Chapter 15
Jordan
“Oh shoot,” I grumble, sifting through my clutch. “I forgot my lipstick.”
It’s a production for Nate and Savanna’s benefit. My lipstick is tucked safely at the bottom of my purse, but I need a moment alone with Liam before we face the evening. Before we face the aunts. Before we face anything.
Nate screwed him up. I could tell right away when his body went rigid against mine. I pictured him confessing every sordid detail of our affair this week, and I had to put an end to it, even if I don’t know that playing a couple is a great idea.
Actually, I know it isn’t. I’m already enjoying everything between Liam and me far too much, especially after he put his total trust in me last night. Having the separation while in public was necessary to keep my heart from getting even more involved. Now I’m not even going to have that.
Unless Liam continues to freak out. He’s completely stiff beside me, and not in the way I like.
“You want us to wait?” Savanna asks as Nate puts a hand out to hold the elevator that’s just arrived.
“No, no. You guys go on ahead. There are people waiting for you.” I wave them to go. “Liam can come with me, so we show up downstairs together.”
“Okay, we’ll see you down there.”
Spinning Liam and me back toward our rooms, I drag him along the hallway.
He follows easily enough, but I think it has more to do with the fact he’s in some sort of daze than realizing what’s going on.
I wouldn’t normally consider Liam the spiraling type—it’s not something I’ve ever seen or heard that he’s done at work—but I think he’s spiraling hard right now.
The second we step over the threshold to my room, I grab his face between my hands to yank him down to me. There’s only a small resistance to my move before he meets me halfway, my lips colliding with his in a punishing kiss.
One that has all the hesitation on his part, and none on mine.
My hands slide down to his collar and then the front of his black shirt, wrapping it in my fingers as I hold him to me, begging him with my lips to kiss me back.
I know his hesitation. I understand the guilt that I’m certain he’s feeling right now.
But I need him to snap out of it, and physicality is Liam’s love language.
After what seems like an eternity, his lips begin to move against mine, his body responding to me the way I knew it would. He walks us backwards until my back hits the wall, his hands finding my hips for his fingertips to dig into.
When I’m certain I have his full attention, I jerk my head back, ripping my lips from his. It’s left us both breathless and huffing, but the interruption is needed. It might be the place, but it definitely isn’t the time to be getting carried away.
“You back with me?” I ask him, my lips pulsing from the aggression he started to show in our impromptu make out session. The one Nate forbade.
“Fuck,” he sighs, pressing his forehead against mine.
With that one sigh, I can feel the defeat consume him again, but before I can kiss him out of it, he pulls away from me, stumbling back until he hits the opposite wall.
“I’m his best fucking man, Jor,” he says, shaking his head.
I bite down on my bottom lip, nodding my head.
All week I’ve had moments of this. We both have.
At least I thought we had. Now I’m starting to wonder if Liam had compartmentalized and hadn’t been thinking about it at all.
I’m wondering if the gravity of the situation is truly hitting him for the first time, and he’s overwhelmed by it.
His eyes are haunted, his voice strangled as he chokes out, “He trusts me with you.”
The anguish kills me. It breaks my heart for him. Last night he made such a huge breakthrough by finally letting someone in, and now I feel like this could send him ten steps backward. It’s a lot harder to get over something when you break your own heart than when someone else does it.
“And he’s right to trust you,” I tell him with conviction, pushing off the wall.
I only go far enough that I can reach out to take his hand.
“You told him you wouldn’t do anything you weren’t invited to do, and you haven’t.
This was my choice, Liam. You would have stopped the first night if I’d told you. ”
“I should have stopped.”
“Could you have?”
His mouth opens to answer me, but he hesitates, staring blankly like the question confuses him.
I seize my opening. “I couldn’t. We tried, remember? We tried to stop after that first night. We said it was just going to be that one night, but we couldn’t stay away from each other.”
“I should have fought harder.”
“And then what? Until when? When the attraction got so heated between us that we couldn’t control it? What would have happened then? Something scandalous in front of someone we know? In front of Nate?”
My fingers grip his tighter and I close an inch of the gap between us, physically taking the ground that I know I’ve gained with him mentally.
“What if you’d fought harder and then we’d seen Paul?
