by Vivian Wood
“I don’t care about family history, Jack. This is…” Liam stopped, then took a breath. “I’m going to go find Audrey.”
“I’m sure she’s fine, man.”
Liam’s fists clenched. For just a fraction of a second, he thought about punching Jack square in the nose. Instead, he just sucked in a breath and walked away, trying not to let his anger boil over.
It took a few minutes of searching to find Audrey on the front porch, hastily eating a peanut butter sandwich.
“Are you hiding?” he asked when he stepped out.
She gave a little cough, frowning at him as she chewed.
“No,” she mumbled.
“You’re hiding from your mum to eat a sandwich,” Liam said, crossing his arms.
Audrey glared at him. “All I’ve had in the last twelve hours is a handful of popcorn and some grapes. I deserve a damn sandwich if I want one.”
She finished the last bite and turned to go inside, but Liam snagged her wrist.
“Don’t go back in,” he said. “Stay with me. I’d never thought I’d say this, but… I’m nicer.”
Audrey’s scowl wavered, and he could see her repressing a smile.
“I have to. My mom probably needs something by now,” she sighed.
“So fucking what? She’s not disabled, is she?” Liam asked, arching his brows.
“Well, no, but—”
“But nothing. Stay out here with me. Hell, we can leave right now if you want.”
“I shouldn’t be going anywhere with you,” she sighed. “Clearly I can’t be trusted.”
“Trusted to do what? Catch yourself a husband?” Liam asked, pulling her over to sit on the front steps.
“Trusted not to get intimate with someone who’s leaving town in six months,” she said, her faint smile falling away once more.
Her words hung heavy between them for a moment.
“Listen, Audrey,” Liam tried.
“Nope. No,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to hear whatever you’re about to say, I really don’t. I knew better, and I… I instigated things anyway.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Doesn’t matter, Liam. I already understand that it’s not going to be pretty promises and talk of the future.” She pursed her lips. “You’re not like that. I knew that from day one.”
Liam couldn’t think up a clever retort, so he leaned down and kissed her instead. He meant it to be quick, just to shut her up, but the second his lips touched hers it turned heated, demanding. In mere moments they were both breathing fast, and it was all Liam could do to let Audrey go when she finally pushed him away.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I can’t do this.”
“What, kiss me? You’ve proved to be pretty damn good at it.”
“No, Liam. I can’t… mess around with you. Do you know why my mom keeps talking about me getting a husband?”
“Because she’s a bit of a twat?” Liam asked.
“Ugh, that word is gross.” She wrinkled her nose. “And no. She needs me to marry someone rich. Jack’s current bit of luck, playing for Atlanta Unified, that will only last for so long.”
“And that’s your problem, somehow?” Liam asked.
“Yeah, Liam! It is. Not everyone’s family is so well off that they never have to worry about money, okay?”
Liam stared at her for several long moments, trying to work through her words.
“Audrey, what kind of family do you think I’m from?” he asked, staring her down.
“Um, the kind that sends their kid to Swiss boarding school,” she said, giving him a funny look.
“And Jack never talked about visiting my family when we were lads?” he asked.
“No. Jack and I weren’t really close back then. I was here, and he was off frolicking with you at endless summer camp.”
It seemed that there was quite a lot that Jack hadn’t filled in for her, including the constant bullying he’d lived through in his first couple years of Academe Augustin.
“I was on scholarship, just like Jack,” Liam informed her.
She paused, cocking her head. “You were?”
“Yeah. And I hate to tell you this, cupcake, but I come from a much harsher place than Peachtree City, Georgia.”
She seemed to consider that for a few moments.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry for… for jumping to conclusions, I guess.”
“My point in telling you this, love, is that we don’t owe our parents much beyond a little thank you for making me once in a while. You can’t be running around trying to…” he paused to wave his hand at the house, “support all of this. Honestly, Jack shouldn’t be giving them money either. He’s not a great footballer, he should be saving his money and investing it.”
Audrey pressed a hand to her forehead.
“Yeah, I keep telling him that,” she sighed.
“And you, what do you keep telling yourself?” Liam asked. “It sounds like you buy into some of that evil shite that keeps coming out your mum’s mouth.”
Audrey snorted. “Well… I’ve just heard it for so long, it’s kind of like… a hum in the background. I barely hear it, but it never quite leaves my head, you know?”
“Well, she’s fucking wrong. You’re very fit, and your hair is gorgeous. Like fire, if fire was soft like silk.”
He gave her a half smile, brushing a lock of her hair back from her forehead. She smiled back for a second, then sighed and pulled back.
“What? I’m being all… romantic, like,” he said, teasing.
“I don’t want you to be romantic,” she said, sobering. “Ask yourself, Liam, truthfully. Is there any scenario here where you and me getting closer doesn’t end in catastrophe?”
“I think it’s likely to end in amazing sex,” he said with a grin.
“I think it’s going to end up with you back in London and me totally brokenhearted,” Audrey said, looking away from him suddenly. Was that a glint of tears in her eyes?
