Chapter 35
PEYTON
The pavement bites through the thin soles of my sneakers, each stride sending a jolt up from my heels to my teeth.
The train of my skirt billows behind me like a sail, catching the wind and dragging me backward instead of propelling me forward.
I gather the skirts higher and push my legs harder.
My lungs burn. My eyes sting. I have no idea where I’m going. I only know that I can’t go back.
The private road that leads to the Rockwood family home stretches out in front of me, a ribbon of smooth asphalt lined with tall, dark cedars and the occasional oak holding on to its last rust-colored leaves.
Through the breaks in the timber, the sun is sinking behind the hills, casting a warm amber glow across the water.
Ten minutes into my mad sprint running away from my second wedding in a month, the guttural rumble of a motorcycle chases me.
I falter and glance backward, just as Liam clears the turn behind me on his Ducati. He eats up the distance that still separates us in a blink.
I catch my breath, ready to apologize. To explain, to beg for forgiveness, to accept whatever anger he’s going to direct at me for embarrassing him in front of his family.
He pulls up beside me. Liam is sitting astride the flaming-red bike without a helmet, his dark hair raked back by the wind. His jaw is set. His gray eyes sweep over me. Over the bridal gown, the roses crowning my head, the flush on my cheeks.
And he smirks.
“You know”—he holds out my jacket, letting it dangle from two fingers—“you should stop running away from your weddings without a coat.”
The relief that cracks through me is so sharp it hurts.
His gaze lowers. It traces the gathered skirts bunched in my fists, the bare expanse of leg between the hiked-up hem and my sneakers. The path of his eyes is like a fingertip dragged along my skin. A burning caress.
“At least the footwear is more practical this time,” he adds.
I snatch the jacket from his outstretched hand. Despite having been running, I’m shivering. The sleeveless gown left my upper body exposed to the quickly chilling November day, and sweat is cooling fast against my skin, turning each gust of wind into a razor. This is not the moment to be prideful.
I shove my arms into the coat and wrap the heavy fabric tight around my body, the lining warm from where it’s been pressed against his torso on the ride over.
“Liam, I’m sorry.” I sound ragged and breathless. “I didn’t mean to—”
He stops me with a raised hand. Palm flat. “Hold on, we can do all that later. Now, hop on.”
I blink. “What?”
“Get on the bike.”
“Why?”
“To get the hell away from here faster.”
He says it with the same matter-of-fact ease he uses to order breakfast. Like fleeing a surprise vow renewal on the back of a Ducati is a perfectly normal Saturday afternoon activity and my running away didn’t ruin everything.
Tears prick behind my eyes, hot and sudden, and I press my lips together to keep them from spilling.
He must see the tremor in my chin.
“Hey, hey.” His voice drops, loses its edge. The commanding tone softens into a lilt I’ve only heard in the dark, when we’re curled under the covers and the masks are off. “It’s okay. This wasn’t your fault.”
“I ruined everything.” My voice cracks. “Your parents—the party—your mother spent a month planning this, and I just—”
Liam makes a face. His jaw tightens, a muscle jumping. “I am so mad at my mom,” he says, each word bitten off and precise, “I don’t even want to speak about it. She had no right to ambush us like that.”
I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. Very bridal. “But what about the guests? Your entire family is at the house…”
“And. I. Don’t. Give. A. Damn.” He fixes me with those gray eyes, and the intensity behind them pins me to the concrete.
I stare at him.
This is the same man who walked on an injured, infected leg for an entire business gala to avoid disappointing his dad.
He bandaged a severe road rash with a first aid kit and polyester pants rather than risk Charles Rockwood’s disapproval.
He has spent years contorting himself into whatever shape his parents required, absorbing their criticisms, swallowing his pride, chasing their approval blindingly.
Liam married me just to impress his father.
And now he’s sitting on his motorcycle in the cold, telling me his family can go to hell.
For me.
I’m shocked. Frozen in place.
“Get on, Peyton.”
The order, coming from Matt, would’ve chafed. Every directive from him came with an invisible leash attached. Coming from Liam, the words send a thrill down my spine. A liquid rush of heat that spreads through my limbs. He isn’t asking for submission, only taking care of me.
Wrangling the tulle so it doesn’t drag on the road or melt against the exhaust pipe takes a solid minute. I bounce most of the fabric up, bundling it between us, and slide onto the saddle behind him.
Liam turns his head. His profile is sharp against the pale sky and so painfully gorgeous. I get lost in the cut of his jaw, the sweep of dark lashes, the curve of his mouth that I’ve been dying to feel on mine for days.
“Hold on tight,” he says.
I wrap my arms around his waist, locking my fingers together, and press my cheek against the worn leather between his shoulder blades.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask.
“Home.”
And no word has ever felt more right. Home isn’t an address or a new ZIP code I memorized five weeks ago. Home is the certainty that wherever this bike goes, I want to go too.
He revs the engine. The Ducati leaps forward, and I tighten my grip, pressing closer.
We shoot down the private road, through the canopy of bare oaks and evergreens, the wind whipping the loose fabric of my skirt into a frenzy.
My hair, however, doesn’t move. The stylist’s concrete-hold spray has turned the updo into a helmet that not even this speed can disturb.
It feels like taking off. Liam must be going easy on the gas for my sake, but the acceleration still punches the air from my lungs. The world smears into streaks of brown and green. The cold wind stings my cheeks and bites at my legs, exposed from ankle to knee.
