So Bad It Must Be Good

by Nicole Helm

  “Plus,” Dinah continued, her smile going sly, “he’s super-hot and really good at sex. That’ll put anyone in a good mood.”

  Kayla managed a chuckle and decided to focus on that. On friendship. On brownies and wine and funny movies. On her best friend, who’d changed, and herself, who had too, and maybe tomorrow she’d know what to do about Liam Patrick.

  But if she woke up as confused as ever, Kayla was certain of one thing: She wouldn’t let that stop her.

  * * *

  Liam didn’t go straight home from Kayla’s. Instead, he’d dropped by his grandmother’s house and she’d force-fed him the casserole she’d made for dinner.

  She’d subtly mentioned how infrequent his visits were, and he took care of a few little projects. Changed a lightbulb that had gone out, oiled a squeaky door and the like.

  He didn’t even argue when she’d insisted on serving him dessert. He’d simply sat at her cramped dining room table and listened carefully to all her stories of his various cousins and their offspring.

  God knew there’d be some kind of test to see if he’d been listening, and when he least expected it to boot.

  Still, when he got up to leave, she’d patted his cheek and told him he was a “good boy.” She’d given him that look that told him she had quite a few pieces of advice to bestow upon him but had decided to offer him reprieve tonight.

  It had settled him, to be of some use to a person who mattered to him. To help, to fix, to listen. He didn’t feel quite so churned up anymore.

  At least until he pulled his truck into his usual parking spot on the street in front of his house. He frowned at the shadowy figure on his stoop. Even though he couldn’t see the person, he had the sinking suspicion it was Aiden.

  Which meant one of two things: Aiden was either in trouble or extraordinarily drunk. Maybe even both. But it was the only time Aiden ever came to Liam’s place. Otherwise they only saw each other at Mom and Dad’s when Aiden graced them all with his presence. But Aiden never let Mom see him drunk.

  Liam had the insane urge to drive away. He didn’t want to deal with Aiden’s bullshit tonight. Not when he was still a little edgy underneath the calm that helping Grandma out had given him.

  But Aiden was his brother, and if he was drunk or in trouble, it was Liam’s duty to help. Like Dad had said earlier, Aiden just required a bit more attention, a bit more help. Liam didn’t want Mom or Dad or, God forbid, Grandma having to worry about Aiden’s shit.

  So Liam got out of his truck and trudged toward his front door.

  “Well, there you are,” Aiden slurred, still just a dark shadow on Liam’s stoop. “Don’t tell me bro-bro has a life.”

  “Bro-bro? Christ, how drunk are you?” Liam muttered, taking the step up to the concrete pad.

  Aiden stumbled to his feet. “Very, very, very drunk,” he said gravely. “Where’ve you been, asshole?”

  Liam sighed. “Grandma Patrick’s house.”

  Aiden laughed. Hysterically. He even slapped his knee a few times as if Liam had just told the joke of the century. “Of course you fucking were. You were fixing her fucking toilet and probably vacuuming her fucking curtains and she gave you milk and fucking cookies. Saint fucking Liam.”

  “Isn’t that something like blasphemy?” Liam replied drily. Clearly Aiden was itching for a fight, and Liam was not in the mood to navigate Aiden’s mercurial temper when he was drunk.

  But that was his job, wasn’t it? And he’d learned a few tricks after thirty years on the planet. First, never rise to the bait Aiden laid.

  Liam unlocked his door and shoved it open before motioning Aiden inside. “I suppose you want a place to crash.”

  “Nowhere else to go,” Aiden muttered, weaving and stumbling into the house.

  Liam flicked on a light and Aiden collapsed onto the couch.

  Liam frowned, the first trickle of worry over annoyance skittering down his spine. It certainly wasn’t the first time Aiden had shown up at his place drunk and antagonistic, but this was . . . extreme.

  “Where have you been? Mom’s been worried.”

