Chapter 17
May, Four Years Ago
He lives in a private dorm, one of four rooms connected by a shared common area.
It’s deserted when we walk inside, though there’s an empty glass with melting ice on the coffee table in front of the TV.
The walls are covered in Tennessee paraphernalia, and there’s a pile of baseball equipment by the door. More than just his.
“Do you live with your teammates?” I ask.
“Two of them, yes.” He nods at one of the doors and I head toward it.
His dorm room is more narrow than square and fits his furniture neatly with little extra space.
A twin-sized bed with a navy blue comforter, a small desk stacked with textbooks and papers, a dresser, a bedside table, a closet.
It’s cramped but organized. And it smells nice in here, like some kind of cedar-and-moss candle.
Which, yes, appears to exist on his bedside table—though if I had to wager a guess, Liam has only burned it once.
I twist back from my evaluation as he softly shuts the door, enclosing us.
The overhead light is off, and his desk lamp casts the space in a golden, low glow. About five feet separate our bodies, but standing in Liam’s personal space makes me feel overwhelmingly close to him.
He leans his back against his door and crosses his ankles. “This is me.”
“I didn’t expect you to be this neat.”
“I’m not.”
I lift an eyebrow. “You expecting company?”
“Yeah, you better scram before she gets here.”
I bite on my smile. Liam lifts onto his feet and walks toward me, slowly. With every step, I feel my own gravity growing stronger, rooting me in place.
His hands find my hips again, mine his shoulders, and the expression on his face matches what must be plain on mine. Complete disbelief. Limitless desire. Absolute comfort and safety. His eyes are still filled with sunlight and it’s warming this whole tiny room.
“Paige,” he whispers, and it smells like strawberry ice cream. “You are my favorite person.”
“You’re my best friend,” I whisper back, giving him what he’s wanted all this time.
“I want you so bad. I’ve wanted you for so long.”
I nod my agreement. “I’ve wanted you when I shouldn’t have.”
“But now you can,” he says.
“And we should,” I say.
He kisses me so gently that I halfway wonder if it was an accident. The lightest graze of his lips to mine, then away. But he leans in again, does it again with slightly more pressure, and that’s when I know without a doubt how much trouble I’m in.
Every touch before now, from early March to mid-May, was him operating at reduced power.
The third time, Liam’s mouth lingers, and his hands move to my back, pulling me into him.
His teeth, my tongue, strawberry and chocolate and pilsner.
His mouth works over mine in a way that could only be described as savoring.
My hands go behind his neck, up into his hair, and Liam softly moans into my body like he’s in agony.
When I’m gasping, he goes for my throat, trailing his wet lips and tongue over the skin. He gently pulls twice on my hair, like a signal, and I look at the ceiling while he explores underneath my chin. Liam’s breath is short, but mine is worse. I feel like I swallowed an upper.
“What do you like?” he asks, teeth pulling at my earlobe.
“Huh?” It manages to sound like a question, which is good, since it was actually just a badly disguised moan.
Liam pauses, lifting his head to catch my eyes. He looks drugged himself. Out of sorts. His voice is broken, rasping. “Is there something you particularly like during sex?”
Liam’s eyes track to my blushing throat and darken. “Did that embarrass you?” he asks.
“No,” I lie. He looks back at me, face softening. “I’ve never thought about it in specifics,” I explain.
“With me, it will be specific. Specific to you.”
That is the hottest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, but it doesn’t help me answer his question.
“I like talking,” Liam offers, one of his palms moving over my heart. It speeds. “You don’t have to say anything back if you don’t want to. I just sometimes can’t help it.”
“Like dirty talk?”
“Not that dirty,” he says, voice low, a wink of amusement in it. He’s still staring at his hand over my heart. “Just … actively verbal.”
I nod my understanding. “Okay.”
He waits for me, all patience and restraint. I’m not getting around this, I realize. Communicating my sexual needs to him. How novel.
A flash of my sex with Evan goes in my mind, then immediately out of it.
“I like touching,” I say. “I mean, obviously, but I want to be able to touch you whenever I feel like it. Which will probably be the whole time.”
I see the question in Liam’s eyes and answer it before he can ask. “Like, I don’t want you to pin my wrists with your hands or ask me to keep my palms on the headboard or the wall. I want it to be like … like we both get to touch each other.”
