Chapter 18
18
Liam
I t was a beautiful morning, so I jogged from our cove to Dillon’s bar, The Gull. It was an epic day, sunlight sparkled all over everything, covering the world in glitter. Why didn’t I take more vacations like this? It was so wholesome. So soul-filling.
I understood now why my brother hid out in his mountain cabin – because he was a recluse who hated people – yes. But fresh air and physical activity in the off season was so much better than being squeezed in a bar or at a club. Dancing and drinking all night until you woke hungover and with half the day gone.
A woman with a baby stroller was jogging the opposite way and we waved at each other.
I wasn’t Wyatt. I liked people. And I really liked small towns where everyone knew each other.
I came to a stop in front of the One-Eyed Gull that did a bang on impression of being an absolute dive bar. Which was strange because Dillon was a multi, multi millionaire. He could be running a slick joint.
“Hello?” I yelled, stepping from the bight outside into the dark and dim interior of the bar. It didn’t just look like a dive bar, it felt like one. It was a kitschy nautical themed place with a gigantic mermaid mural on one wall. It was the kind of place that might make you roll your eyes, but settle in for a long, fun night just the same.
“Yep!” Dillon shouted. “Back here.”
Two kids came tearing around the back of the bar and stopped on a dime in front of me. Dillon’s kids, twins.
They looked like holy terrors. Twelve-year-old miniature Dillons in girl and boy form.
“Who are you?” the girl asked.
“Liam,” I said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Anna,” said his daughter with pigtails. “This is Matt.”
“Hey!” Dillon said, coming up from the kitchen with plates full of eggs and bacon. “I let Liv sleep in on Saturday mornings. So the kids and I come over here and have a civilized, quiet, well-mannered breakfast, without fighting or throwing food or making anyone cry, don’t we?” he asked, setting the plates down on the table.
The kids, laughing and shouting at the same time, bombed into the chairs like the floor was lava. Honestly, they were so different from Tess, it was like looking at a different species.
“I actually know who you are! You’re Liam Locke,” said the little girl, before shoveling in a bite full of eggs. She never broke eye-contact. “Nice job with the Stanley Cup,” she said.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Dillon admonished. The girl chewed and swallowed.
“Your brother is my favorite player.”
Of course he is.
“How about you?” I turned and asked Matt, who had a sketch book on the table in front of him and was ignoring his eggs. “Is my brother your favorite player or are you the twin with some sense?”
“I hate hockey,” he said.
Blinking, I looked over at Dillon. “It’s true,” he said. “Coffee?”
“Sure,” I said and Dillon poured me a cup and set it down on the bar. He sat down next to me and we both sipped coffee.
“How’s the house?” he asked.
“Fantastic,” I said. “Thank you again.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “My grandmother, rest her soul, would have liked that it was filled with families. Even if one of those families was the daughter of the man who robbed me blind.”
There was a long, shocked silence and I didn’t know what to say. Dillon laughed.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. If her being here is a problem…”
“I’m fucking with you, man.” Dillon shook his head. “Kit’s not the problem. You are,” he said, and clapped a giant hand on my shoulder. I remembered when I’d met him and he did the same thing. Dishing out wisdom to anyone who would listen.
“You got a choice to make, kid. All that talent of yours and you can be an asshole or you can lead a team all the way to the top. But it’s your choice.”
Ever since, I have worked hard to be the kind of player Dillon could respect.
“Me?”
“What the hell did she mean that she owes you?”
“What do you think she meant?” I said. “She and her dad took me for six figures.”
Dillon turned his head to check on his kids. The scar, where a blade had nearly cut into his forehead, catching the light from the kitchen. He’d been terrifying on the ice. I imagined Kit being so young and having to come here and apologize to this man who hated her.
Then I thought about how I treated her every Sunday.
I wanted to punch myself in the face.
“Didn’t she pay you back?” I asked him.
“She tried,” he said. “But I wasn’t interested in punishing her any more than she’d already been punished.”
“Well, to be fair. Her dad went to jail,” I reminded him. “Not her.”
