I jolted. “I didn’t mean—”
She shrugged, not unkindly. “It’s still true.”
I went across the room, urgency propelling my feet faster. “That is not true,” I stated vehemently. “You haven’t taken shit from me.”
“Except your father, your career…” Her eyes strayed to Charlie. “And your dog.”
“Bellamy!” I rasped, surging forward and grasping her by the shoulders. She felt thin and small beneath my hands, and I gentled my grip a little.
She glanced down at where I held her, a small sound erupting. Her eyes lifted, wide. “You touched me.”
I frowned. “I always touch you.”
She shook her head sadly. “Not lately. Lately, it seems like you try not to.”
My stomach clenched and so did my jaw. “I touched you last night.” I defended without heat.
“You didn’t speak to me. You left before the sun came up.”
“I kissed you at the service just a little bit ago.”
“Keeping up appearances.”
I sucked in a breath. This was worse than I thought.
So much worse.
I pushed away from her to pace. “You actually think the only reason I touched you today was because I was worried what the people in this town would say if I didn’t?”
“No one knows what really happened.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and regarded her. “Apparently, Alex told you what the official story is.”
“Well, someone had to,” she snapped. Immediately, she turned contrite. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You’ve been through so—”
“I was wondering when you were gonna show up.” I half smiled.
Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“Defeated isn’t usually a word I would use to describe you.”
“You think this is funny?” she asked, straightening off the counter.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. This was not going well. “Of course not, sweetheart. Nothing about any of the past few days is funny.”
“You act like you want me to be mad,” she muttered.
“Maybe I do.”
Her eyes snapped up to me. “Why?” she whispered.
“Because it would be a hell of a lot better than this!” I exclaimed, gesturing between us. “This sorrowful acceptance of…” I couldn’t even bring myself to say it.
“The end?” She finished.
I made an angry sound and lunged toward her. “This is not the end,” I spat. “I’ve had enough endings to last my entire lifetime.”
Charlie didn’t like my sudden movements or the aggressive way I spoke. With a low warning growl, he inserted himself between us.
I glanced down at the dog, then back to Bellamy. “Bells. I would never hurt you.”
She smiled sadly. “I know. He’s been a little on edge since that night.”
“How did he get to the hotel?” I asked, curious.
“He attacked the man in the house, not Spidey, the first guy. He was just trying to protect me. When the man recovered, he was going to shoot him.” Her lower lip wobbled, and my heart sank. I still didn’t know the full events of that night. There hadn’t been any time to really talk to her. “So I shoved him out the back door and told him to run. He must have been so confused.”
I made a soft sound and reached for her, wrapping my arms around her upper body while the dog stood between us. Charlie didn’t object to the hug, maybe because he was part of it.
“It’s okay now,” I murmured, stroking the back of her head. “You saved his life. You saved mine that night. And yours.”
“Not Ren’s.” She sobbed, her shoulders shaking as I held her.
I tried to pull her even closer, but the dog was in the way. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here, sweetheart. I truly wanted to be.”
“Your mom needed you more.” After a small hiccup against my neck, she said, “She blames me.”
My stomach dipped. “She’s irrational right now.”
“You smell good.” She blubbered and pushed a little tighter into my neck.
I half smiled at the random comment. I liked it. No. I loved it. Bellamy didn’t really believe this was the end of us. Just as I couldn’t either.
“What do I smell like?” I asked, shifting closer. I loved my dog, but he was pissing me off. He was keeping me from full-on contact with my girl.
“Snow,” she murmured. “Like home.”
I pulled back and picked her up, lifting her over the dog and bringing her against me. Her legs wound around my midsection and her arms wrapped around my neck. Her body melted against mine, draping over my upper body, melding to me in all the right places.
I started to carry her to the sofa where I could sit with her in my arms and fix all the damage our separation had caused.
Charlie barked. Then barked again.
Bellamy sat up, blinking her red-rimmed eyes. “He needs to go outside.”
I groaned. Bells patted my shoulder, and I let her slide down my front, totally enjoying the immediate lick of flames that tightened my balls and caused a quick intake of breath.
She went to the table where her coat was, picked it up, and pushed her arms through.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking out the dog,” she said as if it were obvious.