“Oh, Ginger, don’t be like that.”
“Liam…” she said, her lower lip beginning to tremble. She glanced at him, and he could see that she was indeed only moments from tears. “If you care for me, even a little bit, you won’t make me…” She sucked in a breath, then finished, “Please don’t make me fall for you. You can’t help the way you are, and I can’t help getting attached. Trust me, it’s better this way.”
Liam couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that. Nothing that wasn’t just a growled curse, followed by yanking her against his body and kissing her until she changed her mind, anyway.
Audrey gave him a look, a truly sad sort of smile, then slipped away into the house.
Liam gave himself a couple minutes of alone time, trying to shake off the sudden gloom that fell on him. It was hard, knowing what sort of man Audrey really thought him to be. Like looking at himself in the mirror the morning after an all-night bender, shocking and unpleasant.
When he’d calmed himself down, he headed back to the party. Another full hour dragged by, Liam and Jack hardly talking, Liam gritting his teeth every time Audrey’s mum made another critical comment.
Audrey herself didn’t reappear, and Liam was just a little too proud to go looking for her again. Her words rang in his head, all the reasons that she didn’t want to get any closer to him.
At the end, Jack waved off Liam’s offer of a ride home. Liam left the party with a dark thundercloud over his head, his thoughts jumping around wildly.
Was he really just not good enough for her? He knew it, of course, but… it was difficult to hear that from her lips.
Maybe there was someone else. Maybe she had a secret.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…
He made it back to Atlanta in record time, but instead of going home he went to a hole-in-the-wall pub near his house and put down pint after pint.
Why the hell am I even this miserable? he wondered to himse
lf. I’ve never been this tangled up over a woman, ever.
That was the problem, though. Audrey wasn’t just any woman. She was funny and caring, efficient and smart, all in one irresistibly sexy package. And she tolerated Liam amazingly well, though he wasn’t certain how or why.
All at once, an ominous realization flickered to life in the back of his beer-soaked brain.
You care about her. You fancy her, you stupid sot.
And then, well, this is completely and totally fucked.
Throwing some cash on the bar, he stood up and propelled himself out into the night air, hoping it would give him some small bit of clarity.
Just what the hell was he supposed to do now?
12
Audrey
Audrey scooped up a stack of endorsement deal paperwork from her desk in the little makeshift home office she’d set up in one of the spare bedrooms.
She hadn’t spoken to Liam directly in a couple of days, not since her declaration on the front steps of her parents’ house. It was easy enough, since he’d been benched from practice with a sprained ACL.
Between visits from team doctors and spending long hours on the couch, Liam simply hadn’t needed much from her other than refilling the fridge and making sure there were plenty of over the counter pain medicines within reach.
Every time she walked through the house, she felt his gaze on her, making her tense and nervous. So much so that she’d begun to search for new apartments nearby, just to get some space.
Though it wasn’t her intention, she’d made things super weird between them.
This is why you don’t make out with your boss, dummy, she scolded herself for the hundredth time. No matter how hot he is…
Today, though, she’d picked up a fat sheaf of business documents from his lawyers. He needed to read and sign them in the next couple of days, which meant that Audrey needed to actually talk to him.
Truth be told, if she didn’t resolve this tension between them soon, she was probably going to have to quit. Might as well test the boundaries now, right?
Heading downstairs to the living room, she stopped short. The room was empty.
“Liam?” she called out, walking to his bedroom.
The door was open, no Liam in sight.
It took her a couple of minutes of searching to find him sitting in the back yard in the fading evening light, a bottle of whisky sitting on the table beside him.
He was staring out into the yard, looking contemplative.
“Hey,” she said.
He started and glanced at her, then looked away again. “Hey.”
His voice was rough and gravelly, almost as though he’d been weeping. There was no trace of tears on his face, but he was clearly in some kind of distress.
“Are you okay? Do you need me to get your pain medication?” she asked. “I know you don’t want to take narcotics, but—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off.
She sighed. “Okay. Well… what can I get you?”
Liam looked at her again and then shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Let me call the doctor for you,” she insisted, walking over to set the papers down beside his bottle of whiskey.
“It’s not that.” Liam waited a beat, then said, “I just got a call from London. My mum died this morning.”
Audrey’s heart flip-flopped in her chest.
“Oh, Liam… I am so sorry…” she said, then bit her lip. “Can I sit?”
He shrugged. She grabbed a lawn chair and dragged it over beside his, then sat down, unsure what to say.
“What happened?” she asked after a second.
“She was an addict,” Liam said. “She has — had, I mean — been clean for a few years, mostly because I paid to have her kept in a full-time patient care facility. But her heart finally gave out, I guess.”
“I’m sorry,” Audrey said, reaching out and putting her hand on Liam’s arm. “Really, I am.”
Liam released a heavy sigh. “She was a shit mum, I’ll tell you that. I guess Jack never told you the story, but… he came home with me one Christmas, when we were in school.”
“No, he never said anything about it,” Audrey said.
