Chapter 24
The high I’d been riding since arriving in Liam’s hotel room started to wane by Sunday evening. I tried to push off the anxious feeling in my belly as typical work week dread. No one who had to wake up early on a Monday really enjoyed their Sunday night, right?
It didn’t help that my mom had been blowing up my phone with increasingly nasty texts about her lack of funds.
She seemed to think that Andy should be financing her life—her addictions, more like—and when she was unable to get in touch with him, she turned her anger to me.
I knew that Andy was right, that I should just block her and be done with it, but something always held me back.
Not hearing from Liam all day made my bad mood worse.
Which was ridiculous, really. I mean, just because he had said he’d text me when he got home didn’t mean his radio silence was a sign of something bad.
He had probably just gotten distracted hanging out with his daughter after a long road trip. Perfectly understandable.
I managed to control myself enough to not call him throughout the day.
I wanted him to enjoy his time with Josie.
So I focused on laundry and lesson plans and all those little tedious details to get ready for another week of teaching.
I did send him two text messages, just to thank him again for the amazing night and to let him know I was thinking about him.
He didn’t respond.
I had a hard time falling asleep that night.
Part of my brain wanted to relive those unbelievable memories of our night in Liam’s hotel room on an endless loop.
I still couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that he had gone to so much trouble, for me.
Sure, Liam was an incredibly wealthy athlete, and as the sister of a legit multi-billionaire, I knew better than most how much easier it was to accomplish amazing things when you had gobs of money to throw around.
But he had thrown that money around for me. And it wasn’t an attempt to get into my pants—at this point, he had to know I was a pretty sure bet. He had said I deserved it, to have a fuss made over me. And he seemed genuinely happy to be the one to do it.
So why couldn’t I just smile at the memories and fall asleep? Okay, I hadn’t heard from him since New York. But it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. I had never been a clingy person before, and obsessing about one missed call wasn’t like me.
But as I lay there in the dark, I had to admit to myself a simple truth—there was a part of me that was probably always going to be second guessing things where Liam O’Conner was concerned.
I had been absolutely certain about his feelings for me in New York.
I would have put money on the fact he saw our relationship as more than hooking up, that he honestly and truly cared for me.
But I’d believed that about him once before, and I had been wrong.
Could it be possible that I was yet again seeing things that weren’t there when it came to this man?
With a groan, I shoved my pillow over my face.
If I hadn’t heard from him by tomorrow evening, I would call up the girls and spill the whole thing.
Maybe all I needed was an outside perspective.
I had jumped to negative conclusions with Liam once before—and they might have been the correct conclusion, for all I knew.
But I had spent a lot of time over the years regretting the fact that I hadn’t just asked him about prom.
It might have been an uncomfortable conversation, but it would have saved me a hell of a lot of heartache and wondering if I would have just put on my big girl panties and mustered up the courage to ask him straight up if he wanted to go with me, just me, as a real date.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. I was a lot older now, and a hell of a lot more mature. I could damn well ask the man I was sleeping with how he saw the status of our relationship.
My night of tossing and turning resulted in an awful morning.
I finally fell asleep for a few hours only to wake up late, forcing me to rush around my house to get ready.
Lack of sleep always left me with a headache, and this one was a doozy.
I managed to swallow a couple Advil on my way out the door, knowing what I really needed was a cup of coffee.
Hopefully someone more organized and together than me had gotten to school early enough to start a pot in the teacher’s lounge.
My hopes were dashed when I darted in with only five minutes to spare. “Sorry, Grace,” Beth, the school secretary said, looking apologetic. “We’re all out of grounds. I meant to go this weekend and it just slipped my mind.”
Since Beth was just about the sweetest lady on earth, I did my best to smile and not let my extreme disappointment show. How in the hell was I going to get through the day without coffee?
I allowed myself to indulge in a perfect little fantasy of Liam dropping Josie off with a cup of Starbucks for me.
