Chapter Twelve
The day of the toy fundraiser came in a whirlwind of chaos. I had planned it out all week: wake up before the sun, eat breakfast, and get everything ready for the event before the doors even open.
That was not how my morning went.
Instead of my usual obnoxiously loud alarm clock, I awoke to sunlight hitting me directly in the eyes and an ache in my neck. The sunlight told me that I was already behind.
It took me a few moments to blink away the drowsiness and take in my surroundings before an icy cold wave of panic had me shooting up from my half-sitting, half-lying position.
“What time is it?” I practically shouted, searching around the room for a clock. “Does that clock work?” I asked as my gaze narrowed on a wall clock that was not ticking. “Why would you hang up a clock that doesn’t even move?”
“It’s a decoration,” Liam groaned from his spot on the couch.
“Don’t care. That makes no sense.” I found my phone on the floor, partially sticking out from beneath the couch. It was desperately in need of a charge. “Oh my god. Oh my god!”
“What?” Liam asks, his eyes finally flying open. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? Here, allow me to write you a list. I fell asleep on your couch.
My phone’s almost dead. I fell asleep on your couch.
I’m starving because all we ate last night was popcorn and chips.
I fell asleep on your couch. The Prologue is supposed to open in less than an hour, and I’ve got about a hundred things I need to do before that happens.
And, oh yeah, I fell asleep on your couch last night!
” My heart was racing, and panic was coursing through me.
The panic wasn’t only because I was running late. It was the implication. Liam and I had fallen asleep on his couch. Tangled up together, as if there was something between us. The thought of it was almost too much to handle.
“What’s the big deal with falling asleep on my couch?” Liam asked, standing up. With furrowed brows, his gaze flickered to the sofa, as if I were implying that it was filthy.
Liam looked so different. His normally wild curls were only messier with the frizziness of sleep. His eyes looked almost soft, all the usual arrogance washed away in the night. His normally pristine shirt was rumpled.
“We don’t do that,” I offered up as my argument. Falling asleep together on his couch—that was not something we could ever do again. It was one step toward a very slippery slope that would no doubt end with me getting my heart broken.
Liam was standing so close to me. It wasn’t until that very moment, when I had to tilt my head up to meet his eyes, that I noticed for the first time just how much he towered over me. If he and I ever did kiss, I would have to stand on my tiptoes to reach.
“Apparently, we do.” A more tender version of his normal cheesy grin spread across his lips.
“No, we don’t,” I argued weakly. My gaze was fixed on those lips. I couldn’t seem to stop proving to myself how badly this entire scenario needed to never happen again.
“We just did.”
“It’ll never happen again.”
“Why not?”
Why not? Those words echoed off the walls of my mind, like my brain was empty aside from that sole question. Why couldn’t movie nights and waking up entangled together be something we do?
“Because.” A million reasons. An infinite number of reasons. Liam and I would never work.
We had barely crossed the threshold from hostility to toleration to friendship. Never in a thousand years would a relationship ever work. I wasn’t sure if that was even something I would want.
Whether I wanted it or not didn’t really matter. It was an uphill climb to get to the point that we were at now. One wrong step was all it would take to go sliding all the way back.
“Because that’s not what we do.”
Liam rubbed away the remaining sleepy haze from his eyes. Then he looked at me with an expression that I had never seen before.
Sparks erupted as he gently pressed the warm tips of his fingers against mine. We weren’t holding hands, not really, but it still felt so intimate. “Jessa, if I kissed you right now, would you let me?”
My breath hitched. “Liam—”
A high-pitched ding echoed throughout the room.
I used that as my escape and practically leaped away. Away from Liam, and away from his impossibly tempting lips. From his burning hot fingers.
I couldn’t. Not ever. Not with him.
“Oh, um,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket. “It’s Lily. I guess she got in a little early today for the big event. She’s waiting for me downstairs, I—”
My face flushed a deep shade of red. There was no way to get from Liam’s place to mine other than through his shop’s front doors. I would have to walk out of his place, dressed in the same clothes that I was dressed in the night before.
I glanced back up to see Liam staring at me. “You should probably get going then, huh?”
The tension from moments ago had not faded in the slightest.
