Chapter Thirty-Eight
They left the bagel shop and planned to meet in the Nymans’ neighborhood. Chance drove separately, and Liam stayed in step with Chelsea.
Concern needled him. What did she sense that I didn’t? What did I miss? Unsettled, he took her hand. Their fingers tangled, but Chelsea eased her hand away then glanced around.
Anxiety spiked. Why didn’t he sense a possible threat like she did? “What are you looking for?”
But the nervous glances were different from the bagel shop. Insecurity stiffened her shoulders, and her rigid walked seemed disjointed. “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t what?”
“Hold hands,” she said under her breath.
Possessiveness made his molars clench, and he stopped abruptly. “I can make you come in a bed but not touch you now? What kind of shit is that?”
Her eyes widened and her cheeks turned red. “I don’t know—” She wouldn’t meet his glower. “What if someone sees us and wonders—”
“I touched your hand, Chelsea. I didn’t label you a harlot.”
Her chin snapped up. “Exactly! That’s my point.”
“What is?”
“Someone could see us.”
He threw his arms out. “Anyone can see us. We’re not fucking invisible.”
Shame and confusion shimmered in her eyes.
Screw those two guilt-baiting feelings. “We talked about this. Us.”
She averted her gaze. “I know.”
“But…?” He blanked, not understanding the rules or her perception, then decided to lay on the heavy truth. “Want to know something, Chelsea?”
She backed up. “Not sure that I do.”
“Oh, you do, babe.”
“Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”
Liam could’ve laughed, but he prowled closer until her back met a brick wall. “I’m crazy about you.”
“Does that mean you have to make a scene?”
“Are you listening to anything that I’ve said?” He bent close as though he might kiss her. “I want your hand in mine as much as I want you naked in my bed.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to—”
“Supposed to what?”
“Touch,” she suggested.
“Sunshine, I have touched you in ways that make my dick jump. I think I can manage holding your hand.”
Her eyes widened again. “But is it the right thing to do?”
They’d already hammered this out! Hadn’t they?
He saw everything clearly. Or, at least, how he felt about her.
Why couldn’t she hang onto that instead of doubt?
Liam towered over her then realized they could talk until they’d both turned blue.
She had to see for herself. “If you want to find out, grab hold, and let’s figure this shit out. ”
“Very romantic,” she whispered defensively.
His mindset leaned more toward mission objectives than romance. But he wouldn’t back from a test. “You want romantic?”
“No,” she quickly corrected. “I didn’t say that—”
“Didn’t you?” He scoped out their surroundings. “I don’t do romance, but if that’s what you want.”
“You don’t do romance?”
He grinned then broke away. “Excuse me.”
No one stood close to them on the sidewalk, but a group of people stepped out of a restaurant across the street. He called to them, “Hey.”
A few in the group stopped, uncertain if the crazy asshole intended for them to pay attention.
“This woman…” Liam pointed at Chelsea, who watched, mouth agape. “Is scared—”
“I’m not scared of anything,” she hissed. “And this isn’t romantic.”
“To hold my hand,” he continued, now having the full attention of the group. “And I have no idea how to romance the pants off of her—”
Her face now registered a not-so-subtle shade of fuchsia. “My pants have never been more secure around my waist than they are now.”
“Is that a challenge?” he asked with a sideways glance.
“Shakespeare,” a woman across the street shouted.
Liam turned directly to Chelsea. “Shakespeare, it is.”
“You don’t know Shakespeare.”
“I know that I want you to hold my damn hand.”
Chelsea shook her head as if she couldn’t believe what he was doing.
Hell, he couldn’t either. Especially since he didn’t know shit about Shakespeare, other than two punk teenagers killing themselves instead of telling their families to fuck off.
There was no need for anyone to be told to screw off, but he could stretch the moral of the story and make a connection to their circumstances.
