Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
“It’s starting to rain.” She spread her palms at her sides and closed her eyes, tilting her face to the sky as the heavens opened up on them.
“Is it?” He couldn’t rip his focus from her as they stood on the footpath outside the store, waiting for their limo to pull back around to pick them up.
The water glided over her, soaking her hair and shirt, and if he was getting drenched, too, he hadn’t noticed. All he could see was her.
“Sir!” the driver hollered while taking the garment bags from him. “You’re getting soaked.”
He blinked away the drops of rain on his lashes and followed Emily. Once the limo was on the move, she reached for one of her bags from an earlier store they’d hit.
“Can you put the partition up?” she asked the driver, forgetting to maintain her deeper-than-normal Southern accent for her role. “I can’t walk through the lobby looking like I was just in a wet T-shirt contest.” She motioned for Liam to look out the side window so she could swap tops.
Yeah, he’d prefer her to change and keep her nipples out of everyone else’s line of sight. Preferably forever.
When he realized he could see her in the reflection of the tinted window, he closed his eyes.
“Sorry,” she said when catching him with an elbow while changing. “Done.”
He shifted to face forward, and she nearly caught him with an elbow again, this time in the face, while combing her wet locks with her fingers. “Not much room back here for a limo.” He peered at her and attempted a smile.
“Maybe this car is used for people who ride alone or with someone they care about.” She grimaced. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
He took a moment to consider her words before admitting, “I do care about you.”
But when she didn’t say anything, his thoughts wandered to Australia. To his family. To Brandon.
Maybe it was time to visit home and forgive his brother.
Brandon had been willing to give up absolutely everything for love in a way Liam never could for Melissa.
“I think I should head home after the op is over.” He hadn’t meant to verbalize his thoughts, but it was too late now.
“Which home?” Her brows lifted. “I don’t even know where you live.” She crossed her arms as if chilly and gathered her focus to his face.
“I meant I was going to visit Sydney, but I don’t actually have a permanent address in the U.S. I sort of bounce from place to place.”
“Always on a mission?” she asked softly, even though the partition was up.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes shifted down.
“I need to talk to my brother,” he said. “My mum wants us to get along, and I think it’s time I get over what happened.”
He swallowed, hoping to hell he could ward off the emotion, to fix his attention onto something else. And thinking about Emily’s ex was all it took to shake away the grip of sadness and redirect his energy toward anger.
“When’s your brother’s baby due?”
“I don’t even know.” And he didn’t want her to feel the need to make small talk about babies, not after learning about her ex-fiancé’s pregnant wife.
She held a palm in the air. “I’m okay. I promise.” But when she looked back out the window, her spine bowed.
If she was feeling anything like him right now—then she wasn’t even close to being okay.
He balled both hands, resting them on the vanity counter, trying to collect his thoughts, to get his head on straight before he had to face Emily again.
Steam from his hotter-than-hell shower still wafted around the room and covered the mirror, and he was grateful for the fact he wasn’t able to see his reflection.
“Liam, you almost done?” she asked through the door. “I thought I took long showers.”
“Sorry.” He yanked a towel off the hook on the wall and wrapped it around his hips before opening the door.
She pressed a hand to her eyes and whirled away.
“Emily,” he said with a chuckle, allowing every shit thought he’d been harboring to fade at her adorable shyness. “You’ve seen me naked.” Memories of the precious few times he’d seen her naked—or even partially naked—hijacked his brain.
When he’d shown up at her door last Thursday, and she’d opened it clad only in a T-shirt and panties, his heart nearly exploded in his chest. The lazy buzz of alcohol flowing through his veins had been the only thing keeping it from breaking through his breastbone.
And since then, every time he saw her, it was like witnessing the sun setting on the horizon for the first time—a promise of a new day to wipe the slate clean.
“I know, but it’s different now. We’re supposed to only be friends and—”
“I thought you said we couldn’t be friends.”
She lowered her hand from her eyes then moved to the other side of the room and separated the curtains. The rain was still crashing hard and heavy.
Her shoulders sagged as if Lady Liberty’s scales of justice were tethered to her arms, weighing her down.
“We can’t be friends,” he admitted. “You’re right.” They’d moved too far beyond friendship to ever try and step back in time and erase what had happened between them.
She slowly faced him. Her forehead creasing. Her pupils dilating.
He’d hoped he could push her away. Put distance between them to keep her safe, but it wasn’t going to be possible, was it? He couldn’t even last twenty-four hours.
