by Linda Seed
He planned to show her how. He just didn’t know quite how to do that yet.
He drove the truck through the rainy streets of Portland and back to his motel, where he lay on the bed and looked at the ceiling, thinking about it.
She needed to know he could stick, that was all. She needed to understand what it meant to be him; Liam kept his promises and had absolute loyalty toward those he loved.
He was exactly the man she needed, and he knew it.
She would know it, too, before he was done.
After a night of restless sleep, Liam had the beginnings of a plan. The size and scope of the plan were going to make it difficult to accomplish, but the size and scope of the thing were also what was going to make it work.
The more he thought about it, the more he thought his idea was perfect. It addressed all of the longings of Aria’s heart, whether she fully recognized them or not.
It also addressed some things Liam had been neglecting for himself for some time. It was a way to mature. A way to move forward.
If he did what he was planning and he still didn’t manage to win her over, he would have put a lot of money and time and work into it just to be disappointed. But sometimes a man had to plunge headlong into something, no matter the consequences.
In the morning, he got into the truck, turned it in at a U-Haul place in Portland, caught a flight down to San Luis Obispo, and started doing what needed to be done to put the whole thing in motion.
Chapter Thirty-Five
For Aria, the key to getting by without Liam was convincing herself she was better off without him.
She didn’t feel better off—not at all. But she told herself she was, day after day. She didn’t necessarily believe it, but at least she eventually stopped arguing the point back and forth in her own mind.
That was how she got through the rest of the winter. She got through it by doing the tasks and errands and routines she always did, focusing on the minutia of her life—Was she out of paper towels? Did she need to pick up her dry cleaning?—instead of considering the bigger issues of love and contentment, and her own soul’s longings.
Liam had taken to sending her letters through the mail, prompting Aria to wonder, why the mail? Why not e-mail? At first, she didn’t open them, because she was afraid of what they contained. Was he angry? Was he begging her to reconsider? Was he trying to manipulate her?
But her resolve failed her on one rainy day in late January, and she read one. To her surprise, the letter was full of updates about his family and anecdotes about everything that was going on around the ranch, but there was no pressure, no bitterness. Just friendly communication from one person to another.
The letters began to come once a week. She didn’t answer them, but she read them all, and after a while, she realized how much she looked forward to them.
It wasn’t good, her looking forward to them. Those letters were a small wedge he was using to pry open the door to a relationship with her. Obviously, that was his intent. But it was safe as long as she didn’t answer—that’s what she told herself. As long as she stayed silent, up here so far away from Cambria, then how could her feelings for him hurt her?
She was still in touch with Gen, of course. They’d worked out an amicable deal for Aria to fulfill her contractual obligations. She’d transferred the yurt to her studio here in Portland and had finished it there. Gen had arranged for it to be shown at a studio in San Francisco in March, and Aria would provide Gen with a percentage of the sale, as they’d agreed.
The showing would have a performance component: Aria would live in the yurt for two weeks, and during gallery hours, she would invite visitors to come inside and sit with her. The plan was for Aria and the viewer to sit facing each other for a period of time to be determined by the visitor. Aria would sit silently, and the visitor could react to that however he or she chose.
Aria had done something similar in the past, without the yurt. She’d been surprised and gratified by how people had responded to it. They’d started out either uncomfortable or amused, but the longer they sat with her, with Aria silently looking at them in a relaxed and nonjudgmental way, the more things started to happen.
Some people began to talk about themselves, about their lives. Some stayed silent, simply looking back at her. Some felt a deep sense of relaxation. Some started to cry.
She wasn’t certain what caused the emotional reaction in people who responded that way, but she had a few theories. Maybe being silently observed made people think about themselves and about their lives. Maybe it made them deeply uncomfortable. Maybe it just made them feel seen, some for the first time in their lives.
By the middle of March, Aria and Gen had, together, arranged for the transport of the yurt to the gallery, they’d collaborated with the gallery owner on promotion for the show, and they had fine-tuned most of the details.
All that remained was for her to travel south and do the show.
Living in a yurt on an art gallery floor wasn’t going to be nearly as appealing as a four-star hotel, but the discomfort, along with the opportunity for visitors to voyeuristically view her through the yurt’s open door, was part of what would draw people to see her.
Her food would be brought to her, and she would have a ten-minute break every two hours to use the bathroom.
Other than that, the yurt she’d painstakingly made of refuse would be her home.
By late March, Liam’s plan was most of the way to its fruition. He’d been working feverishly pretty much every moment that he wasn’t performing his daily duties on the ranch. He’d hired a team of professionals, of course, and his brothers and sister were helping out here and there.
If this worked, he’d be congratulating himself on his ingenious, bold gesture for years to come. If it didn’t, people would be looking at him in town, talking to each other about that poor bastard who’d done all this for a woman and had been dumped on his ass.
