Chapter Twelve ZOE
Chapter Twelve
Z OE
My body was trained to wake up early, even before Mira had moved in with me. But I knew from experience that Liam wasn’t usually far behind.
When he didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, internal alarm bells rang, alerting me to being the first one awake among the three of us. The couch had been surprisingly comfortable, but my back was still sore when I stood and stretched.
I quietly made my way up the steps, then peeked around the corner of Mira’s room.
And my heart stopped.
Liam wasn’t on his floor bed anymore, because Mira had taken his place. She was sprawled out underneath the blanket, her hair a tangled mess and her chest moving up and down evenly. He was sound asleep, his back against the wall and Mira’s stuffed frog shoved against his shoulder as a makeshift pillow.
And he was holding her hand.
My aforementioned heart, which had stopped, turned a slow, sweet roll behind my ribs.
He’d kill me for doing it, but I pulled out my phone, crouched down to get a better angle, and snapped a picture.
Then I sent it to Rosa.
My phone buzzed almost immediately.
Rosa: My Lord. That is criminally adorable. Doesn’t that make you want to get pregnant with his babies??
I smiled. There was no helping it.
Me: Logical guess.
Me: I think I’m ready to admit that he’s not completely without a soul, as previously thought. The last twelve hours have been ... educational.
Rosa: Do tell . . .
But I wasn’t able to respond, because Mira started stirring, turning onto her side. I tucked my phone away and slowly rubbed her back. Then I touched the backs of my fingers to her forehead.
The weight of Liam’s stare was tangible, but I kept my focus on Mira. She smiled sleepily.
“I have a sleepover with Liam,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep.
“I see that.” I sat on the floor, crossing my legs underneath me and opening my arms. She clambered onto my lap and snuggled into my embrace. I pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
Finally, I brought my gaze up.
With his hand free of hers, Liam had crossed his arms, and I did my very best not to study how the black cotton shirt stretched over his chest.
His expression wasn’t blank, but it was brimming with reserve.
“You look tired,” I told him.
“That your way of telling me I look like shit?” he asked, voice a slow drawl. I’d never heard him speak after just waking, and at the scraping roughness of it, like a cat’s tongue over my skin, I fought a shiver up my spine.
Instead of answering, I kissed Mira’s forehead.
“How’d she end up down here?” I asked.
“She woke up around three and saw me down here. Said she wanted to sleep by me, and I couldn’t fucking say no.” He arched his back and winced. “I’m too old to sleep like this.”
I hummed, hiding my smile in Mira’s hair. She had this big, surly man wrapped entirely around her little finger, and he would rather die than admit it. He’d fight it the entire way, and I wondered what would happen if I pointed it out.
My mom used to tell us all the time, Look for the ways people show their love; don’t just wait for the words. Not everyone can say them easily. But they almost always prove it with their actions.
Should’ve been my first clue with Charles, because he had all the words. In the beginning, he told me all the time how beautiful I was. How much he loved me. How good we were together.
In hindsight, it would have been so easy to berate my past self for how easily I’d fallen for those words. And in the end, they were fairly empty. Because his actions indicated something else entirely.
“How’re you feeling, duck?” Liam asked.
“I okay,” she said, still nuzzling into my chest.
He looked at me. “Should we take it again?”
“We can,” I told him. “But I think the fever broke.”
“You cannot fucking know that just by kissing her forehead.”
At his dry tone, I smiled. “No, but she’s sweaty, which probably means it broke during the night.”
He eyed me carefully, then grabbed the thermometer. He scanned Mira’s forehead, and when he rolled his eyes, I laughed quietly.
“Don’t be so smug,” he said. “It’s rude.”
“Should we go make some breakfast?” I asked Mira.
She hopped out of my lap. “Can we have doughnuts?”
“Maybe later,” I told her. “How about some eggs this morning?”
“I don’t like eggs,” she said.
“Sure you do. Remember when I put the cheese on them a couple days ago? You ate every bite.”
She thought about that, then nodded. “Extra cheese.”
“You got it.” I motioned for her to come closer so I could open the back of her pajama pants and check if her overnight pull-up was dry. “Nice work, Mirabelle.” I pointed across the hall. “Pee first, and then we’ll go downstairs.”
