Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
SIMON
Splashing water on my face, I wiped the liquid from my cheeks as steam coated the mirror.
I wasn’t sure how long I had been in the bathroom; thoughts had built up over the past two days since breakfast at the diner.
It was evident Liam was hiding shit from me, and no matter what hints or probing I did, he dropped nothing.
He’d always been a private man, which was part of the reason our love had gone unrequited for so long.
He kept to himself, which wasn’t a problem, but it did irk me that he refused to relinquish his past. Despite my devotion to him, my trust wavered when he didn’t feel comfortable telling me more.
I wouldn’t force him to, but it hurt not knowing anything about his life before his time at the military base.
He knew everything about me, but I hardly understood the nuances of him.
Even when I was being sneaky, I couldn’t get anything from him. If it was something to do with me, I just wanted him to tell me. I enjoyed making him laugh and maintaining my carefree attitude, but behind closed doors? When I stared at my reflection in the mirror as I did now?
The mask fell, crumbling to deepen the wrinkles on my forehead.
The stains of my anxiety were more evident: the shadows under my eyes, the tightness around my lips, and the furrowing of my brows.
While he had his demons, so did I, and I would carry them alone without adding to his burdens.
If he couldn’t tell me his, then I needed to be strong for both of us—a perfect image of happiness he could rely on.
Running the towel over my hair one last time, I placed it on the hook, making sure the bathroom was organized before wrapping my hand around the knob. Twisting it, the door cracked open as my gaze landed on Liam.
Spread out on the bed, he was engrossed with his book as he lazily flipped through the pages.
Hair sprawled on the white pillowcase, I grinned at the comfort exuding from him.
While he’d carried the anxiety of that conversation for days, he seemed to be doing better…
or at least, better at hiding what was troubling him.
“Damn. I’m out here showing cock, and you’re too busy reading.”
Liam dropped his book to his chest, peering up at me with those circular slutty little glasses. “You were in there forever. My apologies for filling the time with a hobby.”
“A cute hobby, as long as you keep wearing those.”
Tapping beside my eyes, I shuffled over to the dresser and pulled out a pair of briefs. Slipping them on with a pair of loose sweatpants, I gently closed the drawer before flopping onto the mattress with a sigh. Everything was too loud, but I plastered that dumb grin on my face.
Raising my arm and pressing my head into the comforter, I glanced up at him from the unconventional angle as I trailed my fingers along his hip. “And it was my everything shower.”
He lifted his brows. “You’re fooling no one, Simon.”
“Fooling? I am cool, calm, sexy. But foolish?”
His expression remained unamused. “What’s wrong?”
Biting my lip, I shifted my chin down to stare at the wall across from us.
Keeping the leisurely pace of my strokes along his skin, I made a mental note to fix the picture hanging on its surface.
Crooked beyond belief, it wasn’t a big enough distraction from the voices in my mind. “I… Nothing pertaining to me—”
“Your happy-go-lucky persona is chipping away, Simon. I can see behind your mask. So whenever you actually want to talk, let me know.” He grabbed his book again, opening it to block himself from my view.
“Then… how about it be true for you, too. You always brush it aside. I try to be happy, but you’re still sad.
I try to talk to you, and you brush it away.
I try to give you space, and you come back looking even…
worse. I try… I try to hold you, and you shove me away.
I try to be there, but it’s like talking to a wall—”
Snapping the book shut, his jaw feathered with mounting frustration. “Oh, God forbid I try to focus on you and your injuries. You know? That you lost a leg? That, despite saying you’re fine after the fact, I know you aren’t. That this…,” he gestured toward me with his hand, “is all a front?”
“God forbid I try to crack through that impenetrable fortress you maintain. And, regarding my leg, sure. I’m not okay with it, or what happened. Sure, it haunts me that you had to see… had to witness the impacts of that land mine, but you haven’t told me how it’s hurt you at all.”
“Because it isn’t about me!” he shouted. “You are the one whose entire life changed because of that incident. Not mine. Mentioning my struggles on the matter is fucking insensitive, Simon!”
Pressing my palms into the mattress, I sprang upward, whipping around to look at him.
“Insensitive? You act as if my life is terrible, but it’s not.