If that happened, at least he would know he’d tried. At least he would know he’d done everything he could.
He’d gone back and forth with himself on whether to go to her show in San Francisco. He wanted like hell to see her, just to be in her presence for a little while. The structure of the thing, as Gen had explained it, meant she would have to see him. She wouldn’t have to talk to him—wouldn’t even be able to, according to the rules of the deal—but she’d have to let him sit there with her as long as he wanted.
That seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up, but it would also be hard. Hard not to reach out and touch her. Hard to preserve his secret and not tell her what he’d done.
“You have to go,” Gen told him a couple of days before the show was set to open. They were in the living room at the Delaney house before a family dinner, Liam with a beer in his hand, Gen with the baby snuggled up and sleeping in her arms.
“You think?”
“I do.” She leaned toward him for emphasis. “It’s not just a chance for you to see her. It’s a chance for you to see who she is.”
“I know who she is,” he said. “I know her.”
“You think you do, but this is her art. It’s a big part of who she is as a person. You can’t fully understand an artist if you don’t understand their art. Believe me, Liam, because I know what I’m talking about. You have to go. You have to be there.”
“Well … I’ve seen the yurt. Hell, I helped her work on it.” He wasn’t sure why he was resisting. Was it because the idea of performance art puzzled him and made him feel dense because he didn’t understand it? Or was it because he was afraid of going up there and being rejected?
“You’ve seen the yurt, but that’s only part of it. Look.” Gen put a hand on Liam’s arm and squeezed lightly. “Aria’s very private. She’s very … closed off. The performance part of it is how she lets people in. It’s how she lets people really see her.” She let go of him and sat back on the sofa. “You have to go.”
He figured she was right, and anyway, just havin
g the chance to see Aria’s face, to breathe in her scent, would make it worth the trip, even if he had to crawl all the way to San Francisco.
He was scared, though, and he wasn’t too big of a man to let Gen know it.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen when she sees me,” he told her.
“Best case scenario, she remembers why she fell for you and she decides she can’t stay away another minute.”
That sounded too good to be true—which it was. “And the worst case scenario?”
Gen shrugged. “The two of you spend a few minutes inside a yurt made of trash, looking at each other and feeling awkward. After everything you’ve done for her, I figure you can manage that.”
The weekend of the gallery opening, Liam drove north full of excitement and trepidation. Aria had made it clear that she didn’t want to be with him, so showing up at her show could be interpreted as pushy. She hadn’t answered any of his letters, so maybe he needed to just get the message already.
On the other hand, she’d told him she loved him. If Liam was choosing what to believe, he would choose that. He would choose that one moment when she’d said “yes.” It had cost her something to say it, so it had to be true.
As he made his way up Highway 101 toward San Francisco, he reminded himself that a man never got anywhere by being timid about the things he wanted. A man got somewhere in life by being bold, by acting as though things were going to go his way until they actually did.
Hell, what did holding back ever get you? Redmond had held back when he’d loved someone, and he’d gotten years of loneliness and estrangement from his only son.
To hell with that. To hell with all of it.
Liam had come this far, he was by God going to go the rest of the way. If Aria turned him away when she saw him—if she refused to acknowledge him or even asked security to throw him out—then at least he would know he’d done what he could.
He’d know he’d been a man.
Chapter Thirty-Six
One nice thing about doing a show like this, Aria reflected, was that it took her mind off of Liam Delaney.
She thought about him so much that she was emotionally exhausted. But this—this period of time when she would be performing—would be about the audience and about the art, not about her. She’d have no choice but to focus on what she was doing, to the exclusion of all else.
To the exclusion, most of all, of Liam and all of her longing and regret.
That was what she told herself, though if she’d thought it out further, she’d have realized it was bullshit.
Two weeks living in a yurt inside an art gallery included nights, times when the gallery wasn’t open. Then, she’d have nothing to do but think, and it was pure idiocy to imagine her thoughts would be about anything but Liam.
When the truth of that poked at her—which it did from time to time—she told herself that the Aria she’d be inside the gallery was all about performance. And she would simply perform the part of someone who wasn’t preoccupied with a man.
She told herself it was working as she got herself set up inside the yurt with a mat on the floor and the various random items she needed to make herself comfortable.
She told herself it was working as the gallery opened and visitors began to stream in.
She told herself it was working as the first couple of people came into the yurt, sat with her, and then moved on.
She believed it right up until the moment when Liam folded his long body into the yurt and sat across from her, one leg tucked beneath him and the other stretched out awkwardly in front of him.
“Liam. What … You …” She was stammering, fighting competing urges to fall into his arms or flee for the exit. Her heart was pounding, and a sudden sheen of sweat covered her palms.
“Shh.” He put an index finger to his lips. “That’s the deal, right? You’re not supposed to talk?”
