22. Liam
LIAM
Liam had taken to coming in through the back door when he returned home at the end of the day.
It was the best way to avoid seeing Cara, which was something he didn’t want to do.
He knew she wasn’t going to the same trouble to avoid him.
Their paths still hadn’t crossed since the night of the disastrous phone call that had torn them apart, and now it was a week on, but he knew that wasn’t for lack of trying on her part.
He’d seen the evidence. Dishes he had never used in the drying rack, letting him know that she was spending time in the kitchen.
Or one night, he’d come into the den to watch TV and found the streaming service logged into the profile he’d made for her when she’d first moved in.
She was clearly moving around, making the most of the house.
Which she had every right to do, he reminded himself.
That had been the agreement when she had moved in.
For as long as she was here, she was to make herself entirely at home.
There was no reason for her to suspect that had changed, even though Liam found himself wishing she would keep to her own part of the house and stay out of his space.
Soon enough, I’ll be able to get her to move out. I’ll send her back home, and we can put this behind us.
He felt sort of hollow at that thought, even though it was what he wanted.
Having her gone would be a good thing. He knew that.
It would be the best and the quickest way to keep from having to think about what had happened.
Right now, he couldn’t even be in his own house without remembering what it had felt like to open up to another person for the first time in years, only to realize that she was just like everyone else.
I don’t think she ever really cared about me.
It made him sick to think it. She cared about advancing her career, that was all it ever was.
Because when push came to shove, when things were really hard for me, she didn’t give a damn what I wanted.
She wasn’t willing to step back from the project of fixing my reputation when I asked her to.
She doesn’t care what I want. She only cares about her own opportunities.
He closed his eyes as he made his way down the hall to his bedroom, trying not to let himself feel her presence in the house. Trying not to think about the way she had been the one to say their affair should be just a one-night thing, and he had been the one to ask for more.
God, it’s like I was begging her. How did I not see that at the time?
She had probably been trying to get out of things with him. She’d acted sad about it, but that had probably just been to protect his dignity.
All right, but what about the rest of that day? What about after I pushed? She seemed genuinely happy about the time we were spending together… Did I just imagine it all?
He let himself into his bedroom and closed the door with a heavy sigh.
He wasn’t even drunk. Though he’d returned to Megan’s bar every day since his falling-out with Cara, he found himself drinking extremely moderately.
There just wasn’t much pleasure in the idea of cutting loose the way he once had.
Today he’d only sipped on his beer and left after having a single drink.
He’d chatted with Megan a little, asked her how her post was being received and whether her ex had said anything about it, but even that was less engaging than it might have been under different circumstances.
She was polite and friendly, but she was distant now, and so was he.
It was as if they were both constantly aware of the fact that something might have happened between them, and that it had been pushed aside.
It was as if Cara was always in the room.
Truth be told, Liam felt as if Cara was always in every room. He knew he wouldn’t begin to feel like his old self again until that was over, until he managed to shake her off—and yet, he’d miss her terribly when even the ghost of her was gone.
He sat down on his bed and took out his phone, mostly out of habit.
He’d been avoiding the news lately. He didn’t want to see the wild stories he was sure they had come up with about him.
He didn’t want to see anything about the Stingers either, or any other football team.
So there were a lot of apps he just couldn’t open anymore.
His habit was to check his personal texts, not that he received many of those nowadays.
Even Mark Lawrence had stopped reaching out lately.
He’d probably decided Liam was no longer worth bothering himself about.
So Liam wasn’t expecting to see a text—but to his surprise, there was one.
At first, he just stared at the phone, feeling as though he must have manifested this just by force of will. He had been thinking about her so much that he had manifested this message.
Cara.
There was a picture of her face on the screen, and only now did it occur to him that he had missed looking at her. He’d missed the jut of her narrow chin, the way her eyes flashed, the way you could see a smile trying to break free onto her face sometimes, even when she was holding it back.
He stared at the picture for a long moment.
Then he clicked on the image to pull up the text she’d sent him.
It was surprisingly brief, given that they hadn’t spoken in days and this was the way she was breaking the silence.
Check your email.
