“I’ve asked myself why about a million times since that day.” I admitted, still looking at the screen. “Why did it have to happen then? At the height of my career. Why this injury, as opposed to all the others I’d come back from over the years? Why that? Why then? Why?”
I heard Bells swallow, and she rose from the barstool. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
I watched her move around the island. My shirt rode up the backs of her bare thighs as she reached to grab a mug. We’d barely left the bed in two days, and even still, just the glimpse of her creamy, naked thigh was enough to make my body respond.
The sound of the coffee pouring into the cup was soothing. As was the sound of her putting the carafe back on the burner and adding some cream, just the way I liked it. I sank down onto the stool she’d just vacated, the seat still warm from her body heat.
The mug made a light thump when she set it on the counter and pushed it right in front of me.
“Thanks, sweetheart.” My voice was still rough from sleep, or maybe it was from the emotion clogging it.
Finding her watching this, hearing it play from the hallway, brought it all back. The anxiety, the frustration… the sense of loss. It all pummeled me for a few endless seconds as I watched the emotions play over her face as she lived it for the very first time. I felt as if it were just yesterday instead of last year.
The way I had to limp over to this counter was a bitter reminder that nothing had changed.
Drawing back, I held out my arm, inviting her into my lap. She stepped forward, then faltered, her eyes slipping to my knee. I made a bad-mannered sound and gently towed her close. She climbed into my lap, balancing most of her weight on my “good” leg.
I wrapped my arms around her from behind and dropped my chin to her shoulder. “That the only thing you watched this morning?” I spoke quietly beside her ear.
The length of her blond hair brushed across my bare chest with her nod, bringing a rush of emotion into my heart.
“There’s more videos like that?” She seemed horrified.
I chuckled a little. “I’ve been hurt a few times. Some of them were a lot worse than this one.” I recalled the past, then turned somber. “But that was the one that took me out of the game.”
I couldn’t help but feel acrimonious about it. In my mind, it truly wasn’t the worst of my falls in my pro career. But if you asked anyone else, this one would be the one they named because this one was the one that kept me down.
It wasn’t supposed to keep me down.
“Sometimes I get this feeling…” she whispered, her finger tracing the handle of the mug.
“What kind of feeling?”
The admission came out like a secret rush. As though she expelled the entire sentence with a single held breath. “Like I don’t know you.”
I jolted beneath her. Everything inside me withdrew from the confession. I wanted to make a joke. I had one on the tip of my tongue.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t make light of that. I couldn’t smile and make those words go away. If I did, they would haunt me. Hell, it seemed they were already haunting her.
I pushed up, taking her with me. She squeaked with surprise, but I kept going. Her feet hit the floor, and she turned, trapped between the counter and my body. My hands slid beneath her arms and lifted so she was sitting on the counter in front of me. Her knees fell open, and I stepped between them, anchoring my hands flat on the counter on either side of her hips.
Leaning close, I studied her blue eyes intently. “That’s not true.”
“If it wasn’t true, I would have seen that before.” She pointed to the laptop. “I would know about all your past injuries and everything you had to overcome to get those medals. I would have understood exactly what that conversation you had with the doctor was about, and I would be able to have secret conversations with you with only our eyes.”
My chest tightened, and a ripple of denial moved down my spine. “None of that shit matters,” I replied darkly.
“Yes, Liam, it does.” Her eyes stayed intent on mine. “Details matter. Everything about you, down to how many cavities you have in your mouth, matters!”
I made a face and sniffed with an air of superiority. “I don’t have any cavities.”
Bellamy rolled her big, beautiful blue eyes. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
I grinned, showing her my pearly, cavity-free teeth.
She shook her head, but the humor died far too soon.
I sighed. “I get what you’re saying.”
She gave me a yeah right look.
I drew back just slightly (I wasn’t willing to put that much space between us). “Don’t you think it drives me insane that I didn’t know about your dad? That you love to cook? About everything you’ve been through? I watched the trial coverage and read articles about the secret star witness who would be lucky to make it through her testimony alive, and I didn’t know that was you.”
“I’m glad you weren’t there,” she whispered.
The second the words left her mouth, her eyes flew to mine. I nodded, knowing what she was thinking. I’d said the exact same thing just moments ago.
Living with that injury, losing so much, had been hard enough. The last thing I wanted was for her to suffer through it all, too.
Her shoulders slumped. I felt the defeat wave off her, and I wanted it gone. Wrapping my hand around hers, I shifted so a lot of my weight was pressing into the counter between her legs.
“You might not know all the details of my career, all the places I’ve traveled, or even what I’d been hoping for in the future. But what you do know is far more important than any of that.”
“And what is it I know?” she asked dubiously.
I gestured to my mouth. “Duh. About my dental hygiene.”
She tried to act like she wasn’t amused. Too bad the lift to the corners of her mouth betrayed her. I winked, and she shook her head.
