Chapter 28
LIAM
Peyton accepts my job offer on Sunday night. She tells me she’s settled things with her old firm over the phone after our visit to the office on Friday, and that she’s ready to start over.
And so we move into a new routine. We drive to work together every morning.
Peyton in the passenger seat, clutching a massive travel mug of over-sweetened coffee.
Me fighting the obsession with her perfume, glad the coffee steam at least partially covers it.
We don’t talk; she spends the ten-minute drive staring dead-eyed at the dashboard, sipping mechanically as she waits for the caffeine to boot up her brain.
She’s not fully human until we pass downtown.
We don’t share lunch. Our schedules rarely align.
I’m often in back-to-back meetings while she’s knee-deep in data models with her new team.
But I also don’t want to monopolize her.
She needs people besides me, colleagues who will become friends, a life in this town that exists independently of our arrangement.
So I eat at my desk or with my father, and she eats with her team.
Dinner, though. Dinner is ours.
Every night, we sit at the kitchen island, plates of whatever Mrs. Gable has left us warming in the oven, and we talk.
About work, about the town, about nothing important.
She tells me about the regional inventory patterns she’s identifying.
I tell her about suppliers meetings and the real estate side of the company she’s not involved in.
After dinner, we argue about which streaming show to watch, and she always wins because I’m pathetically incapable of denying her anything.
The evenings feel safe. Manageable. I’ve established firm rules: no kissing in the house. Not that I’m not thinking about kissing her constantly—I am, but knowing it’s off the table takes the edge off. Removes the possibility, so I can stop calculating distances, angles, and opportunities.
It’s working. Mostly.
The mornings are harder.
I keep waking up wrapped around her. My body has developed a mind of its own, seeking her heat in the night, pulling her close until we’re tangled together like we belong that way.
Sometimes I wake first and extract myself before she notices, retreating to my side of the bed.
But some mornings—more often now—she wakes before me.
The first time she caught me spooning her, I braced for awkwardness. For her to stiffen and pull away, to make a joke that would reset the boundary. Instead, she smiled. A sleepy, sunrise smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes and made my pulse thrum in the roof of my mouth.
And every morning since then, no matter who wakes first, she surfaces with that same smile. Like waking up in my arms is the most natural thing in the world.
It’s messing with my head.
Wednesdays have become the worst part of the week. She leaves for the book club, and the house feels empty. I can’t even hang with Lila because she’s there too. I need some guy friends. Or to re-learn how to be fine on my own.
Almost two weeks into this new routine, we’re at the kitchen island, destroying Mrs. Gable’s herb-crusted chicken and roasted vegetables, when my phone buzzes against the marble.
I glance at the screen; it’s Mike Webb, my lawyer.
“Sorry, I need to take this.” I slide off the stool and step toward the window, tapping the green button. “Mike.”
“Liam. Good news…”
The call is brief. He gets straight to the point.
“Thank you, Mike,” I say after five minutes. “I owe you.”
“Just doing my job. Give my regards to your wife.”
I hang up and turn to find Peyton watching me, fork suspended over her plate, her expression caught between hope and fear.
“That was my lawyer,” I say, walking back to my stool. “Matt has dropped the lawsuit against you and your parents.”
The fork clatters to her plate.
“For real?”
I nod.
For a moment, she doesn’t move. Then she’s off her stool and rounding the island, and before I can brace myself, she throws her arms over my shoulders and hugs me tight, her face pressed into my neck.
“Thank you.” The words are muffled against my shirt. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I wrap my arms around her, pulling her closer. She fits against me perfectly—the top of her head tucked under my chin, her curves pressed to my chest, waking up nerve endings I’d numbed, leaving them stinging and alert.
“You don’t have to thank me,” I say into her hair. “I told you I’d take care of it.”
“I know, but—” Peyton pulls back just enough to look up at me, her brown eyes shining. She doesn’t finish whatever she was going to say.
The space between our faces is nothing. Inches. Less.
I have never been more glad about my no-kissing rule. And I have never been more miserable about it.
My thumbs find the curve of her lower back, tracing small circles over the soft fabric of her sweater. Her fingers thread into the hair at my nape, nails scraping lightly against my scalp. The touch scrambles my signals, making me forget to exhale until my lungs start to burn.
“I should call my parents,” she says. Her voice is hoarse, stripped of the breath needed to carry it.
