Squad—and maybe not even Marlena. Her heart squeezed painfully at that thought. Either way, no matter what Liam thought about Marlena’s opinion or feelings, it was time for her to take a play from his book and stop caring so much about appearances. As she’d already reminded herself more than once that night, she knew what they were to each other, even if his current actions didn’t support it.
He’d not only told Marlena about his P.E.T., a privilege he hadn’t afforded to even his family, but he’d trusted her enough to allow
her to listen to his P.E.T. recording. Her protectiveness of him returned in full-force.
“His story isn’t mine to tell, and neither is his treatment,” she said to Olivia. “I’m sorry he won’t talk to you. And I’m sorry that he keeps hurting you. I really am. I don’t know how to fix things between you two, but I think a place to start would be for you to stop pointing out how flawed he is and start looking for the good in him.”
Olivia’s eyes turned hurt, her features drawn. “It’s not that simple.”
“No. It’s definitely not simple, but very few worthwhile things in life are. And I’ll tell you another thing—he’s worth it, and I know you know that, too, or else you wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep him in your life. I understand that you’re all staging this intervention because you care about me, but knock it off, okay? This is my life and my business. And for shit’s sake, stop comparing me to other women he’s been with. That’s a toxic road to go down, and I’m not interested.”
Presley and Harper’s gazes fell. Olivia hugged herself.
“Sorry about that, about bringing up his other girlfriends. I won’t do it again,” Harper said. “If you trust Liam not to hurt you, then I’ll work on trusting him, too.”
Marlena nodded. “Thank you. I love you guys. We can’t let a man come between us, right?”
“Never,” Presley said. She looped an arm around Marlena’s shoulders, then Olivia’s, pulling them all into a hug.
Marlena decided to go out on a limb and attempt some levity. “Besides, if we’re all mad at each other, then who’s going to help me move the rest of my stuff to my new apartment on Saturday?”
Their melodramatic groan was laced with affection. Marlena squeezed her friends in a tight hug. Even Olivia grinned.
Marlena rubbed Olivia’s back and offered her a conciliatory smile. “Are we okay?”
Olivia offered her a combo shrug and nod, as though to say, sort of, but not really. “I’m your biggest fan,” Olivia said. “If you need me to be okay with all this, then I’ll keep trying.”
“Thank you,” Marlena said. “That’s all I ask.”
Their hands found each other in the group hug and held on tight. And though she still sensed hurt and trepidation in Olivia’s touch, she knew they were all going to be okay.
Chapter Fourteen
The promise of team yoga on Friday night, followed by hours of worshipping Marlena’s body in his bed, had gotten Liam through a slog of a day that began with a particularly brutal P.E.T. appointment and ended with the wife of the guy who’d contracted Duke’s team to build a deck demanding a refund because the stain of the wood on the finished deck was too dark. Fucking civilians.
His first glimpse of Marlena through the glass front of her studio when he’d pulled up to a parking spot sent his pulse racing and his whole body yearning for contact. Each time he saw her felt like the first time. He was filled with a rush of restlessness and craving reminiscent of stepping onto US soil for the first time after deployment, but not being allowed to go immediately home. Each time that happened, it wasn’t until they were alone and he touched her that he truly felt settled and home.
She followed him with her eyes as he slid out of the truck cab, but rather than smile, her expression was serious and distant. He searched his memory, wondering what he’d done to earn her displeasure, but all he could see in his mind was the kid, his mom full of bullet holes, and a hospital clinic covered in blood—the residual impressions of his latest P.E.T. listening session before he left his apartment, his fifth retelling and third listen of the day, counting the two retellings during therapy. Whatever splinter Marlena had in her paw, he didn’t have the fortitude to deal with it tonight.
With grim resolve, he walked to the rear of the truck and pulled from the truck bed the folding screen he’d built for her. It was heavy, solid black locust wood and required some heft to get it out of the truck bed and onto the curb, but the distraction of hard physical labor felt good. Marlena, her eyes on the screen, held the studio door open for him, but didn’t say a word. Fine. If she wanted to give him the silent treatment, then maybe that was for the best tonight. He wasn’t much in the mood to talk, either.
He hauled the screen inside and leaned it against the wall.
The next thing he knew, Marlena wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his back. He stiffened at first contact, feeling defensive, but he forced himself to relax into the idea that perhaps she wasn’t angry, after all, and maybe he didn’t have to be on red alert.
