Chapter 19 Liam
Imade it fifteen minutes before I had to pull over.
The apartment complex appeared on my right like a ghost. The same brick facade, same parking lot where I used to park my truck next to her car every night. Our building… second floor, corner unit. The windows faced Lavender Creek, and we used to leave them open in summer to hear the water.
I told myself to keep driving. Told myself there was nothing here for me anymore.
I pulled into the lot anyway.
The creek path was right where I remembered it.
I walked down to the water and sat on the same bench where Piper used to come to grade papers on Sunday mornings while I slept in.
She'd bring her coffee in that chipped mug, the one I'd given her on our first anniversary.
The one she'd refused to throw away even after the handle broke and she had to hold it with a dish towel.
The water was lower than I remembered. Or maybe it had always been this shallow and I'd just never noticed.
He seems like a good guy. I'm glad.
I'd meant it when I said it. Watching them through that window, the way he'd stood close but not crowding, the way she'd pulled her hand back and he'd let her…
Yeah. He seemed like a good guy. Better than me, obviously, but then again… the bar was pretty fucking low.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and stared at the creek.
Closure. That's what I'd told myself I was looking for. Captain Carter had given me a week to get it, and I'd driven two hours thinking an apology would do it. Thinking if I could just tell her I was sorry, just see her face one more time, I could—
No.
Fuck.
I hadn't been looking for closure at all, had I?
I'd been hoping she'd... what? Forgive me? Take me back? Tell me it was okay, that we could try again?
The thought made me sick. Made me want to punch something.
How fucking delusional could I be? I'd cheated on her for four months. She'd caught me with my hands on another woman. She'd called off our wedding and rebuilt her entire life without me. And some pathetic part of me had still been hoping that showing up with an apology would somehow—
God, I was an idiot.
She didn't need my apology. Didn't want it. And seeing her, actually seeing her in that bakery she'd built, thriving without me, with some guy who clearly knew how to treat her right… that didn't give me closure. It ripped everything back open.
Because I finally got it.
The problem wasn't just that I'd cheated. The problem was me.
I'd been comfortable. Too comfortable. We'd fallen into a routine—work, wedding planning, Sunday dinners with family—and somewhere along the way I'd stopped seeing Piper.
Stopped really looking at her. She'd become part of the furniture, part of the plan, part of the safe, predictable life I'd built.
And then Jenna showed up and paid attention to me. Made me feel seen. Made me feel like I was more than just a guy going through the motions.
Except that was bullshit too, wasn't it? Jenna didn't really see me. She saw what she wanted to see. And I'd let her because it was easier than admitting I was bored with my own life. Easier than doing the actual work of staying present in my relationship.
I'd told Piper the bakery was too risky. Too impractical. We needed stability, needed to save money for the house, for the wedding, for the future we were planning.
But in reality? I'd been scared. Scared she'd succeed and outgrow me. Scared she'd realize she didn't need me to build the life she wanted.
Turned out I was right. Just took her catching me cheating to figure it out.
And when everything fell apart, when I got caught, I ran. Transferred stations. Worked myself into the ground, convinced I was dealing with it when really I was just punishing myself in a different location.
I was still running.
Still the same fuck-up, just with a different address.
A duck landed on the creek with a splash, paddled toward the opposite bank. The sun was starting to set, turning the water orange and gold. I'd sat here with Piper once, maybe twice. She'd loved this spot. Said it made the shitty apartment worth it.
I pulled out my phone and opened the notes app.
Fifty-three drafts. Fifty-three long texts I'd written to her over the past year. Apologies, explanations, desperate pleas that I'd never sent because I knew that she didn't want to hear them.
I selected them all.
My thumb hovered over the delete button.
These were all I had left. The only place where I could still tell her things, still pretend she might care what I had to say. Deleting them felt like cutting the last thread.
Good.
I hit delete.
The screen went blank except for one note: New Note.
I stared at it for a long moment. Then I started typing.
You don't get to keep doing this. You don't get to keep being the guy who fucks up and then feels bad about it and calls that growth. You destroyed the best thing that ever happened to you, and she's moved on, and you need to move on too.
Not by forgetting her. Not by pretending it didn't happen. By actually becoming someone different. Someone who wouldn't make those choices. Someone who doesn't run when things get hard.
You need to kill the old Liam. The coward. The selfish asshole who thought he could have everything without consequences.
She's not coming back. She shouldn't come back. And you need to stop hoping she will.
Figure out who you are without her. Then figure out how to be better.
I read it over twice. Then I locked my phone and stood up.
The apartment windows were dark. Someone else lived there now, living their own life, making their own mistakes. Maybe they sat on this bench too. Maybe they had it figured out in ways I never did.
I walked back to my truck and got in.
Captain Carter had given me a week to fix this or figure out how to live with it.
I couldn't fix it. Couldn't undo what I'd done, couldn't make Piper forgive me, couldn't go back and be the man she deserved.
But I could stop being the man who destroyed her.
I could start there.
I put the truck in drive and headed back to Station 34, leaving Lavender Creek and our old apartment and the ghost of who I used to be behind.
For real this time.