Chapter 6 Liam #3
The lock finally releases. She makes a small sound. I shift us, careful as glass, and pull the sheet up over her bare back. The pillowcase is ruined. So is the floor. So is most of what either of us thought we knew about how this would go.
I don't speak for a long time. When I do, it's not a speech. "Tell me what you need." It's the first time I've ever contemplated that question. What does my omega need?
She's quiet. Long enough that I think she's asleep. Then, "To be the most important thing in your life." The simplicity of it cuts. "Not one of the things. Not part of a list. The thing."
"You are."
"I'm not." Her cheek is still on my chest. She doesn't lift her head. Somehow that's worse. "If I were, you'd have walked out of their offices. The contract. The merger. Your father's ghost. You'd have set the whole pile on fire before you let me stand on that shop floor watching the door close."
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
She isn't finished. "Don't say I came back. Coming back is what happens after you've left."
I sit up. She lifts off and wraps the sheet under her arms, sitting cross-legged in the wreckage of the nest. She is the most beautiful and the most furious thing I have ever seen.
I can't lose her. So I tell her the truth.
"My father." Her eyes change. "You know about him.
How he stopped eating. Stopped being a father.
My brothers and I watched him empty himself bit by bit.
By the time we buried him, he'd been gone for years.
He chose her over us a thousand times after she was already dead.
I built every part of my life around not being him.
" She doesn't move. "The control. The merger.
Bethany. A penthouse where nothing has a smell.
I built a man who couldn't be unmade by an omega because I watched what unmaking does.
Then you walked into the back of a flower shop, and it started. The unmaking. And I—" I stop.
"You ran."
"I ran." I cup her face. " Not from you. From him. From the version of me that ends up in a chair next to your bed waiting for a scent to fade. I told myself I was being responsible. I told myself I was honoring the contract. I told myself a hundred things that weren't Liam, you're a coward."
The word sits there. She doesn't argue with it. "You're not done. Keep going."
She is sitting in the wreckage of a nest she built to mourn me, and she is asking me to finish the worst sentence I've ever started. I keep going. "I flew to Singapore to end it. In person. Not a phone call. Not a press release. I owed her that much—"
"You owed her."
"Star—"
"Of course you did."
"Listen." She closes her mouth. "I owed her the truth in person because I'd told her a lie in person.
That's the only reason I got on a plane.
And you weren't—you were not out of my head for a single mile of it.
Not on the runway. Not at thirty thousand feet.
Not for a minute. Every mile away from you got louder, Star.
Not quieter." Her eyes have gone very still.
"By the time I landed, I couldn't remember why I'd thought breaking the bond was the responsible thing.
By the time I sat down across from her, I knew.
I'd done everything to protect myself when I should have protected you.
I didn't want to be hurt, and you were hurt instead.
Now, I'm here saying I will lay down my life so you never get hurt again.
I'm your alpha, I'll always be your alpha.
If you go to a thousand clinics, you wouldn't get rid of me. You're mine, I know that now."
"Know what?"
"That leaving you wasn't going to break the bond. It was going to break me. There is no version of my life where I survive walking out of yours."
"Liam."
"I told her with words I don't remember. Bethany asked me to wait two weeks before announcing you as my mate. I told her I would, only if you didn't get hurt. Bethany and I were always, only on paper. I lost that merger, and didn't give a fuck. I only remember being relieved.
She released that story, and I don't know if it's real or fake. I only know that this is real. I walked out of the meeting and started thinking about a fairy tale."
Her breath catches. "Mine?"
"Yours. I've never believed in them, but now it's all I want.
And I only want it with you." She closes her eyes.
"You said it in the back of the shop. First night.
You were laughing. You were embarrassed that you said it.
Your grandmother read them to you, and you never grew out of them.
You knew it was stupid, but you wanted the whole thing. The slipper. The carriage. The fit."
"You remember that?"
