Chapter 7
Nine years earlier
“Nice place,” I say, glancing around Liam’s apartment.
My eyes immediately go to the tall bookshelf in the corner.
He’s got everything. Chaucer. Faulkner. Joyce.
Baldwin. Even the Bridgerton series and some Roxane Gay.
“Have you read all these?” I ask, letting my finger drift along the spine of one of R. F. Kuang’s novels.
Liam looks up from the kitchen, where he’s dicing garlic. He’s got one of those little towels tossed over his shoulder, and I’ll be damned if it’s not the sexiest sight I’ve ever seen.
“Most of them,” he says. “Though I don’t have much time for pleasure reading while I’m in school. Now most of my reading involves anatomy textbooks and absolutely no sex scenes.”
“I hate when that happens,” I say, reshelving Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. “Nothing worse than popping open your biochem textbook hoping for a real spicy scene and all you get is that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”
He laughs, and I watch as his muscles flex and tighten under his skin as his knife moves back and forth, finely chopping the cloves of garlic.
When he’d asked if I liked lasagna, I imagined he meant at a restaurant, or possibly a frozen grocery store meal. Certainly not him cooking from scratch. But Liam is proving to be full of surprises.
“So is this your usual routine?” I ask, propping my elbows on the kitchen counter and leaning toward him. “Woo her with lines about being a hopeless romantic, then bring her back to your place where you show off your knife skills and wear a slutty little towel over your shoulder?”
He looks up, eyes flashing with amusement. “Oh, you like my towel, huh?”
“Do you actually use it? Or is it just for show?”
“That depends.” His brow rises, mouth arching up halfway into a smile. “Is it working?”
“That depends”—I shift forward—“entirely on how good the lasagna is.”
He leans in close enough for his breath to feather my jaw. “Don’t worry,” he whispers. “It will be worth it.”
I don’t think we’re talking about lasagna anymore and my chest leaps, a dozen electric currents shooting under my skin.
“How long is this lasagna going to take? I’m starving.”
“About three hours.”
“Three hours?” My mouth falls open. “You couldn’t have chosen to make something quicker? Like Rice-A-Roni?”
Again, he laughs, and my stomach flutters victoriously.
“Why eat Rice-A-Roni when you can have the best lasagna in the world?”
“The best in the world? That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”
His eyes shine, dimples popping. “Well, I’m a presumptuous man.”
I should tell him that I didn’t come here to sleep with him. That his little routine isn’t going to work on me. That we’re just going to eat lasagna and that’s it. But if I’m being totally honest with myself, I’m not sure that’s true.
Maybe it’s the accent. Or his face—one I would quite frankly like to sit on. Or hell, maybe it’s the slutty little towel, but whatever Liam is selling, I’m a curious consumer.
“And what are we going to do while we wait?” I ask, hopping up on the counter.
His eyes skip from my green tube top to the jeans hugging my curves. “I have a few ideas.”
I snort. “I’m sure you do.”
He presses his palm to his heart. “Roslyn, please get your mind out of the gutter. I was going to say we could talk.”
“About?” I ask.
He sets his knife down and moves to the other side of the counter so he’s eye level with me. “Anything you’d like. Where you grew up. Childhood pets. Siblings.”
“Do you also want to know my mom’s maiden name and the street I was born on?”
He laughs and the sound settles right between my legs. “I’m a gentleman, Roslyn. I wasn’t planning on stealing your bank info until after dinner,” he says, keeping heated eyes on mine as he reaches for a different knife.
I watch the way he moves with a chef’s precision. “Where’d you learn to cook?”
“My mum. Taught me everything I know.”
The timer for the oven goes off, and he pulls the roasted tomatoes out in a glorious haze of garlic and olive oil.
“Are you two close?” I ask, watching as he pours the tomatoes into a food processor.
“We used to be,” he says, keeping his focus on the food. I wait for him to elaborate, but instead he asks, “What about you? Are you close with your family?”
“Honestly, things have been pretty strained since I dropped out of med school,” I say, thinking to last weekend when Gramps wouldn’t even talk to me at family dinner.
“But I’m really close with my mom. She’s the only person who supported the decision, who didn’t make me feel like I was throwing my life away. ”
“I’m sorry your family’s been so hard on you, but I’m glad you have your mum.”
“Me too,” I tell him. “She’s my best friend. I tell her everything. Sometimes I feel like she’s more my friend than my mom.”