Instead of lingering with the knowledge that Liam might be feeling a bit emotionally naked after Mira’s short-lived fever, I hopped up and left the room.
It took him a couple of minutes to come down, but as he started down the stairs, he yelled over his shoulder: “I see you ignoring that soap, you little heathen.”
“Good Lord,” I muttered. “We’re gonna have to explain this to her therapist someday. If I can ever find someone without a six-month waitlist, that is.” I cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl and started whisking. “Well, it all started when Uncle Liam said the f-word seventy-four times a day and called me a little heathen ...”
He gave me a look. “What, no coffee yet?”
“I am not moving in here to wait on you hand and foot, Liam Davies.” I pointed to the machine. “You are perfectly capable of making your own.”
“Calm down,” he said. “You were the first one up. First one up always makes the coffee.” Then he sighed. “But isn’t that a nice mental image? You walking around with a little apron on ... making anything I’d like.”
Shockingly, my answering glare did not incinerate him on the spot. He did, however, whistle a happy little tune as he started filling the coffeepot with water.
When Mira came downstairs, he was saved from any possible retort I might have had. And I had plenty of options burning the tip of my tongue.
He knew it too, the ass. Because he walked past me and winked .
The egg in my hand cracked because I was gripping it so hard. Bits of shell and egg white went all over.
And then he laughed.
I’d never heard him laugh like that before. The sound was so deep and rich that I almost forgot I wanted to shove the egg straight into his face.
“What are you laughing at?” I asked. “You’re the one who’s gonna be picking eggshells out of your breakfast for the next hour.”
“No eggs for me, Valentine.” He patted his perfectly flat stomach. “Not hungry yet.”
Mira took her spot at the island, and I quickly peeled a banana and set half on her plate before eating the other half myself.
“You want some?” Liam asked me as he started measuring the grounds.
“Please. I usually only have one cup in the morning, but I think I’ll need two today.”
He grunted.
While I made the eggs for Mira and myself, Liam went to the guest room to take a quick shower. He came back into the kitchen as I was taking my seat at the island, his hair almost black because it was still wet.
When he walked behind me, the scent of clean male had me chewing a bit more slowly. Good Lord, what soap did he use? Dirty Sex in a Bottle?
That’s about what he smelled like. Clean, fresh, a little spicy. I blew out a harsh breath and ignored it while he fixed his coffee.
“Black?” he asked.
When I looked over, he was pulling a second mug from the cupboard. It took me a moment to swallow around my shock, but I nodded.
He set the mug down in front of me, and I gave him a small smile.
Liam wouldn’t make eye contact.
Mira finished her eggs and pushed the plate away.
“Good job,” I told her. “Why don’t you go read some of your books, okay?”
She nodded, hopping off the stool and running toward her playroom down the hall.
Silence filled the kitchen.
“So,” I said slowly, “is this our new morning routine?”
He took a long sip of his coffee, finally letting his green eyes settle on me. When he lowered the mug, he let out a heavy, measured sigh. “Don’t know.”
“Maybe we need some sort of schedule. Who’s responsible for what meals. Who’s gonna buy what groceries.” I made a vague gesture with my hands. “Division of labor and all that.”
“Do not make another bloody binder.”
I gave him a look. “They’re helpful. Structure is our friend right now, and you can’t deny that. This is a unique situation, and it’s not like I can go ask my friends how they do it at their houses.”
He conceded that with a slight raise of his eyebrows.
“I can understand why Mira wants to stay here.” I set my coffee down. “If anything, I’m surprised it took her this long to ask. But I’m not willing to say we’re moving in here permanently just yet. Maybe we take this a month at a time.”
For a moment, I allowed myself one quick glance at my house and felt a pang underneath my ribs. It must have shown on my face.
“I bet you can get her back there after a while,” he said. “This might just be a phase.”
“ Or she’ll always want to be here because it’s where her parents lived. Because it’s her home. I can’t begrudge her that.” Looking at Liam’s face, I tried to puzzle out what I saw there and, as usual, came up blank. “You really didn’t mind leaving your house?”
