I wanted to kiss her again.
The urge slammed into me with the intensity of an avalanche. I wanted to cross the kitchen, pull her to her feet and plant a kiss on her she’d never forget. Not a hasty, spur-of-the-moment kiss. Right here in front of my family, alone. It didn’t matter where. I wanted her. And it terrified me.
“Did you hear me son?”
I focused in on my father, who was standing in front of me, his coffee cup in his hand. That was one way to get my thoughts off the carnal route they’d taken. “What’s that?”
“I could use your help outside, if you have a minute.”
It shamed me, as it always did, that my first response was to tell him no. I didn’t want to spend the whole weekend doing chores and listening to him gripe about how I was abandoning the family to get a degree I didn’t need. Then I took another look at those new lines on his face and relented. Besides, it’d get my mind off kissing Charlie, or at least, I hoped so. She has enough on her plate with what went down with Andrew and now she was leaving in a couple months. Forget about it, Walsh. I’d be content with the way things were. I had to be.
“Sure, dad. I’ll be outside in just a sec.”
He nodded, reached around me to put his cup in the sink, then pushed out the squeaky back door, the screen slapping behind him.
I crossed the scuffed checkerboard linoleum to the table and stopped to give Grandma Dorothy a kiss on her hair. I met Charlie’s eyes over grandma’s head and said, “Will you be okay here for a little while?”
She smiled, but there were questions in her eyes. “Sure. I bet Grandma Dorothy and I can find something to keep us plenty busy.”
“You sure?”
Grandma twisted in her seat. “You heard the girl. Now get outside. Your daddy’s been busting his back for months, but he’s not as young as he used to be and could use your help.”
Charlie sent me a sympathetic look and I sighed. Sometimes, despite her patchy memories and tics, Grandma could send an arrow straight through to the bullseye. “Go,” Charlie mouthed.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help my family. I wanted to, I tried. But living my father’s life wasn’t all I wanted for my own. I had my own dreams. My own goals. He was stubborn enough that he didn’t want to bend, and I was stubborn enough that I’d never ask for help.
I found him in the old barn situated a healthy walk behind the house. Whatever color it had been painted when it was new had long since faded. My dad, and sometimes I, had kept it in good repair as best we could. Replacing the roof, rotted beams, weathered siding. It was a patchwork mess but the scent of fresh hay for the horse and motor oil was a familiar and welcome reminder of all the years I’d spent here. I thought of Charlie, who’d come to love my family in place of her own and felt guilty about even wanting to run from this place.
Dad called out from where he was sprawled underneath a tractor. “You’re taking your sweet time, aren’t you?”
Still thinking of Charlie, I swallowed my angry reply and hunkered down with one hand keeping balance on the side of the rusted old machine. “What do you need?”
We were more alike than I wanted to admit, because I saw him choke on his own response before he bit out, “Get me that wrench there.”
Like they’d been a thousand times before, the tools he needed for the job were laid out on a towel, a dirty one, but as organized as you could get in a country barn. I found the wrench and passed it to his outstretched hand. Metallic clanks echoed throughout the bowels of the tractor.
It would have been so easy to be the son he wanted me to be. Easy in that I could see how much he wanted the kind of man who’d proudly carry on the traditions he’d started, who’d farm the land he slaved over his whole life. The irony was it was the very farm that had inspired me to become a vet. We had horses, donkeys, a cow or two, plus a slew of chickens, goats and barn cats. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to have the large animal vet visit a couple times a year. Dad hadn’t thought anything of my tagging along back then, but it had molded me in the way that I knew he still wished the farm would.
The conversation we should have been having hung over the rest of the afternoon like a dark cloud, but neither of us could make the first move. Instead, the only words spoken were requests for more tools or polite small talk. I wished as I handed him a screwdriver and followed his directions for guiding in a part that I could talk to him like I had when I was a kid. Then he’d ask for something else and the moment was lost.
It wasn’t until he slid out from under the tractor that he looked me in the eye for the first time since I got home. He wiped his hands with a rag and sighed. My body tensed in preparation.
“We’re selling the farm,” he said.
Chapter Six
Charlie
“I’m so happy to see you again,” Mrs. Walsh said as she smiled at me over a glass of milk after dinner that night. Liam had come in after a couple hours with his dad looking like a thunderstorm rolling in, so I kept my distance. He’d only surfaced when his mom started making dinner with a healthy side of homemade chocolate chip cookies. “I kept telling Liam he needed to bring you around.”
A pang of guilt made my stomach clamp down on the contents of rich chocolate-y goodness. “I know. I’m sorry I haven’t visited. I’ve had…a lot going on.”
She tutted at me. “No need to apologize, honey. Liam told me all about the boy you’ve been seeing. Andrew, right? How’s that going?”
Liam, who’d been happily stuffing his face with his mother’s homemade chocolate chip cookies, paused, and his eyes came to me. I shook my head subtly, and he chugged a glass of milk to help the cookies down.