What would you have done? What if that whole thing would have gone differently because we hadn’t fucked the night before. ”
“Even if we weren’t fucking I still would have stood up for you,” he says through a clenched jaw like I’m trying to insinuate he wouldn’t have.
“That’s not what I mean,” I tell him patiently. “I mean what if you would have lost it on him instead? Or worse, what if you’d come over and claimed me with a kiss, and Nate had seen that?”
“He would have understood that after an explanation.”
I shrug in challenge. “We’ll never know.
And besides that, it would have been game over at that point anyway.
” I take another step towards him, my body so close that I can feel the heat coming from his.
“What I’m trying to tell you is that we would have ended up here anyway, Liam.
Screwing the week away, having fun together, enjoying each other. ”
His light brown eyes are conflicted as he peers down at me, his jaw set, lips tight. We both know I’m right, but his conscience is messing with him. When it comes down to it, though, neither of us could stay away from the other.
It’s going to take a miracle to do so once we’re back in Santa Rosé, but I’m hoping that reality, and being back to normal life, will help with that. Honestly, I’m counting on it.
“I feel like a piece of shit,” he confesses with a sigh.
But I know I’ve won against his thoughts when his free hand slides around my hip and he draws me flush to his body. Pressing the side of my head to his chest beside my free hand, he rests his chin on top of my head.
“You aren’t one,” I assure in a soft whisper. “But if you want to cool it, and not spend the next two nights together, I understand.”
“That’s the worst part,” he grumbles, the war still waging even though I know we’re on the other side of the worst of it. “I don’t think I can. Not until I absolutely have to.”
“Sunday,” I murmur.
“Sunday.”
Stepping into a large, private room in the hotel restaurant Savanna and Nate reserved for the rehearsal dinner, my stomach swoops near my feet when I make eye contact with one of my aunts. I can practically see the wheels turning as she takes in the man at my side. It makes me want to throw up.
Liam’s hand is at my lower back, pressing gently to guide me through the door when all I want to do is dig my heels in and turn around.
So much for the confidence I had upstairs when I was calming him down. Nate swears it’s worse to be alone and deal with them, but he’s forgetting that they’ve all met Liam. Multiple times.
In fact, when he doesn’t show up to a family event a couple of the aunts are quick to ask about the “hunky firefighter.” The perpetually single one.
Why didn’t any of these thoughts occur to me when we were talking in Nate’s room?
Oh right. They did. I just didn’t give them a voice. Among all the other thoughts I couldn’t give voice to.
Like how bad this is going to be for my heart. And confusing for my head.
Turning my shoulder into Liam, I tilt my head up while keeping my eyes on the room—though away from the prying eyes of my aunt. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Cool, calm Liam is back. I glance at him briefly to see his eyes scanning the room, his charming smile making my stomach swirl in a different way as he nods to someone. It’s like we’ve been switching places back and forth since we met in the hallway upstairs.
“For Nate, you can.”
Right. Right, we’re doing this for him. And given that we’ve both completely and utterly betrayed his loyalty, and I’ve broken my promise to him, this is the least I can do. It would just be a lot easier if I didn’t feel like everyone’s eyes were on us.
Liam ducks closer to me, his lips near my ear while his hand slides around to my hip. “Later, I’ll show you what happens to good girls who can do scary things.”
My eyes fly to his, big and wide, taking in the mammoth size smirk he’s wearing. “You can’t say things like that right now!”
“Jordan, dear—” A woman’s voice rings out.
My stomach dives again. “Oh no—”
“What?” Liam asks, bracing beside me.
“—I just saw…” The woman’s voice trails off before finishing her thought.
“—my mother.”
Oh lord, this isn’t good. I don’t know how I didn’t think about my mom in this whole thing.
Maybe because all we kept talking about were the aunts.
Newsflash to all of us, though—she’s part of them.
And now, not only do I have to deceive them, but I also have to lie to her.
There’s no way this works out if she knows the truth.
While she might not be the nosiest, there’s no way she won’t encourage the others to ask questions if they know I’m single.
The woman wants grandbabies, and she doesn’t think Nate’s going to do it fast enough. If she only knew I wasn’t convinced I wanted them.
“You’re fine,” Liam whispers a second before he turns us both to stand directly in front of her. “Mrs. Miller. Looking breathtakingly flawless tonight. That dress brings out the blue in your eyes.”