He shook his head. “Just a house. Didn’t feel too much of anything about it, really. Wasn’t big and flashy.”
“And you don’t have a place in London?” I asked. Was it shameless prying? Absolutely.
Liam gave a slight nod. “Not mine, though. Bought it for my mum and her family.”
“ Her family?” I asked. “Aren’t they yours too?”
He rolled his neck, which popped audibly when he tilted to the right. “She remarried when I was a teenager. They had a couple more kids.”
“How old were—”
Liam held up his hand. “Zoe, I know you cannot physically stop yourself from being nosy right now, but I believe we’ve reached our daily quota for personal questions.”
“It’s not even seven a.m.,” I told him.
His eyebrows arched slowly. “Exactly.”
I took a slow sip of coffee, my mind buzzing from the interaction. Bantering with Liam Davies perked me up faster than any caffeinated beverage in the world.
What an inconvenient realization.
“How many do I get every day?”
Liam set his mug down, his face inscrutable. “How many what?”
“Personal questions.”
His eyes traced my face. “You are not serious,” he said slowly.
“As a heart attack. We’re about to cohabitate . We’re raising a child together. You can’t expect me not to be curious.”
It took him an annoyingly long time to answer. He just stood there, staring at me like I was the world’s most complicated puzzle. No one had ever looked at me like that.
The moment he came to a decision, I saw it in his eyes. “You get one on weekdays, two on weekends.”
I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.
Except ... he didn’t so much as crack a smile. He was serious.
My laughter faded. “Holy shit, you’re not kidding,” I whispered.
Liam sighed. “Let’s keep focused, yeah?”
I sank back on my stool and studied his shuttered facial expression. My mom would have a field day with him. “Have you ever seen a therapist?” I asked.
He barked out a harsh laugh. “Absolutely fucking not. And no shrink would have me either.”
“My mom is a therapist.”
“ That explains a lot.”
“I bet she’d see you. She takes online clients.”
“Not in a million years, Valentine.”
With a sigh, I stood and picked up the empty plates. While I rinsed them off in the sink, I tried very, very hard not to inhale Liam’s sex-soap smell, because he was standing close by.
“You moving your shit in or what?” he asked.
I put the plates in the dishwasher and shrugged as I closed the door. “Some of it. Not everything, though. I’ll keep most of my clothes and stuff over there. Just bring a couple of days’ worth at a time. I’ll probably still work in my office if you’re around.”
He eyed me carefully. “You taking their room?” he asked quietly.
My stomach filled with sloshing ice, the cold seeping up into my lungs, and I breathed through it. Mainly because I didn’t have a choice. The other option was to dive headfirst into a pint of ice cream, and that didn’t feel like a healthy coping mechanism. “I think so. I might change out the comforter and some artwork, make it look a little bit more like me.”
“Your ex’s head mounted on the wall?” he asked lightly.
“I don’t keep those trophies out for public consumption, but that’s really sweet of you to ask.”
Liam licked at his bottom lip, and my cheeks went a little warm.
There was no reason for him to make anything of mine warm, which just went to show how long it had been for me. Tyler, sweet though he was, had never progressed to the bedroom-activity phase of our relationship. He’d wanted to take things slow, and I hadn’t really hit a point with him where he made me want to tear my clothes off.
Which meant that Charles was, unfortunately, my last experience with sex.
And his idea of sex had been early-evening missionary so that he could stare at himself in the mirror over the dresser, as the lighting and the angle made his body look better than it actually was. After about seven minutes (give or take), he’d leave the room, and I’d always have to roll over, tug open the top drawer of my nightstand, and finish myself off with a little help.
It was the only reason I was having this reaction to Liam. The only thing that made logical sense, at least.
Because now I was thinking about sex with Liam, and absolutely nothing good would come from that.
“What about your trophies?” I asked, head tilted to the side. “Do I have to worry about intrepid football fans sneaking out in the middle of the night? Finding them in the kitchen in the morning, wondering when the coffee’s going to be made?”
He took a careful step closer, and I backed into the counter. His eyes searched my face.
“What do you think?” he murmured. “You think I’d parade women around here?”