He nodded and took a sip of coffee like he was the most relaxed man in the world. Meanwhile, I felt like the puck was about to drop on a game I didn’t know I was playing.
“You didn’t go to the trial?”
“I didn’t get called as a witness. So I figured there was no point.” I didn’t tell him how I wanted to turn my back to that night. Pretend I’d never been such an idiot.
“You didn’t follow it?” He asked. “I mean, it was in the papers. Guys were talking to me about it all the time.”
“I didn’t follow it,” I admitted. “She hadn’t gotten to anyone else on the Bruisers, so no one talked about it with me.”
“So…you don’t know?”
“Know what?” I asked. “Jesus, Dillon, get to the point!”
“What do you know about her?” Dillon asked, sitting back. The old guy was a little thicker than he’d been. Grayer. Slower. But when he turned those ice blue eyes on you, it could freeze you to your bones.
I thought about Nashville and the way I’d fallen for Kit so hard, so fast. Her eyes, her face, her body, her…spirit. Showing up to a black and white event in a red dress.
The fucking sex that I’d never, not once in all these years, been able to replicate.
“If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have said I knew all there was to know about her. She was a liar and a cheat. Just like her dad.” I shrugged. “Now, I’m beginning to think I don’t know anything about her. So if you’re going to enlighten me, get on with it.”
“She came here after the trial and tried to pay me back and I told her, her father’s debt wasn’t hers.”
“But she helped him,” I said. She’d basically all but admitted it. “Why offer to pay anyone back if you weren’t guilty?”
Dillon’s face hardened. “Because her sorry excuse for an old man made her feel that way.” He looked back over his shoulder at his kids. “Kids, when you’re done, take your plates into the kitchen and go find Aunt Wendy. See if she needs help with anything.”
“Yashh, Dad,” was what it sounded like when your mouth was stuffed with pancakes.
Dillon lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “You know I was a witness at the trial. Well, I stayed to watch it every damn day. I was pissed. Not only had he taken my money, but he’d encouraged me to spread the word. And since it was working so damn well for me at the time, I did. I was the one who’d talked these kids, and yes, they’re professional athletes, but they’re also dumb kids, into investing with him. I wanted to know everything that went down. Well, Kit also took the stand.”
“To defend her dad?”
“For the prosecution.”
“Fuck me,” I muttered.
“You really didn’t know?”
I shook my head, feeling queasy.
“She told the jury everything that happened the night she found out who her father really was. How she got a series of urgent texts from him and when she called him back, he told her to empty all the bank accounts and bring it to their suite. That he was in serious trouble. So, she left a party in the middle of the night to do what he asked and when she went to their hotel, he’d been beat to shit. His thumb was broken. And two guys were there threatening to do worse if she didn’t get them their money.”
“The gambling?” I asked. I knew that part.
“He was in deep with some serious players.”
“But…what party?”
“That Move On event in Nashville.”
The floor fell out from under me. She didn’t leave a party. She left me. Alone in a hotel room. To go toe to toe with fucking thugs? A cold sweat trickled down my spine.
“I try to picture it,” Dillon said, shaking his head. “A twenty year old kid herself, pulling together anything she could get her hands on to save her dad from being kneecapped by the guys he was in deep with. How fucking courageous. All while learning, he wasn’t who she thought he was.”
“How did he get arrested?” I wasn’t sure why that fact was important. It felt important. Like a piece to the puzzle I was now just putting together.
“She got her father out of that situation, but by that point the Feds were already on to him. She turned him in.”
Oh Shit..
“They must have asked her,” I said. “While she was on the stand, if she actively targeted some of his victims.”
“Oh, the defense did.” Dillon growled. “Over and over again. She said she had no idea what her father was doing. That she believed his investment firm was real, and that he was just teaching her the business, in case she ended up not pursuing a career in education. She said her only role was to provide background information about the players.”
What had she said that night – about her dad’s bad memory?
“And you believed her?” I asked.
“What the fuck?” Dillon looked at me like I was the asshole. “Of course I believed her. She was fucking heartbreaking on that stand. I’d never seen a person so betrayed by a parent.”
