Chapter 29 #3
I nod at him. “I was what I needed that day. A bad ass bitch who put the asshole of all assholes in his place.”
He’s still perplexed. “But how does that relate here?”
“Well, I’d finally learned how to stand up to him.
For years I just took the shit behavior and let him walk all over me.
I mean, sure, I’d get angry, and we’d get into a fight, but ultimately I still took it all.
The airport was the first time I had truly learned to stand up for myself,” I explain, but then take it further. “And after that, I stood up to Nate.”
“You did?” he asks. Liam’s head tilts to the side, and it’s so adorable it makes me chuckle. He looks like Tosha when he does that. Like father, like pup. Though she’s still fast asleep on the sectional next to us.
Again my head bobs up and down. “Yeah, after I left your place that day. I tore a strip right off him just like he did to you.”
“You fought for me. Even after I didn’t fight for you.”
His eyes fall between us, and he heaves such a heavy sigh that it jostles me against him. His hands had fallen to my thighs sometime during our talk, but they’re slowly retreating towards his body now. My own fall to his, stopping them in their tracks.
“As mad as I was at you, I’m also madly in love with you,” I tell him, my fingers hooking under his to hold his hands in mine.
“Of course I was going to fight for you. Because I was in a place that I could. And from where I’m sitting, not many have fought for you in your life, and you weren’t able to do it for yourself. ”
I lift our hands between us and press my lips to his knuckles. “That’s what a relationship is, Liam. We do things for each other, especially when the other can’t. We lift each other, and while I did a shit job of that because of my own pain, I knew I had to fight for you.”
“You didn’t do a shit job.”
My eyes roll into the back of my head, and my head drops slightly to tell him I don’t believe him without words. “I did. I lashed out at you when you were already down. I shouldn’t have said what I said about Paul fighting harder for me. I’m really sorry that I did.”
His lips purse for a second while a crease in his forehead appears. “You weren’t wrong, though. I didn’t fight.”
“What have you done all your life in situations regarding relationships?” I ask, trying a different tactic.
His answer is immediate. “Ran. As fast and as far away as possible.”
“So all of a sudden, you’re faced with this new relationship and there’s trouble. What’s the only thing you know how to do? The only thing your experience in life has taught you?”
It’s adorable the way he blinks once, and in the fraction of a second it takes him to do that, I watch the lightbulb go on. “Run.”
“Were you what you needed by doing that?” I ask the question again.
His chest rises to the max I think it can inflate, and then the breath slowly expels from him.
“Yeah,” he finally responds with a nod. “It was… safe. It made sense to me. You wouldn’t lose your brother, and I would hopefully be able to patch things up with my best friend, and things would go back to the way they were. Eventually.”
“You do realize that was never going to happen, right?” I chuckle.
It’s Liam’s turn to roll his eyes. “It wasn’t clear in the moment, but yeah, I figured it out pretty quick. You know, I really don’t like being a grumpy ass, but there I was, day in and day out.”
“Not you!” I gasp mockingly then laugh. “If it makes you feel better, I ate my weight in nachos and watched Dirty Dancing so many times Quinn made fun of me for it.”
We both chuckle, our laughter waking Tosha enough that she stands up on the couch, shakes herself off, turns three times, and falls back to the cushion with a contented sigh.
I know she’s not mine, she’s Liam’s, but it’s almost like everything is suddenly right in her world.
Then again, she’s probably felt every ounce of tension Liam’s put himself through the last ten days, and now that it’s lifting, she’s finally able to relax.
Liam’s hands slip from mine to rub up and down my sides. It pulls me from my thoughts of Tosha, back to him, and I offer a loving smile, leaning in to give him a short but sweet kiss.
“Can we agree that we’re both sorry?” I ask him.
“Definitely,” he nods. “I’d also like to promise that I’m never going to run again.”
“I don’t need that promise,” I tell him, shaking my head. “I just need you to talk to me if you feel like running again. Or tell Nate. Talk to someone. Quinn or Brody. A therapist. I don’t care. And if you still run after that, promise me you won’t take so long to come running back.”
Liam smiles that panty-dropping, half smile-half smirk that makes me melt. “I promise.” He pauses for a second and then adds, “Know what else I promise?”
I shake my head, anticipation blooming in my chest.
“I promise we will have a very healthy sex life. I promise an infinite amount of orgasms. But most of all,” he says, leaning in until his lips are just a breadth away from mine. “I promise to love you for as long as you’ll let me.”
“Forever. I’ll let you forever.”