Check his email? Liam frowned. That was really all she wanted to say? Unless…had she written him an email? That seemed a surprising choice, unless whatever she wanted to say to him was so long that it couldn’t be communicated by text…
His heart pounded at the thought.
That could go one of two ways. On one hand, maybe she’d written to confirm all the worst things he had been thinking. That she had never really cared about him, that she had no interest in spending more time with him. That she’d never been interested in him as a person…
That was a horrible thought, and it shamed him to think it. He had opened himself up to her. He’d trusted her. Was it actually possible that she’d never cared at all?
If that was the case, could he bear to sit here and read her words on the subject?
But what if the email was something else?
What if it wasn’t filled with regret and distance? What if, instead, she had realized what she’d done by refusing to take his side when he’d asked to stop performing for cameras? What if this was an apology and a promise to prioritize what Liam wanted?
He had to read it. Even if there was a chance that it would turn out to be something painful, he needed to know for sure. He needed to find out what had been so important that it had driven her to write to him after a solid week of no communication.
With a sigh, he opened his email app.
He hadn’t opened it in days, and the number of new messages was overwhelming. But the one he was looking for was right at the top. Cara had sent it less than an hour ago.
After only a moment’s hesitation, he clicked it open.
It took a moment for what he was seeing to register. He had expected a block of text, a Dear Liam, something that looked like a letter. This wasn’t that.
Cara hadn’t written anything at all. It was a forwarded message. He scrolled down to the body of the original email, which he understood at once was something that had been sent to her.
Ms. Bailey,
Thank you for reaching out. I can’t tell you how glad we were to receive your message. The whole management team has read it and is thinking about what you’ve said.
We did find the story in the news to be a bit hard to believe, and we suspected there might be more to it. We appreciate you sharing the truth with us.
If what you say is true—if you and Mr. Sims are willing to go on record and set things straight—there is still a place for him with the Lions.
He’ll have to sit on the bench for the rest of this season, of course, but there’s a chance he might be able to start next year if he puts in the work and pays his dues.
We’ll look forward to hearing from you about this as soon as possible.
Warmest regards,
Ben Harvey
Liam stared at the message for a long moment, hardly able to take it in.
She had done it.
She had really done it.
This was what they had been working toward all this time. This was what everything had been for. And now, here it was. A team wanted him. He was going to be able to play football again, just like that. His life wasn’t over after all. The one thing that mattered to him…she’d gotten it back for him.
He scrolled up again the part of the message that was from her, the place where she could have typed something for him if she had wanted to, wondering if perhaps he had missed it.
Surely she must have wanted to say something in this moment, even if it was only to gloat over what she had done.
To tell him that she had been right to focus on PR in the moment when he had wanted to step away.
There was still nothing.
She was right, though. I was the one who was wrong the whole time.
I was ready to give up. I was going to stop trying.
Because I was overwhelmed, and because I didn’t believe there was any chance this would ever work out the way I wanted it to.
But Cara never gave up, and it’s thanks to her that I have a chance to play again.
The last week rewrote itself painfully in his mind.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t cared. It was that she hadn’t been ready to quit. It was that she had believed in him enough to keep trying even after Liam had given up on his own future.
He thought of Colorado. Of going out there and being part of a team again.
Sitting on the bench for a few months, yes, but he would be a part of practices, and soon enough they would consider letting him start.
He would be back on the field, picking up where he had left off as though nothing had ever gone wrong. Everything would be as it should be.
So why did it hurt to imagine it? What was this ache that made it impossible for him to embrace that vision?
He didn’t really even need to ask the question, if he was really being honest with himself.
It’s because Cara wouldn’t be there.
He sucked in a breath. The thought of being without her, truly without her, opened a chasm in the pit of his stomach that he didn’t know how to close.
Would it be enough to have football back in his life if it meant moving away from Miami and sacrificing the one person he had ever truly felt he could talk to?
In the moment when things seemed most dark…I didn’t want a team, I wanted her.
Now he had the chance to be a part of a team again.
But if he took it, it would cost him Cara. For good this time. There would be no getting her back.
And that price might be too high to pay.