by Stella Rhys
Ethan’s wild eyes flickered down at the letters in his hand. He was calming down, visibly thinking. Finally, his jaw went slack as he let out a sigh. “Fine. Have them.” He held out the letter in his hand. I breathed out hard, but just as I reached for it, he snatched them away. “Actually, no. You don’t get to have them just yet,” he said, tucking the letters behind his back.
“Damn it, give them to me now,” I demanded shakily. When I started into the apartment, he stood in my way.
“This isn’t your home anymore, Sasha. If these letters are under my roof, they’re as good as mine,” he reminded me evenly. “Of course, there’s a decision you can make to make this your roof again. And it’s the only way you get your letters back. Probably the only way you get your mom back. Definitely the only way you get to see Daisy. So think about it. Because you do want all those things. They’re all the things that’ll make your life easy and good and drama-free again. Aren’t they?”
I stood there at a loss for words, in awe of how truly revolting Ethan could be. I thought he’d hit rock bottom when he surprised me at the bar, but this was a brand new low. “You couldn’t have possibly thought a speech like that would sell me,” I said. He was deliberately blithe as he shrugged.
“I thought it could. I still think it can. Good decisions are always the hard ones, babe, so take your time thinking about it,” he said, whipping the stack of letters out from his back pocket. “Just know that the longer you take, the more of these I’ll be reading.”
“Ethan – ”
“What?” he cut in. “Change your mind yet?”
“Of course not,” I hissed between my teeth, my hands shaking furiously at my sides.
He exaggerated a shrug. “Well. Just give it time then, babe. I promise you, it changes everything,” he said before shutting the door.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m kind of glad we’re heading up there a day early,” Riley said as she drove us to Hudson Valley in Travis’s old Audi. “I just need a fucking break from the city.”
I winced. My nails dug into the leather of the passenger seat as I recalled what Liam said to me the night before.
I need a break.
With those four words, I’d reached my official tipping point. If I was a mess before, I was a disaster now.
The unraveling had started the night of A.J’s dinner. That was the night the first wall went up between Liam and me. The second went up the night after, when he came home to find me quiet. My every word to him was strained and admittedly sounded like a lie, but that’s because it was exactly that. I had gone to Ethan’s in secret and failed epically to retrieve the letters from Owen. I was crumbling under the pressure of a million untruths, and it wasn’t hard for Liam to tell that something was different. That I wasn’t “fine,” and that I had no intention of telling him what happened.
I dodged about a dozen questions before he lost all patience with me.
“I can feel it, Sasha,” Liam growled, grabbing me on my way to my bedroom. “When you’re hurt. When you’re in any kind of pain, I can feel it in my own muscles, my own fucking bones. It tortures me. It drives me insane when I can’t help you, because all I think about is you, and you know that. But you’re still going to keep me in the dark. You’re still going to keep me guessing – aren’t you?”
I couldn’t come up with an answer for him. Not a good one at least. I considered coming clean about Ethan for a second, but then I saw Liam becoming violent the way he had with Tuck, but a thousand times worse. He hadn’t truly fought in years – in the ring or at a bar or anywhere – but I wasn’t convinced that that side of him was just gone. I saw how hard a fraction of it had come out on Tuck, and I had a feeling that it only needed the right reason to come out completely, and that Ethan would be his ideal excuse.
So I kept my mouth shut.
And for the next three days, I was the one who was kept guessing because he was gone. He didn’t come home for a minute. He didn’t answer my texts or my calls, and neither A.J nor Max had seen him at the gym.
It wasn’t till the third night that he finally messaged me back with words that tore my heart clean down the middle.
I’m sorry. I need a break.
“Damn it, Sash. It’s like buzzkill city in here,” Riley groaned. “Why did you even decide to come with me if you weren’t going to talk at all the whole ride?”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
I just need to see Liam.