Liam’s eyes crinkle as he smiles. “I’d love to meet her someday.”
My skin warms at the thought of Liam meeting my family. Of seeing him beyond tonight.
“My mom would love you. But don’t get cocky,” I add, when his grin expands. “I’m pretty sure she loves everyone.”
“She sounds lovely.”
“She is,” I tell him. “She’s loud and funny, and she falls in love a lot. I swear every time I see her, she has a new boyfriend.”
“So your parents aren’t together?” Liam asks, dumping minced garlic in with the tomatoes.
I shake my head. “They broke up when I was five.”
For as long as I can remember, my mom’s love life has been a revolving door of interchangeably shitty men.
Not all were bad, like the guy who owned the ice cream truck and gave us unlimited free ice cream.
But most have ranged from cringe try-hards who tried to buy my siblings and me off with new toys, to abusive narcissists, who would cheat on my mom and tell her it was her fault.
And with every breakup came the aftermath. The moving. The new schools. The new job. The uncertainty of whether I’d come home from school to find my mom cooking with Ella Fitzgerald at full volume, happy and hopeful, or if I’d have to hide her phone so she wouldn’t text her ex.
Sometimes things felt normal. She’d take us to the movies or order pizza for dinner or get a new job with a pay increase, and I would breathe a sigh of relief, feeling like things would finally settle down, until the next man came along and our life imploded once more.
“Do you and your siblings still see your dad?” Liam asks.
I swallow and look away, pretending to be absorbed in the sauce now simmering on the stovetop. “My siblings and I all have different dads, actually.”
It’s not that I’m embarrassed about my mom or her past, but I’ve received enough pitying glances and overheard the word slut thrown around over the years that I feel protective over her.
I hate the idea of her being judged or looked down upon, especially when the men who knocked her up and then bailed never had to face the same accusations.
But if Liam’s shocked or thrown off by this admission, he doesn’t show it.
“Did you know your dad?” Liam asks.
“Not really. By the time I was old enough to remember, they’d broken up and he’d moved to New Mexico. We never heard from him except for when he wanted my mom to mail him his things.”
I never felt any burning desire to know my dad. Not when he clearly didn’t want anything to do with us. But once, when I was a teenager, I looked him up on Facebook. Apparently, he has a wife and two sons, and they live in a stucco house with a tile roof and a swimming pool.
His real family, I thought. The one he actually wanted.
I never told my mom. It was better if she didn’t know.
“I’m sorry,” Liam says. “Sounds like that’s his loss.”
“That’s what my mom says too,” I tell him.
His mouth wavers upward into a smile before pressing a button, and the food processor whirs to life, filling the silence with the electric buzz of the machine. Within moments, the clump of tomatoes turns into a creamy red sauce.
“That smells amazing,” I tell him.
“Try it.” He dunks a spoon in the sauce and holds it out to me.
Blushing, I lean toward him, catching a whiff of laundry detergent and aftershave as I put the spoon in my mouth. The flavor instantly explodes across my tongue in a burst of tangy tomatoes and rich garlic.
“Wow. That’s really good,” I tell him, licking my lips.
“Wait until you try it with fresh béchamel and handmade pasta.”
“You’re making fresh pasta?”
“No, we’re making fresh pasta,” he corrects.
“We?”
He nods.
“But I’ve never made pasta before.”
“That’s okay. I’ll show you,” he says, beckoning me toward him. “Come here.”
A tiny bolt of electricity runs the length of my spine at the way he says it, all low and commanding, and I know I’ll be replaying it in my head long after tonight’s over.
Liam pours a neat pile of flour out on the counter and makes a little divot in the center. “We’re going to crack a few eggs in here.” He uses one hand to crack an egg right into the divot.
“Okay, now you’re just showing off,” I tease.
He grins. “Well, clearly my knife skills and slutty little towel didn’t do the trick. Now I have to bring out the big guns.”
I raise one eyebrow. “These are your big guns?”
His eyes cut to mine, a pulsing heat behind them, before he begins mixing the flour and eggs.
Maybe I’m a huge pervert, but all I can think about as he kneads the dough, pushing and pulling it like taffy, equal measures rough and gentle, is whether what he’s doing with his hands is a transferable skill set.
His gaze darts up to mine, mouth curling upward, like he knows the effect he’s having. “You want to try?” he asks.
I nod, and he tilts his head in invitation.
