Chapter Seven LIAM
Chapter Seven
L IAM
To be perfectly clear, I did not believe in ghosts.
Even when I was young, I thought Casper was a wanker who needed to get a life. Haunted houses were a giant racket. And the idea that no one else figured out that the little kid in that stupid movie could see dead people was completely idiotic.
However ... none of that explained the dream. The one that left me staring at my ceiling for hours, my hand over my wildly racing heart.
The night I came home from Chris’s house—where I’d left that bloody box sitting in the middle of the island, and a hole in the wall from the bat Zoe had swung at my head—he appeared in a dream.
Wasn’t really a dream, I suppose. More like a cloudy memory that came to me in my sleep. Something I’d forgotten.
Early in our Denver years—Chris already settled with Amie and me happily not settled with anyone—we’d talked about what the rest of our careers might look like.
“I’ll play ’til they drag me off the field,” I told him.
We were sitting in the front row on the fifty-yard line, drinking beers in the dark stadium.
“No, you won’t,” he said.
He was so fucking smug, always thinking he knew me best.
I gave him a look. “What makes you say that?”
“Because I know you.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughed. The absolute git. He had a big smile, wide and happy, that showed all his straight, white, perfectly American teeth. “Mark my words, Liam. You play because it’s your favorite outlet, and I get that. I get all the reasons you chose this game over that other one,” he drawled.
I rolled my eyes and took a drag of my beer.
“You play because of the brotherhood,” he continued. “You take care of your teammates like they’re your family.”
My only response was to shift in my seat. I didn’t remember doing that in real life, but in my dream, his words were starting to make me uncomfortable.
“You say you don’t want a family—”
“I don’t ,” I interrupted.
Chris ignored me. “You’ll want to take care of them too. Once you find the right one.”
This, unfortunately, is where the memory changed into something else.
I tried to get out of the seat, tried to walk away. But my legs were useless. I couldn’t move, no matter how hard I tried.
“You’ll take care of mine, won’t you?” he asked.
Then his hand, big and strong and relentless, gripped my arm. His eyes seared straight into my bleeding soul.
“Won’t you?” he asked again.
That’s when I woke with a startled gasp, which dragged my mind into the here and now. The dark room where I lay in my bed. The sheets were twisted around my legs, like I’d thrashed myself awake. My hands shook a little bit as I swiped them over my face, and the skin on my back was damp with sweat when I sat up in bed and took a few deep breaths.
“Fuck,” I sighed.
I never did get back to sleep.
Instead, I laced up my trainers, tugged on some athletic shorts and a sweatshirt, and went for a predawn run in my neighborhood, needing the relentless pounding of my feet against the pavement over a sterile gym.
April in Colorado was always a gamble when it came to the weather. We’d gotten snow the week before, one last grasping attempt from winter as it ushered itself out. But it had melted almost immediately. This morning, the skies were still, but it smelled like rain as I punished my body for that stupid dream I couldn’t shake.
My lungs heaved the farther I ran, and instead of seeing Chris’s face, I saw Mira’s.
I saw Zoe’s when she’d chased me down in that parking lot.
When she’d charged down the steps, ready to decapitate me because she thought I was a burglar pilfering from her friends’ house.
And again when she’d told me to leave the key behind.
It’s for family, she’d said. Like she hadn’t just twisted the proverbial knife straight in between my shoulder blades. It was a wound that I’d earned. I couldn’t be mad at her for doing it, no matter how badly I wanted to be.
On the final stretch of my run, with my house in view, I sprinted. My muscles screamed in protest. My lungs bellowed from the effort to breathe.
You’ll take care of mine, won’t you?
The sound of my feet as I slowed to a stop, the slap, slap, slap against the pavement, wasn’t enough to drown out the memory of his voice.
He’d never said that to me in real life. Not once.
I bent over, hands on my knees, as I tried to catch my breath.
I couldn’t. It simply wasn’t there.
Because either my brain had planted that guilty message after I’d drifted off to sleep, or my asshole best friend had just hijacked my dreams to remind me what a selfish git I was.
I stood, hands on my hips, and stared up at the house where I’d lived for twelve years. I’d bought it with money from my rookie contract. It wasn’t big; it wasn’t flashy. It was fine for me.
The bigger house I’d purchased was for Mum, her husband, and my two half sisters, who at the time were still young enough to live at home.
That was a home for a family.
Mine was just a house. It had walls. Nice-size rooms and a pool in a private backyard where no one could watch me do my laps.
Chris and Amie’s house had been a home too. I liked being there. Always felt at ease when I walked through the door.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I had to clarify that statement.
Had felt at ease.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath.
I thought about calling my mum for advice, but I bloody well knew what she’d tell me. With an ocean between us, I could practically hear her voice.
Liam Andrew Davies, you apologize to that young lady. You apologize, and then you fix it, because the only apology that matters is the one that comes with changed behavior.
“Fuck,” I said, just a bit louder.