My mother had asked Riley to come up a day early to help prep the food. Vic had asked Liam to do the same, needing someone to fix the stairs on the deck before guests arrived. That left me, alone and uninvited. It was obvious to me that my mother had no interest in seeing me if she didn’t have to, and under normal circumstances, I’d grant her that wish. But Liam hadn’t answered my texts since the last one he sent me, and I was falling apart fast. I needed to see him. I needed to know what was happening – what he was thinking, if there was even an us anymore. Every nerve ending in my body had spent the past few days fraying to nothing, and it was getting to the point where I could no longer stand my own company. I was neck-deep in fear, doubt and regret, and worst of all, I was afraid that if I opened my mouth for a second, everything would come pouring out.
So I kept mum the whole ride up to Hudson Valley. And more eagerly than ever, I anticipated seeing Liam.
“Here we are,” Riley sighed as she pulled into the circle driveway of our parents’ stone and cedar shingle home. It sat atop three acres of lush grass and overlooked the water. Normally, the sight of the green and the leaves hummed some kind of calm into my veins. But today, the anxiety sitting on my chest stubbornly refused to go away, no matter what I did. Parking the car, Riley sighed again. “Well. Whatever’s going on inside that head of yours, Sash, you better shut that down now. If it’s about me, I told you I never made Natalie pull that stupid stunt last week, and if it’s not about that, then you gotta chill, ‘cause you’re not the only one with shit going on. Okay? We all have to put on a happy face for the holidays, even if we don’t want to, so move your ass,” she said, unbuckling my seatbelt. “It’s time for some good ol’ Blakely-Cage family bonding.”
“Yeah. Definitely.” I mustered up whatever strength I had as I checked my reflection in the mirror. Despite the mental state I’d been in this morning, I still managed to put together the kind of look I knew my mom liked to see – hair up, light mascara, nude lipstick and some cardigan belted over a dress and tights. Riley had on a similar get-up, and if I weren’t so emotionally off kilter, I’d have laughed at how matchy-matchy we looked walking up to the front door of our parents’ house.
“There they are.” Greeting us was Liam’s father, Vic. Instinctively, Riley and I straightened up. We were seventeen and nineteen by the time we met him, and he was a man of very few words, but as a six-five former gunnery sergeant, he had a way of commanding respect. “Riley. Sash.” Vic actually two-armed our hugs, and I had to smile at his effort, though it felt like being embraced by a copper statue. “Good to see you both. How was the ride?”
“Long,” Riley said bluntly. “Mom cooking?”
“She is. I’m sure she could use your help.”
Riley pointed her fingers like a gun at Vic and winked. “Join you later for cigars in the shed,” she grinned before taking my hand and pulling me into the kitchen with her. “If I’m stuck helping with this shit, so are you,” she whispered before putting on her perfect daughter smile as we entered the kitchen. “Hello, Mumsy,” she trilled.
“Hi, hello!” My mother said in the midst of emptying the oven. She had on one of her hundreds of floral boat neck tops, which she always paired with beige cigarette pants. Her short blonde hair, usually worn in a bob, was twisted in a perfect little chignon today. My mother was beautiful. That was undeniable. Her razor sharp cheekbones were visible even from behind, and age had done virtually nothing to the looks she had always been proud of.
I couldn’t help my usual wonder about whether she’d have liked me better if I took after her the way Riley did. “Just getting ready to turn this kitchen into a big, beautiful mess,” she chuckled as she turned around, her smile radiant. But the second her eyes landed on me, it faltered. “Oh. Sasha.”
“Figured you could use another set of hands,” Riley ignored the tension between us as usual. I cleared my throat.
“Hi, Mom.” The smile that stretched my lips felt unnatural. I generally forgot how to talk and move like a human being around my mother, and could barely remember the last time I felt at ease with her. I always tried to tell myself that I was the one being sensitive, but today, she was doing less than usual to help me prove that. My heart dropped as I watched her turn back to the oven.
“Hi, Sasha.” Her greeting came without eye contact. “So, did Travis change his mind at all about coming?” Mom promptly returned her attention to Riley. “I hate the thought of him being home alone on Thanksgiving.”
“Mother, I told you he’s contagious. He can’t come,” Riley said flatly as something in the corner of my eye caught my attention.