Liam noticed two women whom he’d spotted at the bagel shop book club, and they were angling to hear Liam’s every word. “Got anything to help me out?”
“Kill me now,” Chelsea muttered.
He winked at her. “Pretty sure that’s not Shakespeare.”
“Probably could’ve been,” one book clubber said.
“How about, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,’” the other woman volunteered.
That was the kind of Shakespeare he was talking about. Liam pictured the acting chops he’d seen at his high school’s rendition of the play and belted, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet—”
But that was all he had. Except for that “Romeo, oh, Romeo” line. That didn’t seem to fit the moment. He raised an eyebrow, and at least Chelsea laughed.
“Enough! Enough!” She rushed over, failing in spectacular fashion to cover his mouth as he decided the best course of action was to repeat the same line. “Liam!”
“What?” He dropped his chin, still holding himself up with a puffed chest and testing his acting chops. “Not romantic enough?”
Her fists knotted in his shirt, and she tugged. “I’m going to kill you when we don’t have witnesses.”
“At least I’ll die with your hands on me.”
“Liam!” She pulled with her body weight, and finally, he bowed to his crowd and backed her up to the brick wall again.
“At least a little romantic?”
“I don’t know what to call that.” Her long lashes, which curled at the corners of her eyes, fluttered as he caged himself around her.
“Sexy?” he joked.
Her eyes bugged. “What will it take for you to never do that again?”
The list he could come up with given thirty seconds, a pen, and a piece of paper… His nerves skipped, and all his humor was gone. “Do you like how I touch you?”
“Liam—”
“Do you?” He inched his face closer. “Those goose bumps. The way you shiver. Do you like how I make you feel? It’s a very basic question.”
Chelsea nodded.
“I don’t give a fuck who thinks what. Either people accept this—”
“What is this?”
“This. Us,” he amended as if that clarified things. “Either they accept us, or they mind their business.”
She didn’t respond.
“You and me? We’re not disloyal. We’re not done hurting. We’re not doing anything except for living. Either friends and family give us the grace to live as something other than a shell of a fucking human being, or they can stick their judgment where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she confessed.
“But you will hurt me.” That was as real as it got.
Her bottom lip trembled.
He dropped his forehead against hers. His forearms still caged her to the brick wall, and he knew that standing on a busy street wasn’t the place to ponder how life evolved or question who she was so afraid of disappointing. “I refuse to question why and when we fit. We just do.”
“It’s just that simple?”
Fuck yes, it was. “It’s whatever we make it.”
Liam waited a breath of a second, wondering if they were at a fork in their road where their understandings and expectation forged different paths.
“I’m glad I saw you love her,” Chelsea said.
His breath hitched. That wasn’t at all what he expected her to say if he’d had a hundred lifetimes to guess.
“Because,” she continued, “I saw who you were. How you carried her feelings like a responsibility and a privilege.”
His throat ached. “Chelsea…”
“You are a good man.” She cupped his cheeks. “And I don’t want to disrespect others who saw that and loved you because of it.”
“Linda and Frank?”
She nodded. “I suppose.”
“We’ll talk to them.”
Chelsea rolled her lips together. “I don’t know why that sounds so hard.”
“Because you think it changes the past, and it doesn’t.” He pushed her hair behind her ear. “Make sense?”
Forever seemed to tick by. “Makes sense.” Chelsea’s fingers found his hand, and she squeezed. “Guess we should catch up with Chance. He probably thinks we got lost.”
Liam’s chest shook with a quiet rumble.
“What?”
He glanced down, positive she knew what made him chuckle, but her wide eyes waited, her eyebrows arched. She didn’t have a clue.
He hummed as they made their way, holding hands, down the block and around the corner to his Explorer, then he opened the back door. “Up and in.”
Her confusion hadn’t faded in the least. Liam made a note to expand how her thoughts drifted about them in bed—or out of one too. “If we’re going to be late, there should be a better reason than Romeo and Juliet.”