Chapter 9 #2
The silence between us was comfortable now. Lived-in. The kind of silence that didn’t need filling, that came from hours spent working side by side, from shared meals and evenings like this one—sitting in the dark and letting the day settle.
“Owen told me about the cat rescue,” I said, keeping my eyes on the dark pasture instead of him. “The one on Fifth Street.”
Liam groaned. “Owen needs to learn to keep his mouth shut.”
“He said the cat was feral.”
“Feral is an understatement. That cat was demonic. I’m pretty sure it was possessed.”
“He said it chased you up a tree.”
“It did not chase me.” Liam turned toward me, indignation written all over his face. I held my stare on the pasture for half a second longer—then looked at him anyway. “I was strategically retreating. There’s a difference.”
“He said you fell into Mrs. Patterson’s birdbath.”
“That birdbath came out of nowhere. It was a hazard. A lawsuit waiting to happen.”
I laughed—an actual laugh, caught off guard by it, the sound spilling out before I could stop it. It felt unfamiliar, like using a muscle I hadn’t trusted in a long time.
Liam went still beside me. When I turned, he was already watching, his expression caught somewhere between warmth and surprise. Like he’d stumbled onto something rare. Like he was committing the sound to memory.
“What?” I lifted an eyebrow, the smile still lingering.
“Nothing.” He shook his head, but the look didn’t fade. “Just… you should do that more often.”
“What?”
“Laugh.”
The word hung between us.
I didn’t know what to do with it. At the station, Liam was always cracking jokes, always trying to get a reaction from the crew. I’d never laughed at any of them. Never let myself be charmed by his easy humor, his self-deprecating stories, his attempts to lighten the mood after hard calls.
I’d kept my distance. Kept my walls up. It was safer that way.
But sitting here in the dark, something had shifted. Something I wasn’t ready to examine.
The silence settled back, easier now. Liam tipped his head toward the sky again.
“My grandmother used to say you could tell the weather by how the horses slept,” he said, gaze drifting toward the pasture. “Lying down meant rain was coming. Standing meant clear skies.”
“Is that true?”
“Not even a little bit.” He smiled at the memory. “Buck laid down for three straight days once and it didn’t rain a drop. But she believed it, so we all pretended. Checked on the horses every night, reported back like we were weather forecasters.”
“That’s sweet.”
“She was wrong about a lot of things. But she loved this place.” His voice softened. “She had a way of making you feel like you belonged to it—not the other way around. Like the land remembered you, and you were just returning the favor.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I’d ever belonged anywhere. Every place I’d lived had been temporary—something to pass through until it was time to leave again. I’d never let myself imagine staying.
“Thank you,” I said quietly after a moment. “For today. For her.”
Liam shrugged, deflecting. “She’s a good kid.”
“She is.” I hesitated, then added, “She hasn’t smiled like that in two years. Not since our mom died.”
He turned to me. Our eyes met in the darkness, and something passed between us—recognition, maybe. Or the beginning of something neither of us was brave enough to name.
“She just needed someone to be patient with her,” he said softly. “That’s all any of us need, really.”
The moment stretched. Heavy. Full.
This is working, I thought. Maybe this could be real.
I shut the thought down immediately.
But it didn’t stay shut.
I lay in the guest room, staring at the ceiling, sleep impossible.
The day replayed behind my eyes. Mia’s face when Honey took the apple. Her laughter at dinner—bright, unguarded. The way Liam had looked at me on the porch, like I was something worth looking at.
I was falling for him.
I could feel it happening, like slipping on ice—that moment when you know you’re going down and there’s nothing to grab. The ground rushing up. The certainty of impact.
It terrified me more than Todd ever could.
Because Todd was an enemy I understood. A monster I knew how to fight. I’d spent years learning his patterns, his weaknesses, his tells. I knew how to survive him.
But this? Wanting someone. Needing them. Letting them matter.
I didn’t have armor for this. I’d never needed it before.
I’d built my entire life on not wanting things.
Wanting was dangerous. Wanting meant losing.
Every time I’d let myself want something, it had been taken away—my mother’s love, twisted by addiction; my childhood, stolen by Todd; every place I’d tried to make into a home, ripped away before I could settle in.
So I’d stopped wanting. Stopped hoping. Learned to survive on what I had instead of reaching for what I didn’t.
But watching Liam with Mia today—feeling the ease of the silence between us on that porch—I’d felt something crack open in my chest.
There was a feeling building that I refused to name. Naming things gave them power. Naming things made them real.
So I called it gratitude. Called it relief. Called it anything except what it actually was.
The slow, dangerous realization that this place, this man, this life we were pretending to build…
I was starting to want it.
For real.