“Yeah.” Mine isn’t much better. “You should.”
Neither of us moves.
Her gaze drops to my mouth. Stoking the dense, suffocating pressure that’s been building for weeks, the same pull I’ve been fighting every single day.
With an atrocious effort of willpower, I squeeze her sides once and step back.
“Go, call them.”
She blinks, surfacing from whatever trance we’d both fallen into, and nods, disappearing into the living room with her phone.
I stand in the kitchen and try to remember how to breathe.
She’s gone for about fifteen minutes. I clean up the dinner dishes. Load the dishwasher. Wipe down the counters. Straighten the dry-erase board on the fridge, where her latest note reads:
I googled the ending of the book on your nightstand. Oh, maaaan!
I shake my head, unable to suppress a smile.
When she comes back, the bubbling happiness is gone.
Peyton walks into the kitchen with her phone clutched in one hand, tapping it against her other palm in a nervous, rhythmic gesture.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She stops on the other side of the island. “My parents. They acted happy at the news, but something’s off.”
“Off how?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head, frustrated. “Their voices were weird. Too bright. They were trying too hard.” The tapping continues. “I need to go home for the weekend. Check on them in person.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
Her head snaps up, weariness flickering across her features.
“No,” she blurts. The instant hard pass stings more than I care to admit. “I mean—thank you, but no. I haven’t told them I’m married.”
Why does that hurt even more? Our marriage is a sham.
“Okay,” I say, keeping my face neutral. This isn’t about me, it’s about her and her family. “I could have Kit look into things,” I offer. “See if he finds out anything about what’s going on with them.”
Peyton’s mouth quirks into the first proper smile since she walked back in. “I can’t believe you have a fixer.”
“A what?”
“A fixer. Like Hall from Billions, the dude doing Bobby Axelrod’s dirty work.” She shakes her head, somewhere between amused and disbelieving. “Very morally gray billionaire of you.”
“I prefer to think of Kit as a resourceful personal assistant.”
“Uh-huh.” She shakes her head but she’s smiling wider now. “Yeah, okay. Have your ‘resourceful personal assistant’ look into it.”
“I’ll call him.”
* * *
The next evening, I have to deliver the hard truth.
We’re in the living room. Peyton is curled into the corner of the sectional with a throw blanket over her legs.
I’m on the opposite end when my phone pings on the armrest. I scroll through the text that came in.
Read it once, then again. I stare at the words until the screen goes dark in my hand, the information burning sour in my gut.
I grab the remote and pause the TV. “Kit found out what’s going on with your parents.”
“Oh?” Peyton turns toward me, the coziness gone.
“A significant number of clients severed ties with their accounting firm,” I tell her. “The corporate accounts that generated the bulk of their revenue—they’ve all dropped them. Within the last two weeks.”
Peyton goes still. “What?”
“Kit suspects it was Matt pulling strings. He couldn’t ruin your family through the legal system, so he found another way. Business pressure. Whisper campaigns. Favors called in.”
The color drains from her face.
“Then it has all been for nothing.” She sighs. “I ruined my parents’ lives, anyway.”
She starts to cry and shake. The sobs break free—ugly, wrenching sounds that tear deep inside me.
I’m across the couch before I realize I’ve moved. I pull her into my arms, tucking her against my chest, one hand cradling the back of her head while the other rubs soothing circles between her shoulder blades.
“We’ll find a solution,” I murmur into her hair. “I’ll help. We’ll fix this.”
“How?” She shakes against me. “Thank you for offering, but I don’t even know how you could help.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“At least I have a job now.” Her red-rimmed eyes find mine. “Thanks for that. I can help them with the medical bills; that’s the most important thing.”
“No need to thank me. My company is lucky to have you.”
I’m lucky to have you, my mind echoes.
Except I don’t really have her.
She gives a tiny smile, but then her face crumples again. “He won. Gosh, I hate him.”
I hold her tighter, making a silent vow that her ex will pay for this. Matt VanCamp is a dead man. I’ll destroy him.
I rock her through her sobs, letting her cry until she’s empty. Even then, I don’t let go.
When we go to bed, Peyton asks me to hold her.
She’s lying on her side, facing away from me, and her voice comes small and uncertain in the darkness.
“Liam?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you…” She hesitates. “Would you come under the covers and hold me tonight? Please?”
I don’t answer with words. I shift under the comforter, fitting my body against the curve of hers, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her back against my chest.
