My gaze flies to hers across the room and then back down to our full plates. How long have we been in here? I screw up some courage and actually sound pretty convincing when I smile and head towards her.
“Oh, Liam was just regaling me with stories of his latest conquests.”
She looks surprised. “No wonder you’ve been in here all this time.” She smiles. “That’s a long list.”
“Yep,” I agree. “And growing longer by the second.”
I throw a wink over my shoulder and don’t wait around to see his reaction.
See, all I have to do is keep up the pretense that I’m totally chill about this whole thing. All I have to do is act mature and worldly so he takes a chance on us. If he’d just take a chance, then I know he’d eventually fall for me. It took Bella ages to convince Edward to let down his guard. Why should my own love story be any different?
“I’m not falling for this,” Liam says a couple of hours later as he swings the passenger-side door to his Mercedes open for me to get inside. I stumble but catch myself in time—mature and worldly, remember? I stop short of getting into his car and turn to flash him a smile.
“Fall for what?” I ask innocently.
He shakes his head in exasperation even as a small smile plays across his lips.
“You’re a terrible actress.”
I acknowledge that this is probably true by sinking down into the leather seat. He gets into the driver’s side and pulls his obnoxiously expensive car out onto the road. I stretch my legs out into the line of heat wafting out from the vent and wiggle my toes in my boots.
“Do you mind if I put my feet on your seat? I’ll keep my socks on.”
He looks startled, as if I’d asked if I could take off my clothes instead of my shoes. I’m guessing worldly and mature women don’t ask to sit crisscross applesauce on men’s butter-soft Italian leather seats. I must remember this.
“No, go ahead,” he says warily.
I slip out of my boots and wiggle my toes in freedom.
He eyes my brightly colored Avengers socks. “You have a thing for superheroes?” he asks.
“I have a thing for Stan Lee.”
I cross my legs in the seat and cover them nearly to the knees with the billowy skirt of my dress. It’s a twenty-minute drive to Santa Monica. I figure I should at least be comfortable.
“It’s actually kind of incredible.”
His arm muscles move and stretch underneath the sleeve of his shirt as he shifts the car into one gear after another.
“What’s incredible?” I murmur.
“The way your brother got mysteriously called into work and couldn’t give you a ride home.”
“Oh, there’s nothing mysterious about that. Tosh has a new app coming out. He works almost nonstop.”
“And everyone else?”
“What about them?”
“Everyone else couldn’t give you a ride either?”
I give him a huge smile.
“You know you’re the only one who lives on the Westside too, Liam.”
I like saying his name so much that the single word comes out a whisper. I worry about using it all of the time, so rather than sound like a deranged parrot, I save it up and use it sparingly like rations on a desert island. The only problem with this is that my emotions usually spill out with it.
“And what if I had plans?”
The demand in his question pulls me back into the moment. I look out my window at Beverly Hills sparkling just outside of the glass.
“You don’t have plans,” I answer confidently.
We come to a stop at a red light, and I can almost feel him pulling on his arrogant persona.
“Don’t assume that just because it’s late on a Sunday that I don’t have any plans to meet up with a date—”
“You meet your mother every Monday morning for breakfast.” He freezes, utterly still. “You told me, remember? How you have to get up early to drive to Santa Barbara and how she looks forward to it all week long, because you’re the only one who—”
“Don’t.” His tone has a hard edge. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I look right at him now, absolutely refusing to be denied this one truth.
“Sure I do.” I touch the scar on the back of his hand gently with my index finger. “You just wish I didn’t.”
He pushes into first gear, effectively dislodging my hand. I’ve managed to piss him off again, just like the last time. So it’s on to plan B, which is to back off. Being alone in the car with him for the next half an hour feels intimate enough. I look out the window, remembering the night he got that scar.
Liam and the leggy redhead he brought to New Year’s had been arguing for most of the night. I doubted anybody else noticed, since they weren’t sitting at our table, but I was fascinated by it. I knew he was Brody and Max’s brother, and I knew he was a big deal at Barker-Ash, because our company did so much work with them at the time. I knew his handshake was solid from our one brief introduction. I also knew that he was beautiful. That was the end of my knowledge about him, and I was intrigued enough that I couldn’t stop staring.
It was New Year’s Eve, the DJ was awesome, the club was alive with energy, and everyone around us was having fun. Everyone except for Liam and the Amazon woman. He kept having to take calls on his cell phone, and I watched her grow more and more frustrated as the night went on.
It was nearing midnight, and he’d just sat down with her again, only to have his phone ring for the millionth time. I saw him apologize to her and watched her snap enough to chew him out. Having never had any kind of public tiff, I was kind of mesmerized watching it go down, even if I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Her red hair was flying this way and that, and just when it seemed like she was really narrowing in on her central thesis, he looked down at his phone. I’m guessing it was buzzing again. She tossed out a line, something that made his eyes narrow. But just as quickly, his face cleared of all emotion and he shrugged. On his way out of the room he had his phone to his ear, but he stopped long enough to say something to the general manager, who had shown us to our seats. Jessica Rabbit got up in a huff and grabbed her bag, and when she passed him, the GM followed her out—I assumed to get her a cab.
