Chapter 27
CHAPTER 27
OLIVE
B y fate or by design, I’m alone again with Liam.
Being alone with Liam is exactly what I don’t need right now.
I’m doing my best not to think about how bright his green eyes look. I’m working hard not to notice that he didn’t shave this morning, and I think I like him better with a little stubble. I’m pretending it doesn’t matter that I’ve grown used to his scent, and it might be my favorite fragrance I’ve ever smelled.
Liam has built a treehouse in my mind, and I am not quite prepared for it.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod, suddenly aware that my mouth is so dry I might as well be chewing on cotton balls.
“I thought I was going to be locating trees, not walking down memory lane,” he says grumpily.
My laugh sounds nervous in my own ears. “Your mom knows how to keep you on your toes.”
“All right,” he says. “Where was the bird with the broken wing? ”
“You don’t remember?” I ask. “I cried about that bird for a week after Benji told me it probably wouldn’t recover.”
We start walking through the rows of trees the way we did when we were kids. It’s colder today than it has been all week, but the sun is out, creating a false sense of warmth. After a few minutes of crunching footfalls and unspoken silence, we come upon the little shed where I found the injured bird.
“Here,” I say. “It was on the ground, right by this big oak tree.” I reach up and touch the rough bark. “I always loved this tree. It’s always been my favorite.”
“I remember.” His voice is quiet. “You always collected the acorns. Remember you turned that into a game to see who could find the most?”
“I always won that game,” I say.
“Because you changed the rules in the middle, like usual.” He rolls his eyes, laughing quietly to himself. It’s a nice laugh. I wish he did it more. He turns away and starts searching the grass for acorns.
I move around to the back of the tree, then bend over to pick up an acorn. On my way back up, something stops me. There, carved into the back of the giant oak, are our initials—L.F + O. W. in the center of a heart.
I reach out and trace the letters with my finger. “Oh my gosh.”
Liam turns, and I see the moment he realizes what I’ve found.
“What is this?” I meet his eyes.
“Oh, man, I forgot that was there,” he groans. “You’re going to make a thing of this.”
“Heck yeah I am!” I laugh. “When did you carve this?” I pull out my phone and snap a photo.
“Don’t—” He moves toward me, reaching for my phone, which I hold behind my back .
“What’s the matter, afraid someone will discover you have a heart?” I laugh.
He doesn’t. He doesn’t like to be teased, which of course, makes me want to do it more.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I get it,” I say. “Silly kid stuff. Should we take a photo over here? I think I found the bird—” I take a few steps away from the tree— “like here?” I turn and face him.
“That’s not what this was.”
I raise an eyebrow, but don’t say anything.
“It wasn’t silly kid stuff,” he says. “Not for me.” He pushes a hand through his hair, keeping his face angled away from me.
I feel like the conversation in his head right now is completely different than the one in mine.
I watch as he turns away, digging at the ground with his foot.
“What are you?—”
He holds a hand up. “Let me—just give me a second.”
I snap my jaw shut and take a step back because I don’t want to get in the way of whatever he’s about to say.
“That night—the party—” He meets my eyes and I nod, encouraging him to go on. He shuts his eyes and quickly says, “You were right.”
“About . . .?”
“I was going to ask you out.”
“Oh.” I go quiet and try not to trade Liam for Travis in my memories, picturing the differences.
“I have some regrets.” Liam faces me. “I’ve made some mistakes—a lot of mistakes. But one that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that I got out of Travis’s way, and I wish I hadn’t.” He studies me, unflinching. “You should’ve left with my number that night.”
“Why?” The question is so quiet, I’m not sure he hears.
He takes a tentative step toward me. “Because I never would’ve hurt you the way he did.” He searches my eyes. “ Because I would’ve tried to make you understand how lucky I was just to be around you.”
The words are just . . . out there, and I feel like I’m processing them in the wrong order. But then, it starts to click. He was going to ask me out. He never would’ve hurt me. I should’ve left with him that night.
I look up and find him watching me, angst behind his eyes. My pulse quickens, and I feel flushed, because once the pieces snap together, all the feelings I’ve been fighting off rush at me with surprisingly intensity.
Without thinking, I close the gap between us, grab his face with my hands and kiss him.
The kiss is point three seconds long before I pull back, eyes wide, hands dropping to his shoulders. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry.”
He looks shocked and a little amused.
“I just sort of went for it, and—” I snap my jaw shut. “That was a lot like our first kiss.” I cover my face with my hands, then peek through my fingers. “I can do better.”
He chuckles softly, moving closer and brushing a strand of hair away from my face. “Good. Because I’ve been waiting years to do this again.”
I drop my hands and smile at him, and all the reasons this will never work fall straight out of my mind. “Years?”
“Off and on since we were twelve,” he says. “Every time I saw you, I thought about it.”
“You should’ve said something.”
“Me? Say something?”
I smile.
“Timing was always off,” he says. “I don’t think we were ready for—” He stops, inhaling, like he needs a second to decide if he wants to go on— “something real.”
Something real.
