Chapter 36
LIAM
I know I’ve said the wrong thing the instant Peyton’s face crumbles and the light behind her brown eyes goes out.
I try to course-correct with humor. “What?” I tilt my head, forcing a self-deprecating smirk. “You don’t want to divorce me?”
Her gaze slides sideways, toward the fire, where the flames are licking greedily at the fresh logs. The orange light catches the moisture building along her lower lashes.
“It isn’t funny,” she whispers.
“Hey.” I lean forward, reaching for her, but she shifts her hands into her lap, fingers knotting in the fabric of her skirt. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Peyton finally turns her head. “Are you asking for a divorce just to be cruel, then?”
“No. Fuck, Peyton. No.” I scrub both hands down my face. “I wasn’t joking about the divorce,” I say. “But not because I’m done. That’s the opposite of what I—” I break off. “I’m new at this. I’ve never been in a serious relationship. And I’ve no idea what I’m doing.”
She crosses her arms and stares me down as if to say I need to do better at explaining myself.
I stop. Take a breath.
Start over.
“I want to divorce you, only so we can date like normal people.”
Her walled-off stance relaxes a fraction.
“Without the pressure,” I continue, “or the lies to our families, or the constant performance.” I lean closer. “I want everything between us to be real. Every word. Every kiss. Every touch. Not because we’re playing parts, but because we mean it.”
“What about your parents?” she asks tentatively, as if she won’t let herself believe me. “You only married me so your father would—”
“I’m done.” I pause just long enough to bury that version of myself. “I won’t keep bending over backward to impress them. If my dad can’t see my value running the company based on my work, my results… it’s his loss.”
I reach for her hands. This time, she lets me take them.
Her fingers are cold despite the fire. I wrap my hands around them to warm her up.
“You’re the first person who ever made me feel like I wasn’t falling short.”
Now that I’m putting it into words, that knowledge burns in my belly.
A low, persistent flame that I’ve been carrying since the morning I woke up with her curled against my chest and didn’t want to move.
Since the day she stood up to my father in my office.
Since the kiss in the corn maze, the dance at the Moonshine, the texts that lit up my phone screen in a bland hotel room a thousand miles away and made me feel less alone than I ever was before meeting her.
“We got to know each other with no expectations.” I rub my thumb across her knuckles. “No agenda, no game plan. We started from scratch, and when I’m with you—” I clear my throat. “I can be myself, and that’s always been enough for you.”
Her chin trembles. A single tear spills over, tracing a glistening line down her cheek. But she doesn’t wipe it and doesn’t drop her gaze.
“I feel the same,” Peyton blurts. “With you, I never felt the need to adapt. Or dull myself. Or be embarrassed about my friends, or my messy hair, or the fact that I use kids’ toothpaste.
I never had to hide parts of myself or shave my edges to fit into your life.
You just—get me.” Her grip tightens on my fingers. “All of me.”
The fire turns the tear on her cheek into liquid gold.
“What do we do now?” she asks.
“Whatever the fuck we want.”
Her beautiful face breaks into a grin, and then she’s laughing.
When she stops chuckling, her gaze drops to my mouth. “Does the no-kissing-in-the-house rule still stand?”
“No more rules.” I shake my head. “Only the ones we make up.”
Her eyes lift back to mine. Brown and gold and shining. And asking…
“I’ve been dying to kiss you,” I reply to her unspoken question, “since I saw you running down that road in this dress.”
She smiles now. “Look how far we’ve come; the first time you only wanted to run me over and yell at me.”
“I’ve never been happier about a bike accident, and I mean it with every atom in my body…”
“But?”
“But first—” I tighten my grip on her hands, anchoring us both. “Do you think I’m right? That you should move out?”
The humor and heat in her eyes turn to serious consideration. I love this about her. She always takes me seriously. Even when I’m self-sabotaging at the worst possible moment, she gives the question the weight it deserves.
“Do you want me to move out?” she asks. “Or are you asking because it’s the rational, correct thing to do?”