I expect him to stand off to the side and watch as I do it, but instead he steps in behind me, pressing his hips to my back. My throat goes dry at the feel of him. All of him. Every soft curve and hard ridge.
“You have to put your whole body into it,” he instructs, guiding my arms back and forth as he kneads the dough. “Like this.” He presses his hips right against my ass, and I’m thankful he can’t see the blush crawling up my neck.
“By the way.” He leans in, his lips gently brushing my earlobe. “This is my big gun.”
“And here I thought you were just happy to see me.”
He laughs and his whole body vibrates against mine, setting off a million tiny flames across my skin.
“You know, when you invited me over, I didn’t expect to do a Ghost reenactment,” I say.
“Well, I had to make sure you didn’t think I was boring.”
“I think you surpassed boring when you brought out the food processor.”
“Wait until you see my blender,” he says. “Though I usually reserve that for second dates.”
“So this is a date?”
“Isn’t it?” he asks, breath hot on the side of my neck.
“I thought this was two friends, making pasta and reenacting Ghost.”
“And do you normally reenact Ghost with your friends?”
“Not unless tequila is involved.”
He leans in a little closer, hips grinding against mine in a decidedly non-friend maneuver. “Maybe we’re not friends, then,” he says.
Every cell in my body heats up. He’s smooth. I’ll give him that. And a panicky part of my brain tells me it’s always the smooth talkers, the ones who know just what to say and how to say it, who do you the worst. I saw my mom date plenty of them to know the type.
But as we continue rolling out the dough, his hips snug against mine, I wonder, would it really be so wrong to hook up with Liam?
Clearly, we’re attracted to each other, and it wouldn’t have to mean anything.
It could just be a one-time thing. For fun.
Besides, the idea of letting loose for a night, of not thinking about the future, or what I’m going to do next, or Gramps’s disappointment, sounds exactly like what I need.
The thought gives me a burst of confidence as I turn around to face him.
“So, what usually happens next?” I ask.
He’s tall enough that he hovers over me, neck bending as his eyes find mine. “We layer the noodles with the sauce,” he says.
“No, I mean after you’ve pulled out the big guns.”
His eyes flash, a question mark hovering behind his gaze. “Well, that depends. Did the big guns work?”
“You honestly had me at the slutty towel,” I admit.
He laughs and the vibrations ping across my skin. “So you’re telling me we reenacted Ghost for nothing?”
I bite down on my bottom lip, fighting back a smile. “I wouldn’t say nothing.”
We’ve shifted closer now, his hips caging me against the counter.
“In that case, I suppose I’d ask to kiss you.”
His attention drops to my mouth, and somehow that single look burrows directly between my legs.
“And if I said yes?”
I can feel the heat of him, the smell of aftershave and basil, and I know that the instant he closes the final gap between us, I’m a goner.
“Then I’d lean in.” He bends toward me, so close his hot breath diffuses across my cheek. “And do this.”
Our gazes hold. A beat passes. My heart pounds in my throat. Then, just when I don’t think I can stand the scorched tension a second longer, he angles his jaw, cupping my cheek with his palm, and kisses me.
I expect it to be no different from the dozens of other meaningless kisses I’ve shared with men whose names I no longer remember.
But I know within seconds of his lips meeting mine, this isn’t that kind of kiss.
It’s the kind that burns hot against my skin, branding me.
The kind that will linger long after it’s over.
His mouth is slow at first, working over mine with controlled precision, a master class in restraint that nearly has me crying out with want. Then he tips my chin back and he kisses me a little rougher, a little harder, like he can’t quite help himself.
A moan escapes me, inviting his hands to slink lower, pulling me flush against him, showing me where he’s hard.
Maybe it’s that, or the ghostlike whispers of warm breath on my neck, or the way he hoists me onto the counter, parting my knees with the urgent press of his thumb, but every cell, every nerve ending hums with the same hot whoosh of need, unified in pursuit of a singular goal. More.
As my fingers twist in his collar, dragging him closer, I try to remind myself that this is just a hookup.
A distraction. That it means absolutely nothing.
Just like all the hookups that have come before, and surely all the ones that will come after.
But the thought gets lost in the pressure of his hands, the swirl of his tongue, the steady rock of his hips.
In the billion singing particles all demanding more, more, more.
And I know with every shallow gasp and full-bodied moan that the rest of my life will be divided into before and after.
Everything before this kiss. And everything after.