"I remember everything you've ever said to me, Star." She makes a small wet sound, but doesn’t speak. "You wanted the perfect prince."
"Liam—"
"You got me. I am not him. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow as a man who writes poetry on a card. I'm not going to learn soft. There is a way that fairy tale alphas are gentle that I will never be."
"I never asked you to be—"
"I know. I'm telling you anyway. So you hear what comes." Her hand has gone very still in mine. "I'm imperfect. We are imperfect. And we still fit."
She doesn't move. "That's the part I finally figured out. Princes are a story, Star. Fit is a fact. The bond, my hand on your hip, the way your scent goes when I walk into a room—that is not a story. That is the only fact my life has ever produced."
"Liam."
"I had something made."
She blinks. "What?"
"Before I flew home. I called a jeweler and had this made because I could not get back to you fast enough and needed to bring you something. I needed it to exist before I touched American ground."
I get up. Her eyes follow my naked body across the cabin. My pants are on the floor where I dropped them. The velvet box is in the inside pocket. Heavier than it looks for what it is. I come back. Kneel in the nest.
Not on one knee. Both.
"This isn't a ring." Her eyes go wide. "A ring comes later. When the omega in you is ready. When you tell me. I'm not asking you for a yes tonight. This is something else." I open the box.
Star doesn't reach. She just looks. The slipper is no bigger than the tip of my thumb. Glass. The chain is platinum because she's worth more than platinum.
"Liam—"
"I searched the world." Her mouth opens. "I didn't know I was searching. That's the part that took me years to learn. I was running mergers and signing contracts. Telling myself I was building an empire when I was looking for you. I just didn't know it yet."
I lift the pendant out of the box. "I walked into a flower shop to file a complaint—”
“—to be an asshole.”
I shrug, “Maybe. It was a lifetime ago, and I was a different alpha. I walked in and found the only omega in any country, in any city, in any back room of any shop who was ever going to fit me." She is crying again. Different tears.
"Perfectly."
She lifts her hand. She doesn't take the box. She touches the slipper with one fingertip. Like she's making sure the glass is real. Like it might be a trick of the light.
It isn't. "You had this made," she whispers. "While you were leaving me."
"While I was coming back to you."
"Liam."
"Every mile away was a mile back."
A breath shakes her whole body. "Put it on me."
My hands are not steady. I cannot remember the last time my hands were not steady. She turns. Lifts the heavy weight of her hair. The bond mark sits livid at the side of her neck where my teeth went in the first time. I fasten the clasp under it.
The slipper settles in the hollow of her throat. The glass catches light. She turns back. She is wearing nothing else. "Say it again," she whispers.
"Which part?"
"The last part."
"I found the only omega who was ever going to fit me." I press my forehead to hers. "Perfectly."
The bond doesn't sing.
The bond roars, cheers, rumbles, and then...
Settles.
Her hand comes up. Closes around the slipper at her throat. Closes around my hand at her jaw. She doesn't kiss me. "I'm not promising."
"I know."
I smile to myself. My omega has a little, tiny bit of asshole in her, too. And she is going to make me pay. That's okay. There is no limit on her price.
"I'm not saying yes to anything tonight."
I smile again and lift her onto my lap, where she immediately curls. "But I'm not going to that clinic."
As if I would let her…
"Say it again."
A breath. A half laugh. The first sound that has come out of her tonight that is hers. "I'm not going to that clinic, Liam."
I don't trust speaking. She lies back down in the nest and pulls me with her.
My head goes to her chest. Her hand to my hair.
The slipper presses cool against my temple where she holds me there.
She drifts off with one hand fisted at the slipper and one hand fisted in my hair, and her breath evens out against my forehead.
The cabin goes quiet in a way no room ever has, and I'm enveloped by her scent.
I keep watch.
Not the way my father did.
The way a man keeps watch when the thing he was looking for—without ever knowing he was looking—finally falls asleep against him.