She’d completely forgotten that was, in fact, the deal.
Now, reminded of her role, she quieted and sat across from him, cross-legged inside her yurt, with Liam so close she could smell his soap and feel the warmth of his body. She waited, silently, to see what would happen next.
The thing about being still and quiet was that it made you think. Liam had thought quite a lot on his way up here, and before that, too. But it wasn’t the same as the kind of thinking you did when you were in an enclosed space, saying nothing, sitting across from the person you’d been doing all that thinking about.
There was a process to it, a layer of phases. First, all he could think about was Aria so close to him, the way she looked, the complex mix of warmth and pain in her eyes as she locked her gaze on him.
Then, there was the self-consciousness, the wondering about what she was thinking, how she was feeling, whether she wanted him to leave.
Finally, once all of that passed, there was understanding.
Honestly, he’d thought this whole idea was stupid—the yurt itself was okay, but the thing with Aria sitting across from people and looking at them had seemed like so much New Agey bullshit.
But now, as he sat there, he started to get it. They were communicating, the two of them, without talking. They were making a connection that was different than the one they’d made before. He was seeing her—really seeing her—maybe for the first time. And he hoped she was seeing him.
And suddenly, in a sudden burst of inspiration, he understood what all of this was to her. He understood the yurt, and why she’d built it, and what it all meant in the context of her life.
She was itinerant. She was, essentially, homeless. All she had was a shell she’d built for herself out of the garbage of her belief that she could never hope for anything better.
The truth of it hit him hard, like a strong wind or a slap to the face.
She’d shown him who she was the moment she’d shown him the yurt that first day in the barn.
He wanted nothing more than to bring her out of here, out of the prison she’d built for herself, but that was no good. She had to decide to free herself. He couldn’t do it for her.
When he’d come into the gallery, the owner had chatted with him a little, had told him that people were moved by the experience of sitting with Aria—that some of them even wept.
He’d thought that was crap. But now here he was, his eyes hot and filling with tears.
Gen had been right. It was good that he’d come. He hadn’t known her—not really—until this moment.
Sitting across from Liam without speaking, and without touching him, was one of the hardest things Aria had ever done. And it was also one of the most powerful.
He sat motionless, making eye contact with her, saying nothing, just being there, his presence strong and steady and real amid all of the artifice of this event, this place.
Time stretched on, and he didn’t move, didn’t look away from her.
When she’d done this kind of thing before, she’d sometimes felt inspiration about the people sitting across from her—about who they were as people, what they feared, what they dreamed.
Now, as Liam sat with her, she had an inspiration about him, something she was feeling now for the first time.
Looking at him, she knew—really knew—for the first time who and what he was. Rock solid. Steady. Reliable and sure. There was something so true and real in him, something she’d failed to notice or acknowledge before.
The inside of the yurt was dim and close, but the multicolored skylight cast a dappled blue and green glow onto him, onto both of them, promising something better outside of this darkness.
When he finally got to his feet and left the little structure to make way for the next visitor, she knew what she had to do. She just hoped it wouldn’t be too late by the time she was able to do it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Liam was working a couple of weeks later, building a porch railing. He’d built porch railings before, so he knew what he was doing, and he was able to let his mind wander a bit while he did what
had to be done.
He was enjoying the spring weather, the sunlight streaming down on him, warming his back. He was enjoying the sound of the birds in the oak trees behind him.
He liked the work, liked the warm, tired feeling in his muscles as he hammered and sanded and hauled wood planks from one place to another. He liked the camaraderie between himself and the guys he had working with him, the banter, the kind of chatter that went on between men when there were no women around.
When his cell phone rang in his back pocket, he straightened, stretched his back, and pulled the phone out to answer it. The smell of wet grass and sawdust mingled pleasantly in the air.
He saw Gen’s name on the display, and took the call.
“Hey, Gen. What’s up?”
“Aria’s at the house.”
Liam froze. He wanted to say something, but no words were coming.
“Liam? Did you hear me? I said—”
“I heard you.” He took a deep, shaky breath, then let it out. “She say why she’s here?”
“She came to talk to you. Said she didn’t want to call first because she didn’t know what you’d say.”
Liam put a hand on his belly, which was fluttering with nerves. “Well, I guess this is it, then.”
“Should I bring her out there?”
“Yeah. Do it. Thanks, Gen.” He hung up the phone and readied himself for whatever was to come.
“Where are we going?” Aria was sitting in the passenger seat of Gen’s car, James in his car seat in the back, as they made their way along the curves of Santa Rosa Creek Road. To one side of the road, a grass-covered hill rose toward the blue sky. To the other, the creek burbled over rocks and past trees.
“I’m taking you to Liam.”
“Okay, but … where?”
“Well … he didn’t want me to tell you that.”
“Why? Gen …”
“Just hang on. We’re almost there.”
