Chapter 39
PEYTON
Monday, the drive to work is identical to every other morning. Same winding lake road, same scalding coffee I’m nursing in my travel thermos, and the usual hum of the heater filling the silence.
But I’m different.
We are.
Liam is holding my hand, our fingers laced over the center console.
And that simple contact rewires the entire commute.
His thumb traces a slow circle on the inside of my wrist. A lazy, absent motion, as if he’s not even aware he’s doing it.
But I’m aware. I’m aware of the warmth of his palm, the way his grip tightens when we round a curve and then loosens again, never letting go.
Everything is the same. And nothing is.
At the office, my morning starts as any other. I settle into my desk chair, boot up my laptop, and pull up the regional dashboard I’ve been building for the pilot stores. The numbers populate in neat columns. I’m deep into a comparison of gear sales when my office door swings open without a knock.
Liam leans against the frame, hands in his pockets, looking criminally good in his dark suit.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey yourself.”
He crosses the room in three strides, cups my face, and kisses me. It’s brief—a press of warm lips, the faintest brush of his tongue against my lower lip—and then he’s pulling back, straightening his tie, and walking out without another word.
I sit, blinking at my spreadsheet, my mouth tingling.
My concentration is shot. Every footstep in the hallway makes me glance at the door, my pulse tripping in anticipation. I can’t decide if I want to scold him for distracting me at work or drag him into the supply closet.
But as he invites me on a coffee break mid-morning, I’m leaning toward the supply closet option.
That mood dampens as we round the corner and run into his father.
The Rockwood patriarch is pouring himself a cup from the kitchenette pot, his silver hair and tailored suit immaculate.
When he spots us, his gray eyes—identical to Liam’s, only colder—sweep over us with an edge of disapproval.
I straighten my spine but resist the urge to drop Liam’s hand, and hold on tighter instead.
“Liam, Peyton.” Charles nods at each of us in turn. His expression is neutral, giving nothing away. “Everything alright after Saturday?”
“Yeah, Dad.” Liam’s voice is easygoing, but his grip on my hand turns firmer.
Charles studies us for a beat. “You’ll need to smooth a few ruffled feathers,” he says to Liam. “Your mother invited people. Bailing on the celebration like that left some explaining to do.”
Liam’s jaw tightens. “I understand.”
Charles shifts his gaze to me. The assessment is direct—not hostile, but clinical. As if he’s recalculating a variable in a model he’d already balanced.
“And you,” he says. “To be a Rockwood, you need a thicker skin. A few guests and a cake can’t scare you.”
I meet his stare, swallowing down a wave of irritation, defiance, and a flash of hurt that I tamp down before it shows.
“My wife won’t do anything she’s uncomfortable with.” Liam’s tone is polite but firm. “And a heads-up would’ve been nice, Dad.”
The two men face each other. Same height, same jawline, same stubborn set to their shoulders.
Charles holds his son’s stare. Then the corner of his mouth twitches. “No surprise parties for you two,” he says. “Noted.”
He nods once—to Liam, then to me—and walks away.
I exhale.
Liam squeezes my hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I watch Charles’s retreating back disappear around the corner. “He didn’t yell.”
“He never yells. That’s what makes it worse.”
The Rockwoods are so different from my parents, who argue loudly, cry, hug, and resolve everything over a plate of burnt ends within the hour. My family runs hot. His runs cold. Neither is perfect, but I’ll take the shouting and the hugs over the controlled chill any day.
“It could’ve been worse.”
Liam drops a kiss on my hair. “Progress, I guess.”
We don’t talk about it again.
The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur of data models and conference calls. I lose myself in the work. By the end of the day, I’ve finalized the preliminary dashboard for the Arizona pilot and emailed the results to Liam’s VP of operations.
I’m shutting down my laptop when a knock comes at my door.
“Come in.”
Liam walks in carrying a pile of clothes and a pair of hiking boots stacked on top, the laces dangling. He himself has changed out of his suit into outdoorsy gear: green cargo pants, boots, and a light-brown heavy sweater.
I lean back in my chair. “What’s all that and what’s with the new look?”
He dumps the load on my desk, scattering a few pens. “You’re about to test Rockwood Outdoors merchandise firsthand.”
I pick up a fleece jacket and turn over the tag. The Rockwood logo is embossed on the inside collar. “Where are we going?”
“On a first date.” He crosses his arms. “If you still want to go.”
“Mmm.” I stand, smoothing down my pencil skirt. “Sounds adventurous.”
“Meet me outside?”
“Where are you going?”
“To let you get changed.”
“Are you suddenly shy?” I cock my head. “Stay. Enjoy the show.”
I round the desk and shove him backward by the chest until the back of his knees hit the chair in front of my desk. He drops into it, his eyes flaring wide.
I cross to the door and push it shut. Lock it.
When I turn around, Liam’s stare has gone dark. I hold his gaze and unzip my skirt. The fabric whispers down my legs and pools at my feet.
His throat bobs.
I shove off my cardigan and unbutton my blouse, one button at a time, pulling the silk from my shoulders. I stand in front of him in my bra and panties, the late afternoon light slanting through the outdoor blinds and painting golden bars across my skin.
“We don’t have time,” Liam warns. “Not if we want to make it before dark.”
I tilt my head, smiling innocently. “Time for what? I’m only doing as I was told.” I reach for the cargo pants he brought me. “Changing.”
“Should I remind you that you’re sleeping in my bed tonight? I’ll get my way with you.”
I step into the pants, tugging them up my hips. “I hope so.”
The look he gives me could incinerate the building.
I finish dressing up, lace my new boots, and grab my jacket. “Ready.”
“That smart mouth.” Liam rises from the chair. He tangles his hand in my hair and pushes me against the office door, kissing me thoroughly.
