Chapter 21 #2
He shakes his head. “Not since Dad. I’m worried that’s the time they’ll have made the effort, and I’ll choke.
I sometimes wonder if they’d ever surprise me.
But that hasn’t happened either. I wouldn’t choke if I didn’t know they were watching, but—it would mean a lot to me, if I came out of the stadium after a game and saw them waiting. Just once.”
“They’re your family, Liam. They’ll love you even if you choke.”
“But I promised her I would—” His head shakes briefly, and he flicks his eyes toward the river, voice softening. “We don’t have a lot of money, Paige.”
I get this mental flash of Liam holding his grieving mother. Promising to take care of her.
The tune changes again.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you’re ranked fifteen,” I say, winking at him, smirking. Trying to add some levity to the air after I forced Liam to weigh it down.
His head tilts. “How often have you been checking on me?”
I flush red, wondering if I shouldn’t have been. But Liam is grinning like he’s pleased, and he says, “Fuck, I love it when you blush.”
My hands shake, and I put the mandolin aside. “You do owe me for all those shared ice-cream cones we put on my gift card. As soon as you get signed, I’m coming to collect.” I shrug. “It’s pure business.”
“If I get signed, I’ll buy you thirty ice-cream cones. And a harmonica, to add to your collection.” He nods at the new instrument, my birthday gift to myself.
I smirk. “I’ve always wanted to play the harmonica, walking along the App Trail with my hair in at least four braids.”
“That,” Liam emphasizes, his voice incredulous, “is what you’ve always wanted?”
“What else is there?”
“I don’t know, Paige, a record deal? Your songs on the radio? A sold-out stadium?”
“The last one, I’ll leave to you, and the first two, absolutely not.”
Liam glares at me good-naturedly, looks toward the river again. A cryptic smirk crosses his mouth. “We’ll see.”
“We’ll see about what?”
“Never you mind, little songwriter of mine.” He launches over me, ending the conversation by pinning me on my back.
He’s leaning in for a kiss when I see that wince.
I’ve seen it once before—when Liam tried to throw his arm over my shoulder yesterday on a walk. A flash of pain pinches his face up, fleeting, then gone.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He shifts his weight to the opposite elbow. “Just tweaked my shoulder. It’ll be fine in a few days.”
I chew on my lip, concerned all the same. Liam’s eyes track it, and a growl dies in the back of his throat.
Sex with him has been …
Yeah. Life-changing, I suppose.
I wouldn’t call myself touch starved, but when Liam’s skin is on mine, it feels like he’s the only person I’ve ever felt.
He rubs his thumb over my lips, hard enough to mimic a kiss. Our feet push against each other, and my breasts arch to graze his chest.
“If we were in private,” he whispers, eyes smoldering, “I would play with your body like you play all your instruments.” His hand goes to my breast. Liam brushes it gently, making me gasp, then pulls his hand back. “You’d make noises and get broken in. Become used to my hands.”
He talks like this all the time. And I have to constantly remind myself that before we’d even seen each other naked, Liam told me to expect it.
Which means he was like this with other girls—before.
Only it feels like that can’t be true.
It feels like what’s happening between us is unique, novel, this far unwritten.
I nod at his discarded book on the corner of our blanket. “You must be reading something dirty.”
“Always, and only ever,” he jokes with a wide grin.
“In an Agatha Christie book?”
“Nothing turns me on like a single paragraph on geology that lasts six pages.”
“I’ll be sure to repeat that when you’re famous.”
Liam smiles and dips down for a chaste kiss. “When it comes to fame, Bristol, I have a feeling you’ll blow me out of the water. Out of the whole ocean.”
“I don’t want that,” I protest. “I choose the beach. You can have the ocean.”
Disbelief flashes across his face, but he wipes it off quickly. “Why would I want to be alone in the ocean if you’re on the beach?”
We’re reaching the point of hyperbolic absurdity, but he’s an athlete, and I’m a musician, and I suppose we’re just prone to it.
“You’re not in the ocean, Liam.” My hands move over his back, rubbing in slow circles. “You are the ocean. People go to the beach because they want to see the ocean. Because they’re happy just being near it and marveling at its magnificence.”
He’s thinking hard, brow tense, eyes deepening. It crosses my mind that what I said was too romantic, too ardent, and I blush again.
He watches the color splash across my neck. Still says nothing. I blush deeper.
Liam rolls off me, sits up, faces away. He scrubs a hand through his hair.
I’m panicking now.
Slowly, I rise to a sitting position and cross my legs, my hands in my lap. “Sorry,” I say, voice shaking so badly it’s audible. “That was over-the-top. I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head but doesn’t turn back.
Eternal seconds tick past. Birds chirp and grass rustles and my heart thunders.
Eventually, Liam says, “My mom used to do flower arrangements with the scraps Dad brought home from the yards he worked on. They were beautiful. She’d gift them to another one of his clients, and it became part of his business model.
If you’re a client, you get a bouquet of landscaping scraps from another yard. ”
He goes quiet again. “She doesn’t do arrangements anymore, even though people still ask for them all the time. She won’t even buy a bouquet at the grocery store.”
Liam stands, reaching down to offer me a hand. I take it, and he hauls me to my feet, then kisses me so soundly, the spark of it goes through the earth and shifts a tectonic plate.
“You’re not the beach, Paige. You’re the whole fucking sky.”