“Right. Yes.”
“Here,” he said, stepping away. “Borrow my coat. It’s freezing out there.”
“Are you sure?”
His lips twitched upward, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Yeah. You probably want to fix your hair before you head down, though. Maybe then you can pass it off like you didn’t spend the past eight hours drooling all over me.”
“I do not drool,” I said defensively. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to make it look a little more presentable.
“Tell that to my shirt. It’s still wet.”
I rolled my eyes as I made my way toward his front door. “Whatever.”
“Hey, Jessa?” Liam asked as he slid his coat over my shoulders. I couldn’t dare to look him in the eye.
I hummed in response, my gaze fixed on the ground.
“Do you think we can pick up where we left off later?”
My eyes shot up to find a goofy grin plastered across his face. His amber eyes shone with amusement. “Absolutely not.”
I twisted open the front door to his apartment and then stepped out into the stairwell.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find—” was all I heard before I shut the door.
I stepped out of The Galaxy Gamer’s Cafe with disheveled hair and Liam’s winter coat thrown over the same clothes that I wore the day before.
That alone was nothing short of humiliating, but doing it beneath the gaze of my employees, who each held all too smug grins for so early in the morning, was downright mortifying.
If I could have melted into the snow that crunched beneath my feet at that very moment, I would have.
Lily was the first to speak up, a sing-song teasing lilt to her voice as she said, “Morning, boss.”
“Don’t start.”
“Start about what, exactly? The fact that you’re totally doing the walk of shame right now or—”
“Lily. Please. Not before I’ve had a coffee.”
The shop was as I had left it the night before. A Christmas winter wonderland. Twinkly lights and holiday magic, all set up in order to host the greatest toy drive of all time.
I wanted to do well, regardless of Liam and our competition. I wanted to do right by the organization, and I wanted The Prologue to play a big role in making sure no child would go without a gift for Christmas.
I poured my heart and soul into the day, and it played out exactly as I imagined it would—maybe even better.
By noon, The Prologue was more full than it had ever been before.
Our enormous stack of blind dates with a book was reduced to a small pile, and we had collected more presents than I ever dreamed we would be able to.
The organization was already on its way to pick up a huge load of toys because we were running out of space to keep them all.
It was shortly after they had driven off with their trunk packed full of presents that Liam appeared.
He seemed to have a habit of doing that. One moment, I would be alone, focused, and busy working. Next thing I knew, he would be right there beside me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Liam. He held a coffee cup from his shop in one hand and a paper bag from KC Donuts in the other. Beneath one arm was a wrapped-up blind date with a book.
His cheeks seemed to warm as he smiled at me. “Brought you something to eat,” he said, holding the bag out toward me. “You said you were starving earlier. You know… After we did the thing you said we won’t do anymore.”
“Please do not phrase it like that.”
Liam let out a breathy chuckle. “I believe that’s how you phrased it.
But anyway, I figured with how busy you are today, you would probably make some excuse to yourself about why you couldn’t possibly take a few minutes out of your day to eat.
So, here.” He held the bag and the coffee cup toward me.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the items from his hands.
The moment our fingers brushed, my mind was quickly struck with thoughts of waking up on his couch, my head on his shoulder, and our legs entangled.
“Are you… buying a book?” I asked as my gaze drifted down to the book wrapped in brown paper. I needed something—anything to distract me from how hot it suddenly began to feel inside the shop.
“Yeah,” Liam said with a shy smile. He held up the book for me to see, “You did this one, right?”
I examined the book. Little doodles of hearts and stars surrounding a set of clues alluding to the book being a very cheesy, but very sweet, romance. “Yeah, I remember doing this one.”
“I could tell from the handwriting,” Liam said.
If he hadn’t known me all my life, I would probably find the way he knew the ins and outs of every little detail about me frightening.
Many times, I still did. Other times, I tended to feel almost affectionate in regard to it.
Particularly during moments like this, when he wore a soft smile and was buying a book I knew he’d never read just for the sake of charity.
“How’s your event going?” I asked. “If your shop is even half as full as mine is, then I have no idea how you can even be here right now. I feel like I’m drowning a little,” I confessed.