“What did the defense do?” I asked.
“It was gross. They tried to make her sound like a whore. Showed pictures of all these dresses she wore. Like she was jerking all these guys around to set them up. And I kept staring at her dad waiting for him to object or something, but then I realized it was his idea to set her up like that. To use her like that. I swear it took everything in me not to lay that fucker out in the courtroom.”
My hands were in fists at my sides. I never met the guy. Never even saw him. But I wanted to beat him to a pulp. “The prosecution pointed out that there were no witnesses called who could corroborate that. So yeah, I believed her.”
What if they’d called me? I wondered. For a while after that night, I’d told myself she must have slept with half the guys her dad robbed. But I had to work hard to try and believe that, and in the end – I never really could. She wasn’t an actress. Or a liar.
She was exactly what I thought she’d been that night.
Real.
The biggest con my dad played was on me.
“She was going to go to school to be a teacher,” I said.
“Yeah. There wasn’t any money left for that and he wasn’t about to give up one of his biggest assets and let her go to school,” Dillon said. “A few months after it was over, she tracked me down at a charity event in New York. Offered me everything she had left after the lawyers and the penalties were paid.” Dillon shook his head. “It was a couple thousand dollars. I tried to convince her, her father’s sins were his own. Told her I wouldn’t take a dime, and she needed to start thinking about the future. But I got the impression, she wasn’t ready to do that.”
No. Instead she’d sought out other victims, doing the same thing she’d done with me. That she’d done with Dillon. Fuck, I’d been an ass to her. Had other guys done the same?
She’d spent five years paying a debt that wasn’t hers.
“She doesn’t owe you jack shit, Liam. I hope you know that. I hope you’re not some guy dicking her around just to be an asshole because you lost some money.”
I was totally a guy, dicking her around, just to be an asshole. But not because I lost the money.
Because I lost my heart.
“I gotta go,” I said, pushing away the coffee. “Thanks, man.” We shook hands.
“Hey, you guys are welcome to come here for dinner any time. The wings are pretty great.”
“Thanks, but Tess is a vegetarian.”
“So is my son!” Dillon said. “We have good veggie options. Come on by, you’ll be taken care of.”
I nodded, told him to say goodbye to the kids for me, my mind on what I needed to do next.
Go home and have a long overdue conversation with my nanny.
And then I had to fire her.
I found them on the wide, sandy beach. They wore sweatshirts over swimming suits. Hats and sunglasses. They were bent over something in the sand and two other kids were with them.
Do not stare at her ass , I told myself. You’ve messed this up enough. Staring at her ass will only make it worse.
As I walked down to the ocean, wondering how in the world I wasn’t going to blow this, the three kids raced to the water, rinsed off the things they had in their hands and then raced back to Kit. She examined what they had and pointed to a driftwood log further up on the beach out of the reach of the tide. Like lemmings, the kids ran over and set their treasures down.
“Hey,” I said, a few steps behind her. She turned and lifted her hand to cover her eyes. The green sweatshirt she wore pulled up enough that I could see the tie of her bikini bottoms on her hip and the smooth perfect skin of her thigh. The curve of that spectacular ass.
Jesus, man, stop thinking about her ass and just fire her already.
“Whatcha doing?” I asked, looking over at the kids who were now focused on that tree limb.
“Finding some shells,” she said. “The tide is going out so we found a horseshoe crab and a whole bunch of other things. They’re drying out on the limb over there and then we’re going to go into town and get another book on shells.”
Oh my God, was I really going to fire this woman?
“Where have you been?” She asked with a smile. “You were already gone this morning when we got up.”
“Went for a jog. Then I had coffee with Dillon,” I said, and the smile dropped from her face. She turned to look out at the water. I stepped up to her side, looking at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“That you weren’t involved with your dad’s crimes?”
She shook her head. “But I was. I did help him meet players. I did study up on their lives, their stats. I did those things, Liam.”
“Yes, but you didn’t…”
“Fuck them?” she snapped. “Seduce them and fuck them and tell them to invest with my dad. But I did that to you, didn’t I? So why would you believe I wasn’t part of the whole damn scheme?”