Closing his eyes, he braced his forearms on the wall and exhaled, consciously trying to let go of his defensiveness and the heavy weight of his grief and anger.
“Were you listening to your recording on the way here?” she said quietly.
His first attempt to speak came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and started again. “In the apartment parking lot before I came over. I can’t listen to it when I drive; it’s too distracting. How did you know that’s what I’d just done?”
She rubbed her nose and lips into his T-shirt, right over his spine. “I can feel it on you.”
Despite everything, a smile found its way onto his lips. He loved when she started in on all that mystic talk. She processed emotion as though it were a palpable object, and maybe, for her, it was.
He pivoted and gathered her in his arms.
“How was therapy this morning? Progress?” she said.
“Not much, not yet. Little changes, but this is a hard one.” Every day, he felt like he was starting from scratch, the feelings were so raw. It took Dr. Patel pointing out the small differences in each recording for him to recognize that he was improving and his guilt was gradually receding. Today, Dr. Patel had brought to his attention that he’d gone from saying “I couldn’t save her” to “there was nothing I could do to save her”—minute details, yes, but at least it was progress in the right direction.
He’d been working on this P.E.T. cycle for five weeks, but that morning he and Dr. Patel had discussed that the standard six week session wouldn’t be enough for this particular trigger memory. He was struggling not to internalize that as a setback or failure.
She touched the edge of the folded screen. “What did you bring?”
He stood the piece upright and unfolded the hinged five-foot-tall panels that he’d darkly stained to match the desk he was also building for her, though he wasn’t ready to tell her about that project yet.
“It’s a new screen to replace the one I broke. The plan was for it to be done sooner, but I have this demanding new renter who wanted her place painted like celery and needed bookshelves and crown molding installed.”
He smiled to let her know he was only teasing, because he really didn’t mind the work, but she was too busy studying the screen to notice.
In the top third of each panel, he’d cut rectangles out, then inlaid a carved wooden pattern. He was proud of the craftsmanship he’d accomplished on this piece, from the selection and alignment of the planks to the treatment of the wood that brought out the artistry in the grain and the carvings he’d created in the top third of the panels, a pattern of swirls inspired by a screen he’d found on a website about ancient Japanese art.
The piece was top quality, easy on the eyes, and durable. It settled his nerves to know that, no matter what happened with him and Marlena, the screen would last as a symbol of restitution, not only for the way he’d turned that first massage appointment into a disaster, but for all the wrongs he’d done to her throughout their teenage years and beyond. The desk and the bed he planned to build next weren’t so much a gesture of restitution but because she deserved nice things and he wanted to give them to her.
She ran her fingertip along the ridge of one of the decorative swirls, the one he’d made to look like a wave. “You made this?” Her voice was breathless, as though he’d awed her, but this was about restitution. He hadn’t been trying to impress her.
“Yes. It’s no big deal.”
She folded her arms around him and pressed a kiss to his lips. “It’s a big deal to me.”
“That’s because you’re a chick. Two X chromosomes mean everything’s a big deal.” Again, he smiled as he teased her, and this time she noticed and returned his grin.
“This is an incredible gift. Thank you.”
Wincing, he scratched the back of his neck. “It’s not a gift. It’s just a replacement. Restitution.”
“Thank you. I love it. But you don’t owe me restitution, Liam.”
Of course he did. More than he could possibly repay. He’d been an idiot in high school. An absolute fucking idiot to think of her as ugly, less than. He’d made sure she knew he felt that way, he and his stupid, punk friends. Then that first night in her studio, he’d practically attacked her. He’d given her a goddamn panic attack, he’d come on so strong and mean.
“In high school, I was a dick to you.”
That glowing awe faded and she released him. “Yes, you were.”
“Looking back on it, I think I must have been threatened by how close you and Olivia were. And . . .” Swallowing, he walked to the shrine and watched the flickering flames of the candles. “And I felt threatened because I was attracted to you. The first sex dream I ever remember having was about you, when I was thirteen.”
“How could you have been attracted to me? You took every opportunity to remind me I was fat and ugly.”
Living with the knowledge that he’d hurt her like that literally made his heart ache now. He’d suppressed the shame of it for years, choosing instead to ignore her, taking the easy way out by not acknowledging her at all rather than own up to the teenage bully he’d been. But it had to be said now, because his shame felt like an elephant in the room every time he was with her. He didn’t give a crap what most people in the world thought about him, but the woman whose company he’d come to crave like an addiction deserved better than that.
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