  Aiden laughed again, though not quite as uproariously. “Do you ever fight your own fucking battles, Liam? Or are you always too busy taking up the sword for every damn other person.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means maybe if Mom is worrying it’s none of your damn business.”

  “My brother. My mother. My family. That’s my business, Aiden. Maybe you don’t feel the same way, but—”

  “But I’m wrong, right? I’m unfeeling and selfish and so fucking wrong?”

  The worry buried deeper. Aiden usually didn’t have a bad thing to say about himself. “What is with you?”

  Aiden shrugged. “Everything, right? Isn’t that what everyone’s always saying? I am the problem. I am an asshole. A wolf in sheep-ass clothing.”

  “You’re drunk enough to be incomprehensible. Sleep it off.”

  Of course, instead, Aiden pushed off the couch and weaved enough that Liam felt the need to reach out and steady him.

  “’S fine,” Aiden said, pushing Liam’s steadying hand away. “I ended shit and it’s all fine and dandy. I’ll call Kayla tomorrow and everything will be fine.”

  Liam kept himself very still, reminded himself to breathe, to be the rational, sober adult in the room. Because a good half of that didn’t make sense. “You’re staying away from Kayla from here on out. Understood?”

  Aiden squinted at him. “Says who?”

  “Me.”

  “Lemme guess,” Aiden said, apparently attempting to slap Liam on the shoulder but missing entirely. “You think she’s too good for me.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Kayla Ganna—Gabba—Gallagher is a fucking princess and I am a useless fuckup.”

  “I didn’t say that, Aiden,” Liam said through gritted teeth. He didn’t know what to do with his brother being a drunken, self-pitying ass. He could fight antagonism. He knew what to do with that.

  In what seemed to be the theme for today, he did not know what to do with this.

  “Don’t have to say what’s truth. But maybe someone good and shit would fix what’s wrong with me.”

  “Only you can fix what’s wrong with you,” Liam replied flatly as Aiden plopped back onto the couch. He sprawled out and closed his eyes.

  “You’re confusing us, Li-Li. You’re the strong one. You can fix everything. Well, ’cept me, but sometimes I wonder if you ever tried.”

  “Look, Kayla and I . . .”

  But Aiden was making a faint snoring sound, his face lax, his body limp. Well, Liam supposed explanations about Kayla could wait until morning when Aiden was more likely to remember it anyway.

  Liam shoved a cushion under his brother’s head, hoping to God he didn’t have to clean up another person’s puke again. But he wondered if Aiden was right.

  Maybe he’d never really tried to help Aiden. Maybe he’d only ever pushed him away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kayla was sick with nerves, which wasn’t all that uncommon in her life, really, but it was uncommon when it came to Liam.

  Still, they hadn’t exactly discussed . . . anything. They’d agreed to see each other tonight, but what did that mean? She didn’t have a time, a place. All he’d done was fucking nod at her and repeat tomorrow.

  She kind of wanted to punch him right about now.

  Instead, she’d picked up a pizza at a place kind of close to his house, and she was going to be damn brave enough to march up to his door and offer dinner and sex. And if he turned her down, she’d live.

  Maybe punch him too, but mostly she’d live.

  But as she turned onto his street, his truck was parked where he always seemed to park it, which meant he was home. Probably.

  Her stomach lurched and even the smell of pizza didn’t help. Why was she doing this? What was the point of potentially embarrassing herself?

  She looked at his little ho
use and thought about his meticulously organized workshop, the way he’d kissed her last night, the scrape of his beard on her thighs.

  Okay, well, there were some convincing arguments there. She grabbed the pizza and got out of her car. She breathed through the nerves as she walked up to his front door.

  Embarrassment wasn’t fatal. Feeling foolish would eventually fade, so she had everything to gain and nothing to lose. If she could only get that through to her churning stomach.

  She stood on his porch and probably the only thing that eventually got her to knock on Liam’s door was a man staring at her a little too intently from across the street.

