Chapter Twenty-One ZOE
Chapter Twenty-One
Z OE
When I couldn’t sleep, I had a terrible habit of staring at the ceiling and pondering really deep existential questions.
About mistakes and regret. These two things had plagued me for months after I kicked Charles out of the house.
About finding your purpose. I’d spent a solid year on this one when I decided to take a sabbatical from working full-time because I knew I needed the break.
Loss and love and heaven and God.
Whether there were predetermined plans for our lives that we couldn’t see, or whether it was all truly left to chance. I was still wrestling with those.
And tonight I thought about first kisses.
I thought about what it meant when those kisses were the best first kisses I’d ever had in my life. Nothing I’d experienced came close.
It had to mean something, right?
I’d doze for a while, my eyes heavy with the tug of sleep, only to jolt awake when I remembered how Liam’s thumbs had played my nipples like instruments until I made sounds so perfectly aligned with the heat building between us that I couldn’t hear over the rush of my thundering pulse.
When I thought about his firm lips and the hot, demanding slide of his tongue, my breath would come faster, and my heart raced in my chest.
For hours, I tossed and turned, kicked at the sheets covering my legs, and smashed my overheated face into the pillow when I couldn’t pry the thoughts of him from my head.
My pulse was stretched thin across my entire body; I could feel it everywhere.
Feel him everywhere.
As the night wore on, interminably slow, I picked apart every millisecond of what had happened.
The gnawing worry that had plagued me all evening when he hadn’t shown up at his normal hour. The bone-melting relief when I realized he was home. The whiskey bottle in his hands. The look on his face because I knew something was wrong.
And the way my body had reacted when he laid his hands on my skin. The way my heart took a slow, tortured turn in my chest when he curled his body over my back and pressed his nose into my hair.
Honestly, it was a miracle I hadn’t shoved him down on the island and ripped his shirt clean in half. I wanted to. I wanted to finish what we’d started, and I couldn’t deny—no matter how much I should have—that I would have finished it if he hadn’t stopped us.
There would have been sex.
Kitchen sex.
Messy, hard, glorious kitchen sex with Liam.
Complicated , glorious kitchen sex with Liam.
I laid a trembling hand on my face and tried to will myself to sleep, but it was a lost cause.
The worst part of all these Technicolor flashbacks was the line of questions that came after them.
Why hadn’t I thought about all the reasons we should’ve stopped?
And, even worse, if Liam hadn’t stopped us, what would have happened afterward?
The nature of our situation made any future relationship that much harder. It didn’t matter if that relationship was between me and Liam or with someone new. For either of us.
To call it murky was an understatement, and I still couldn’t parcel out whether my attraction to him was real or simply a byproduct of the situation.
We were both single. Forced to be together every day. Seeing sides of each other that we hadn’t before. The prospective changes were inevitable.
And terrifying.
Then there was the added awareness that he’d been attracted to me once upon a time. Maybe he still was. Would I have been tempted to kiss him if I hadn’t known that? Did his admission plant a seed of possibility that I never would have considered on my own?
It was foolish to deny that I’d been lonely. Having heartbreak in your past didn’t automatically turn you into someone who hated love.
I wanted to be in love. Butterflies and first dates and first kisses and all that came with it.
I wanted someone to love me in the same way. Where the sight of me set millions of wings aflutter in the pit of their belly and tangled their tongue when they tried to speak.
No, I didn’t hate love. Maybe I just didn’t fully trust myself yet. And for good reason. What I’d been through allowed for some hesitation where I might not have had any in the past.
Why, then, hadn’t I hesitated last night?
This was the worst of the questions that plagued me in the darkest parts of the night. There were no clear answers. There was no right or wrong. No black and white about any of this.
We just had to figure out the best way to move forward. And I knew before the sun came up which version of Liam would greet me in the morning.
We’d be back to the man behind the iron wall.
“Bloody hell, what did we do?” I whispered. Then I sighed heavily and turned to the side, pinching my eyes closed, determined to get at least a few hours of rest before I had to face him.
Most of the time, being right came with an undeniable sense of satisfaction.
