Chapter 18
July, Now
I wake up without a clue what city we’re in. Phoenix? Maybe Tucson?
I forgot to inquire on the tour bus last night and fell asleep an hour out. Misha had to shake me awake when we pulled up to the hotel. Liam met me in the lobby, smirking and asking questions about what kind of weed gummy the band had given me, but I was too sleepy to make any words sound right.
I try to stretch against the sheets, but all four of my limbs are stuck. Buried, caught, trapped. I’m either folded in on myself, contorted into a biological anomaly of a position—
Or, alternatively, I’m wrapped in Liam’s arms.
Verifying, I crack open one eye.
The words SLIDING HOME are emblazoned proudly across his T-shirt, and my nose catches on the bottom curve of the G.
I crane my head up in line with the shadows beneath his jaw.
He smells like hotel soap and starchy sheets.
Liam’s arms are looped around me, the bottom one undoubtedly forgoing blood circulation by this point.
Our legs are tangled, and one of my index fingers is caught in the elastic hem of his boxers.
I remove it, making a guilty fist, and plot my escape.
My first attempt at extrication is lifting my right leg off his hip and reclining onto my back. Unfortunately, this causes my left thigh to shift higher between each of his, and one of his palms to settle on my boob.
Liam halfway rouses, inhaling deeply, and rubs the heel of his palm across my breast. My nipple peaks and my breath catches. I stare at the ceiling as warmth pools in my core.
“Paige?” It’s only a whisper. I rock my head sideways to find him blearily watching me, his eyes at half-mast, hair flattened.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper back. “I don’t know how this happened.”
Liam exhales a short laugh, moves his palm from my boob to my shoulder. He uses it to pull me back until I’m on my side again, facing him, but he manages to extricate his previously trapped arm in the process.
“We wake up like this every morning,” my boyfriend informs me with a sleepy smile. “You’re just usually too drowsy to notice.”
It’s true that Liam always beats me out of bed. He’s usually even showered and dressed by the time he shakes me awake each morning. But here I thought we’d been better platonic bedmates than a couple of tween girls at a sleepover only to be informed my snuggling tendencies die hard.
“Zara used to put up a pillow wall when we shared an air mattress on family camping trips in Gatlinburg.”
His smile grows. “I don’t need a pillow wall.”
Noted. Would now be a good time to discuss Liam’s physical boundaries? Light cuddling okay, no lip-to-lip contact, occasional ass grabbing, but don’t go anywhere near his groin? I’d like bullet points.
His hand on my shoulder drops to my back and presses my whole body forward. Since my thigh is still trapped between his legs, his erection becomes immediately evident.
“Why would I want a pillow wall,” Liam mumbles, warm breath tickling the hairs at my crown, “when this is my favorite part of my day?”
I can’t say anything, only melt a little more as he tucks my head beneath his chin. “I enjoy holding you for five minutes. Then I roll out of bed. Then I go take a shower and jerk off while I think about you.”
A tiny gasp. A rattling laugh.
“Are you teasing me?” I ask, voice incredulous.
“Do you think you deserve to be teased?”
Yes, honestly. If I’d been in Liam’s shoes, I’d be feeling a little sexually vicious right now.
I suggested leaving. On the first day. No matter how selfless I thought it’d been at the time, I freaked Liam out, dusted off his defense mechanisms. He’s used to me being the one to walk away because that’s how it’s always been between us.
Withholding sex isn’t something unexpected anymore.
It makes absolute perfect sense he’d do this until he trusts me.
If he ever trusts me.
“Maybe a little bit,” I answer.
He pins me, my back to the mattress, my stomach heaving against his chest. Both of my wrists are locked in his grip on either side of my head. “I’m glad we’re in agreement,” he rasps, his eyes dark and wide-awake now.
Liam settles his front to mine, and instinctually, my legs hook to wrap around his back. “No,” he orders, a wicked challenge on his face. I let my legs go limp again.
A smile crooks at the corner of his mouth. He looks down at me one more time—gaze roving over my eyes, cheeks, jaw, neck—before he rolls back the way he came, then climbs out of bed.
I perch onto my elbows, devouring him in the honeyed light of the early morning as he peels his shirt over his head and tosses it.
The cords of muscle in his bare back. The wrinkle of cotton in his boxers.
His umber hair, already longer than when we reunited a few weeks ago.
He turns, scrubs at his face with a hand, uses his other to hold his erection beneath his boxers.
Liam leans against the wall near the bathroom and looks at me.
“You could do it too.”
My mouth is dry. “Would you want me to?”