I shrugged in his mother’s direction. “It’s going alright.” I hoped my response was nonchalant enough. Mrs. Walsh had a bullshit detector like you wouldn’t believe.
Which was why when she said, “Now, I don’t believe that for a second, but I’ll let it slide until you’re ready to talk about it, sugar bean,” I couldn’t look her in the eye. “Don’t you worry,” she added, “these things have a way of working themselves out.”
“I sure hope so,” I managed.
“You two clean up after yourselves. I’m gonna check in on Grandma Dorothy.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Walsh,” I said.
“No need, honey. You’re family.”
She stopped to kiss us both on the head like we were twelve instead of twenty-two, and I realized I needed this much more than I thought I would. I turned to Liam, who was licking the chocolate off his fingers. I ignored the pang of heat the sight ignited in my stomach and focused on my own cookie.
“Thank you for this,” I said around a mouthful. “How did you know it was what I needed?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t. I just tried to think of the one place that makes me feel better when something bad happens, and this was what came to mind. Besides, I had a wicked craving for homemade cookies, and I figured you wouldn’t be open to baking for me.”
We both knew he was joking, but I was grateful for the change of subject. “You’re such an asshole.”
He batted his eyes. “But you love me.”
“Debatable,” I said, but I was smiling. He had a knack for making me smile when I absolutely did not want to. We’d be in the middle of arguing about God only knew what and he’d start cracking joke after joke, because—as much as he wanted to win the argument—he wanted me to smile more. Or so he said. “What are we doing today?”
“Since chores are done and dad can’t guilt me into helping out anymore on Mom’s orders, I have a surprise,” he said, then rounded the table to pull me from the chair and push me out the back door to the attached garage. “No time for thinking right now. If you start thinking you’ll overthink it, and I can’t handle the drama.”
At first, I thought he was talking about the kiss and then I realized he must be talking about Andrew. I really needed to stop thinking about ways to go in for round two.
“Are you going to tel
l me what you and your dad talked about this afternoon?” I blurted out. Great job, Char. Real subtle. “You came back looking like he was drowning kittens or something.”
“Long story. We can talk about it when we get where we’re going.”
I stumbled in the darkened garage, my hands outstretched to keep from running straight into something. “Where in the world are you taking me? Liammm. I do not want to go skinny dipping again.”
He snorted and then placed his hands on my shoulders to guide me. I heard the rattled groan of an old truck door opening followed by a waft of leather, grease, and earth. “Scoot in,” Liam said, and gave me a little heave into the cab of the truck.
“Umph,” I grunted. It was his father’s old truck. The one they used during the summer to tend to his part-time handy-man business in addition to all the work they did on the farm. “Is this going to be a theme? You shoving me into vehicles and taking me off on a whim?”
“It would be if you’d shut your trap.”
“I can’t help it. I’m not the ride-or-die type. I have too many questions.”
“Clearly,” he replied as he hit the button for the garage door opener, then backed the truck into the driveway.
Before I could ask any more questions, he’d thrown the truck into Drive and we were bouncing along a rutted country backroad. The sound of night birds filled the truck over the smooth crooning from the latest country star. Being down one sense heightened all the rest and despite my constant reminding, my brain was especially attuned to how close Liam and I were on the bench seat.
“Should I be worried?” I asked to cover my nerves. This was Liam. I’ve known him forever. I shouldn’t be nervous. It was like we’d crossed a line into a different territory and my eyes were open to things I’d noticed, but not at this level, not with this amount of intensity.
“You know I’d never let anything happen to you,” he said.
“I know, but you’ve also never done anything like this before.”
“I had a feeling we could both use a break.”
The truck eased to a stop with a squeal of breaks. We unbuckled, and Liam tugged me into his arms and carried me to the back of the truck where he tossed me bodily into the bed. A godawful, scream-queen-worthy screech ripped from my throat as I sailed through the air and landed, not on the hard metal like I was expecting, but on soft, downy fabric.
“Listen, Walsh,” I said when I finally caught my breath, “I appreciate you kidnapping me and throwing me around, but I have to say, your attempts to cheer me up leave a lot to be desired.”
The truck creaked as he heaved himself over the side and plopped down next to me. “Shut up for a minute and just look.”
“Look?” I prompted, but he slapped a hand over my mouth and tipped my head back, and the view made me swallow my protestations.
“You don’t get stars like that in the city, do you?”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and relaxed into the blankets. “No, you don’t.”
“I would have dragged your ass to the treehouse, but I figured the freshmen fifteen you put on might take the place down.”
“You’re such an ass, Liam,” I said, but I leaned my head against his arm as we settled into the pillows. Surrounded by the sounds and scents of days gone by, it made it easier for me to digest all the mistakes I’d made when they were so far away—which was exactly his intention, I realized.
“I thought my attempts to cheer you up left a lot to be desired?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Mom had mentioned she and Dad used to come out here and do stuff like this. I figured it was shit you girls got off on.”
“How romantic,” I teased with my heart in my throat.
“Shut up.”
