Chapter 55 Andrea #2
My nose started to tingle, and I dabbed at it with the napkin.
“I watched that movie again. Say Anything,” I said. “You were right. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Nobody does. We just have to hope and take a chance … or stop making up reasons not to.”
He nodded.
“But I didn’t, Liam. I didn’t do that. I lied to myself about … God … so many things.” My throat tightened. “And it wasn’t cool. I was mean to you, and you didn’t deserve it, and I hate myself for it.”
“Andy,” he said, his tone serious. “Nothing you’ve done is that bad. Everyone makes excuses. Everyone fucks up. You know that, don’t you?”
I shrugged. If he was going to be nice to me, I was definitely going to cry.
“Don’t you think I fuck up all the time?
” He dipped his head to catch my eye. “I do, Andy. Probably more than you. I’ve done a lot worse things than writing a letter to protect my job or making a mistake about someone’s motives.
” He shook his head. “Those things are just … normal. Everyday mistakes.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course.”
“But the letter …”
“Oh, Andy, I didn’t care about the letter,” he said. “Of course I knew why you’d written it.”
He did?
“What I did to you wasn’t cool either, was it? I panicked, and ran, without telling you why.”
That had upset me more than I’d wanted to admit. I’d felt like such an idiot. And I’d really liked him, even then. It had hurt, because I thought he’d liked me, too.
“I suppose … not.”
“It wasn’t, Andy. But we talked about it, and I said sorry, and you said it was okay, and we moved on. That’s what happens in good relationships, isn’t it? You mess up, you do your best to repair, and you try to change.”
Was it that simple?
“Until the next time you mess up,” he said, with a wonky smile. “And then you have to do it all again and try to stay … kind about it.”
“I guess so.”
“So … it made sense to me that you’d write it,” he said. “I felt awful about it, but I understood.”
“But that’s why I felt so terrible, Liam,” I said. “I didn’t want to hurt you … but I did.”
“Andy, I knew that some of it was true,” he said. “That’s why I felt bad. It hit home, and it made me want to change, to stop being this two-dimensional CEO guy I thought everyone wanted me to be. Because when you wrote the letter, that’s who you thought I might be, and it scared you.”
“Oh.”
“The person I am really—when I’m with you, just the two of us—wasn’t the person I was everywhere,” he continued.
“And that was weakness. I realized it, after we split. Being the same person on the inside that you are on the outside … that’s integrity.
Something that’s solid, all the way through.
It’s the same whether it’s morals, electronic data, or a building. ”
“You realize only an engineer would say that, don’t you?” I raised a brow at him.
He laughed. “I expect so.”
“God, Liam. It’s so good to talk to you again.” I’ve missed you so damn much.
“I know,” he said. “I missed the fuck out of you while we were apart.”
And I’d thought about him every single day. I just hadn’t known how to cross the distance.
“I missed you too,” I said, sniffing.
He pulled me closer and hugged me again, tighter this time.
“Andy, I think it’s going to be okay.”
The Wookiee head sat next to us on the bench, its mouth fixed open, looking at the stars.
“So what mistakes have you made?” I asked. “They can’t be as bad as mine.”
He laughed softly. “Oh, come on, Andy, lots of things. I think you know some of them.”
“I’m … not sure.”
“Well, my mum,” he said. “I hurt her, and I only saw her again because of you. I wanted to thank you for that. That … mattered.”
“Oh.” A warmth melted over me. Maybe I wasn’t all bad, after all.
“And then Novexia,” he said. “The restructure. Justifying what I was doing to the company—to people’s lives—by telling myself it served some sort of higher purpose.” He shook his head. “Jesus. I look at that now, and it just seems so arrogant.”
“But, Liam, you were trying to do something good with it, I knew that.”
“Yes, but I was seeing things in black and white, like a child,” he said. “There’s almost always a middle ground, and that’s what I was ignoring, because I wanted so badly to make it right, what I’d done, and I didn’t care—”
“I don’t understand, make what right?”
“I was trying to deal with something difficult,” he said. “To make peace with it, pay back my debt, I guess.” He shook his head. “So stupid. It wouldn’t have worked anyway. Some things you just have to live with.”