Before I could think better of it, I was following Liam as he retreated down a long dark hallway, past the kitchen and towards the office. Because we’d done events here in the past, I knew where he was headed, and I followed him right to the door. He didn’t close it entirely. I stood outside in the shadows, straining to hear his voice over the bass that shook the walls even all the way back here.
“No, it’s OK. I wasn’t busy.” He moved back and forth like he was pacing. “Did you really? That’s wonderful,” he said patiently. For a moment he disappeared from view. He resumed his pacing with a full bottle of whiskey in his hand. He’d already had multiple cocktails tonight, and I wondered how he could remain standing. At some point he leaned against the wall near the door; in the dark, empty hallway I did the same. The conversation continued with him answering softly and gently, almost as if he were speaking to a child. I didn’t hear him hang up, but I did hear the crash when the mirror broke into a million pieces. I rushed into the room without stopping to consider what I was doing. Liam spun around wildly when he heard the door slam behind me, his bloody hand dripping onto shards of the broken whiskey bottle beneath his shoes.
I nodded at his hand.
“Is there a first aid kit in here?”
If he found it odd at all that I mysteriously appeared in the room, he didn’t say it. He took one step and then another before his back hit the wall. He slowly slid down it to the floor.
“In the closet,” he said as his head fell back against the wall behind him.
I grabbed the first-aid kit and sat down beside him. I was infinitely grat
eful I had decided to wear a romper that night instead of a cocktail dress, or that position would have been a whole lot more scandalous. When I reached out to inspect his bleeding hand, he pulled it back quickly.
“You’ll ruin your outfit,” he mumbled.
He seemed totally drained, like all the energy in him had fallen to the floor along with the whiskey bottle. I’d only ever seen him full of life, and this side of him made me sad. I lifted his hand again, careful to keep it away from the electric-blue material of my outfit, and slowly cleaned him up. It was not one cut but several, and they were deep enough to scar. He watched my hands work on his, neither of us saying anything.
“Ex-girlfriend?” I asked just to fill the silence.
“No.” He shook his head sadly.
I wrapped the gauze end over end to create a bandage and tied it off carefully.
“Who, then?”
His eyes narrowed. “It’s none of your business.”
I grinned. “Tell me anyway.”
He looked at me for a full minute before responding. “It was my mother.”
I wadded up the used gauze in my lap and got up to deposit it in the trashcan.
“Oh, that’s not nearly as seedy as I was hoping for.”
“Will you grab me the other bottle while you’re up?” He gestured at the collection of decanters in the corner.
I rolled my eyes at the request. “I think you should probably have some water instead.” I started across the room to grab him a bottle of Evian, but his voice stopped me short.
“I said it was my mother, not my stepmother. Not Viv. My biological mother, Elizabeth. She’s struggling to adjust to a new medication they’ve started her on. The nurses in her assisted-living facility have already had to sedate her twice in the last month. She’s calmer if she can speak to me, so I keep answering even though she’s manic and only repeating the same story over and over. She doesn’t even realize we’ve talked twenty times today already.” He sighed heavily. “She doesn’t realize a lot of things.”
I must have stared at him for a full minute with my mouth hanging open. I was totally unprepared for that. I glanced at the bottles of liquor in the corner and headed in that direction.
“Did you say you wanted the bourbon or the gin?”
When I turned around holding one in each hand, he smiled sadly.
“Both?” he asked.
I nodded and sat down beside him, handing him the bourbon and taking a swig of the gin myself. It was fairly dark in his office with only the lamplight, and the moment felt safe, perfect for secret telling.
“Why is she calling only you?” I asked him.
He took a long pull.
“Because I’m the only one who takes her calls.”
“How is that possible?”
He looked away from me, telling his secrets to the dark office.
“My parents’ divorce was messy.” He swallowed. “She cheated on him . . . more than once. Brody never forgave her. Dad either. We were teenagers then, and she was always off on one adventure after another. She was—is—flaky. They didn’t really have a reason to talk after the papers were signed.” He took another drink.
“As a little kid I thought it was magical how much energy she had or how excited she’d get about something. She’d flit from thing to thing like a butterfly, and I just thought it was her personality. She was always a little bit manic, but she didn’t really experience the deep depression until after they were apart. It was like each year after the divorce, she got progressively worse. At first it was little things: spending all her money on a new business she wanted to start and then deciding she hated it a month later. I realize now that Dad was her straight man, and without him there to keep her in check, she started to implode.
“I tried—I tried so hard to help her, but it was early in college, and I was too focused on my own life to pay much attention. A few years ago it got . . . bad. I’ve had her in care ever since.” He looked at me suddenly. “It’s a state-of-the-art facility, not an asylum or anything. It’s like a five-star hotel . . . only with orderlies and psychiatric care.” He tried to smile then, but it didn’t get anywhere near his eyes. He took another drink.