My pulse jumped to my throat when I looked outside.
It was Liam.
My mouth dropped, and my heart skipped a beat when I laid eyes on him in the backyard, chugging water from a bottle and looking like a lumberjack in his dirty white T-shirt and scuffed jeans. It was a crisp fifty degrees out but he made it look like the middle of July with sweat beading his hairline, his cotton tee soaked in sweat from what looked like a ton of hauling and hand-sawing.
“Whoa-ly shit, did Liam just redo the stairs on your deck?” Riley exclaimed when she noticed. “Damn, Sash – you see that shit? Paul Bunyan out there.”
“Yeah,” I said casually. But my heart pounded in my ears as I watched Liam through the glass. His biceps flexed and his muscles strained against his shirt, but his face was blank and stoic, making him look effortless in his every move. I stared especially at his arms and his chest – the parts of his body that I was used to feeling close to me at night. I wanted to just run outside and bury myself against his warmth. I wanted so badly to feel his hands rubbing my back, comforting me in the way that only he knew how. But all I could do was stand there and fake nonchalance despite the heartache churning in my chest.
“What – who the hell is that?” Riley’s voice pierced my ear just as my eyes registered the lithe figure of a strange girl keeping Liam company outside. She had his checkered shirt wrapped around her as she handed him a thermos to drink from. When she took Liam’s hand and rubbed up on his arm, Rily gasped. “Seriously, who the fuck is that?”
“Language,” Mom scolded.
I ignored them both, my eyes unblinking as I watched the display. I very vaguely recognized the girl. She had to be someone I saw at Junction Pub every year around the holidays. Something about her wild, honey-blonde waves registered in my memory, but that was all.
“Don’t watch that. Give them privacy,” Mom said tartly.
“Who is that?” Riley pressed on.
“You know her. The Daltons across the street? That’s their younger daughter.”
Riley’s jaw dropped. “That’s Maddy Dalton’s little sister? She was like, five-foot-nothing the last time I saw her!”
“Well, she’s clearly not anymore,” Mom said smartly.
“Did you set this up?”
“I invited her over is what I did. I wanted Natalie Mathis to come over, since she’s a bit more age appropriate for him, but Liam said he didn’t want to see her. So this is the effort I’ve put forth, and maybe he’ll find some interest in Bree. She’s very pretty.”
It was true. My jaw tightened as I slowly remembered Bree. She was a freshman when I was a senior in high school. During some holidays, she snuck into Junction with a fake ID and ran her mouth about how she could drink us all under the table. Back then, she was a tiny little thing and wore her big hair in a sloppy ponytail. Now, she looked about four inches taller and dressed head to toe in bright, skintight workout gear.
“Oh geez, I totally remember this brat.” Riley wrinkled. “Mom, are you trying to hook Liam up with a child? ‘Cause this girl’s like, barely fuckin’ twenty-one.”
“I swear to God about that language, Riley Faith,” Mom warned tightly. “And again, it’s not my business to speak for Liam, but if he decided to start seeing Bree Dalton, I for one couldn’t be happier. She’s a lovely girl,” she said firmly before heading off for the stairs.
“Yeah, easy for you to say when you’re not watching this shit!” Riley called after her. She was laughing but I couldn’t even fake it. My hands gripped the edge of the counter when I saw Bree casually straddling Liam as he took a break to sit on the steps. Fury crawled through my bones as he did nothing but stare blankly at her, simply watching her bite her pink lips and hook her hands on his shoulders. Riley was muttering scandalously in my ear about it all but I could barely pay attention as I stared out the window, processing the fact that this was it.
It was over.
Whatever Liam and I had – if it had been anything at all – was already past tense. And I should have known because I made it impossible to be with me. I lied, I kept secrets – I didn’t give him the basic respect he deserved for being my savior through my every thick and thin. In short, I blew it. I let the demons of my past run my present, and it just cost me the best thing I had going in my life. I couldn’t breathe. All I wanted was to crawl into a hole somewhere, but surrounded my so many people, I had no place to run.