Understanding floods him. Followed by a flash of pity, but Liam quickly wipes it away, and thank goodness. Tonight is only about us.
“You can put your hands on any part of me,” he whispers, “whenever you feel like it.”
“Me too,” I echo. “I want you to touch me, Liam.”
His lips find mine again, and his palm on my heart goes down to my breast. He squeezes it, rubs a thumb over the peak, and I keen at his touch, molten.
He grabs at the belt loop of my jean shorts, and Liam uses the leverage to angle our hips together.
He pulls my bottom lip between his teeth and sucks on it leisurely.
The combined effect of everywhere he’s touching me turns me into a version of myself I haven’t met.
She makes sounds I didn’t know I was capable of.
She arches her back and juts her hips forward in an unfamiliar contortion.
“Your body,” Liam drawls, his face dropping down to my chest, “was made to my exact specifications. Did you know that?”
I shake my head as he tugs my shirt down.
It’s stretchy and rests underneath my boobs, propping them up in my lace bra.
Liam sets my back against his bed. I recline, feet dangling, while he uses a knee to knock my legs apart and step between them.
His elbows rest on either side of my shoulders and his fingers go to my hair.
“It’s like you were ripped from my head,” he whispers, eyes on my face before they drop to my chest. “The first time I saw you, I thought, No way. There’s no way that girl actually exists outside my brain.
Your curly brown hair and the way you blush and the flash of brilliance in your pretty green eyes right before you say something that keeps me on the edge of my seat.
You’re the fucking blueprint, and that’s why this is going to be so goddamn specific. ”
He punctuates the sentence with a soft thrust, and since Liam is still on his feet, he has all the control.
I hum at the ceiling and grab for his hair when his mouth lowers to my chest, hips rocking delicately into mine.
I am absolutely gone, lost in the sensation.
My hands roam his back, comb through his hair, brush across his earlobes.
“Liam,” I sigh.
“That’s who, exactly.” He replaces his mouth with his fingers on my nipples and tips our noses against each other, giving me one more earth-shattering cant of his hips. “I want to make you a deal, Paige.”
I laugh throatily, my hand on his cheek, my thumb brushing over one set of his eyelashes. He lets me. “A deal?”
“Yeah.” Liam pushes his bottom lip into his teeth. “I want to go down on you. Which means I’ll be the one touching. But after, you’ll—” His voice breaks when he says “ride me,” and he gently rocks his hips again. “You’ll be in charge then. What do you think?”
“I’ve never done either of those things,” I admit.
His face drops to my shoulder and his hand trails to my hip. “Oh, my fucking God, Bristol, baby.” Liam grips my hip, lifts it. Rocks our bodies. “I think you will love them.”
“I’m already close,” I warn him.
“Okay. I’ll slow down.”
He does nothing of the sort. If anything, his hips go deeper into mine.
“Liam, if you don’t stop moving, I’m going to—”
“Come like this?” he groans into my chest. “Yeah, I think you should. Screw the deal. I’ll go down on you in the morning.” His lips go back to my breasts.
I start whimpering like some kind of wounded thing, chasing the feeling, forcing it farther away so I can chase it more. My hands are on Liam, and his are on me, and our bodies are on each other, again and again and again.
“Do it, Paige,” he mumbles, sounding boyish and lost. “Come while I ride you like this and then you’ll get to ride me.”
“I’m gonna.”
“Yeah, you are.” His thrusts are shorter, harder. My body is carved deep into his mattress.
“Right now,” I say.
“Now?”
“Yes, Liam, right n—”
He kisses me, swallowing my sounds while his body rocks and mine implodes. And that, I’m pretty sure, is the moment my chromosomes are altered, the moment Liam Bishop writes himself into my DNA.
He goes strangely quiet after that, peppering tiny kisses on my cheekbones, my nose, my chin.
My hands hook loosely onto his elbows, too tired to feel but desperate to touch him back.
He takes off my shorts, peels down my underwear, kisses up my thigh to my stomach.
Liam whispers for me to sit up, and I do, and he lifts my shirt and bra over my head.
I pull him close, tumbling my arms over his shoulders so I can claw at the fabric on his back and tug it over his head.
His chest is all hard lines, sculpted from training.
I rub my hands down his stomach, catching the way he shivers, and unbutton his jeans, pushing the pants and boxers off his hips.