Lifting the hand I held, I pressed her palm against my chest. Her fingers were cool compared to my skin. Her hand was small compared to mine when I pressed her palm flat over my heart. “You know places inside my heart no one else has ever met. You know how hard it is to breathe when we look into each other’s eyes. And I’m betting you feel a gentle tug right about here”—I poked my finger into the center of her chest—“when I walk into a room.”
Her eyes scoured mine. “You feel that, too?”
“Ah, sweetheart, I definitely feel it, too.”
Our foreheads met, and we both smiled. Too soon, Bells pulled back, her brow knitting. “It doesn’t make sense that I could love you so very much and not know the details.”
“You think knowing my favorite color or the state of my teeth means you love me more?”
“Your favorite color is blue,” she said, mildly affronted.
“‘Cause that’s the color of your eyes.” I kissed the tip of her nose.
“I want the details, Liam. I want everything about you.”
“You already have the most important parts, Bells.”
A stubborn glint came into her eyes, and I chuckled even as my stomach clenched. This entire conversation made me nervous. What if once she knew about everything, she decided she didn’t love me as much? I was no longer a seventeen-year-old without baggage and big dreams. I was midtwenties with experiences, failures… with—
“Liam.” Bellamy interrupted my internal debate.
I sighed. She deserved everything. And I couldn’t keep worrying she might find out and walk away. “Everything is want you want? Then everything is what you will get.”
I lifted her off the counter and gestured for her to grab her mug. “C’mon, then.” Taking the laptop and my coffee, I went into the living room, dropped down on the sofa, and propped my feet up on the coffee table.
Bellamy sat down beside me, tucking her legs beneath her. I snagged a thick, plaid blanket off the side and tossed it over her, pulling some of it over my lap.
“What are we doing?” she asked, watching me.
“Getting comfortable. Everything takes a long time.”
She made a face. “How about you just tell me about snowboarding?”
“I think everything might be easier to talk about.” I admitted, sipping at the coffee. When she didn’t say anything, I glanced over at her. “You make good coffee, sweetheart.”
“I know it’s hard for you, but will you try?” The soft understanding in her voice was almost my ruin.
I’d tell her anything she wanted to know, even if it ripped open all the wounds I’d been working so hard to heal. I nodded and kissed the back of her hand before threading our fingers together. “For you? Anything.”
“When I first came here, you said you came back to BearPaw because of an injury. It was always kinda implied that you weren’t going back, that you couldn’t.”
“I did leave the pros because of my ACL. I had no choice. It was a bad tear. I had surgery, physical therapy… the works. But something like that takes a long time to heal. And even once it’s healed, there’s no guarantee it will hold up to the kind of boarding I do. Or that after everything I’d even be as good.”
Fuck. Just saying that out loud was hard. That was always my biggest fear. That I wouldn’t be as good.
I glanced down at the coffee in the mug. “From the time I was six years old, I lived with a snowboard strapped to my feet. Nothing else mattered to me. I was a junkie. Hell, the only friend that stuck around was Alex. Everyone else got sick of me always being feet deep in powder.”
“Everyone here loves you,” Bellamy rebuked.
I smiled. “Yeah. People love the idea of me. My celebrity. My family name. The medals and titles. That’s not real friendship. That’s not real love.”
“You gave up a lot,” she murmured.
“Even you,” I echoed. Regret did not mix well with coffee. I sat up, plunked the mug down on the table, then sank back into the cushions. “My whole identity was wrapped up in being a snowboarder. In being a pro athlete. And then…” I gestured to the laptop. “It was gone.”
Bellamy’s free hand settled around the base of my neck, her fingers playing in the short strands of my hair. Goose bumps lifted over my arms because her touch felt that good. “It was difficult.”
I made a sound. Difficult was a massive understatement. “I spiraled into this place… into this dark abyss that seemed to open up inside me and swallow me whole. I was so fucking angry. So lost. The doctors tried to tell me I might be able to return, but I was beyond hearing it. All I heard was the voice inside my head, telling me everything I worked so hard for was gone.”
“What happened?”
“I was a hostile patient. I hated anything that tried to pull me back to reality.”
She made a sound, and I glanced over at her. “I’m glad you weren’t there, Bells. I hurt everyone around me. I never want you to see me like that. I never want to be that again.”
“I would have loved you anyway,” she whispered, her fingers still brushing through my hair.
I made a soft sound and closed my eyes. “I’m not so sure you would have.” I kept my eyes averted toward my lap even when I heard her indrawn breath and felt her physical reaction.
“You actually think that you being hostile and angry is enough to make me stop loving you?”
My chin lifted, eyes boring into hers. “How do you know?” I challenged. “How could you possibly be so sure?”
She didn’t even have to think about her answer. She was absolute. “Because even after I thought you played me, I loved you.”
Leaning up, I kissed her fiercely. My heart ached with love, with the fear of loss. And from all the years we missed with each other. She tasted like coffee and comfort. When I deepened the kiss further, the fingers against the back of my neck tightened, and she sighed softly.
Too soon, she pulled away. “Are you trying to distract me?”
I lifted one brow. “Is it working?”
“No.” She confirmed but then sucked her lower lip into her mouth. “Maybe.”