My jaw clenched as I replayed for the millionth time the events in my head. I saw her first. The red dress. I stared her down until she approached me. She told me who she was, why she was there. Who her dad was.
Had I been seduced? No. Enchanted? Totally. Had I sent that email to my accountant to impress her? Maybe.
Was that her fault? No.
And all of that bullshit. The money, talk about her dad, all of it was before I stole that bottle of champagne and made the night about us.
“Dillon said you found out the truth about your dad that night in Nashville. Is that why you left so suddenly?”
“Dillon talks too much,” she said and stepped away towards the kids and the petrified limb, but I grabbed her arm. Reeled her in closer. She was stiff but she didn’t fight me. Her jaw was tense as she stared out over the waves.
“Why did you let me believe the worst?” I asked. “Why did you let me treat you that way?”
She pushed her glasses up on her face and scowled at me. “I’m not in charge of your behavior, Liam. You acted like a jerk the second I approached you about my offer.”
She was right. My behavior was hardly her responsibility, but I still felt like a tool she punished herself on.
“If you’d told me…”
“Stop,” she said, shaking her head. “I was never going to tell you. I wish Dillon hadn’t.”
“You were just as much a victim of what your dad did as I was. More so. Worse even than Dillon.” I shook my head. “I think of you in that room with the guys your dad owed money to and… fuck, Kit. You could have been hurt.”
“They weren’t interested in me. They just wanted their money.”
“You must have been terrified.”
She stiffened even more, if it was possible. She was as rigid as the petrified log on the beach. “Dillon really had a lot to say, didn’t he?”
“He was horrified that I brought you here to repay a debt that isn’t yours to pay back,” he said. “And now that I know the truth, I’m horrified too. I’m not that kind of man, Kit. I swear I’m not.”
That forced her to look at me. But her sunglasses kept me from seeing her eyes, and without seeing her eyes, I had no idea what she was thinking. Taking my life in my hands I reached up and pulled off her glasses.
Her eyes were quicksilver in the sunlight. They were wide and unsure. She wasn’t used to forgiveness. Or kindness. Especially from me.
Never in my life had I felt like such a beast.
She blinked up at me. Her skin was pink and freckled across her nose. Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, curled against her nape. I wished I could reach out and touch it. Stroke the silky wind tossed ponytail in my hand. Hold it in my fist.
For a long breath everything on the beach vanished. The waves, the seagulls. It was just us. Without the secrets she used to protect herself, and the anger I used to protect myself… we were just two people who felt a serious connection.
The most powerful connection I’d ever felt.
She cleared her throat and looked away, over my shoulder at the kids.
“It’s not really something to be horrified about,” she said with a shrug.
“No?” I said with a self-deprecating laugh. “You’ve been working two and a half shitty jobs, living on the rough side of Portland and putting aside your dream of being a fucking teacher, in order to pay me back money I keep in a fucking drawer.”
She glared at me. “You really should deposit that money.”
I laughed. “Kit! I’ve been an asshole to you. Get mad at me.”
“Well, truthfully” she said, her lips curling. “It made things easier.”
“To punish yourself for what you thought was your fault. Oh, and can I say that shit deserves some legit therapy by the way?”
A bittersweet smile flirted at the edges of her mouth. “No, to not like you.”
It was as if the sand beneath my feet opened and sucked me in. “Wait? Are you saying you like me?” I grinned at her like I’d caught her in a major confession.
“You once told me, if I looked you in the eye and told you the truth about that night, you would let me go,” she said, looking down at her hands, dusted with fine sand, like sugar. She tried to brush it off, but it clung to her skin.
“And I also asked you, why you came back to my room with me.”
She shrugged. “Because I wanted to. Because I’d never been attracted to anyone the way I was attracted to you.”
“I knew it!” I said with a victorious fist pump. She smiled, which had been the point.
“Cool your jets, Locke,” she said.
Cool my jets? Impossible. My jets could never be cooled. I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t crazy. Our connection had been mutual.
“You know what has to happen,” I said.