“I hate this house when you’re not in it,” I confess. “Wednesday nights are the most miserable hours of my week. I want you up in my space all the time.” I brush a curl away from her temple, tucking it behind her ear. “But you told me you wanted to go on dates. Take things slow.”
She’s quiet for a beat. The fire pops in the silence.
“Maybe I was wrong,” she says. “I was following conventions that dictate a certain number of dates before having sex, and that couples have to be in a relationship for a respectable amount of time before getting engaged, then married.” A smirk plays at the corner of her mouth.
“But we did everything backward, didn’t we?
We started with the rings. And, I don’t know, signing divorce papers or moving out now would feel as wrong as reciting vows. ”
She shakes her head. With those flowers woven into her hair, she looks like the day we met. She’s so fucking beautiful I’m going to break.
“It’s weird,” she continues. “I know that it’s too soon to be married. That normal people don’t do it this way. But—”
She takes a breath. Deep enough that her shoulders rise and fall. “Do you want a divorce?”
“Not a chance,” I say.
“Okay.” A tremor fractures the word, a vibration of… happiness? Possibility? “We’ll figure out what to do. But now—” She lifts our joined hands and pulls me forward. “Can you please just kiss me?”
I smirk. “See if I can get it out of your system this time?”
She leans closer still, whispering, “You have a lot more kissing to do before that happens.”
I let go of her hands and cup her face.
Her skin is warm from the fire. I tilt her chin up and close the distance.
The first brush of my lips against hers is gentle. I hold the light pressure for a few heartbeats, savoring the tremble of her lower lip, the catch of her breath, the way her fingers come up to grip my wrists like she’s afraid I’ll pull away.
I won’t.
Instead, I press deeper, and her mouth opens beneath mine. I taste the salt from her tears, the faint sweetness of the lip gloss, and underneath just Peyton.
She sighs into the kiss, and the sound unravels me.
I slide one hand behind her neck and angle her to have better access. My tongue slides against hers.
The gentleness burns off. She meets my rhythm with a hunger that hollows out my chest. Her fingers slip from my wrists to fist in the collar of my sweater, dragging my weight forward.
I hold her steady by her nape, my thumb tracking the heavy thud of her pulse along her jaw.
We have no audience. No obligations. No one to impress. This is real.
A soft sound breaks in the back of her throat. I swallow the noise, greedily.
I kiss her until my lungs demand oxygen. And even then, I drag it out, scraping my teeth along her bottom lip to steal one final second of contact before I pull back just long enough to breathe. I drop my forehead over hers.
“Hi,” I whisper against her lips.
She laughs, a breathless, broken sound that vibrates between our mouths. “Hi.”
I kiss her again. Slower now, taking my time, mapping the fullness of her lower lip with my tongue, then my teeth. She shivers when I press light kisses on her jaw.
Her hands drift down to my chest, palms flat over my heart.
I kiss along the line of her neck. Peyton tips her head back, granting access, and I trail my tongue down the column of her throat. Her pulse flutters wild and desperate beneath my lips.
“Liam,” she breathes. My name in her mouth, in that voice—wrecked and wanting—is a sound I will spend the rest of my life trying to earn again.
I return to her lips. We kiss until the fire crackles down to embers and the room dims to a warm, amber glow. Until my back aches from the angle and the stiff coils of her updo surrender a few rogue curls. Until we’re both breathless and trembling and grinning against each other’s mouths.
When we pull apart, her eyes are shiny. Not with tears, fear, or doubt. They’re no longer haunted like the night I found her shivering on Main Street.
They’re bright with joy. Simple, uncomplicated, radiant happiness.
And mine must be the same, because she reaches up and cups my cheek. “You look happy.”
I catch her hand and press a kiss to her palm.
“I am.”
“Me too.”
I keep trailing kisses over her knuckles. “Anything I can do to make you happier?”
“Well.” She cocks her head in a playful challenge. “As pretty as this dress is, the boning is getting uncomfortable. Think you could give me a hand taking it off?”
She lays the trap with a wicked spark in her eye, and I take the bait, a willing captive.