“Your mom didn’t think it was weird we’re going to stay out here?”
He grinned. “She thought it was sweet. Said she was gonna bug Dad to take her out dancing or something because they never do anything fun anymore.”
“So, c’mon. What happened with your dad?”
Instead of answering, he pulled out another blanket and draped it over us. I tried not to think about how close we were. How our heat mingled together underneath the fabric. It’d be so easy to lean over.
“They’re selling the land. The farm,” he said after a while, breaking me from my fantasies. It was as effective as an ice bath.
“What?!”
His fingers pulled at a string on the blanket. “Yeah, dad told me when we were out fixing the tractor. There’s some fancy big shot who wants to develop the land into a country retreat or some shit.”
“He didn’t give you a hard time about it, did he?”
I knew how much tension there was between the two of them. They tried to hide it, but men weren’t as subtle about their emotions. They liked to think they were all stoic and that women were the emotional ones, but it was the other way around. I wanted to reach for him, but I stuffed my hands between my thighs to keep from doing it.
“Actually, he didn’t…and that was somehow worse.”
“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” I wasn’t as good at lightening the mood, but he smiled anyway.
“Yeah we are. But enough about me. We came here for you. I don’t want you to beat yourself up about what happened. Andrew’s a grown man. You deserve better. When you find the right guy, you won’t be running away from him. The right guy will make you want to stay put. Your mom left you, your dad died. Everyone you’ve ever loved leaves you. You’re scared of having someone else do it, too. You think I’ve been here all these years and not noticed?”
“I—” my voice cut out and I had to turn away to keep from letting tears spill over my cheeks. How could he see straight to the heart of me so easily?
“Aw, fuck, Charlie. You know I hate it when you cry. I take it all back.” He tugged on my arm and pulled me close enough that he could wipe away my tears with the hem of his shirt. The familiar scent of his cologne wrapped around me on my next ragged inhale. I caught the barest glimpse of his abs which made all the emotion his words inspired clog inside my chest as a wave of heat swept over me.
Determined to ignore my response to him, I took several deep breaths to clear my head. “So you’re saying I should have stayed with him?”
“Hell no.” He sounded so offended I laughed. “If he was the right guy he wouldn’t have let you go in the first place. If you did run, he would have chased after you.”
“What about you?” If we had to talk about me any longer I’d go crazy. “I don’t see you running down the aisle.” It wasn’t just a diversion, I was honestly curious. Even if I wasn’t preoccupied with his mouth since the kiss, I knew he was attractive. There were enough girls always checking him out to clue me in if I’d been completely oblivious.
“I’m in no place to be in a relationship.” I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t stop a little at his comment. But I was being silly. He was going to school, I was leaving. It’d never work. “Even if I could devote my time to her during vet school, I don’t want to be in a serious relationship until I’m situated in my career and stable with a steady income.”
“Is that why you rarely go on dates?” I asked.
“I date,” he said and pinched my waist. I smacked his hands away, but snuggled closer to listen for the rest of his answer. I didn’t even mean to do it, it was just habit. When he didn’t push me away, I relaxed, listening to the way his words reverberated in his chest. “I just don’t want to get serious yet.”
I found his hand and took it in my own. His long, capable fingers were warm and callused as they cradled my smaller ones. “But things will never be just as you want them, Liam. My life is a testament to that. Just as you think things settle down and you have a good thing going, it throws you another curve ball. I survived my mom leaving, and then my dad got sick. I survived taking care of him, and then he died.”
“You’ve seen how my parents can be sometimes,” Liam said after a moment. “The
stress, the arguments.”
“They love each other,” I insisted. “People argue.”
“Sure they do, but it’s not always enough. They’ve struggled my whole life putting food on the table. Providing for me and my sisters. I don’t want a hard life like that for my family. I don’t want to become my father, busting ass every day for a job that barely pays the bills and then having to sell it just to make ends meet. Besides, could you imagine me settling down? I can barely commit to listening to one song all the way through.”
I laughed, then sobered. “Be serious.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. “C’mon, Charlotte, you know I’m no good at this emotional shit.”
“You always say that, but you know exactly how to make me feel better, so you must be good at something.” Which wasn’t a lie. After mom left and dad got sick, Liam was the only one who could deal when I finally broke from the strain. “And don’t call me Charlotte,” I added, though I knew it was pointless to remind him because in the years we’d been friends, he’d never listened.
“Well, you’re pretty easy to cheer up. Cookies, a little time away. Piece of cake. Maybe I would kickass as the committed boyfriend.”
I ignored the boyfriend comment. “You make everything seem so easy,” I said as I lost myself in the deep blue-black endlessness of the night sky. “I wish I could be like you.”
“Bullheaded?” he said with a laugh.
“To a point,” I said honestly.
“You don’t wanna be like me,” he replied and tugged me closer to his warmth. My eyes began to flutter closed. I was warm, surrounded by Liam and felt safe. I always felt safe when I was around him and that was more important than any kiss. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”
Friend Zone Series Box Set Page 4