Chapter 34 #2
Passive. That’s the one thing Liam never wanted me to be. I might’ve even wound up that way if he hadn’t steered me so fiercely in a different direction.
That kind of love is a slow build, a yearslong investment. And it was a thankless act for so long, even a resented one, until I gained enough perspective to see that what Liam did for me was the greatest expression of love he was capable of.
“But Kayla and I are on a team now,” he goes on.
“She’s not alone with this, and neither am I.
We’ll work together to be a better family.
To be better siblings to each other. Better at expressing ourselves when things are bad.
Better at asking for help.” There’s a clarity in his eyes now. Hope in his voice instead of dread.
“I’m on whatever team you’re on,” I say.
“You’re first-string,” Liam says, “on every team where I’m the captain.”
“We’re not doing a very good job of fighting,” I whisper.
Liam’s response is an openmouthed kiss to my throat that shoots sparks into my heels. “You asked me to connect the dots about what changed. From the time you left to get some air and right now.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say.
“You were right about the fact that I’m a people pleaser,” he admits.
Liam turns me until my back is on the bed and he’s hovering over me, a mix of want and hesitation painted on his face.
“It was never throwing a baseball that felt vital to me. It was the endorphins of giving other people what they want. I would stand at the center of a baseball diamond and work so hard to win games for the fans, for my family. But the team went on without me, and there were other, better ways I could’ve supported my family if I hadn’t been so focused on this one thing.
“I didn’t need to be the architect of other people’s happiness.
I’m far more effective making people happy by working from the sidelines.
And that doesn’t make my life smaller than it might’ve been if I’d never gotten injured.
It doesn’t make my contributions less significant.
I—matter,” he gets out, swallowing. “I matter to people like this, the way I am now.”
Tears are tracking down my cheeks, listening to Liam self-realize in this way. “You matter so much,” I say, “to so many people.”
He leans his weight on one elbow while his other hand touches my chin softly.
“So do you,” he whispers. “That’s it, Paige.
That’s the final dot I had to connect. Neither of us needs to be seen to know we’ve helped other people feel seen.
We can be the support system. We can be the backbone.
A singular, invisible cog on some greater wheel, and it wouldn’t be a small life if you’re in it. It would be everything. It already is.”
He leans closer. “And one more thing. I got this job, stayed in it all this time, hoping that someday it would lead me back to you. It did. I’ve enjoyed it. But I miss baseball, and I want to find a way to get back to myself now.”
Pride swallows me. He’s considering himself, at last. “You could do anything, and you will, but I happen to know from firsthand experience you’re an excellent peewee coach.”
Liam’s lips crash to mine. We’re enmeshed, our limbs tangled, our bodies inseparable.
We’re getting there. To this place that’s always been just out of reach but now floats toward us like a dandelion seed in the wind.
“I can’t wait,” he rumbles, mouth on my body, “to see how far your music travels when you invite other people to carry on the love story we started.”
I nod jerkily, my smile star bright as Liam’s fingers coast through my hair and his mouth hooks back onto mine. In the end, he drew the same conclusion about my songs that I did.
They change meaning the second someone claims them. They belong to every person who listens in specific ways I’ll never comprehend.
If music is an offering, I’d hold mine out to the world and say, I made this with the best intentions.
You can share it with me, if you want, and take a piece of it to keep for good.
You can even move it to a different place on the circle and make it into something else, something unrecognizable to my eyes, and that would be an honor.
It would be an honor to see where I end and where the music keeps going. It would be an honor to see what happens when other people claim pieces of the art I made. And even when that happens, it won’t change this, or what it meant to me when I made it.
“I love you so much, Liam,” I whisper, my spine arching away from the bed. “Loving you is the honor of a lifetime.”
Liam bunches my shirt in his fist. “I will love you in endless places. You wrote that I always would. When my truck breaks down. When my body goes weak. I’ll love you from the sidelines, from the studio, from wherever we choose to be. Forever.”
He pulls the shirt over my head, our bodies working toward an uncapturable harmony.
Flashes of everything that ever existed between us blink across my mind.
That first, curious look through the shelves of a Knoxville bookstore.
Discovering he likened me that day to a siren.
My heart feeling inexplicably fisted when I caught sight of Liam again at a party.
Dirt on my skin from baseball practice and the patient look in his eye when I taught him to play guitar.
Breakfast in our pajamas in public. The way he held me when Maisy left my life, when Folly returned to it.
Lying on a blanket while he told me about his dad.
Liam’s gaze on the ceiling in that hospital room, how my heart broke when his did.
That last, precarious thread of joy in him I snapped out of fear when I walked away in World’s Fair Park.
The invisible string I followed to find him again at CMA Fest, bolstered by a bravery he planted.
And everything since.
And everything yet to come.
Individually, our impact is still a grand slam, but together we’re really something.
He molded me, and I shaped him, and this love story isn’t over yet.
There will be more songs and proper fights and deeper passion and bigger doubts to unearth, and Liam and I will always be a work in progress.
Which also means, like art on a circle that someone created with the best intentions, we’re never, ever over.