Sure, I lost a part of me, but I’m damn lucky to still be here…
that I get more time with you, Liam. And yes, it happened to me, but your entire world changed too, and I want to know how it did if you’d just let me. ”
“I’m not doing this.” Moving from where he rested, he went to push himself from the bed.
Curling my fingers around his wrist, I tugged enough to keep him next to me. “Then, if that’s too much, what happened at the diner? Can you talk about that?”
His skin blanched at the mention, and he craned his head away from me. “No.”
Jaw feathering, I interlocked my hand with his.
“Fine, harbor everything inside, but it won’t last. One day, everything will burst, and I’ll be there.
” Rubbing my thumb across his knuckles, a shaky breath tumbled from me.
“But at least talk to me about that day, the mission… the… the moment that changed everything for us. I need to know, Liam. Anything… Anything.”
His throat bobbed, his Adam's apple rising and falling. “I pined for you for years, and you never saw me, so why do you even give a fuck now, Simon? It’s in the past. It’s over with. It all happened before you even bothered to bat an eye in my direction.”
“I’ve always given a fuck about you, and if you didn’t know that, then I’m sorry I wasn’t straightforward enough. I loved you for years, too, but it—”
“You’re lying.”
My attention snapped to him instantly, and that mask faded as my lips trembled. His words hurt, and whether it was my fault or not, I would own up to it. But for him to call me a liar?
Timbre shaking, I gripped his hand tighter. “No, I’m not. Thorne knew I… I had feelings for you—”
Liam huffed out a laugh. “Wow, good for Thorne. Did all the people you fucked know that, too? Or was it just something you offered on a case-by-case basis?”
“I’m not… proud of my past, and there’s no apology I could offer to erase that stain, but in some fucked up way, I did it to keep you away from me, from discovering how pathetic I was underneath the light-hearted personality.
But you were always a constant, and I loved you, always, even before we made it official.
And after that day with the land mine? I couldn’t keep doing this thing called life anymore if you weren’t beside me. ”
“Yet you openly admit to shoving me away? You openly admit you didn’t want me by your side? Where the fuck is the line, Simon?”
“That’s not… not what I was trying to say. Did I push you away? Yes, because I wanted you to be safe from me—”
“Safe from you, how?!” His palm slammed into my shoulder in an attempt to shove me away. “How?”
“Because I mess up everything,” I whispered, unable to hold his gaze.
“Because you were everything I wanted, and if it was ripped away by something I did, I wouldn’t recover.
I laugh, I smile, and I make jokes to ease the ache in my chest that I’m nothing but a mistake who infects others with bigger mistakes.
Was it right? No, but I learned that the misery of not having you was worse than the happiness of being with you… that… that I need you, Liam.”
He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger as a lengthened sigh left him. “That’s your reasoning? If you view yourself in such a negative light, solely because of an assumption of character, then I am far worse than a goddamn virus.”
“You are not a virus, Liam. You… You bring me so much—”
“I am,” he hissed. “You wouldn’t understand because you do not know the depth of my past, but if one of us is infested with mistakes, it’s me.”
“You could never be a mistake, no matter what happened in your past.” Placing my thumb on his chin and hooking my pointer underneath, I turned his gaze to look at me.
“It’s not possible, because I know you. I know your heart, because you’ve done nothing but cradle me with a gentleness I’ve fallen head over heels for. ”
His tongue danced across his bottom lip as he tried to glance away from me. “You don’t understand, Simon. I am defiled. I am far worse than someone’s sloppy seconds.”
Hauling him closer, my lips brushed against his. “You are not, nor will you ever be. Maybe I don’t understand, but even if I did, I guarantee you would never hear those words from me.”
Pressing my mouth to his in an attempt to lighten the darkness seeping in, I pulled away to kiss his jaw, the freckles dusting his cheeks, and his forehead. “None of it matters except for you—”
His utterance came so soft, so faint, that I almost missed it. “I am one of them.”
Brushing my thumb over his skin, I hid the tremor that wanted to shudder through my body at his statement, because some part of me had suspected it. “One… One of them?” I asked for clarification, keeping him by my side to offer whatever comfort I could.
“Yes. I was—”
Before he could finish, his ringtone interrupted his admittance. Reaching over to grab it, a flash of confusion danced across his features. But it was that lingering uncertainty beneath it that caught my attention as he answered the phone.