“Morning, Liam,” my neighbor Bill called out as he wheeled his trash bin to the street.
“Sorry, Bill.”
He smiled. “Used to it by now, buddy.”
I nodded, then sighed as I went to get my own bin.
Two hours later, freshly showered and so uncomfortable I wanted to tear my skin off, I pulled into Zoe fucking Valentine’s driveway.
I stared at the house for ten long minutes before I could get out of the car.
Her house looked like something I’d find outside London. The iron fence, the Tudor styling, the well-tended plants and flowers she’d cultivated to make it look sweet and friendly.
All in all, it was like its owner.
Except when she was facing me, of course.
I’d been uniquely talented in bringing out Zoe’s hidden feisty side. Amie had constantly told me how strange it was that Zoe was nice to everyone. Except me.
I shoved open my door with a grimace, because ever since the moment I’d met her and couldn’t keep my stupid mouth shut about the utter arse she was marrying, she hadn’t been sweet and friendly with me.
There was something about her. I’d never done a good job of defining it in my head. Likely because she defied any sort of label my feeble brain was able to give her.
I wanted to be close to her. Wanted to see her smile.
And I wanted to push her as far away from me as humanly possible, because proximity to Zoe Valentine was dangerous.
It had felt like a mockery, the ring on her finger that first night, because for the first time in my life, I’d met a woman who knocked the breath from my lungs when she smiled.
I hated that she was taken. I hated that she made me feel that way. And I hated even more that she was marrying some idiot who needed to be punched about as badly as anyone I’d ever met.
Naturally, that meant I was a dick to her every single time I saw her. Just to make sure the lines between us were clear.
And now?
Now I was strolling up to her door before it was polite to drop by someone’s house, and there was every fucking chance she’d slap me across the face before accepting an apology.
I didn’t even know what my plan was. Didn’t know what I was going to say. But somehow I knew that if I didn’t say something, Chris and his big smile and his annoying ghost ass would keep showing up in my dreams.
He’d haunt me, the fucker, and be bloody cheerful about it, if I had to guess.
I let out a slow breath and walked up to the front door.
Before I even knocked, I heard Mira crying.
Loudly.
I pinched my eyes shut and started to turn around.
“Good morning.”
At the dry tone, I looked over my shoulder.
The neighbor with the scary eyebrows was walking her tiny little dog. And while he took a shit on the grass, she watched me with one of those brows quirked up and a poo bag waiting in her hand.
“Going somewhere?” she asked.
“What business is it of yours?”
She barked out an amused laugh. “Despite all evidence as to why I shouldn’t, I like you, Liam.”
“You really shouldn’t.”
“Believe me, I know.” She bent over and picked up her dog’s waste, then tied a knot in the bag. Her animal stared me down, scratching the grass behind him. I stared him down right back and made a growling noise in the back of my throat, baring my teeth while I did. Rosa laughed outright when her dog pricked up his ears, like he was readying to charge me. “Oh, calm down, Peanut. He’s harmless.”
“Am I?” I drawled.
Her eyes were shrewd. “No, I suppose you’re not. But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Bloody know-it-all neighbors.
She started down the sidewalk. “I’ll make sure to tell Zoe I saw you, if you’re about to leave.”
I set my hands on my hips, but she’d already given me her back.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
The screaming had intensified, but I turned back toward the door, pressed the doorbell, and tucked my hands behind my back. Inside the house, I heard Zoe’s attempt to soothe Mira.
Unsuccessfully.
And the screaming came closer.
I rubbed at the bridge of my nose, dropping my hand just as she opened the door.
Zoe had not been awake as long as I had, given she was still in her pajamas, her hair wild and untamed around her face.
Her legs were bare and tan, covered only by small black sleep shorts.
And her face was slack with shock at the sight of me.
Behind her in the family room, Mira continued to scream. I couldn’t see her, but I’d bet the entire neighborhood could hear the sounds coming from that child’s mouth.
“I’ll be right here on the porch, Mirabelle,” she said. There was a slight pause in the crying, even though Mira didn’t fully stop. “And I promise you we’ll find Froggy today, okay?”
The wailing intensified, and Zoe stepped out onto the front porch so she could close the door behind her. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, which I did not stare at, because it didn’t matter if she was wearing a bra behind the black sleep shirt, and I wasn’t a fucking pervert.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
It wasn’t said harshly. She wasn’t glaring. And somehow that made it all so much worse.
No, Zoe was exhausted. That much was obvious.
“You look tired.”
The words tumbled out before I could stop them, and when her eyes narrowed in annoyance, I knew I’d fucking stepped in it.
“Do I? Maybe it’s because we were up half the night, and I don’t sleep much anyway these days, because I suddenly found myself a single mom to a child who didn’t come with an instruction manual, you pompous prick.” She tilted her head, and that gaze she aimed in my direction was like a fucking weapon. She could level cities with those eyes, and I fought the instinct to cover my balls. “Is that why you look so well rested, Liam?”
I held up my hands. “I’m sorry.”
