Chapter 19
Now
“Does this hurt?” Liam asks, adjusting then readjusting the pillow elevating my ankle the same way he’s been doing for the last hour after we eventually found our way back from the hike. “How about this?”
“You don’t have to baby me,” I tell Liam. “I’m fine. It barely hurts anymore. See?” I flutter my leg in the air, but Liam doesn’t seem convinced.
“You twisted your ankle,” he says with the same seriousness as if I had lost a limb. “You need to rest, Roslyn.”
I know he’s being overly dramatic, but I can’t help enjoying how worried he is about me. It’s kind of cute.
“Do you think we’ll have to amputate?” I tease.
He gives me an exasperated look, like he’s so over me, but not before I catch a glimpse of a twinkle behind his eye, like maybe he’s secretly enjoying this.
“Just elevate your foot.” Liam gestures to the pillow he’s propped up under my ankle. He adjusts it, frowns, then readjusts again as if a judging panel will be here any second to assess his work. “How’s that, baby?”
I stiffen, an inhale catching in my throat. Did he just—?
Liam’s face instantly turns red in confirmation. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Habit, I suppose.” Then he turns away, busying himself with the pillows while I swallow down the lump in my throat.
It was an accident. Of course it was. But my heart doesn’t seem to know the difference as it performs a series of complex acrobatics that leave my chest tight, and my breath stilted.
After a tense beat, he asks, “What about food? Are you hungry? I could order room service. Chicken nuggets?”
I snort. I’m not exactly a sophisticated eater. More of a chicken tenders and boxed mac and cheese sort of gal.
“You know, I have been known to eat a salad on occasion,” I say, giving him a look.
“Which occasion?”
I roll my eyes. “Very funny.”
“I don’t care what you eat, you know.”
“Why? Because we’re getting divorced, and it doesn’t matter if I die of malnutrition anymore?”
“No.” He gives me a sharp look. “Because you’re an adult, and if you want to eat like an unsupervised thirteen-year-old boy, then go for it. Also, I’m English, so I really don’t have room to talk.”
I snort-laugh. “Whoever decided beans go on toast was seriously disturbed.”
“Don’t even get me started on atrocities like spotted dick and black pudding.”
“Spotted dick?” My mouth parts into a horrified O. “That’s a thing?”
“Unfortunately. Someone really thought to themselves, You know what we need? A dessert with beef fat and dried fruit. And while we’re at it, let’s give it a name that sounds like a form of genital herpes.”
A wild laugh tumbles out of me, and the corners of Liam’s mouth rise a fraction of an inch, like he’s trying very hard to resist a smile as he pulls a granola bar out of his backpack. “Want one of these?”
My stomach growls at the sight of food, and I take the bar. “Aren’t you going to have one?” I ask, biting into the chewy, peanut butter-y center.
He shakes his head.
“Oh right. Of course. A body like that isn’t built on sugary processed foods,” I say.
He lifts one eyebrow. “A body like what?”
My cheeks heat up. “You know what I mean.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he says, his eyes flashing with amusement.
Good grief, he’s enjoying this, isn’t he?
“Are you really going to make me say it?” I ask.
“Say what?”
I throw the granola bar wrapper at him. “God, you’re an asshole. You got hotter, okay?”
He lifts one eyebrow, his gaze flaring playfully. “Careful, Roslyn, or I’m going to think you’re flirting with me.”
A spark of heat travels down my spine, and I look away, not wanting him to see the way his words affect me.
“You look good too,” he says after a beat.
“Now I know you’re lying. The dirty dishes at the bottom of the sink look better than I do right now.”
His eyes soften. “I’m serious,” he says. “You’re always beautiful.”
There’s a chance he’s just being nice—probably because I’m injured—but the earnest tug of his mouth makes me think he means it, and my chest pangs, a sticky ache spreading from limb to limb.
“Okay, so if you don’t want me to order food,” he says after a beat, “how about a nightcap?”
I ought to tell him no, that us holing up in our stateroom as drinking buddies isn’t part of the plan. But so far none of this has gone to plan. Besides, I can’t help but think that after the day we’ve both had, a drink sounds good.
“Okay,” I tell him. “One drink.”
* * *
Unfortunately for me and my liver, one drink quickly becomes splitting a bottle of gin, and now I’m tipsy at sea with my ex.
Liam passes me the bottle, and I swig straight from the mouth. The gin is tangy and sweet and burns all the way down.
“I guess this is our only venue for drinking,” I tell Liam, wiping my mouth and passing back the bottle. “Considering we’re supposed to be trying to have a baby,” I add, giving him a look.
