Chapter 28
Now
Liam and I don’t talk again until we’re back on the ship, but I can feel the shift between us. And so can he.
That’s the problem with trying to hide your feelings from someone you’ve been with for nine years.
Liam knows me better than anyone. He probably knows what I’m thinking right now.
Which is probably why he’s looking at me like that, with that insufferably indulgent look on his face.
It almost makes me want to change my mind about what I’m about to say. Almost.
As soon as the cabin door shuts behind us, I turn to face him. “So, I’ve been thinking…”
His full attention settles on me.
“We clearly want each other, right?”
He tilts his chin, studying me. “I thought you said you didn’t want to sleep together again?”
“I changed my mind,” I tell him.
“About?”
Great. He’s going to make this hard.
“About us fucking,” I say.
A slow, knowing smile unfurls across his mouth, but I press on, trying to get the words out before I change my mind again. “What if we keep doing this?”
“You mean keep sleeping together?”
“Maybe this”—I wiggle my index finger between us—“could be good for us.”
Liam’s eyebrows scrunch together. “A few hours ago you were telling me it was messy and complicated. Is that no longer the case?”
“No, it’s still messy,” I say. “We’re exes pretending to still be together who want to fuck. It’s a dumpster fire.”
“But…?” he prompts.
“But we’re both consenting adults. And if we want to fuck, then it would be a waste to not at least explore this. Right?”
He nods, conceding the point.
“Besides,” I go on, “fucking is better than fighting. Right?”
Again, he nods, and I feel a little burst of confidence. Look at us being mature adults.
“But if we’re going to do this,” I continue, “then I think we should agree it’s only until we get back to Seattle.”
He frowns. “Why?”
“Because by putting a parameter around the arrangement, we can mitigate potential emotional fallout.”
“Hmm. Yes. Mitigate emotional fallout,” he repeats. “You know, I always loved it when you talked dirty to me, Ros.”
“I’m serious,” I chide him. “We’re getting divorced. I think it’s best if we at least come up with some kind of boundaries. Right?”
Liam shifts his weight, eyes dropping to the floor then back to mine. When our gazes meet, the flirty flare is gone from his expression. “Why do we have to put parameters around it?” he asks, his voice turning serious. “Why is us having sex something we should be afraid of?”
The question, or perhaps the genuinely curious tone with which he asks it, knocks all my carefully curated logic out of place once more.
Our bedroom once felt like a refuge. A place where I could give in and fall apart and unravel, knowing I was safe and loved.
Sex wasn’t just a manifestation of our passion, it was a source of stability.
Somewhere Liam could be in charge and I could let go.
But after the accident, intimacy became a wedge between us—both a symptom and a cause of the fractures in our marriage.
So of course sex is something we should be afraid of.
Which is why I know that doing this without rules, without parameters, would be like going eighty on the highway with no seat belt.
And to be quite frank, I don’t trust myself.
Not when the lines between real and fake, between just sex and more, are already blurred.
Not when he’s kissed and touched every inch of my skin, but it’s my heart where his fingerprints are most prominent. Where his touch still weighs heaviest.
“Because…” I swallow a long, tempered breath, my eyes meeting his. “I don’t want to get hurt again.”
I watch as Liam’s expression absorbs my words. His shoulders drop with the corners of his mouth, and a furrow appears between his brows—a tiny clue that despite his big talk earlier, he’s just as fragile as I am. And maybe just as scared.
“Roslyn, I know I hurt you in the past. And I don’t want to hurt you again.
I just…” He pushes a hand through his hair.
“I want to be clear that I don’t take what happened this morning, or anything you’re willing to give me, for granted.
I want you—all of you.” His eyes flash, hard and determined.
“But I’ll respect whatever boundaries you need if it means getting to have a part of you, even if it’s just for a little while,” he adds.
Blood pounds in my ears. I want you, too, I think.
All of you. But that’s exactly the problem, because I know that whatever he can offer me won’t be enough.
I’ll want more—more intimacy, more vulnerability, more transparency, more him—and he won’t be able to give it to me because he’s never been able to give it to me.
Not nine years ago, not on our wedding day, not when I was broken with grief and heartache, and certainly not now. Which is why I need to protect myself.
“I want you, too,” I admit. “I probably want more than you’re willing to give me.” The admission feels almost too vulnerable. Like I’ve just shown Liam all my cards. The ones I’ve been so careful to keep close to my chest.
His expression wobbles, like maybe he might argue, tell me I’m wrong. He is willing. But he blinks and it’s like wet concrete hardening into place.
“Which is why we need parameters,” I go on before I lose my resolve. “So no matter what happens between now and when this ship docks, we both understand that this comes with an end date. Okay?”
For a long moment he’s silent, his gaze narrowed in contemplation. “Okay,” he finally says.
My throat thickens, a knot pressing low in my trachea. I feel like we’ve just entered into some kind of Faustian bargain. But I want this. I want him.
So I pull myself up, trying to appear braver than I feel, and say it back. “Okay.”
Silence follows, and for a moment I wonder if that’s it, if whatever spell we’ve been cast under has finally broken, if maybe we have, in fact, gotten closure, but then our eyes lock and what happens next occurs in a split, almost unidentifiable, second.
So fast that I’m not totally sure who makes the first move.
Maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s me. But from one moment to the next, our fingers are interlaced, our mouths crashing into each other with a ferocity that nearly knocks me over.
In a flash, he’s peeling my shirt over my head, desperate fingers scraping against the clasp on my bra. The thin lace falls away, and everything in me turns wobbly and pliable against his touch.
“Aren’t you going to say it?” I gasp into his mouth.
“Say what?”
A breathy laugh tangles in the back of my throat. “I told you so.”
I feel the corners of his mouth tilt up against mine. “I don’t need to be right,” he whispers. “I just need you.”