But when Brick Wall Liam was back in full force that morning, satisfaction was the last thing on my mind. I wasn’t annoyed either. His eyes were so wary, so guarded as we danced around each other at breakfast and as I got Mira ready for the day, that I couldn’t be upset.
Mine probably held a similar gleam.
Don’t hurt me, mine said.
Don’t break what we’ve built. It was plain as day in his.
The two thoughts crashed head-to-head, and from our past history, I knew exactly what kind of stubborn determination we were capable of.
I didn’t want to break what we’d built either, but I was willing to tiptoe into a new reality if he’d join me there.
The drive to the therapist’s office was quiet. Even Mira seemed to sense our contemplative moods, because she sat silently in her seat, watching the scenery pass.
Being seated next to him while he drove, with one big hand resting atop the wheel and the other casually draped over the console, made my entire being dizzy.
It was so easy to imagine an alternate reality where he’d look over at me and smile. Maybe settle one of those big hands on my thigh as he ferried us where we needed to go.
A wave of longing hit me in the chest, right in the center of my breastbone, and I had to close my eyes against the force of it.
“You all right?” Liam asked.
The quiet rumble of his voice inexplicably brought the burn of tears to my eyes. Somehow, without looking at me, he’d noticed. He’d seen .
What a stupid, simple thing to bring tears to my eyes.
But it wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t stupid that it meant so much to be seen.
I managed a small nod. When I opened my eyes, his hand was tight around the wheel, and the muscles in his jaw twitched ominously.
“We here yet?” Mira asked from the back seat.
“Almost, Mirabelle.” As Liam pulled his SUV into an open spot across the street, I pointed to a short brick building with a simple sign on the lawn. The white door was flanked by large black planters overflowing with red and white flowers. “It’s right here.”
“Looks like a house,” Liam said.
I nodded. “Used to be one. Makes the kids more comfortable than a sterile office.”
He hummed, distrust still clearly stamped over his features.
“Thank you for agreeing to this,” I said quietly. “I know you don’t believe in therapy.”
Liam’s eyes found mine, and what I saw there left me breathless again. How could someone say so much with a single look?
He wanted me.
He didn’t want to want me.
And he didn’t know what the hell to do with me. That was clear as day.
Mira started unhooking her straps, and Liam pulled his gaze from mine, arching an eyebrow at the little girl in the back seat. “When did you learn to do that?” he muttered under his breath.
She simply giggled, pulling her arms out once she was free. “You coming inside, Liam?”
Oh. The way he looked at her, loaded with affection and reluctant love. My heart would never, ever survive it.
He nodded. “I won’t let you do it alone, duck. Zoe and I will be right there with you, yeah?”
She clambered across the console until she straddled it like a seat. “And I go meet a new friend?”
I picked up her bag and smiled. “Yup. Her name is Miss Carol. She’s got a bunch of fun toys for you to play with.”
Zoe bounced excitedly. “Okay. We go inside now?”
Liam and I locked eyes again.
He swallowed roughly. “Is it weird that I’m more terrified to walk into that building than I am to face down a linebacker?”
I exhaled a laugh. “No. I think it’s pretty normal.”
Liam narrowed his eyes. “If she makes me cry, I’ll never forgive you.”
Quite desperately, I wanted to cup his face with my hand, lean forward, and kiss him. A normal kiss, with no desperation or frantic edge. The kind you’d take for granted if you’d done it a million times.
When his gaze flickered down to my lips, I wondered if he’d read that in my face as clearly as I seemed to have read his.
“I don’t think today will be too intense,” I told him. “She’s just getting to know us.”
“Promise?” he asked.
I held out my hand. “If I’m wrong, I’ll do your stinky football laundry for two weeks.”
Liam’s lips twitched. Then he slid his palm against mine, and when his long fingers curled around, I exhaled shakily.
When I pulled my hand away, I fought the urge to tuck my fingers up against my chest because of the way my skin buzzed. I wanted to bottle the feeling, drink from it on a day when I felt tired and lonely down to my bones.
Liam blinked a few times.
Less than ten minutes later, I knew I never should have made that bet.