I swallowed. Quite desperately, I wanted to answer him with something clever or snappy, to keep this little dance going, but I couldn’t find the words. They were frozen somewhere under my sternum, and the air was thick with unnamed tension.
I damn well knew that Liam didn’t sleep around. Chris and Amie had talked about it enough—how he was never in relationships.
Quite inexplicably, they’d felt like that was a shame. Personally, I could understand why the groupies didn’t go after him, considering he was a raging dick and all.
But raging dick or not, he looked like a man who’d never leave a woman needing to roll over and finish anything by herself. With the arms and the eyes and the accent and the voice ...
No. There’d be no help needed. My throat went bone dry as I stared up at him.
Finally, I shook my head.
He nodded slowly. “You’d be right, then.”
Liam stepped back, and I let out a slow, uneven breath. “I’m gonna go shower at my place and bring back some stuff.”
He was staring down at the floor when I stepped out of the kitchen. My heart jangled in my chest. I registered its uneven beats and racing thumps.
This would not do. Not on day one. I opened the slider and paused. “No bullshit?”
Liam’s eyes locked onto mine.
“I’m really nervous to live under the same roof as you, Liam. Most of the time, I’m completely convinced that you hate me.” My voice cracked on the word hate , and I cursed this little moment of honesty. “I think we’re liable to kill each other if we don’t figure out the right way to do this,” I continued.
His jaw clenched.
“I don’t ...” I paused. “I don’t want to mess this up.”
When he didn’t answer, I ducked my head and started out of the house.
“I don’t either,” he suddenly said, quiet and demanding. I stopped, my hand still on the door, my head swiveling slowly to stare. The thick line of his throat moved on a swallow. “And I don’t hate you,” he added in an urgent tone. “I never have.”
My hand dropped to my side, and I turned to face him. “Never?” I repeated incredulously. “You’ve never hated me?”
Then Liam’s face took on an entirely different cast. He could hardly meet my eyes. His jaw was tight, and he shifted on his feet.
He was nervous.
I was tempted to take another picture, because this needed to be recorded for posterity.
“I’d love a few more words than this,” I prodded gently. “Because for a decade I have operated under the assumption that you can’t stand being in the same room as me. You could hardly look at me for years.”
Liam’s eyes closed, and his chest expanded on a massive inhale. The kind you took when you were mentally prepping for something big.
“At the beginning, I couldn’t,” he ground out. “But not ... not because of that.”
My brow furrowed.
“I didn’t hate you,” he said again, his voice low and fierce, and absolutely nothing about that fierceness was computing in my brain.
“You certainly didn’t like me.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Which was fine. I didn’t expect—”
“I did like you,” he interrupted hotly. “That was the problem, yeah?”
His eyes weren’t closed anymore. They were wide open, blazing with intensity—and locked straight on mine.
Something invisible cinched itself tightly around my ribs and squeezed.
“When I met you ...” Liam continued, voice halting as he chose his words. “I got over it. It was ... just a little thing, and I don’t want you to think I’m still ...” He stopped, then blew out a hard breath. “But I liked you, Zoe.”
My breath was coming in short, shocked little puffs. My mouth hung open, and my cheeks were hot. “You ...”
I couldn’t even say it, let alone wrap my brain around what he was telling me.
“Fuck,” he muttered, swiping a hand over his face. “I’m bollocks-ing this up. I shouldn’t even be ...”
Weren’t we a pair? He was stumbling over his words, and I couldn’t find a single friggin’ one.
“You liked me? Liked me liked me?”
He gave me an exasperated look, but holy shit, there was a spark of warmth buried in his eyes, and it was just enough to snap me back into the moment.
“Liam, I . . .”
“Men get crushes too,” he barked. And, oh my, his cheekbones flushed pink. My heart couldn’t take it. “Don’t make a big bloody thing about it. It was a long time ago, and once that twat walked in for dinner and you set down your book and I saw the ring, I got over it, all right?”
I’d forgotten so many details of that night. The only one that remained seared in my memory was the way he’d locked eyes with me and wished me luck with husband number two.
It was so audacious, so rude, and—worst of all—so incredibly accurate.
“I was reading at the island while Chris and Amie were grilling on the deck,” I said quietly.
