Chapter Seventeen
Xander
A GRAVITATIONAL PULL I'm not accustomed to calls to me, drawing me in before I even open my eyes. For the third time today.
My mouth curls up into a smile, and I roll to my left, to the source. I open up my eyes deliberately slowly. The more of Liam makes its way into my consciousness and my view, the more at ease I become.
Liam's lying on his stomach, eyes closed, one hand tucked under his cheek, the other resting above his head.
With my afternoon nap still coursing through my system I sigh and take him in, the vastness of his muscular back, the warmth of his skin, miles and miles of it from the back of his neck to where my duvet starts on his lower back, barely high enough to cover up his ass.
"Morning," I murmur, a smile shining through my voice.
Liam smiles, but his eyes remain closed. "I think the day is ending, actually."
My eyes dart to where the afternoon sun fails to creep inside from behind the shades we hadn't bothered to open for two days, lost in a stew of takeout, and naps and sex. "Does it matter?" It does seem like such an insignificant detail when everything I could ever want is right here, in this room.
Liam's eyes slowly slide open, and when they meet mine, he smiles. "It does actually." He yawns and sits up, his pecks flexing as he stretches. He then grabs his phone and checks the time. "My shift starts in an hour."
"Nooooo," I whine and roll around the bed that's been serving as our temporary home, a brothel, a restaurant and an entertainment center. "You can stay another day. Or a week. Or, you know, a lifetime."
Liam stretches his torso and grabs his t-shirt that's been lying discarded on the floor since Friday. "We can't stay here forever," he says as he pulls it on, and I already miss the view of his naked skin. "Besides, I already skipped two training sessions. I can't skip work, too."
Oh, hell. Who invented the outside, anyway?
I give myself a long, full-body stretch, relishing in the way I know he looks at me, even if I can’t see it with my eyes closed.
Finally, with a heavy sigh, I sit up as well, scoot closer to Liam and connect my lips with his in a deep, mind-bending kiss that ends way too quickly.
I look up to the ceiling and pretend to ponder, before I nod and say, "After careful consideration, I have decided to grant you temporary leave. "
He raises an eyebrow in amusement. "Oh?"
"There's a condition, though."
Liam chuckles. "Of course there is." He grabs my hips and pulls me even closer, without breaking a sweat. "And what would that be?"
"I get to walk you to work. After we take a long, nice shower."
***
"AGAIN?" LIAM ASKS as I take a sharp left later that evening, dragging him by his hand, leading him down yet another shadowed alley I had no idea existed. Interesting how much you get to learn about the city you live in when you really, really don't want to let someone go.
"I told you, we're taking the scenic route," I say, adjusting my hold on his hand, because yep, we're freaking hand-holding now and I can't get over how ridiculously giddy it makes me.
"Is this part of the obstacle shenanigans? Making me late?" he asks, all the while matching my snail's pace.
"Yes. You don't get to pick and choose. Also, you pronounced keeping you close wrong."
I continue to drag him around as we chit chat, flirt and laugh our way to the general neighborhood of Skin on Skin, walking past its longitude for the third time, far enough not to have to think about lending Liam out to the club for the night, but close enough to get there within five minutes, because I'm actually keeping time.
"How many more times are you going to ask me?" Liam inquires after I make him recite the access code to my building for the fifth time.
"I just don't want you to wake me at four in the morning," I say, because of course I made him promise to come back to my place right after his shift.
"Oh, really?" He pinches the side of my waist, making me squirm. "I don't remember you complaining last night."
"See, that's where you get confused." I lower my voice as we pass another couple, and—
Wait. Another couple? Is that what we are? I make a mental note to bring the subject up when the time is right, before the question has a chance to make a permanent residence in my mind and continue, "You're always welcome to wake me up with a blowjob. Hence the code. Besides—"
"Hey! You!" My eyes dart to where the rude interruption comes from.
Three male silhouettes at the end of the alley seem to be walking toward us, but they're too far away, and it's already too dark for me to recognize any of them. I turn to look at Liam, who's seemingly in the same boat. "Friends?"
Squinting, he shakes his head. "I don't think so. Maybe they're confusing us with someone."
