Chapter 13 Riley #2
Liam was quiet for a long moment. I braced myself for a deflection, a joke, something to break the tension the way he always did.
Instead, he said, "Because she's yours. And that makes her mine too."
My breath caught.
"This was supposed to be fake." My voice broke on the last word—the word that had been echoing in my head for weeks, haunting every dinner and every morning and every moment I caught myself wanting things I wasn't supposed to want.
His eyes met mine in the darkness. For a long moment, he didn't speak, and I braced for the answer I was afraid of. That it was still fake for him. That I was alone in this. That I'd made the mistake I swore I'd never make, the one Mom made over and over, falling for someone who couldn't catch her.
Then he reached for me.
His hand cupped my face, his palm warm and rough against my cheek. I could feel the calluses from ranch work, from rope and wood and all the physical labor he did without complaint. Real. Solid. Here.
"It stopped being fake for me," his voice rough, barely above a whisper, "somewhere around the first time you fell asleep on the couch and I couldn't stop watching you breathe. Maybe before that. Maybe the night you showed up with two beers and didn't ask questions."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Could only stand there with his hand on my face and his words landing in all the empty places I'd tried so hard to protect.
"I've been terrified to say it," he continued. "Terrified you'd leave when the year was up. That this was just survival for you. Just strategy. That I'd tell you how I felt and you'd look at me like I'd broken the rules, like I'd ruined everything—"
"It's not." The words came out fierce, certain, surprising me with their force. "It stopped being just anything a long time ago."
I didn't know which of us moved first. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
But suddenly the distance between us vanished, and his mouth found mine in the dark.
I wasn’t sure when it started.
One moment, his face was close—too close to be accidental—and then his mouth was there. Not planned. Not announced. Just happening.
I didn’t register the question in it until later. The hesitation. The almost-pause.
By the time I caught up, my hands were already twisted in his shirt, pulling him in, anchoring myself to something solid.
Whatever uncertainty there had been dissolved before it could form into words.
We were kissing.
He kissed me like I was something both fragile and essential, like he hadn’t known what he was waiting for until it was suddenly in his hands. Like a breath he’d been holding without realizing it.
I kissed him back without thinking. Without deciding.
Just… there.
His hands were in my hair before I registered the movement, steadying my head, tipping my face up. I caught the taste of coffee, something faintly sweet beneath it, the familiar mix of hay and soap and him—a scent I’d noticed once and then never stopped noticing.
My back met the hallway wall. Solid. Cold. He followed, close enough that there was nowhere left to retreat. The weight of him pressed me there, grounding, like an anchor I hadn’t known I was reaching for until it held.
This wasn’t the kiss I’d imagined in the rare moments I let myself imagine anything at all. Those had been careful. Measured. The kind that paused, that checked, that moved slowly.
This was everything we’d been avoiding, colliding at once.
His thumb brushed my cheekbone. I felt it before I saw it—felt the tremor in his hands, small but unmistakable.
The knowledge landed quietly—that he was unsteady too, that this mattered to him the same way it mattered to me—and something I’d kept braced shut finally gave.
I pulled back just enough to breathe.
His forehead came to rest against mine, eyes still closed, breath heavy and uneven where our chests met.
Neither of us moved.
Like if we did, we’d have to decide what this was.
“Riley.” My name sounded different in his mouth. Lower. Heavier.
It took a second to catch up—to register where I was. The hallway wall was cool against my back. The warmth of him was still close. The echo of the kiss lingered on my skin.
“I know.” The words came out soft, rough around the edges, pulled from somewhere deeper than thought. “I know.”
He kissed me again. Slower this time. Like now that we'd admitted this was real, we didn't have to rush. Like we had time. Like we had all the time in the world, stretching out ahead of us, full of mornings and evenings and ordinary moments that suddenly felt extraordinary.
His arms wrapped around me, pulling me close, and I let myself be held. Let myself lean into him instead of pulling away. Let myself want this, want him, want the life we'd been building without admitting we were building it.
When we finally broke apart, foreheads still touching, both breathing hard, I laughed. The sound surprised me—watery and raw and startled out of some deep place I'd kept locked for years.
"So," I whispered. "What now?"
Liam's arms tightened around me. "Now we stop pretending."
I'd built walls for twenty-six years.
Stone by stone, brick by brick, mortared with every broken promise and abandoned hope.
My father left when I was a child. Mom chose drugs over her daughters.
Todd's fists and Mom's excuses and the night I climbed out a window at eighteen with nothing but a backpack and a promise to come back for Mia.
The walls had kept me safe. They'd kept me standing when everything else fell apart. They'd kept me moving forward when stopping would have meant drowning.
They'd also kept me alone.
But standing in that hallway, Liam's mouth still warm on mine, my sister sleeping peacefully down the hall, I felt them fall.
Not crumble. Not shift. Fall.
All at once, like they'd been waiting for permission, like they'd been ready to come down the moment I stopped holding them up.
And for the first time in my life, I didn't try to rebuild them.