Chapter 12 Liam #2
I couldn’t face the quiet of my room. The bad thoughts were already there, waiting in the dark. I could picture it too clearly—the pink shoe, small and perfect—burned into my vision, waiting for me every time I closed my eyes.
So I sat on the bench outside the station and watched the sky lighten.
Pink and gold bleeding across the horizon, the mountains turning from black to purple to blue.
Beautiful. Obscenely beautiful, given what had happened.
The world didn’t stop for tragedy. Dawn came anyway, indifferent and relentless, and you either kept moving or you didn’t.
I sat there and tried to remember how to keep moving.
Tires whispered over asphalt behind me. A slow, familiar sound.
Her car turned into the lot just as the sun crested the mountains.
Riley stepped out, backlit by the dawn, two bottles clinking softly in her hands. She crossed the parking lot with that efficient stride of hers—no hesitation, no wasted motion—and dropped onto the bench beside me like she’d always planned to be there.
One bottle nudged against my knee.
“Cal texted me.” Her eyes stayed on the horizon. A beat. “Bad one?”
I just nodded. I wasn’t in any shape to talk—much less to put words to what that call had been.
To my surprise, she held out a beer. I took it, and she cracked open her own without a word.
No follow-up questions or empty comfort. She did not say I’m sorry or do you want to talk about it—none of the well-meaning phrases that would’ve made my skin crawl. She just sat there, shoulder close enough to feel, drinking cheap beer at five in the morning.
She met it her way.
The silence stretched between us. Not uncomfortable. Not heavy. Just quiet, the way the land got quiet after a storm passed through. Like the air itself was recovering.
I took a long pull of the beer. It tasted awful—lukewarm, slightly skunky, the kind you grabbed from a gas station because it was the only thing open—but I drank it anyway, letting the bitterness anchor me in something solid instead of the images still looping behind my eyes.
Riley didn’t push. Didn’t fidget. Didn’t check her phone or make small talk or fill the silence with noise. She just stayed.
And somehow, that was exactly what I needed.
And eventually, words came.
Not about the call. I couldn’t talk about that—not yet, maybe not ever. Some things you carried alone, not because you wanted to but because sharing them felt like spreading the damage around. Like making someone else see what you’d seen, feel what you’d felt.
But there were other words too. Ones about what we’d been building together—the truths I’d kept tucked away, never spoken out loud. Not because I didn’t feel them, but because saying them meant risk. Meant admitting how much there was to lose.
But I let them out anyway.
“This is what I wanted with Claire.”
The confession came out easier than it had any right to, surprising me as much as it must have surprised her. Even then, Riley only shifted slightly—close enough to listen, angled just enough to give me room to keep going or stop.
Then I continued.
“Someone who shows up. Someone who stays even when it’s ugly.
” I took another pull of beer, watched the sun climb higher.
“She couldn’t do it. The job, the hours, the way it changes you.
The calls that followed me home, the nightmares, the nights I couldn’t talk about what happened because talking about it made it real again. ”
The words kept coming, loosened by exhaustion and cheap beer and the strange intimacy of sitting beside someone in the early-morning quiet.
“She wanted the idea of a firefighter. The uniform and the truck and the stories you tell at parties. Not the reality. Not the 3 AM calls and the missed dinners and the days when you come home smelling like smoke and can’t stop shaking.
” I laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“She wanted a hero. Not a man who sits on benches at dawn trying to forget the things he’s seen. ”
Riley was quiet for a long moment. The sun had cleared the mountains now, painting everything gold, burning off the morning mist.
“Some people can’t handle it.” Her voice came quietly, eyes still on the horizon. A beat. “That’s the reality of it. Sadly.”
“Yeah.” The word came out flat. I had nothing else to offer it.
I waited for more—for questions, for reassurance—but this was Riley.
“Doesn’t mean no one can.”
I turned to look at her. She was staring straight ahead, her profile sharp against the brightening sky, her hands wrapped around the beer bottle like she needed something to hold onto.
“I know what that’s like.” Not looking at me. Not needing to. “Coming home carrying things you can’t unload. Weight no one can see.” Her thumb traced the condensation on the glass. “Wanting someone nearby who doesn’t try to fix it. Who doesn’t turn it into a story about themselves.”
She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to.
In that quiet space between us, I thought about everything she carried—Todd, her mother’s death, the years of raising Mia alone. The constant fight with a system that always seemed one step away from failing them. The calls she took too. The bad shifts. The people who didn’t make it.
Different weight. Same kind of ache.
“You drove across town at four in the morning with gas station beer.”
“Five.”
I let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh and shook my head. “Still.”
She shrugged, like it was nothing. Like showing up for someone in the dark hours wasn’t everything.
“You’d do the same for me,” she said.
It wasn’t a question. And she was right
We sat until the sun climbed higher, until the gold faded to white and the day began in earnest. Somewhere behind us, the station was waking up. Shift change coming. The world moving on the way it always did.
I turned to look at her. At this woman who’d driven across town before dawn with cheap beer and silence. Who hadn’t asked for explanations or offered comfort that asked something back. Who had just shown up—steady, present, asking nothing in return.
The words gathered in my throat. Heavy. Dangerous. True.
I love you.
I’d been falling since the night she crossed the firehouse kitchen and offered to save my life with a proposal that should’ve sent me running.
Since the way she fought for Mia like the world might end if she didn’t.
Since the way she let me closer one inch at a time.
Since the way she looked at the ranch like it wasn’t just land, but possibility.
I love you, and the fear of saying it was sharp enough to taste. And still—I was ready to say it.
I opened my mouth.
Riley turned then. The morning light softened her features, stripped away some of the armor she wore so well.
Her eyes were gentle, searching, like she was standing on the edge of the same thought.
For one suspended second, I was sure she knew.
Sure she felt it too. Sure this was the moment everything tipped.
Her gaze dropped—not away from me, just downward, grounding herself. She took a slow breath.
“We should get back.” Her voice was quiet, practical. A hand tightened briefly around the bottle. “Mia will be up soon.”
And just like that, the air shifted.
I swallowed the confession before it could break loose. Nodded. Pushed myself to my feet.
She was right. Mia needed us. The ranch needed tending.
Horses didn’t wait for emotional clarity.
Life had a way of demanding motion, of offering a hundred good reasons to postpone the truth.
Reasons to stay quiet. Reasons to protect what existed rather than risk it on three words that could change everything.
I held out my hand.
She took it.
Her palm was warm, familiar now, callused where it mattered. I pulled her up, and for a moment—longer than necessary—we stayed that way. Hands linked. Eyes locked. A heartbeat. Then another. Something flickered between us, too quick to name, too real to ignore.
Then she let go.
The warmth disappeared. The space rushed back in, cold and immediate. The moment folded in on itself like it had never existed.
I almost told her.
Sitting there with dawn breaking over the mountains, her shoulder still warm where it had been pressed against mine, the words crowded my throat. Three of them. Simple. Brutal.
I love you.
They pulsed there, demanding air. Demanding risk.
But she stood, and the spell broke. The world reasserted itself—chores, schedules, responsibility—and I let the words sink back down. Swallowed them like I’d been trained to do.
Like a coward.
Like a man who’d learned early that wanting was the first step toward losing.
Owen’s voice cut through me, sharp and relentless. So tell her.
I would. I told myself that like it was a promise and not a postponement. Soon. When I wasn’t scraped raw by a bad call. When sleep wasn’t a distant concept. When my hands didn’t still smell like smoke and grief. When I could be certain—absolutely certain—that she felt it too.
When saying the words wouldn’t make her step back and realize she never needed me in the first place.
Soon.
I just had to find the courage first.