“Alright, I can’t watch this shit anymore.” As Bree pushed Liam’s hands up her thighs, Riley leaned over the counter and rapped loudly on the window. “Hey! Lovebirds! Knock it off before I vom into the sink!”
“Omigod, Riley Blakely! You suck!”
I heard Bree’s high-pitched giggle closing in on the back door. I wanted to dart out of the kitchen but my legs felt like cement and before I knew it, Bree had come in the house to say hi, Liam trailing not too far behind her.
“You little sluts,” Riley teased as if she hadn’t just been ripping Bree. “Remember me, cutie?” As she hugged Bree and gave her a kiss on the cheek, I peered over at Liam. My breath caught in my throat when I saw his eyes trained on me as he leaned back on the kitchen table. All it took was one look at him for tears to spring to my eyes, but I forced them to stay put as Bree came in for the hug.
“Do you even remember my name?” she challenged.
“I do, Bree,” I managed something of a smile. Over her shoulder, my gaze remained locked on Liam. His emerald stare was pinned to me with such intensity that when it suddenly flicked away, I felt as if I’d been stripped naked.
“So, what’s going on here? Couldn’t help noticing you two being a little lovey-dovey outside,” Riley teased. “Or should I say dirty-flirty, Bree? I saw you getting all up in there.”
“Oh, shut up! You can’t blame a girl. I know you two aren’t supposed to, but come on, look at the man. He’s a walking sex god, especially when you’ve just spent the past few hours watching him build a staircase from scratch,” Bree giggled, peering up at Liam, who was pulling his shirt up to wipe the sweat from his brow. He took his time turning his attention to her, but when he did, he gave her a smirk.
“Couldn’t have done it without you.”
His tone was flirtatious and it lit her eyes right up. “Shut. You know I was super useful to you,” Bree grinned. “If not for actual building, then for emotional support. And eye candy.”
Drinking from his water bottle, Liam simply raised his eyebrows in response. I willed him to return his eyes to me, to communicate with me through some kind of silent look. But I got nothing.
“Anyway.” Liam pushed off the table. “I have to go shower.”
“Yeah, you do. You got your sweat all over me before,” Bree grinned. The two exchanged another look that clawed at my stomach, but all I could do was stand and stare in disbelief.
“Ah, ah.” As Liam
headed upstairs, Riley objected. “Don’t we get a hello?”
“What, you want a sweaty one?”
“Just give me a kiss, dickhead,” Riley said, craning her neck so Liam could give her a peck on the cheek. “And don’t forget Sasha. She needs a big one ‘cause she’s a grouch today.”
“Yeah?”
Liam barely looked at me as he gave me the same lukewarm greeting he’d given Riley. My heart sank like it was wrapped in chains. Instinctively, I reached for Liam’s hand to pull him back to me. But with Bree’s eyes on me, I held back and forced myself to bear it. I tried to breathe through the weight of our unresolved issues weighing down on my chest, but it was impossible with Bree still flirting away.
“Aren’t you going to say bye to me, Liam?” she asked, watching from behind as Liam peeled off his shirt. We all did.
Liam looked over his shoulder. “Leaving already?”
“I can stay if you want.” Bree bit her lip and gave a cutesy shrug. “Or maybe you should invite me to shower with you? You did get me all sweaty when you rubbed up on me.”
My cheeks were on fire. Riley flashed me a scandalous look as Liam smirked at Bree. “I don’t think we’d get away with that,” he said just as my mother came down to the kitchen. I glared.
Not what I wanted to hear.
My mom’s chatter was back to filling the room, but I was still fuming as I watched Liam’s sculpted calf muscles twitch all the way up the stairs. I tried to tune out Mom chatting to Bree about him as if it she were holding the daughter-in-law auditions. I was so full of anger and bitterness I couldn’t even think. Distracted, I nodded along when Riley volunteered my help for my mother’s run to the store.
“Let me just drop my bags off upstairs,” I muttered hastily. And before I knew it, my heart was pounding as I made my way up to Liam’s old bedroom.