She tightened her arms and gazed down at the ground. I could breathe a bit easier when she did. I’d never liked the way my chest felt when Zoe Valentine looked at me.
“For what I said just now,” I continued. “And for not stepping up to help you.”
Her face snapped up, her gaze snagging on mine. But she didn’t speak.
The words were hard to force out, but I kept Chris’s face in the forefront of my mind while I did. “I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t want to make this worse than it is, and it’s already fucking awful.”
She licked her lips, and I also tried not to stare when she did that.
Zoe had pretty lips. Soft and pink and the perfect frame for her smile. Not that she ever smiled at me anymore.
Not that I’d given her a reason to.
“Liam,” she said with a sigh, “what do you want?”
My brow furrowed. “To apologize.”
She searched my face before she spoke again. “Right, but beyond that. Do you need anything from me?”
“No.”
“Okay. Because I have nothing in my emotional tank for you right now.” She gestured to the house, where the sound of Mira crying had only slightly abated. “She gets everything I have. I can’t coddle you. I can’t make you feel better about ... whatever this is.” Then she lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. “So you’re forgiven. For telling me I look like shit—”
“That’s not what I said.”
She gave me a warning look.
Again, I held up my hands. “Fine.”
“I don’t know if I can forgive you yet for not helping, though,” she said. “Maybe in time, I will.”
My jaw clenched, and I stared down at the concrete of her front porch. “Fair enough,” I ground out.
The screaming intensified until it reached a sharp crescendo, and Zoe let out a ragged sigh. When I glanced up, she had her eyes squeezed shut and a hand covering her mouth. As she dropped it, I saw a warning tremble of her chin.
Oh no.
No.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
“Shit,” I mumbled. “Please don’t cry,” I begged.
She sucked in a breath. “I can’t help it,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I’m so, so tired.” Another tear slipped out.
Briefly, I raised a hand to ... I wasn’t sure. So I scratched the back of my neck.
She covered her face with both hands, and her shoulders shook. “You are the last person I want to cry in front of, trust me.”
My hand reached out again, and I patted her shoulder. Awkwardly. Just a few short taps.
“There, there. It’ll be ... it’ll be fine.”
She dropped her hands to stare incredulously. “Seriously?”
“Well, I’m assuming you don’t want me to hug you,” I said, feeling slightly affronted.
“No.” She scrubbed her face again. “I’d cry more if you did.”
“Then I definitely won’t.”
Zoe exhaled a sound that might have been a laugh under any other circumstance. Her eyes were slightly red and her cheeks pink. Her hair was a mess. There really were dark circles under her eyes, the exhaustion stamped all over her face. And somehow, quite impossibly, she was still so beautiful that I could hardly look at her.
I hated it.
“I don’t know how people do this alone,” she said. “It’s so hard.”
The words came out so quietly, almost like she’d never meant to admit them aloud.
And the second I heard them, I remembered my mum crying over a pot of mashed potatoes shortly after we left my dad. We’d eaten potatoes cooked a dozen different ways in those first couple of months. Because they were cheap, and they were all she could afford.
I don’t know how to do this, she’d said.
She’d done it, of course. Because my mum was the strongest woman I’d ever met. And she’d done it because she had to.
My chest caved in, and I couldn’t stop it. It wasn’t even bricks tumbling out of place or a crack in the foundation.
Something, a guard or a wall or a barrier, just ... poof! Disappeared. I knew it would build itself back up again eventually, because it always did. But in that moment, I couldn’t feel anything holding me back from wanting to be whatever she needed me to be.
“I’ll help,” I heard myself say.
“What?” she whispered.
Fuck. Fuck . What had I done?
Panic had me talking fast, my voice hard and harsh.
“I’m terrible when kids cry, and I’ll be rubbish at it, and I guarantee you’ll regret ever putting me in charge of her.”
Hope filled Zoe’s eyes, and fucking hell, it tore my heart into a million pieces.
“Really?”
“I’m not joking—you’ll regret it. Probably tomorrow. I already do.”
She let out a shaky exhale, almost like a laugh. “You’ll help? Like, really, physically help?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Can’t right now. I have to go meet with Coach and then run some drills with the rookies because they’re awful. But ... yeah, I’ll help.”
Zoe’s lips curved into a tentative smile. My chest cranked tight at the sight of it.
“Okay. Maybe ... call me later, and we’ll figure something out?”
Fuck. Ing. Hell.
What had I done?
There was no taking it back. Not when it had transformed her in an instant.
Even as rampant anxiety dug its icy claws into my stomach and yanked, I knew I wouldn’t take it back.
I managed a jerky nod and quickly strode to my vehicle. Zoe’s eyes burned into my back the entire way. In the background, there was no escaping the sound of my friends’ daughter, bawling her bloody eyes out over a stuffed frog.
You’ll take care of my family, won’t you?
“You better not show up in my dreams tonight, you asshole,” I said as I punched the ignition button. “I’ll never forgive you if you do.”