“You need to understand who I am. Who I really am.” What I’m capable of. “If that D.C. douche had survived last year, I would’ve beaten him to a pulp for what he did to you, and I’d only just met you then. So, you can imagine how I felt after we saw your friend back at the store.”
She maintained eye contact, never backing down.
“A dozen ways of killing your ex-fiancé popped into my mind when I thought he was Ryan.” He kept his eyes on hers as he strode closer, his forearms tightening. “I even had time to think about how I’d destroy his body after.”
“You wouldn’t have done that,” she said, certainty in her tone, but she gripped the justice charm on her necklace as if seeking protection from his threats of vengeance.
“That’s not a wager you’d probably want to make.”
His ability to kill was one reason he was afraid to be with her, and the reasons kept stacking like a pile of Jenga blocks, climbing higher and higher—and here he was pulling at a piece. Rocking the tower. Taking a chance. Risking the fall.
“You’re not a killer,” she whispered, and yet, she backed up against the window.
He crossed the short space between them and propped both palms over her shoulders. “That’s my job, darling.” The term of endearment was intended to lessen the blow, but maybe he should have just laid out the gruesome realities of his job. He needed her to truly grasp what he was capable of.
“I thought your job was to keep people safe.” Her eyes flicked to his right arm, to the tattoos there.
He and his buddy, a former Teamguy, often hit the tattoo parlor together; it’d become sort of a painful ritual for them. A permanent reminder to be worn for the Teamguys they’d lost.
“I’m still a trained killer. The government spent a fortune making sure of it, too.” His pulse increased as he stared at her, as he observed the woman who had the ability to flip his entire world if he let her. And God did he want to let her. So damn much.
She squeezed one eye closed and pointed a finger at the nightstand radio playing softly in the background.
He listened to the lyrics, trying to figure out the message she was sending. “Isn’t this about a cheater?”
The edges of her lips briefly curved. “I didn’t even pay attention to that part.”
He continued to listen, trying to decipher her thoughts. “Time being able to heal the pain caused by your ex, then?” And then it hit him. “Or is it about moving on from whatever this thing is between us?”
She rolled her lips inward, her dimples deepening at the movement. Her palm went to his chest. “It’s going to take a lot more than time for me to get over you. I guess that’s my takeaway from the lyrics and the way the music is making me feel right now.”
But he didn’t want her to move on. Not anymore.
“Paul wasn’t even half the man you are, though, so yeah, I’ll need more than just time to get over you,” she repeated. “I may not know your middle name, your ring size, or your—”
“I could come home in a box,” he cut her off, desperate to stop her, knowing this was a battle he may not win if she kept talking.
She swerved her eyes to his, her stare glossy with unshed tears.
“Could you handle that kind of pain? Because time doesn’t heal that,” he said, his voice breaking, his own line of sight growing blurry.
He couldn’t find the energy to deflect his emotions. Not now. And maybe he didn’t want to. He was sick of hiding his feelings for the sake of the job. The missions.
“Time doesn’t fucking dent the pain of a loss like that.” He fingered the black band on his wrist.
“I know,” she cried, her lip trembling. “And I’d never recover from that.” Her head bobbed with a shaky nod, and she sniffled. “But it’s because I wouldn’t want to move on.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to conceal the evidence of emotion in his eyes.
Her hand moved from his chest to his cheek, and he instinctively leaned into her touch. “I wouldn’t want you to do that, though. Stay stuck like that.” He lowered his arm. “If something ever happened to me, I’d want you to find another chance at love.”
Her brows darted inward. “What are you saying?”
“Tell me, okay?” He brought her palm back to his chest and held it there as he struggled to fucking breathe without totally breaking down. “Tell me that you’d let me go. Promise me if we try to make this work and something happens to me—you’ll let me go.”
“Liam.” Her eyes dropped closed, tears cascading down her cheeks. “Please.”
“You have to promise me,” he said, injecting a resoluteness to his voice he didn’t quite feel. “It’s the only way I can do this. It’s the only way I can try.”
She covered her mouth with the back of her free hand but nodded. “I promise,” she whispered on a sob before he crushed her to his chest, needing her close.
“James,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “My middle name is James. And I don’t have a bloody idea what my ring size is.”
She half cried and half laughed.
He did his best to blink away his own tears. “And I’m not falling for you.” He cupped her face with both palms, bringing his mouth near hers. “I fell a long time ago.”