He’d done it a few times in the past few weeks, on those mornings when her grandparents didn’t drop her off.
I tried to send out a panicked brain signal to let him know I was in the midst of a serious caffeine emergency.
He did not get my mental SOS. When I went outside to get my kids from the line where the parent aides had them line up before the first bell, I saw Josie skipping happily across the parking lot, her grandmother watching her progress from her blue sedan. Well, there went that idea.
Trying not to dwell on how crappy the morning had gone so far, I greeted my kids and led them into the building.
There was the normal amount of Monday morning hyperactivity, kids swarming around me as we walked down the hall to tell me about their weekend the way they always did.
Josie usually hung back from the craziness, preferring to chat with Gabby while she got settled.
But today she bounced right up to me at the front of the room, before she’d even dropped off her backpack.
“Miss K!” she said, face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Guess what?”
Even with a pounding head I couldn’t deny Josie a smile when she looked so happy. The kid really was the cutest little thing. I could see so much of Liam in her, from the beautiful blue eyes to the way she had to be in constant motion when she was excited.
“What’s up, sweetie?”
Her grin somehow grew even larger. “My mom came home yesterday!”
Everything around me seemed to freeze for a moment. Her mom…came home? Here to Texas?
Suddenly Liam’s lack of communication made a lot more sense.
“That’s…wow, sweetie. How exciting!” I had no idea if I was doing a good job faking it. The thoughts in my head were so jumbled and confused. “Is she here for a visit?”
“She’s here to stay!” Josie was practically trembling with excitement. “She told me so herself!”
Here to stay. Chloe O’Conner was here to stay.
I wanted to press Josie for details, to ask where, exactly, her mother was staying. With Peter and Evelyn? Or was she at Liam’s house? Luckily, whatever measure of professionalism I still possessed rose up and stopped me.
“I’m really glad for you, Josie,” I said through a suddenly thick throat. “Why don’t you go ahead and put your bag in your cubby so we can get started.”
“Okay!” she cried, more jubilant than I had ever seen her before. And why shouldn’t she be? She’d been missing her mother for weeks. What little kid wouldn’t want both of their parents in the same city?
The only question was whether or not her parents were going to be together in the same city.
Stop it, I ordered myself. You know Liam is over her. He practically spits fire whenever her name is mentioned.
But was that passion the result of anger? Or from unresolved feelings?
Regardless of how he felt about Chloe, why in the world hadn’t Liam told me what was going on? He had to know that Josie would mention it. Did he really think it was better for me to hear it from her?
Maybe he wasn’t thinking about you at all, a mean little voice in my head offered.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I reminded myself in an undertone as I went to the front of the room to begin the day’s work. You don’t know anything yet.
But that wasn’t quite true. The one thing I did know for sure was also the thing that had my heart sinking to my knees. Liam O’Conner put the needs and happiness of his daughter above all else. And I was pretty sure Josie’s biggest wish was for her parents to be together again.
Monday felt endless. By the time the bell rang I was worn out, my nerves frazzled.
And my freaking headache never went away.
It wasn’t until I was packing up my bag to go home that I realized I didn’t have my phone.
I usually stashed it inside my desk during the day in case of emergencies but it wasn’t there, or anywhere I looked.
Hoping that I had left it in the car—and honestly, too tired to care much either way—I headed out for the day.
Sure enough, it was sitting in the cup holder. Dead, because of course it was. That’s what happens when you clutch your phone in bed half the night, hoping for a text that isn’t coming, instead of charging it like you should have.
I half expected Liam to be waiting at my house.
In the weeks since our first night together, we’d had to rely on stolen moments when my work schedule matched up to his practices.
After school, when Evelyn and Peter had Josie, had worked out a few times and this is where we had met.
Both my couch and my bed saw plenty of action those days.
But my driveway was as empty as it had been when I left that morning. Even if he wasn’t at practice, he clearly had better things to do than see me. Like reconnect with the mother of his child.
Enough.