Growling, I forced my eyes away from her seductive lips. “Alex came home from the army and showed up at the facility I was staying at.”
I was totally skirting around what I needed to spill. I was being a chicken shit. I ought to be embarrassed.
Better embarrassed than watching her walk away.
Bellamy made a small surprised noise. “You weren’t here at home?”
I shook my head. “Not at first. At first, I was in some state of the art facility in Denver, with trainers and doctors that specialized in sports medicine. I ate, slept, and breathed my injury… I know being there helped the recovery of my injury, and I was a lucky bastard to have access to that kind of care, but…” Faltering, I shook my head and leaned it back against the couch.
Bells withdrew her hand from my neck and brushed at the long strands of hair on top of my head. “It was good for your body, but not your mind. And when those two things are working together, it makes you feel like you’re falling apart.”
I rolled my face in her direction. I don’t know why, but the fact that she could verbally communicate what I was feeling left me a little awed. “Yeah.”
Lifting our clasped hands, she kissed the back of mine. Her lips made a crack in the darkness that still lived deep inside me, the same darkness this conversation was making swell. Like a ray of sunlight, she burst through that crack, and a little bit of relief brought me a sense of peace.
“Alex took one look at me and recognized the dark in me…”
“He has it, too,” Bellamy echoed.
“Yeah. His time in the army hardened him in a lot of ways.” I made an amused sound. “He told me to stop being a damn Nancy and suck it up.”
She drew in a breath.
I smirked. “I punched him in the face.”
“Oh my God! Why do you look proud of yourself for that?” she demanded.
I shrugged. “It made me feel better.”
Bells made a disgusted sound, and I chuckled.
The laugh was short lived because I knew this conversation couldn’t go further until I confessed. “He’s the one that figured it out. I couldn’t hide from him.”
Bellamy sat forward, leaning her body into my side. Her face was intent, perplexed. “Figured out what?”
My shoulder brushed against her when I inhaled. Turning my head, our eyes collided. I prayed to God that soft, worried… yet loving look in her eyes didn’t change once I spoke the truth.
Swallowing, I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, letting the softness of it soothe my ache.
“I was abusing pills.” I confessed.
Then, because I wanted to be very clear about what I was telling her, I went at it balls to the wall.
“I’m an addict.”
Bellamy
Just like that, Liam’s darkness stepped into the light.
Of all the words he could have spoken. Of all the secrets those silver eyes could conceal, him being an addict was something I didn’t expect.
Yet it made perfect sense.
Liam was a man of commitment. He committed himself so hard to what he loved, almost to the point it was detrimental to his own health. He committed to me full throttle all those years ago, to the point of wanting to give up his dreams. He committed to boarding to the point of becoming the greatest boarder in the world.
And now?
Now he was recommitted to me, despite the mob. Despite the danger I brought into his life.
When Liam did something, it wasn’t halfhearted. So in a twisted way, it made sense that he became an addict.
“Bells,” Liam rasped.
I glanced up, realizing my silence was probably hard for him to bear.
“This is why you’ve been so reluctant to talk to me. To tell me about what happened after your accident.” It was also why Alex seemed to watch Liam carefully when talk of his reinjured knee came up.
“I wanted to
be the guy you remember, Bells. Not some half-assed, broken version that you thought you might have to pick up off the floor from beside a bottle of empty pills.”
I sucked in a breath. “It got that bad?”
I never should have stayed away for eight years. I never should have let that little girl scare me off.
He shook his head. “No. But it could have.”
Relief washed through me. Not for myself, but for him. These last few weeks, he’d been taking care of me. Sheltering me. He hid it so well, the fact that he needed it just as much.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” The apology rumbled out. “I just…” He reached for the front of my shirt, bunching the fabric in his hand, tugging me even closer. “It was just so good to finally have you back. I didn’t want to lose you twice.”
A strangled sound vibrated my throat and chest. “Oh, baby,” I whispered, cupping his face and staring nowhere else but into his silvery, stormy eyes. “When I said I wanted everything, I meant it. Everything isn’t just the good… It’s the difficult, the dark, and sometimes the scary.”
A sense of awe came into his face, lighting up the storm in his stare like lightning on the darkest night. He was absolutely stunning. Flawed. Strong.
Mine.
“I don’t think you understand. I’m off the pills now, but I’ll be an addict the rest of my life. There will always be that chance that I could slip back into that darkness that lives in here.” He tapped his chest.
“And there’s a chance—a really good on—some scary men are going to come here and try and kill us.” I shrugged a shoulder. “We both have some baggage.”
Liam made a sound. “That’s out of your control. But this? Addiction? That is something with the ability to control me.”
I tilted my head to the side, regarding him. “I don’t care.”
He blinked.
I smiled.
His lips parted, and though I loved the sound of his voice, I cut off his words with my fingers. “You aren’t the boy I remember from eight years ago. You’re more. You’re better.” I smiled, then whispered, “No longer a boy… but a man.”
Blizzard (BearPaw Resort #2) Page 2