  It didn’t take long for the door to swing open, and he must have looked out a peephole or something because he was smiling when he opened it. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” she managed. “I hope I’m not . . . overstepping,” she offered lamely, and then inwardly berated herself for it.

  “Not at all.”

  Before she thought better of it, she reached out with her free hand and cupped his cheek, rubbing her thumb over the coarse texture. “You look tired.”

  His mouth curved in that world-weary way of his. “I was up half the night taking care of a drunk person.”

  “That’s a nasty habit you have.” Something like jealousy poked at her, though she didn’t want to be that girl. But apparently she was. “Who?”

  “Aiden.”

  “Oh.” She felt unaccountably awkward at the mention of the brother she’d first agreed to go out with.

  “It was . . . Well, you brought pizza. Come inside.” He took the box from her and walked toward his kitchen. Kayla closed the door and followed him.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He grabbed two plates from a cupboard. “Why?”

  She studied him for a moment, coming to the conclusion he was well and truly baffled. That it would never occur to him to unload his problems on someone else. It was fascinating because she recognized that, though they came at it from different places.

  She’d always been told by someone or another that her problems were less important, and so she’d learned to stuff them down. Liam seemed to take responsibility for everything, to hold that responsibility to himself because he felt as though it was his job to fix.

  But maybe that came from a similar place. She’d been an avoider. He was clearly a fixer, but maybe it all stemmed from feeling like their own problems weren’t worthy.

  “Sometimes it feels good to tell someone what’s bothering you.”

  He stared at the pizza as he seemed to puzzle over her words. Something in her chest pinched. Maybe her heart. She wanted . . . She wanted him to tell her what was wrong, and she wanted to offer him some comfort.

  “It is what it is.” He squared his shoulders and smiled at her. “I’ll fix it.” So certain and sure.

  “You’ll fix what exactly?” she pressed, and then wondered why she was pressing when she could be eating pizza or having sex or not talking about his brother who’d asked her out not all that long ago.

  His eyebrows drew together and he moved his gaze to her as if the question didn’t make sense.

  “Aiden isn’t an it, any more than he’s someone who’s your job to fix,” she said gently.

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Yes.” Kayla accepted the plate he’d handed her and took her time taking a bite of pizza. “You know, I’ve spent the time since I stood up to my grandmother and father and quit waiting for something to happen. I did the hard part. I stood up to them, and the world was supposed to reward me with some grand sign or gesture.”

  He didn’t say anything, and she took another bite of pizza while trying to organize her thoughts. “But in the end, the world couldn’t magically give me what I wanted. I had to . . . Don’t you see? Six months ago, I never would have shown up here with a pizza. I never would have gotten drunk and insisted on coming to your workshop. I would have retreated into some safe place, no matter that I had been told my whole life that that’s what I did. I had to decide I didn’t want to be that anymore.”

  “He stood—okay, well laid there—and told me I fixed things, but I never . . .” Liam stopped talking, shaking his head and looking away from her.

  And clearly this was not some misunderstanding, some little blip in his relationship with his brother, but something far bigger, because Liam held his jaw tight, his eyebrows furrowed, and though outwardly he looked stoic, Kayla thought there was a vulnerability in that stoicism.

  She sat her plate down on the counter and crossed to him, placing her palms on his chest. “He said you never what?”

  Liam’s blue gaze met hers for the briefest second, but he didn’t hold it, so she couldn’t be sure it was a naked hurt that had lingered in their depths. “He said I’d never even tried to fix him.”

  Kayla shook her head. “That isn’t your job.”

  He was silent for a while, but she noted something that maybe shouldn’t have brought her pleasure, though it did. He didn’t step away from her hands, didn’t push them away. In fact, as she rubbed them up and down his chest in what she hoped was a comforting gesture, he even seemed to breathe a little easier.

  “Why are we talking about this?” he asked, a forced smile curving his mouth but not reaching his eyes.