Liam snorted. “We showed up at the flat, and it was empty. I mean, some of my things were still there, but Mum was gone. The landlord evicted her, and she’d just moved down to the closest place where people could score and sleep. It was pretty grim.”
“How did you end up in a fancy Swiss boarding school?” Audrey asked.
“My coach at school helped me apply,” he said. “He saw that I had a gift, saw that my Mum couldn’t care for me… Looking back, now, he probably saved my life.”
He picked up the bottle and took a slug of whiskey, making a satisfied sound as he swallowed it. Audrey watched him, unsure what else she could say.
“Sometimes I think, the way I am with women? Lots of different girls, can’t stick with one, can’t trust one…” Liam said, seemingly half to himself. “Sometimes I think that’s because of Mum. Like I’m broken, you know? Inside. Can’t be fixed.”
“Oh, Liam. I’m sure that’s not true,” Audrey said, taking his hand.
He shook her off, looking her right in the eye.
“No? You as good as told me that yourself, not a handful of days past,” he said. His voice was toneless, lacking in accusation, but it still made Audrey cringe.
She had implied that, hadn’t she? Or close enough.
“Liam, I—”
“Leave me,” he said, pulling away from her. “Please. I can’t handle your pity right now.”
Audrey hesitated, then stood and picked up the papers.
“I’m just inside, if you need me,” she said.
When he didn’t speak again, she turned and headed in, heart heavy.
13
Audrey
Audrey woke in the middle of the night, leaving behind troubled dreams. Pulling on a robe, she slipped out of her bedroom, thinking to grab a glass of water.
Liam was in the kitchen when she walked in, drinking right out of the tap. He straightened and glanced at her, looking worse from the wear.
His hair was disheveled, his skin paler than usual.
Gone was the smirking, confident bad boy. In his place was this very human, very damaged version of Liam, and seeing him like this tugged at her heart strings in a major way.
“Are you still up?” she asked, leaning against the counter to watch him.
“Can’t sleep,” he admitted with a shrug. “Bad dreams.”
His words killed Audrey just a little, inside. She held out a hand to him, expectant.
“Come on,” she said. He took her hand, and she towed him back to his bedroom.
“What are you doing?” he asked when she shooed him back into his bed.
“When I was little, I would always run to Jack’s room anytime I had nightmares. He would let me lie in his bed for a little while, until I wasn’t scared anymore. Sometimes, you just need another person in bed to keep the nightmares at bay.”
Liam made a soft, angry sound. “I told you I don’t want your pity, Audrey.”
“Well, that’s good, because I don’t have any to give you,” she sighed. “But if I was hurting, if I couldn’t sleep, you’d do the same for me. Now lie down.”
Liam gave her a long look, then sprawled out on his side in bed. Audrey climbed in behind him, pulling the comforter up over them both.
“Are you trying to be the big spoon?” Liam asked, sounding somewhere between amused and aghast.
“Shut up and accept my comfort,” Audrey said. “You always make everything so damned difficult.”
Liam quieted. Audrey molded herself to his body, shivering as the warmth of his big body seeped into her bones. She took several slow, deep breaths, sucking in lungfuls of his spicy, masculine scent.
It was a little intoxicating, lying here with him like this. In another life, maybe she could have experienced this for real. In an alternat
e universe, one where Liam wouldn’t shatter her heart into a thousand pieces.
Liam’s breath slowed and deepened, and soon the sound of it lulled her senses. Though she’d intended to go back to her room once Liam slept, Audrey soon relaxed, letting herself drift off to sleep.
Audrey dreamed she was in a hospital, walking down an endlessly long hall. At her side was an older man in a white doctor’s coat. The lights above flickered oddly, making her feel jumpy.
There was blood on her hands, but she didn’t know why.
“I’m so sorry, miss. I’m afraid he didn’t make it,” the doctor told her. “You didn’t save him.”
“Who?” she asked.
They walked and walked.
“You didn’t save him,” the doctor said. “It’s your fault, Audrey. You loved him, but you didn’t save him.”
“How could I have done more?” she asked. “Can I wash my hands, please?”
“No, no,” the doctor clucked. “Here we are.”
They stopped at a steel door that read MORGUE. Audrey looked at the door, then at the doctor.
“Go on,” he urged.
She reached out a hand, her bloodied fingers trembling, and pushed at the door. It swung open with ease, and she stepped inside.
The room was small and bright, lit from above with fluorescent surgical lights. A stainless steel table took up most of the space, and on it was someone she recognized.
Liam, cold and pale, draped in a sheet. No longer Liam, really, just a body now. Audrey gasped and burst into tears, stumbling forward to grasp his ice cold hand.
“I loved you!” she swore to him. Knowing he couldn’t hear, knowing she was far too late. “I loved you, I think. I wish I’d been brave…”
She heard Liam’s voice, whispering her name, and started to sob.
Audrey… Audrey….
“Audrey!”
Audrey’s eyes opened and she stared straight up into Liam’s worried face.
“Are you all right, love? You’re crying in your sleep,” he said, touching her face with a fingertip, spreading a bit of wet warmth across her cheek.