Whatever he had to live with, whatever this guilt was that seemed to be eating him up, I wished he’d tell me. How could any of it have been his fault?
“I’m still sorry I hurt you,” I said.
“It’s okay. I hurt you too.” He pulled me closer and kissed the top of my head. “But … I think people do hurt each other when they love each other, and it’s something that we—”
We both went very still. Did he just say what I thought? I didn’t want either of us to break the spell with explanations … but I knew what I’d heard.
Did he feel it the way I did?
“Did I say that out loud?” He nodded and looked down. We both knew he had.
“Say what out loud?”
“Exactl—”
I turned to him and kissed him, one hand sliding into his hair.
He almost seemed to take a breath, and then he kissed me back, gently at first, then more urgently, pulling me into him.
It felt like all the weeks of being apart, the fear and the not knowing, were disappearing as we fought to find each other again.
For once, I didn’t care whether I’d read it right or not. I loved him, and I didn’t want to pretend anymore.
When we broke apart, we were both shaking.
“Liam,” I said. “Don’t you need to—”
“What?”
I nodded toward the exit. “Your flight?”
“My what? Oh no, I won’t be leaving now. I’ve made enough mistakes already this year.” He smiled and reached for me, and I felt his lips press into me, softer now.
“I meant it, though.” He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to mine.
“I love you, Andrea. I have for ages. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, what you mean to me.
And being apart like we have been just made it worse.
When you said you didn’t want to speak to me again, I thought that was it, and I tried to tell myself to move on, but I just … couldn’t.”
So he did feel it too, and we’d both sat there, in our stupid, separate lives, too scared—or stubborn—to do anything about it.
“I’ve thought about so much since that night when we fought at your flat,” he said. “What I wanted, with you. Not having you near me just made it even more clear.”
I get that, completely.
“But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Because a certain someone wouldn’t return my calls or messages,” he said, then smiled. “You kicked me to the curb, Andy … like an old kebab …”
“Like a—? Oh.” What I’d said to him before, when we’d fought. Trust Liam to remember the little details. He always did.
He raised a brow. “Yes, a kebab.”
“Oh, okay, just rub that in, won’t you.” I laughed a little and shook my head, and he squeezed me tighter.
“I’ve known for a while, Liam,” I added quietly. “That I loved you. And I wanted to tell you, but … I didn’t.”
Because I knew this was real, and that was what made it so scary.
“You do?” he said.
I nodded.
“Because I want it all with you, Andrea. I’m not playing. Everything I’ve never had, that I didn’t know was so important before you came into my life—that’s what I want now.”
My lip wobbled again.
“You’ve given me things I didn’t know I needed,” he said.
“You saw who I was, right from the start—you didn’t care about my money.
It made me feel like you saw me … the real me, not the stuff on the surface.
And even when it got hard, you were there next to me, supporting me, holding me to account, and making me the best version of myself.
And I need that in my life, Andy. I need time, with you. Years of it.”
“That’s what I want too, Liam,” I said.
Nothing had ever been so clear.
“I wasn’t expecting to find this,” I said. “I didn’t know something like this was possible, until I met you. You show up for me when things go wrong, you don’t bring the chaos … you make it … bearable.”
He didn’t just survive that fall in that lift with me, he’d stayed steady with me until I could breathe again. He saw me for who I was, too, and he didn’t leave, even when I was messy, or embarrassed, or objectively having the worst Monday a human could have.
“You make me feel like I’m not just … useful,” I said. Liam didn’t need me to fix him, to sort out his life, to be his mum. “I feel like you actually … want … me.”
My stupid throat was clogging with unshed tears again, but I had to get it out.
“And I don’t have to hold back with you, Liam. I don’t have to soften things because you’re too fragile to handle me. If I speak up and say what I think, it doesn’t destroy things between us. It just makes them stronger.”
He chose me when I was one step away from total collapse.
When I made an idiot of myself checking into a hotel in terrible French, when I accosted him at a meeting full of people.
When I stood in front of him dressed like a Wookiee, sweaty and blotchy, damp from tears.