  Still, she smiled up at him, because she didn’t know the answer. This wasn’t exactly what she’d come for, and still . . . She wanted it. Those moments of getting to know a person, because she was finally brave enough to open up to that instead of shy away from it. “I don’t know.”

  His fingers brushed over the hair that waved over her shoulders, rubbing the ends of a few strands between his thumb and forefinger. His gaze moved from her hair to her face, and everything inside of her mind went totally blank.

  He was just so handsome, and . . . He was something she struggled to define. Not fierce, exactly, but something more dazzling than sturdy and sure.

  Slowly, stretching out the moment until it was nothing but vibrating anticipation, his mouth lowered closer to hers. When his lips finally touched hers, feather light, sweet and seductive, it had the power of a gunshot. Loud and disorienting, a bolt of feeling that was so sweet it was almost painful.

  And that was all the kiss was. A brief, sweet thing that left her shivering and desperate for more, especially with his mouth still so close to hers.

  “I like you,” she blurted out, feeling somehow half brave and right and half embarrassed beyond belief.

  But his smile shifted from that fake, blank thing it had been before to something warm and exciting. “I like you too,” he said in his low gravelly voice, his hands sliding over the backs of hers, still on his chest.

  She had to look down, to swallow at the way that waved through her, strong and potent. It even made her throat a little tight, but it also made her think of last night. “So why’d you lie to Dinah?”

  “I don’t know. There was an awkward silence, and I just . . .” His fingers curled around her hands, but he didn’t remove them from his chest. He just held them there. “I thought maybe you didn’t want to tell her. Or maybe you didn’t want anyone to know.”

  She forced herself to be the brave, take-a-stand woman she wanted to be in this . . . relationship. “I don’t care who knows,” she said firmly.

  He inclined his head. “Okay.”

  They stood there, for she wasn’t sure how long, just staring at each other. She’d come here and he’d welcomed her. She’d broached an uncomfortable subject and they’d talked it out.

  But she was done talking. She slid her hands up his chest, his hands falling to his sides as she wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged his mouth down to hers. They’d talked and shared and opened up to feelings, but she wanted different feelings now.

  She didn’t want to talk about how she felt. She wanted to show him. So she pressed her mouth to his, outlined his lips with her tongue. She curled her fingers in his thick hair and poured every ounce of herself int
o that kiss.

  He banded his arms around her, pulling her so close she could feel his erection against her belly. She pressed against it, satisfied at the groan that emerged from the back of his throat. She wanted him desperate and needy for her. The way she was for him at something as simple as that little whispered kiss.

  She scraped her teeth across his bottom lip and he pressed her firmly against the counter behind her. She tried to angle her hips, to rub herself against him, but he was so much taller and broader and stronger, she didn’t have any leverage.

  But leverage didn’t matter with his mouth hot on hers, his beard abrasive and wonderful against her chin.

  He tugged her shirt up and as they had to break contact she realized neither of them had eaten very much. “Oh, the pizza . . .”

  “Is microwavable. I want to be inside you, Kayla.” He paused for a second, his mouth a whisper away from hers. He cleared his throat. “You, uh, can tell me not to say stuff like that.”

  “I like it.” She nipped at his bottom lip, gratified when he grinned that rare, wolfish grin. Like she could tug down that capable, unfazed facade, just as he tugged down her timid, fragile one.

  His hands slid down her arms and then his fingers curled around her wrists. She was pressed up against the counter and he wasn’t just caging her in. He held her hands behind her against the counter so she couldn’t move her arms.

  And then he sighed with something very close to disgust in his expression. “I left the condoms at your place last night.”

  * * *

  Liam was ready to drag Kayla right out the door and head to her apartment. Or maybe a drugstore would be closer, but something about the way Kayla grinned at him made him pause.

  “What do you take me for?” she asked, wiggling out of his grasp and grabbing the purse she’d set down. She rummaged around in the bag that was pink and about the size of her head before she pulled out the box of condoms he’d dropped at her place last night.