Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
LIAM
When I wake up on Tuesday morning, I reach for Briar but find the bed empty.
I pull on my pants and leave the bedroom.
The place is small enough that it only takes me seconds to find her.
She’s already dressed and is sitting at the little kitchen table with Karma curled up on her lap.
A mug of coffee sits forgotten in front of her as she stares off at nothing.
Something has changed. Something all the way bad.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, striding toward her.
Her gaze shifts sharply to me. “Don’t come any closer.”
Alarm pulses through me, and I stop in my tracks and look around, half-expecting to find someone else in the apartment. Yesterday, it felt like we were perfectly in tune. How could that have slipped away in a single night?
“What happened?”
“Your…your phone buzzed, and I thought something might be wrong because it was so early. So I checked the screen, but…” She pauses and swallows. “It was an update for a dating app.”
It takes me a few seconds to understand what she means, because I haven’t been using any dating app. Haven’t had a millisecond’s thought about being with another woman since I got to know her. Then it hits me…
I downloaded that app to get Hannah off my back.
“Briar—” I take another step closer, but she’s still got that wild look, almost like she’s afraid of me, so I stagger to a stop. “It’s not—”
“I know we’re not together. You’ve got every right.
” She looks down into her coffee mug. “But this is just so much like what happened with Jonah. Sophie found out what he was up to when he left his phone at her place. After everything, I…I can’t do this.
I’m not ready. I should have known I wasn’t ready. ”
“It’s not what you think,” I say, my heart racing, blood pounding in my ears.
She gives me a sad smile. “That’s what he said to Sophie too.”
Jesus Fucking Christ.
“I am not Jonah. I downloaded that damn thing after we kissed the first time, because I wanted to be able to look my sister in the face and tell her I was trying to date other women. I didn’t want to lie to her.
Or you. But, yeah, at the time I figured it might be better if both of us found someone else. You seemed to think the same.”
“Liam, I don’t need to know this,” she says, tears forming in her eyes.
Feverish desperation flashes through me, frying my nerve endings. I have to fix this. I have to make it right, but I’m not sure how. Maybe it’s too late to make anything right. Maybe there was never a real chance of making anything work between us.
But I can’t let her misread this situation.
“I haven’t messaged a single person on there since reactivating it. I couldn’t bring myself to even look at it. You can check. I want you to check.”
Tears are streaming down her face now. The need to make it better is so overpowering it nearly topples me, but I don’t go to her. I need to respect her boundary.
“Please.”
“Liam,” she says again, a different kind of plea. Like she’s saying, Please, stop, you’re hurting me more.
But I can’t. Not yet. She needs to know the truth, dammit.
“I care about you, Briar. I tried not to want you, but some forces are too powerful to be denied. If you’re done with me, I understand—it’s a fucked-up situation, no doubt—but I can’t have you thinking I’ve been talking to other women.
You’re the only woman who’s been on my mind. You’re always on my mind.”
She swipes tears off her cheeks—tears I put there—and it feels like someone has wrenched my heart out of my chest with their bare hand.
“Please, Briar. Please just let me comfort you.”
“Put on some clothes,” she says, her expression hardening, as if I’d offered to fuck her on the kitchen table.
I promised myself not to care what anyone thought of me anymore after I was arrested, but I care what she thinks. I care a lot.
I nod woodenly, then head into the bedroom and tug on the rest of my clothes, my heart beating unevenly in my chest.
She’s going to send me away. Maybe she’ll fire me while she’s at it, not that I give much of a shit about my job at the moment.
She watches me as I emerge from the bedroom, her arms folded. Karma has his paws up on the table so he can get a good look at me too.
I lift my phone out of my pocket. “I want to show you my phone.”
She waves me off when I approach the table.
“Please be fair about this,” I say. “I know you’re fair.”
“Liam,” she says sharply. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.”
“No, I believe you about the app. Mostly. I know you wouldn’t offer to show me if you were lying.”
I like that first part, the second part less. “So?”
“It just…helped me realize.” She pauses to take a deep breath. “This was a mistake. I’m not ready, and it would be so messy for us to get involved.”
“Doesn’t feel like a mistake,” I say, a contrarian born and bred. “I want to be with you, Briar.”
She takes a second to digest this, then says, “What about Hannah? What about the brewery?”
“What about it? Don’t you like working together? Because I fucking love it.”
“We should only be working together,” she says firmly, crossing her arms tighter, as if she’s shielding herself from me. “And you and Hannah are so important to each other. I don’t want to ruin your relationship. I’d hate myself if I did.”
“She is important to me, but so are you. Please believe me, Briar. I need you to believe in me.”
Her eyes soften for a moment, but then fresh tears drip down her cheeks. Silent tears. “You should leave.”
Hopelessness swallows me. She’s not going to change her mind. Not now. Probably not ever. The last couple of days have felt like a pocket out of time because that’s exactly what they were. I’ll have to return to the life I had before, only now I realize how empty my existence was.
“So you took what you wanted, and now I’m dismissed?” I snap, undoubtedly making shit worse. I’m like a wolf caught in a trap who immediately starts gnawing on his own leg. Except I’m also hurting her.
God, I’m being an asshole. I know what it must have felt like for her to see that stupid app on my phone after what Jonah did to her. I haven’t opened it even once since downloading it. It was my attempt at a safety net—and now it’s my downfall.
But if it wasn’t this, maybe it would have been something else. Maybe my best will never be good enough for anyone.
Hurt ripples across her face. “You know it’s not like that. It’s just…it’s better if we stick to the rules.”
“All right.” I back up toward the door. “No hard feelings. You can ask for a fuck anytime you feel like it. Goodbye, boss. I’ll see you at work.”