I force myself not to think that the timing is off now too. Because if I do, I might lose my nerve. And, also, because I really, really don’t want to think about it. I want to give in to the feelings I’ve been fighting off. To let myself get lost in the delusion that there’s a future for me and Liam. And yeah, to kiss him with the kind of reckless abandon that makes the rest of the world fade away.
I know I could get hurt, but looking at him, listening to him, finally seeing him—it feels worth it.
This is real. To me and to him.
He brushes a thumb across my cheek, takes my face in his hands, then leans in and kisses me. He keeps his promise, taking his time with a soft, slow kiss that sends a jolt straight down my spine.
My mind starts to spin, and I think about Liam. His gruff exterior overshadowing his true nature. And I want to know all the parts of him I don’t know. I want to hear his thoughts and his dreams and his frustrations. I want to know what he’s thinking with a single look, to give him space to be quiet, to gain his trust—to earn that rare smile that makes me feel like I’ve struck gold.
I focus on his lips, pressed to mine with the kind of sweet tenderness that causes my insides to swoop in anticipation. Liam is slow and deliberate, soft lips and a gentle touch.
I wrap my arms around him tighter, pulling him closer, wanting to memorize the moment so I can relive it any time I want to. And I will because from now on, I’m sure that any time I think about the best kiss of my life, this will be the one that comes to mind.
He pulls back for a fraction of a second and looks at me, eyes searching mine with a quiet intensity that I’ve come to associate with Liam. The quiet intensity that seems to tell a story all on its own.
And then his lips are back on mine, a kind of desperation taking over. The kiss grows deeper, more rushed, and a tingle zips through my body as I completely lose myself. In him .
I thread my hands inside his coat, tracing the muscles in his back with my fingers, giving in to the kiss and everything it means. Because there’s no coming back from this. Not when my feelings for him have grown more real every day. I draw in a breath, mostly to try and still my racing pulse, and I feel him smile against my lips.
I open my eyes, and there he is, in all his beautiful glory, grinning down at me. It’s the first real, full smile I’ve seen. “Is that smile because of me?”
He laughs, but looks away, like he has to hide his face in case someone discovers he’s not a heartless grinch after all. “Yeah, it’s because of you.”
Now I smile and shimmy as I sing-song, “Because you like me.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t make it weird.”
“You hid it well,” I say. “I thought you couldn’t stand me.”
“It comes and goes.”
I laugh out loud, then go up on my tiptoes and kiss him again. I’m kissing Liam Fisher . And I like it. A lot.
My nerves are on high alert as I soak him in, letting myself feel all the things I’ve been trying not to feel since the Christmas Kick-Off. Letting myself love being the center of his attention.
I pull back and search his eyes. “What happened that night?” I ask, knowing he’ll know the one I mean.
He brushes my hair away from my face and holds my gaze. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” I say. “We spent that whole time talking—you actually were talking. And it was easy conversation, you know?”
He nods. “I remember. You’re easy to talk to.”
“Well, that’s obvious by the hours of conversation we’ve had since you got back.” I pause for a second, waiting for the joke to land, then smirk.
I’m rewarded with a smile, and then he leaves a trail of kisses on my cheek, then moves to my neck. “I don’t want to talk about Travis.”
“I thought you were his wingman,” I say.
Liam pulls back, a flash of anger in his eyes. “You did?”
I nod. “I thought you were, I don’t know, teeing me up, I guess. Is that a thing guys do?” I’m embarrassed to admit this, but at the look of concern on his face, that humiliation melts away.
He leans in and forces my gaze. “Olive, I would never do that.”
I meet his eyes. “I know. I mean, I should’ve known.” And it’s not like this has defined my feelings about Liam. It’s not like it was even more than a passing thought. Once I started dating Travis, I didn’t dwell on it. Liam and I were friends, and while I saw a flicker of a chance for something more, it was dashed quicker than it appeared.
Still, knowing now that I missed out on that opportunity, knowing how things with Travis turned out, I can’t help but feel the sting of regret.
The pained expression is back on his face, as he takes a step away from me. He pushes a hand through his hair. “I told Travis about you. The second I saw you walk in. It felt like a second chance or something. Like the timing was finally right, and we weren’t kids anymore.” He looks at me.
He draws me close to him, studying my face like he wants to commit it to memory. “Travis always wants whatever someone else wants,” Liam says, a hint of anger in his tone.
The clarity of what happened settles on my shoulders. “He did it on purpose.”
Liam grits his teeth and nods. “Yep.”
And then, as if realizing something, he says, “But I’m the one who got out of the way.” He drags a hand down his face, shaking his head. “I don’t . . . like to say how I feel. ”
“This is mind-blowing information,” I deadpan, concealing the smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
He smirks. “I don’t want to do that anymore. Back then, I was too young and too dumb and too embarrassed to tell you I had actual feelings for you.” I watch his eyes closely. They never move away from mine. “I’m not embarrassed to admit it anymore.”
The smile is back, and I feel the warmth of it instantly. There’s something to be said for earning a smile from someone who doesn’t give them freely. It starts to feel like currency, and I’ve always been a saver.
“Now, can we stop talking about Travis?” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me close, kissing me like a man who’s wanted to kiss me for a very long time.