The sun is already disappearing behind the hills by the time we make it to the car. We drive for about twenty minutes, leaving the town in the rearview mirror. The road narrows, weaving through dense forest and past rocky outcroppings.
“Where are we going?” I ask again.
“You’ll see.”
“You’re being mysterious.”
“I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
As Saturday proved, I’m not the biggest fan of surprises.
“You’ll like this one,” Liam says as if reading my mind.
He parks near a rocky bluff at the end of a gravel turnoff that barely qualifies as a road. The air outside is chilly. The sun has dipped behind the ridgeline, turning the sky a deep, bruised orange.
Liam opens the trunk and hauls out a backpack so heavy it makes his shoulders bunch. He hands me a headlamp—the elastic band adjustable, the LED light bright when I click it on and off to test it—and fits one onto his forehead.
“Follow me.”
We hike for half an hour through a forest that grows darker and quieter with each step.
The trail isn’t marked, winding through underbrush and over exposed roots.
But Liam moves with the confidence of someone who’s walked this route hundreds of times.
His strides are long and sure despite the uneven ground.
When we reach a wall of limestone draped in creeping vines, he pushes the greenery aside to reveal a gap. An arched cave mouth, exhaling air that’s milder than the November evening.
“Are we going in there?” I peek between the vines into total darkness. “Are you sure a bear in hibernation won’t eat us, or a hag?”
“Trust me.”
I duck through the opening. The temperature turns warmer inside, the air thick with a mineral tang. The beam of my headlamp bounces off wet stone and finds the far wall.
And I stop breathing.
There are crystals everywhere.
They jut from the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Cloudy-white icicles shaped like jagged dragon teeth, some as small as my thumbnail, others thick as my thigh. They catch the light from my headlamp and sparkle.
The silence is absolute. A deep stillness that presses against my eardrums, filling my skull, my chest, my bones. The wind is muted out. No animals are scampering around in the undergrowth. And not even the distant hum of civilization reaches us. The only sound is the faint drip of water.
“What is this place?” I whisper, afraid to shatter the hush.
Liam sets the backpack down. “I found it when I was fifteen,” he says. “One day I was running away from a fight with my dad.”
He pulls a waterproof-backed blanket from the pack and spreads it across a flat section of the cave floor. Then, he sets three portable lanterns in a triangle around the blanket and switches them on.
Warm yellow light floods the chamber.
The crystals ignite. Every facet catches the glow and throws it back, multiplied, scattered across the stone ceiling like a subterranean sky full of stars. The walls pulse and shimmer. The cave breathes with light.
My hands go to my mouth. “Liam.”
He unpacks metal tins filled with foods—cheese, crackers, olives, dried fruit, cured meat, a small jar of honey—and arranges them on the blanket. I have no idea when he found the time to plan everything. This morning?
“Are you a secret romantic?” I ask, still staring at the glittering walls.
He opens a tin and sets it between us. “Do you like it?”
“You could’ve brought me to an abandoned shack and I wouldn’t have cared.”
He glances up, one eyebrow raised. “But this is better, right?”
I look around the cave, and then at him, sitting cross-legged in the warm glow.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “This is better.”
I lower myself onto the blanket beside him, our shoulders touching as we eat.
“So you found this place by accident?” I ask, spreading honey on a cracker.
“Yeah,” he repeats. “I had a fight with my dad about… I don’t even remember what. Probably my grades. Or my attitude. Or the way I breathed.” He picks up an olive, turning it between his fingers. “I hiked out into the woods to get away, and I stumbled into the opening.”
He sets the olive down without eating it.
“I’ve been coming almost every week since then.” His gaze drops. “For years. It was the only place where I could disappear. Where the noise stopped.”
I set my cracker aside. “What noise?”
“The expectations. My dad’s voice in my head. The constant feeling that I wasn’t enough, that I was never going to be enough.” He stares at the cave walls. “Down here, none of that reached me. I could breathe. I could just… exist.”
My heart goes out to him. The image of a fifteen-year-old Liam, angry and alone, crawling into a hole in the earth to find silence—is devastating.
“Have you been coming since you met me?” I ask. “I don’t remember you disappearing.”
He reaches for my hand. His fingers thread through mine, warm against my cold skin.
“I don’t need to come down here anymore.” His thumb sweeps across my knuckles. “You’re my sanctuary now. I find peace when I’m with you.”
“Yeah?” I tease. “Even in the beginning?”
Liam flares his nostrils and kisses my forehead. “In a more aggravating way… but yes, from the beginning. You’re the first person I’ve shown this place to,” he continues.
A mounting pressure gathers behind my sternum that builds and builds until my eyes burn and my vision blurs.
He brought me to the center of himself. To the hidden, vulnerable core he’s protected since he was a boy. The place he goes when the world is too loud, too demanding, or too much. And he’s given it to me.
“I love you.” It comes out thick and trembling and certain.
Liam smiles. Then he tips his head back and shouts into the darkness, “I love you!”
The words hit the stone and ricochet. They return to us from the deep places of the cave, bouncing off the limestone, rolling back in overlapping waves. I love you. Love you. You. You. The echo multiplies, filling the cavern.
A laugh tears out of me.
I cup my hands around my mouth and shout back, “I love you, too!”
My voice chases his through the dark. The cave catches it, holds it, sends it spiraling through passages and chambers we can’t see, and returns it to us in a chorus, tangled together and indistinguishable. Our voices braided into a single, resounding promise.
Liam pulls me into his lap, and I wrap my arms around his neck. We’re laughing and kissing and half-crying as the echoes fade, one by one, into a silence that’s full. That’s ours.
Down here, beneath the earth, the only expectations we have to meet are our own.