Despite the chill, I’ve never felt hotter.
I am molded against him, my inner thighs gripping his hips to keep steady. The vibration of the engine travels through the seat and into my body. We’re fully clothed, yet this tangle of limbs, this overwhelming trust I have for him, makes me more vulnerable than if I were stripped naked.
When his house comes into view, my first—disarming—thought is that I don’t want the ride to be over. Despite the cold and the wind biting at my skin and the dizzying sensation of being suspended between where we’ve been and where we’re going.
Liam kills the engine and plants his boots on the driveway, holding the bike steady between his knees.
“You have to get off first,” he murmurs.
I untangle myself from the mountain of tulle and slide off the seat, hitting the pavement with the grace of a collapsing tent. He kicks the side stand down with a sharp clack and swings his leg over. Before I can straighten my skirt, his hands find my waist.
He doesn’t let go.
His palm settles on the small of my back as he steers me to the front door.
Liam doesn’t even take off his jacket before he starts to fuss.
He might look tough in a black leather jacket, but right now, he is pure worry.
He ushers me into the living room, takes off my coat, and replaces it with a warm blanket that he drapes over my shoulders.
Only then he flings his jacket onto the couch next to mine.
He’s not wearing a tux underneath. His mother must’ve failed to turn him into a show pony.
Did he also want to call off the ceremony?
Liam crouches by the fireplace and stacks kindling in a neat pyramid.
“How cold are you?” he asks without turning around.
“I’ve been warmer.” My teeth chatter as I talk.
He strikes a match. The wood catches, and flames lick at the logs, casting flickering orange light across the room. Shadows dance on the ceiling.
I sit cross-legged on the thick rug close to the fire, my skirt fanning out in a circle of sheer fabric and floral appliqués. The warmth reaches me in waves, thawing my fingers and toes.
I stare at the gorgeous man crouched before the flames. The firelight contours his face into golden and darker shades, highlighting the hollows of his cheekbones, and the dark sweep of hair falling across his forehead.
“Did you steal the cake?” I ask.
Liam gives the fire one last poke. A log shifts, sending a shower of sparks spiraling up the chimney. He watches them climb, satisfied the flames will hold, then turns to me.
“Should I have?”
I shrug, pulling the blanket tighter around me. “It’s just… I feel like I’m in the final scene of Sixteen Candles. Sitting on the floor with the dress, the flower crown, and the hot guy taking care of me. I’m only missing cake.”
Liam chuckles. That simple sound reaches places the fire can’t warm. He lowers himself on the rug across from me, sitting cross-legged so that our knees almost touch. And gosh, Jake Ryan has nothing on him.
“So,” Liam says. “We should talk.”
The flames crackle between us.
I want to say, You should shut up and kiss me.
But I nod instead.
“Are you sure you’re not mad?” I ask. “That I ran?”
“No.”
“What did you tell your parents?”
He reaches over to adjust the blanket on my shoulders, his knuckles grazing my collarbones. The heat of the open fire becomes a dull roar in the background; the real burn bleeds inward, sinking through the skin and settling heavy in my chest.
“I told them there’s a reason we didn’t go for a public wedding. And that they shouldn’t have ambushed us like that.”
I search his face for a crack, for the simmering resentment I expect to find hiding beneath the composure. “And you’re just… okay with that? They must’ve been mad. Embarrassed. Your mother planned this for a month.”
“I don’t care about my parents right now.” His voice is quiet but absolute. He didn’t hesitate even for a second. “The only person I care about is you.”
His words are a wildfire, and I’m the dry brush that doesn’t stand a chance.
“Why did you run?” he asks.
I stare down at my hands in my lap. “I couldn’t do it,” I whisper.
“I have feelings for you…” I look up at him.
“And standing in front of your family, reciting fake vows…” I shake my head.
“I didn’t want to do it. I’d be saying words I’m starting to mean, pretending they’re fake, and I didn’t know how to do that without breaking apart.
I would’ve gone back to being the woman I was before meeting you, and you wouldn’t have liked her. ”
“There isn’t a version of you I wouldn’t like.”
“Well, I didn’t like her. And I didn’t want to get married today.”
The fire pops. A log collapses, reshuffling the flames.
“Me neither,” Liam says.
I lift my head. “You didn’t?”
“No.” He holds my gaze, and the amber light catches in his irises, turning the gray to molten steel.
Liam drags his thumb once across the seam of his jeans, as if he needs friction to steady himself.
A reckless, impossible thought flickers alive in me—that whatever I broke by running might rebuild into something better.
That hope splinters apart with the next words out of his mouth.
“We should get divorced.”
The world tilts.
A ringing fills my ears, high-pitched and cruel, drowning out the warmth from the fire.
I gape at him. My lips part, but no sound comes out.
He doesn’t drop his gaze. His expression is careful… measured.
He’s been thinking about this!
This isn’t an impulsive idea he blurted out.
My heart doesn’t just break. It shatters. Glass dropped from a great height, and shards that explode, scattering in every direction, too small and too many to ever piece back together.
And then it pulverizes.
Because Liam adds, his voice so quiet the fire almost swallows it, “And you should move out.”
The silence that follows is absolute. Wood burns. The lake glimmers through the dark windows in an orange blaze as the sun sets.
And inside me, a different fire ignites. It starts in my chest, in the hollow where my heart used to be, and spreads fast. My lungs blacken and curl. My ribs crack from the heat, splintering into charcoal. It consumes everything, leaving me a colorless heap of ash and char.