“Why didn’t you tell Brody about this? She’s his mother too.”
For a single moment his eyes flooded with tears, and I could feel his pain like my own.
“She wasn’t always like this. She used to be so . . . special. And when she started to get really bad, she begged me not to tell anyone. Brody hasn’t spoken to her since the divorce, and neither has my dad. I don’t blame them for that, just like they don’t blame me for still choosing to have a relationship with her. She didn’t want them coming around out of pity.” He looked out over the dark room. “I didn’t tell anyone, because she asked me not to.”
The words broke my heart. I wanted to hug him so badly my fingers tingled with the need to do it. Instead I let my head fall on his shoulder, as if we were old friends instead of people having their first-ever conversation.
“So why tell me?” I asked.
My head rose and fell with his sigh.
“Because you’re not real.”
I chuckled softly.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you took care of me,” he said conversationally. “Nobody ever takes care of me, so you can’t be real. I’ve had too much to drink, and so I imagined a fairy with big brown eyes and wild hair so I had something beautiful to think about it.”
I almost choked on my words, trying my hardest not to break the spell of this moment by getting emotional. I tried to keep my tone light.
“You believe in fairies?”
His lips brushed the top of my head before he whispered into my hair.
“I do now.”
I fell in love with Liam Ashton at that exact moment.
Liam doesn’t say much when he drops me off in front of Tosh’s house, except to point out that my brother’s car is in the driveway and he is clearly at home. I just thank Liam for the ride and walk slowly up the steps to the front door.
I wanted to press him into talking more, but I worry that, given all the emotions I unleashed in him today, I won’t like the results of that particular conversation. I hadn’t meant to bring up that night, especially since we’ve never acknowledged that it happened at all. We sat on the floor for the longest time as he told me all about his mother. I guessed he’d never told the truth to anyone, and because he was locked in the unreality of the night and the moment, it felt safe to tell me. But as the time ticked by, he seemed to come back to himself, and just like in Cinderella, the magic was lost.
When I saw him at Max’s birthday party months later, he didn’t even acknowledge me, though I caught him staring again and again. When we finally spoke at a dodgeball game, he pretended like it was the first time we’d met. I kept staring at him that day, trying to figure out what his game was or if he’d been so drunk that he genuinely didn’t remember our conversation. But then we went to breakfast as a group, and he was all smiles, congenial and telling jokes. Nobody but me noticed how often he touched that scar on his hand.
Chapter SIX
“Why are we doing this?” I demand as I clomp along beside Max.
She’s running down the street in workout gear, looking like a gazelle. Beside her, Landon looks like jogging Barbie. I feel like a disjointed mule. Running is not my love language.
“Because you said you wanted to get in shape,” Landon calls across Max to me.
“No,” I grunt, barely able to speak over my lungs threatening to implode in my chest. This is what Hazel from The Fault in Our Stars must have felt like. Where’s an oxygen tank when you need one? “I said I needed to work out to counteract all of the licorice I’ve been eating lately. I never said anything about getting in shape, and I certainly wouldn’t willingly ask to
run.”
“It’s just three miles.” Max grins at me, masochist that she is. “And we’re almost back to the car.”
Only three miles. I grumble it in my head since I just used up all of my air supply on that last diatribe. I hate running, but I also just want this ungodly exercise to end, so I refuse to stop and walk, because then it’s going to take even longer to get back to the car. When we finally make it back around, Max suggests we stretch out our legs. I take this as an excuse to crumple to the ground in a heap and then do some random stretches I remember from eighth-grade PE.
“I’m going to miss you guys next week,” Landon tells Max. “I had so much fun with y’all last year.”
“We’ll see you, like, two days later. It’s not like you’re going off to war.”
Landon smiles.
“Well, I don’t know about that. I’ve never brought a man home to meet my parents, so I’m not totally sure how Daddy is going to react.”
“I’m more interested in how Brody is going to react.” I wink at her. “I’ve met your family, and that’s a whole lot of Texas coming at a person at once. I can’t wait to hear how he reacts to them.”
“Speaking of parents, I’m super disappointed I won’t get to meet yours.” Landon smiles at me.
My parents are coming to visit for Thanksgiving, and my mom is making a big lunch for us at Tosh’s place before we head to the Ashtons’ for dessert. Viv was nearly apoplectic when she heard they were coming into town and wouldn’t be coming to her holiday feast. She insisted on us joining them in some capacity. We agreed to come over for dessert. No one in my family is very good at baking, and everyone has heard about Max’s culinary creations, so it was an easy sell.
“Well, it should be a hoot to watch. My parents are absolutely nothing like yours,” I tell Max.
“Thank God for that!” Max grins. “Who could handle that much micromanaging in one holiday?”
“Speaking of holiday managing”—I wink at Landon again—“does Brody know you’ll be sleeping in separate bedrooms at your parents’ house?”
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