One stroke. “Mm-hmm.”
I am blushing harder than a trombonist at a talent show. My bottom lip sneaks between my teeth. Another stroke.
“Go take a shower, Liam.”
“Are you gonna do it?” he asks, but it sounds like begging, and I could tease him back, but today this is his game, not mine.
I nod, and he grins.
Tucson, it turns out. We came here from San Diego, which was the last stop along the West Coast before the tour heads inland.
Today is a rare, free day. No show tonight.
We’ve only had one of these so far, and Liam spent most of it on a conference call with his boss, debriefing about how things have gone so far. Today, though, he wants to explore.
We climb into the car in high spirits. There’s absolutely zero awkwardness about what transpired this morning. If anything, it was like twisting off the cap of something carbonated, letting the pressure dissipate.
“Cupcake,” Liam suggests.
“That’s what 1950s businessmen called their secretaries,” I retort.
“Sweetheart.”
“That’s what Wall Street finance bros call their New York–10 girlfriends.”
“Honey.”
“That,” I say, “is what my grandfather called my grandmother.”
“Darling.”
“Do I really need to explain why I don’t want you to call me darling?”
Liam belts a laugh. “Yes, darling.”
“You’re not an Old English cabbie and I’m not a virginal debutante. Next.”
“Bear. Lovebug. Bunny.”
“I am neither a furry creature nor an insect, Liam.”
“Pumpkin.”
“Now I know you’re fucking with me.”
He pushes his lips together, quieting a laugh. After a moment he softly says:
“Baby.”
My blood races, and I swallow thickly. It’s news to me, my body’s reaction to that term of endearment.
“I never saw myself as a baby person, but…”
From his side profile, I can see the muscles of his jaw work. “You used to like it. When I called you Bristol baby.”
I cough. “Mm. Yeah.”
Liam smirks. “Maybe I’ll test it out when you’re least expecting it.”
“A jump scare?” I joke.
“A baby scare.”
“Did you miss your period?”
He rolls his eyes, fighting a full-blown smile.
We pull into the lot for Catalina State Park, a perfect showcase of the Sonoran Desert that sprawls across Tucson. It’s a dry, thirsty heat in the air today with motifs of red-brown and muted green everywhere I look.
Liam chooses a doable hiking trail off the map at the trailhead, and we set off.
“Do you ever hang out with the band or crew on your off days?” I ask.
“Sometimes. But it’s nice to have a break from your coworkers every now and then.”
I wonder if now’s the time to ask about Liam’s history with Penelope. I’ve been putting it off, especially the more I get to know her.
She pulled me onto the tour bus after the Seattle show, and then I joined them again after San Diego.
The first time, I mostly listened and laughed while Siah and Jake drunkenly riffed on Disney Channel TV intro themes from our childhoods, but last night, it’d been girls only—the others had opted for a separate tour bus to host a few groupies who’d tagged along—and we took advantage of the calm to workshop a few songs for Penelope’s upcoming album.
She told me I’d get songwriting credits for helping, which thrilled and shocked me.
“I barely helped,” I’d said with a shrug, though I had been proud of my suggestion she ended up taking—changing a few notes in the verses, which made the song more sonically interesting.
But Penelope was so set on it, I knew there had to be more to her story, that she’d likely been in my shoes once with someone way less altruistic. “Don’t sell yourself short, Paige,” she’d said. “Always fight for what you deserve.”
Liam helps me over a giant rock in the path, then rubs his thumb over my knuckles once before turning and walking on.
“Do you mind,” I start, catching up to him, “if I ask about Penelope?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
I mull over what to ask. “Did you—or do you still—have feelings for her?”
He hesitates before answering. “I guess for a minute there, I might’ve. But even then, it wasn’t the same.”
“The same as…?”
“You. With Penelope, and Brenna, too, I had an attachment to them, but it was like…” He stops walking, turns to me. “It was like wading into a stream when I wanted the ocean.”
I am going to make you fall so madly in love with me, it’ll feel like you’re on a life raft in the middle of the ocean.
A lyric comes to mind: You have waves that could knock me flat.
“It’s like that for me too,” I say. “The others were just…”
“Ripples,” he concludes, and I nod.
We keep walking. “Was it the same for Penelope?” I ask.
“Penelope is highly emotional—for the record, I don’t mean that in a bad way and she’d say the same herself—so I think it was probably more for her, but that’s not a testament to me, just the way she operates romantically. Especially as a singer-songwriter.”
“Are any of her songs about you?” I ask, suddenly unsettled.
“You’d have to ask her about that.”
I decide I’m better off not knowing.