He winces. “I hate that word, trying. Like, everyone knows what you really mean by that.”
“You mean that they think we’re boning each other’s brains out?”
He shakes his head, making a face. “I don’t want your family thinking about us doing that.”
“Oh, too late. My sister definitely does.”
He laughs low and deep, a throaty noise that lasts only a second before it’s lost to the hum of the ship and the crash of the waves below us.
We don’t have a cabin with a balcony, but the sliding glass door that opens to a barrier overlooking the crash and tumble of the Pacific is just as good, and I turn my face skyward, taking in the smattering of stars overhead.
I’ve never been a nature girlie. Clearly. But there’s something almost comforting about being here under the night sky, feeling both small and big. A tiny drop in the big ol’ universe.
A light breeze lifts the ends of my hair, and I shiver in the cool air.
“You cold?” he asks.
I shake my head no, but he shrugs his way out of his sweatshirt and hands it to me.
It’s his old UW Med sweatshirt. The same one I used to “borrow.” And by “borrow,” I mean that it lived in my side of the closet for years—my go-to lazy outfit around the house or running errands—until it disappeared along with Liam’s other clothes when he moved out.
I’d hoped he’d leave it behind for no reason other than he knew I liked it, but he hadn’t, and somehow the thought of him intentionally plucking it from my side of the closet hurt worse than any other material absence.
But the air does have a chill, and I can tell he’s trying to be nice, so I pull the sweatshirt over my head.
Almost instantly his scent envelops me, that intoxicating mix of soap and citrus that transports me back to nights curled under his arm, my face buried against his chest as he played with my hair.
I wish I could carve out these memories, the once-sweet ones that now feel like tender bruises, and put them in a box under the bed, where I can pretend they don’t exist. But I guess that’s what gin is for, so I lift the bottle to my lips, relishing the burn as it slides down my throat.
We continue to pass the bottle until Liam suddenly asks, “Do you remember the night we met?”
I pull back, eyes narrowing, the question—or perhaps the memory—catching me off guard. “You mean the night we got ditched by Abby and Kevin and you lured me back to your place with lasagna?” I ask.
His mouth quirks. “I didn’t lure you. You came willingly.”
I’m not sure if he means it as a double entendre, but my cheeks simmer anyway.
I had indeed come willingly.
Liam tilts the bottle to his lips before he says, “I still consider myself lucky that you slept with me that first night we met, though I’m sure the circumstances would have been different if I’d made you spotted dick instead of lasagna.”
I roll my eyes. “Please. You were charming and you knew it. You had a whole little routine.”
He shifts his weight, hip bumping mine. “It wasn’t a routine. I just knew what I wanted.”
“To sleep with me?”
The side of his face catches the glow of the moon, revealing a glimmer in his eyes. “Yes. But I wanted more than that. A lot more.”
It’s all I can do to keep my cheeks from flaring as I think back to that night.
How he’d kissed me soft and slow, then rushed and hungry.
How after one quick plea of bedroom, he’d carried me there, limbs braided with mine.
Mouths colliding. Warm breath and tiny, strangled moans.
The weight of our bodies reaching, grasping, fumbling as need coursed through us like cars on a racetrack.
I hadn’t intended to sleep with him the night we met.
And even after we started hooking up, I’d fought our connection.
But he’d pulled me in with that Liam spell of his.
All-consuming and overpowering, like a riptide.
He’d made me feel like he was someone I could trust with something as fragile as my heart. Someone for whom I could be enough.
But in the end, I hadn’t been.
“I still think about that green tube top,” he says, his voice whisper-light, almost like the words aren’t meant for me. “You looked so fucking hot.”
Still. The word burns hot against my chest, followed by a car crash of emotions, each one colliding into the next.
All I can manage is, “You remember what I was wearing?”
“Of course I do. I remember everything about that night.”
A loose strand of electricity zigzags between us as our eyes collide. But I can’t tell if we’re flirting or reminiscing. The gin is blurring the line.
“I remember how badly I wanted you out of that top. Wanted you,” he adds, pinning me with a heavy look I feel right between my legs.
This conversation feels dangerous. I need to retreat.
“Well, you got what you wanted,” I say diplomatically.
His tongue swipes across his bottom lip. “Didn’t you?”
I take another sip from the bottle, forcing my gaze away from his. “You know, I almost didn’t come out that night. I was in a slump after dropping out of med school, and I didn’t want to go, but Abby made me.”
“Do you regret it?” he asks.
“Regret what?”
“Coming to the bar that night.”