Maybe. "Anyway. Speaking of blow—"
"Hey, asshole!" The same voice cuts me off again. Who the fuck does he think he is to interrupt my attempts at acting hot?
They're still too far so that they’re faces remain a mystery, but they're definitely not far enough for me to miss the middle one pointing right at us before all three pick up pace, approaching us in a fast march and I could swear I just heard the F slur flying our way.
I look at Liam again, his face now an entirely different color than just seconds ago.
He abruptly stops walking, halting me in place. "Shit."
My rows furrow. "What is it? Who the fuck are these tools?" I shift from foot to foot, said tools roughly thirty yards away now.
"I don't know the other two, but I remember the guy in the middle. Tried to get into the club a few weeks ago, drunk off his ass. I told him to scram."
"And?" Panic sets in my voice, as I can now make out their ugly scowls.
Liam thinks for one, two, three seconds, and then— "And I think you should run."
My mind goes blank and I blink. "What?"
"Scram!" In a span of a millisecond, Liam lets go of my hand and uses what feels like all of his force to push me on the shoulder.
I stumble for a few steps, fighting to keep my balance just as the three animals materialize right where I was standing a moment ago, and a fist flies through the air, coming to an abrupt halt just inches from Liam's face when he blocks the punch as another set of hands grabs him from behind.
The second I'm steady on my feet I launch back, to help, to do something, anything to stop this madness, but the moment I move, Liam catches my eyes.
He's mid-punch, connecting his fist with the stomach of a bald, bearded guy in his mid-twenties and yells, "Xander, I swear to God, if you don't go right now I'll knock you out. "
It doesn't last more than a second, but somehow my brain steps up and makes a cool calculation in the middle of chaos.
The guy Liam just punched is currently rolling on the ground, hugging his abdomen.
Another is swaying on his feet, both palms cupping the side of his face.
The third one takes a swing. Liam ducks down, expertly avoiding the fist slashing through the air with a swish while landing a hit to the redhead's side.
All the while, Liam's standing tall, his balancing swiftly on his feet, making sharp twists and turns, dodging the attacks of one and a half opponents.
And then there's me, standing in the way, contributing an absolute zero to the scene.
Every muscle in my body flexes, itches, warms up for a fight, but for what's probably the first time in my life, my brain takes full charge over me.
I make a one-eighty and dash, as fast as my feet allow me to the nearest car parked about twenty yards from where Liam, where my guy is currently getting assaulted.
The rational part of me fights hard to keep the emotional part at bay as I duck around the car, poke my head out to keep an eye on the situation while I pull my phone from the back of my pocket and blind-dial 911.
Cacophony of grunts and curses scratches the inside of my skull in the nastiest of ways, and my sense of self breaks in half when Liam takes a punch to the jaw, his head bouncing to the side.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Three guys are attacking my boyfriend!" I yell into the phone before the woman on the other end finishes the question.
"Okay, sir," the operator says calmly, but I can barely hear her. "What's your location?"
I strain my neck as if that will allow me to see better, as if the act of my observing will someone affect the outcome, and did she just ask me a fucking question? "I don't know. I don't know! We were walking, and then he told me to run, and I—"
"Sir, sir, please calm down. I need your location to send help."
I take a few sharp breaths that do nothing to calm me as I try to remember. "We were walking down, um, Hill Street, and then we turned left by the park and there was this super tall brownstone on the other side and—"
"Okay, I've got it. Help is on the way. I need you to stay on the line and—"
I do as she asks but the rest of her words no longer register, drowned out by a clipped whine as a body that isn't Liam's falls to the ground and rolls twice before it hits the curb.
Liam has his back turned to me and there's a pair of legs flailing in front of him as he keeps a jean-wearing man that's almost Liam's size on a chokehold, the baseball cap he had been wearing lying on the concrete ten feet away.
Where the fuck are the police?
I can feel my heartbeat in my throat as my eyes dart left and right in search of the third man, my blood pressure doubling when I can't locate him. An eerie sense of impending doom washes over me.
The operator's tirade in my ear seems foreign now, weirdly squeaky and high-pitched before I realize the sounds don't actually come from my phone, and instead, from a greater distance first before becoming louder until I recognize them to be emergency sirens.
A lot of things happen at once in the next few seconds.