Liam nods at me once when I ask permission with my eyes, and I grip him softly in my hands, feeling, for once, totally in control. He falls out of it, rolling out his neck, hands on my thigh, my shoulder.
“Feels good, Paige,” he murmurs, eyes closed.
I love that Liam keeps calling me by name. Reminding me that he knows exactly who he’s in bed with tonight. On purpose, by accident, I don’t care. I just love it.
“Stop now,” he says, and I do. Liam tugs open a drawer, rips open a foil, slides on a condom. He kisses me again and crawls up my body, pushing me against the mattress, then reclines until we’re tangled and horizontal.
“Do you want to?” he asks, his mouth by my ear again. “I thought you might like it, but I could have guessed wrong.”
“I want to,” I say. “I might be bad at it.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll show you how.”
Liam urges me on top of him, his broad chest heaving, and places my knees near his torso. His eyes hold mine even as he grips himself, then finds the place to join our bodies.
We hover there on the precipice of it, barely touching. Something clicks behind his eyes.
“Take your time, Bristol. I’m not going anywhere.”
I sink onto him inch by inch, feeling close to tears.
This is more emotional than I was expecting, but it also just feels so pure, so good.
Not only because our bodies are finally married, but because I am his favorite person and he’s my best friend, and we were always, one thousand percent supposed to do this.
I’m on him, over him, haven’t even moved yet, and Liam’s eyes are rolling back in his head. I splay my hands on his chest, gripping the skin. Give an experimental forward tug. It feels amazing. For him, too, based on the way he groans.
“Wow,” I say, doing it again.
Liam chokes on a laugh, scratching his nails lightly down my thighs.
I can touch him however I want like this.
Make him sit forward or lie back, kiss his lips or his chest or even suck his fingers into my mouth.
I do all of it, offering tentative suggestions at first, then downright commands when he responds eagerly.
We lose ourselves in how good it feels, and Liam mumbles things like I adore you and harder and I knew you were gonna love this, fucking knew it.
I push against his hips, whining as I climax again, and only then does Liam take control, steeling his grip on my waist as he shoves up into me.
Quick and dirty, like he’d been waiting so patiently.
“Perfect,” he snaps, then grabs my ass in his palms and shoves into me deeper, locating every last drop of sensation in a fever. “You’re perfect.”
It takes minutes for our breathing to go quiet again.
Half an hour later, when we’re cleaned up and I’ve changed into a fresh pair of his boxers and one of his T-shirts, Liam leans over me in bed, tucking my hair behind my ear.
He smiles at me like I have him in a thrall.
“I like you so much that I feel like it’s breaking my brain,” he whispers. “And if you keep writing songs about me, I might float off.”
“Then no more handwritten letters,” I say. “They’re fodder.”
He kisses my temple and whispers in confession, “I’m probably going to fall in love with you before I admit to it, or even before I ask you to be my girlfriend.”
If I trusted him less, I’d be more alarmed. “Why’s that?” I ask.
“Because if I’m drafted, even though spring training isn’t until next February, I’ll still do a fall and winter league to practice before starting with the majors. It’s only fair for you to know what I’m getting myself into, and where, before you decide if you want to be involved in it.”
“What if I already know for sure I’ll want to be involved?” I counter.
“Hold on to that feeling,” he says, “and say it again when I show you a real plan. Until then I’m going to feel more guilty about pulling you into my orbit than good.”
He’s protective of me in a way that outpaces my own instincts. But despite it, a new possibility takes shape in the corners of my mind.
It would have been too embarrassing to follow Zara to New York. Not after I came here to be close to her and Maisy. Maren wouldn’t abide it anyway unless I had a ten-step life plan, and as tight-knit as she and Candice are, they’d see right through me if I popped up in Chicago.
I can’t stay in Knoxville either if it’s just Maisy here. She’ll graduate eventually and then do something else, so I’d only be prolonging my loneliness, my lack of direction. And she’s not my best friend anymore, maybe hasn’t been for a while now.
But Liam.
Maybe I could follow Liam.
A small part of me knows how unhealthy a mindset that is. A larger part of me is terrified of belonging nowhere, to no one.
Maybe that’s how Folly felt, and maybe that’s why she cleared out. From embarrassment or desperation or both. She cut herself off from us before we could think to do it to her.
“I promise to say it again,” I whisper to Liam, “when you show me a real plan.”
He presses his lips to my forehead. “And in the meantime, we’ll have lyrics and love letters.”