She looked at me with surprise. “I have no clue what has to happen.”
“I have to fire you.”
She blinked at me and reeled back. “Are you’re kidding me?”
I held my hands out like it wasn’t up to me. “I can’t sleep with my employee. That’s not cool.”
“All those girlfriends you gave jobs to?”
“Yeah, I never gave them jobs while I was sleeping with them. That always came after.”
“Well, then we’re fine, because not sleeping together,” she laughed.
“But we’re going to. Eventually.” It was as obvious as the freckles on her face.
She put her hands on her hips, in that way women do when they’re about to make a point. “Let me get this straight, it’s okay for you to parade yourself in front of me wearing nothing but briefs-”
“Yeah, that wasn’t cool. Sorry again about that, but I liked you looking at my junk.”
“I didn’t!”
I gave her my best smile. “You did, though.”
“And bargain a kiss out of me, all while you thought I was some lying traitor working off my debt, but now that you know I’m innocent, you have to fire me?”
“I don’t make the rules, Kit.”
“Stop,” she said. She laid a hand on my chest and I clapped my hand over it. Holding her to me. I knew she could feel my heartbeat and I could feel the grit of sand against her skin. Her fingers were cold and I curled them into mine. Holding onto her for as long as I could.
She seemed mesmerized by her hand in mine. The way our fingers looked against my shirt. My chest.
“If I left now,” she said, her eyes flicking over my shoulder to the kids who were now digging gigantic holes in the sand. “Tess wouldn’t understand. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”
Part of me was relieved. I mean, Tess and I would have figured it out, but Kit was just so much better at this.
“You’ll stay?” I asked.
“As a friend,” she said, her cheeks going bright red. She might as well have said as a lover.
“Like a friend? Or a friend friend?” I waggled my eyebrows at her to make her laugh. She was so serious and this was supposed to be fun. We were going to have a beach vacation affair, and it was going to be amazing. And, if everything worked out, she could go to school in Portland and we could still see each other. Maybe Janice could hire her to help out with Tess on the weekends or something.
I loved it when a plan came together.
“But there’re some things you need to know,” she said and my ears perked right up.
“Such as?”
“I’m not…” she stopped, shook her head. “Good at this,” she whispered.
“Good at what?” I asked.
She waved her hand between us. “This.”
I still wasn’t catching on and she opened her eyes wide and said. “ This.”
“Are you talking about…sex?” I asked, dropping my voice like the kids had a chance of hearing us over the waves and the squawk of birds. “Because if memory serves, you were damn good at it.”
“Not sex. Casual sex,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m not like the women you’re probably used to dating. I don’t really do flings. That night in Nashville, that was not typical.”
“It’s because you were soooo into me. I get it.”
She slapped my arm and I laughed and pulled her to my chest, holding her against me. I waited for her to pull away. To push back. I waited for a wall to come up and for her to say something sarcastic. But she just stood in my arms until slowly, slowly, she put her arms around my waist.
And it felt – – like I’d won something. I knew her surrender would be sweet, but I didn’t expect this elation.
“Hey!” One of the kids who’d been digging a hole and collecting shells with Tess came running up. He wore a Bruisers t-shirt. “Are you really Liam Locke?” he asked, his eyes narrowed as if he could spot the lie.
“Is that what you heard?” I asked, putting my arm around Kit’s shoulders. I wondered what this kid thought when he looked at us. Like we were just any other couple standing on the beach. It made me weirdly happy.
“Yeah,” he said. “But you don’t look like him.”
“I don’t?” I asked.
“No. Liam Locke has a beard.”
My eyes went wide like I was outraged. “Are you thinking of my brother?”
He couldn’t contain his smile. “I don’t know,” he said, like a kid who wasn’t intimidated. It was fun. “Am I?”
“You better start running kid…” I said and then gave him a head start before chasing him. The other kid, a little girl, got in on the action, but Tess sidled up to Kit and went back to digging for shells.
I thought of Dillon and his hockey playing daughter and artist vegetarian son and thought how fun it would be to have both.
A kid like me and a kid like Kit.