Chapter 23
July, Now
After we help tidy the kitchen and say our goodnights, Liam and I head to one of Candice and Hailey’s guest bedrooms. It’s cozier than the hotel rooms we’ve gotten accustomed to, the walls covered in Hatch Show Prints, the pillowcases patterned in daisies.
“Did that go okay?” he asks, the skin between his brows tensed.
“You charmed the pants off them. I got a peek at Hailey’s phone while she was adding you on LinkedIn. That’s her love language. And Candice kept squeezing my hand under the table while you spoke, and Harry kept winking at me, so overall, I’d say that was a home run.”
Liam’s lips tilt up. “My first in years.”
“Good to be back?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I never used to think of you as a people pleaser,” I say. “Since you’re also very confident and surefooted. But you are one in your own way, aren’t you?”
He watches me in the half-light, eyes glazed in thought. “I’ve never thought about it. But I guess I am. I’ve always wanted to please my partners. My coaches, teachers, bosses. And my own family.”
“It works,” I promise him, stooping to unzip my carry-on. “We’re all constantly pleased.”
“Paige.”
I twist up.
“C’mere,” he rumbles.
When I stand, he pushes my back to the nearest wall. “I want to try something.”
In slow motion, his hands find my hips. His eyes get that look I remember in my bones. But instead of relaxing, my spine locks.
“You heard us,” I groan miserably.
“On accident,” he whispers. “I was coming back up to see if you needed more help. I didn’t mean to spy.”
“Which part?”
Please not the part where I admitted to already loving you—
He sighs softly, eyes watching mine. “You telling Candice that I’ve been keeping my hands off you because I still don’t trust that this is real.”
“Please don’t kiss me out of pity,” I beg him. “I would never forgive myself.”
His lashes lower, dark eyes dropping to my lips. “I haven’t kissed you yet because we haven’t talked about our breakup yet, Paige. It has nothing to do with not trusting you. It stopped being about trust the second you stayed.”
“Stayed?”
His arms coast up mine, and his thumbs settle near the soft spots of my throat. “This time,” he whispers, “when you thought of leaving me. I asked you not to, and you stayed.”
“You threw me over your shoulder and deposited me in the car.”
He smirks. “We both know you would’ve left if you’d actually wanted to. But you didn’t, despite your doubts and insecurities about your place here with me. You stayed so we could work it out, and to me, that’s trust.”
“I—Then—Do you want to talk about our breakup now?” I ask.
“Not really something I want to get into after drinking,” he says, fighting a wince. “I had been waiting for one of us to raise the topic when you weren’t in the middle of writing a love song, but they just keep coming, so—”
I thunk my head into his chest and Liam laughs, the reverberations of it seeping through me.
“But I do want to kiss you,” he whispers.
“Are you sure?”
“Of this and little else.”
His thumbs, still on my throat, pulse twice in signal. I love it when he does that. Uses my throat, my hair, to direct me.
I tilt my head up, and Liam’s hand is a magic wand, arching my spine toward him as it moves down in one swipe. Our mouths lock, finally, our want all-consuming. It settles over us in a hot sheet.
It was intense, between us.
Time skips, like a scratched CD. I’m flush to the wall, Liam’s mouth over mine, the memory of his kiss pulled through the space-time continuum to now.
He knows what I like. I know how he likes it.
He tastes like something pent-up, combustible at any moment. These are slow, drugging, life-wrecking kisses.
“There will always be another hotel room,” he mumbles, teeth skating past my jaw. “Drives through the night. Work on the weekends.”
Hands in my hair, fingers in his belt loop.
“I understand,” I breathe.
“I don’t own a mattress,” Liam grunts by my ear. “I’ve heard it’s a red flag.”
“But I own a mattress.” My hands are on his stomach now. “Which means you have a bed to sleep in, a place to come back to.”
His nose traces my collarbone. “I never should have given you space.”
“I never should have forced you away.”
“We should have fought more,” he rasps.
“We should have fought for days,” I agree, gasping as his mouth parts over my skin.
“Weeks.”
“Even months.”
“And then made up,” he mumbles.
“And stayed together,” I agree.
We slow down, then stop altogether. We both know after a night of drinking, in a shared house, when it’s been this long, we can only take things so far.
Liam pulls back, his tone certain but eyes wavering. He catches his breath and says, “But you’ll stay with me now.”
I nod, every cell in my body in tune with his wants.
Stay with me.
Be with me.
Come back to me.
From my mother first, and others later, abandonment was a behavior I learned to model. I learned it up close, studied it over and over.
And then, with Liam, I regurgitated the same behavior I’d come to despise without consciously knowing what I’d done.
I don’t think I realized it until now.
“Over everything,” I whisper, breathing him in, feeling the realness of him under my palms. “Through everything. We’ll stay.”