“Harry Potter,” he added. “I think it was the third book.”
Slowly, I nodded.
His eyes traced over my hair, which was undoubtedly a mess, as it always was in the mornings. “It was curly that night, and I thought”—he stopped, swallowing again—“I thought you were Hermione come to life for a minute. Older, though.”
Was my jaw on the floor?
Tucked behind my chest, my heart hammered wildly, and I had the vague worry that he could hear it. “Have a crush on Hermione, did you?” I asked lightly, an attempt to break the tension building and building and building.
“Of course.” He looked at me like I was nuts. “Who didn’t?”
“You’ve read Harry Potter.” It wasn’t a question. Just ... making sure I wasn’t hallucinating the entire exchange.
He shifted on his feet again. “My youngest half sister loves those books. She was always reading one of ’em when I visited in the summers.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth and studied him. He looked like Liam. Sounded like him. What had I said to Rosa in my text earlier?
An enlightening twelve hours, indeed.
As it turned out, he was desperately endearing when being teased. Maybe too endearing, something in the back of my head whispered, but I steadfastly ignored that.
“You’re a Hufflepuff, aren’t you?” I asked. “It makes so much sense.”
Liam reared his head back. “I am not.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“I’m a fucking Slytherin,” he snapped. “Have you met me?”
I hummed.
He jabbed a finger in the air. “See? Everyone makes judgy little noises when I say that. Slytherins are massively misunderstood.” He tucked his arms over his chest again, his chin notched in the air. “You can’t tell me Draco didn’t get dealt a shit hand. He was no bad guy in the end, and no matter what you say, I’ll never change my mind.”
The battle against my growing smile was lost, and I couldn’t stop it fast enough.
Liam rolled his eyes, exhaling a harsh puff of air. From anyone else, I’d have thought it was one step away from a laugh. But with him? I hardly knew anymore.
In his halting voice and choppy words, with the blush of embarrassment high on his cheeks, he’d admitted something to me that he’d probably never intended to reveal.
And if we’d never decided to share this space, he probably never would have.
I was starting to realize that maybe I’d never really known Liam Davies at all. It was the sort of knowledge that could rock the foundations if I wasn’t careful, sloshing water over the edges at an alarming rate.
Tidal waves had less impact than this conversation, and something sweet expanded in my lungs as I felt the implications crash over me.
“So you had a crush on me,” I said quietly.
He couldn’t meet my eyes. “Don’t make a big thing about it.”
Slowly, I nodded. “So that night, you were like ... the boy on the playground who pulls the girl’s hair because he doesn’t know how to use his words.”
Liam’s face was implacable, but he managed a tight nod.
“A healthy life choice,” I said, voice even and dry and only mildly sarcastic.
He gave me a look. “I didn’t say my reaction was healthy, I just ... hated him that first night, and even more as the years went by and you looked so ...” His voice trailed off. “Never mind. It’s not important; it was a long time ago.”
It felt important to me. Really important.
Everything about the last few years of my life had left me feeling just a little bit battered. My divorce and my breakup and the fact that I was burned out from a career I loved.
That I’d changed, been hurt, and wasn’t exactly sure what moving forward looked like.
All of it added up to a version of myself that I hardly recognized. Someone tired and weary from all those shifts and changes.
Not less, though. None of those things made me a lesser version of Zoe Valentine.
But it was still nice to hear that in the midst of some of those things, someone had seen me.
But I wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t push. The fact that he’d admitted this much was a big deal. A decade of keeping himself locked down wouldn’t change overnight, and I knew that too.
It was enough right now that I knew. That he’d trusted me enough to share it.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said.
He heard the sincerity in my voice, because he held my gaze for a long moment before jerking his chin in a short nod. “Welcome,” he answered, voice tight and uncomfortable.
Oh yeah. My mom would have a field day with him.
My hand rested on the slider again, my finger tapping against the frame. “So ... two questions a day on the weekends, huh?”
“Fucking hell,” he muttered. “I wasn’t being literal, Valentine.”
With a laugh, I left the house, pulling the slider door shut behind me. Immediately, I tugged my phone out of my pocket.
“Rosa,” I said when she picked up. “You are never gonna believe this.”