It’s the same position I wake up in every morning. But it’s no longer an involuntary reflex.
This time is intentional.
Her wanting me close. Needing me close. Choosing to let me comfort her. And me wanting to.
I press my face into her hair and breathe her in.
And in the silence, holding her tight, I silently renew my vow to dismantle the man who did this to her piece by piece until he’ll have nothing left but regrets.
Whatever it takes.
* * *
Friday after work, Peyton has a bag packed to go home. I carry the luggage to her car, the crisp fall air tinged with woodsmoke from somewhere down the road.
She’s wearing jeans and one of my sweatshirts she’s taken to stealing. Her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail. She looks tired. Worried. Beaten down. Still brutally beautiful.
“Text me when you get there,” I say, setting her bag in the trunk.
“I will.”
“Drive safe.” I close the trunk and turn to face her. “And if you need anything—”
“I’ll call.” She steps closer and wraps her arms around me.
I hug her back, holding her a beat too long.
“I’ll see you Sunday,” she says into my chest.
“Sunday,” I repeat.
She pulls away, climbs into her car, and drives off. I stay until her taillights disappear around the bend in the road.
That night, I watch the Bobcats’ away game on television. They win by fourteen points. I barely register the score.
Peyton texts once to say she’s arrived safely. I reply, asking her to let me know how it goes.
But she never responds. Which, fair. We aren’t in a real relationship. She doesn’t owe me constant updates. She doesn’t owe me anything.
Saturday, I mope. There’s no other word for it.
I wander from room to room, unable to settle.
I try to work, but the numbers blur. I try to read, but the words won’t stick in my brain.
I stand at the kitchen island and stare at the dry-erase board, deciding this restlessness is just boredom because I have no one to fight with.
I spend the rest of Saturday convincing myself of that.
When my phone rings on Sunday morning, I snatch it up before the first ring finishes. It’s her. My face stretches into a smile so wide it’s embarrassing. I’m grateful no one’s around to witness it.
“Hey,” I answer.
“Liam.” She sounds agitated. Her words tumble out fast, tripping over each other. “You were right. It was Matt. He orchestrated the whole thing.”
My jaw clenches. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, he deserves to step in a wet spot with fresh socks every single morning for the rest of his life.”
He deserves worse than that. He’ll get it if I have my way, which I usually do.
“But that’s not why I’m calling,” Peyton continues, not pausing for breath. “My parents asked me if I was staying in Blue Crescent Harbor, and I said yes, told them about the new job, and they said they’re considering moving there.”
“What?”
“They have to sell the house anyway, to downsize. They can’t afford to keep it. They’ve been studying Camden County, and the area is underserved. There’s room for a new CPA office. And the hospital in Blue Crescent Harbor has a great reputation; it could handle my dad’s treatment—”
“Yeah, Lila’s parents run it. They might be pricks, but they’re the best in their field.”
“Oh, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that. I must tell my dad we know the family who runs the hospital. Lila could introduce us and—”
“Peyton,” I cut in gently. “Slow down.”
She takes a breath.
“This is good news, isn’t it?” I ask. “You’d have your parents nearby.”
“Yes. Of course. Yes.” Another breath. “But they said they wanted to visit and see the town, and I… I had to tell them.”
“Tell them what?”
“That I’m married.” The words come out in a rush. “To you. And they didn’t buy the love-at-first-sight story I fed them. They have questions. And they’re coming down with me today. They want to meet you.”
“Okay,” I say, digesting the news.
“Liam, you need to give the performance of a lifetime. Please convince them you’re helplessly in love with me.”
I lean against the kitchen counter, staring out the window at the lake glittering in the morning sun.
“Sure,” I say.
“They won’t be easy to fool. My dad especially—he’s got this bullshit detector that’s supernatural.”
“I’ll manage.”
“We’re going to drive back after lunch. We should be there by evening.” She pauses. “I’m so sorry to spring this on you. I know it’s a lot.”
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “We’ll take them to A Slice of Heaven. Fill them with so much garlic bread and pizza they’ll forget to be suspicious.”
She lets out a shaky laugh. “You’d better hone your acting skills, anyway.”
“I will. See you later, and relax, okay? I promise everything will be fine.”
We hang up.
I stand in the quiet kitchen, with my phone in hand and her frenzied voice still echoing in my ears, mentally preparing for the evening.
Will it even be acting?