“It’s ten degrees outside. I’ll take him.”
The stubborn glint I was used to flashed in her eyes, and it actually made me feel better. I liked her spunk. I liked her fire. It was good to see it wasn’t gone.
Still. She wasn’t taking out the dog.
“Bellamy,” I grumbled. “Keep your tiny ass in this house.”
“My ass is not tiny.” She sniffed, lifting her nose.
I pointed toward her lower half. “That ass was up against me all night last night. It’s tiny.”
Charlie barked again and pawed at the back door.
“You tell him, Charlie.” Bellamy nodded.
I rolled my eyes.
As I was closing the door behind us, Bellamy called out my name. “Liam?”
I glanced around. She was standing there watching me go with this look of… anxiety in her eyes.
“What, sweetheart?”
She worried her lower lip, then released it. “You’re coming back, right?”
I did this to her.
Me.
“I swear.”
She nodded, and I pulled the door around to close.
We didn’t stay out long. After that question and look in her eyes, I wanted to get back to her as fast as possible. Thankfully, Charlie cooperated and did his business, then ran back to the porch. He loved the cold, but it was bitter outside right now, not even fun for him.
When I stepped back in the house, I expected to see some sort of happiness in her eyes or even just some minor relief.
I saw neither.
Bellamy was standing with her back to me, facing the counter where a fresh pot of coffee was brewing. Her posture was rigid and her head was focused down. It seemed that whatever headway I’d made with her before I stepped outside was somehow gone.
“Bells?” I said, cautious, as I pulled off my coat and boots.
She still had her coat on from when she’d started to get dressed for outside. Why was she still wearing her coat?
She didn’t answer when I called out to her, so I tossed my shit aside and walked to where she stood. I reached for her arm to gently pull her around, but she flinched and jerked back.
All at once, she whirled, tears on her cheeks. “Is this why?” she asked, shaking something clutched in her hand.
“Why what?” I said, glancing down.
It was a white piece of paper that looked as if it had been balled up but someone tried to smooth back out. My veins frosted over.
“Is this why you’ve barely spoken to me in three days?”
“Where did you get that?” I intoned, low.
She made a sound and glanced down at it, the
paper wrinkling more under her intense grip. She read, “It’s rather poetic that you will have to live knowing you sacrificed your father for a woman. And she will have to live with knowing you will blame her for that for the rest of her days.”
I reached for it, but she snatched it back.
“Bellamy,”
“You’ve read this?”
“Yes,” I replied, terse.
“When?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“When!” she cried, hoarse.
“That night.” My words were subdued. “Right before I brought you here.”
The paper floated to the floor like a feather when she let go, allowing her arm to drop back to her side. “When you said you didn’t blame me, who were you lying to, Liam, me or you?”
“I wasn’t lying.”
She looked up, her eyes meeting mine. “Then why did you keep this from me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I opened my mouth.
She cut me off with quiet, heavy words. “Because part of you… even just a small part, believes it.”
I started to shake my head, the denial swift.
She grabbed the black tie around my neck, wrapping her hand around it to tug. “The truth, Liam.”
I met her eyes and spoke. “Yes.”
Bellamy
We had a lot of talking to do, a lot of figuring things out.
He was here. That was all that mattered.
He was here, and he promised he wasn’t leaving.
I went to make some coffee. Liam liked coffee. As the rich brew began percolating, I realized I was still wearing my coat. Grabbing the sleeve to yank it off, I heard the crumple of paper in the pocket and remembered what I’d found at the house yesterday.
It was just paper.
What I read on that paper blew up my world. Liam got a letter from Perry Crone and never told me about it.
Worse: Liam got a letter that claimed my debt was paid in full.
The price?
The death of his father and the fact that it would ultimately tear us apart.
In the end, Crone was getting exactly what he wanted, wasn’t he? This was far worse than my death could ever be, because instead of dying all at once, I would die a little every single day.
Thousands of tiny deaths that would chip away at me and Liam day after day, month after month. To spare us both a lifetime of pain, I should leave.
I couldn’t.
I’d cost Liam enough already. I couldn’t take his child, too.
Now here we were in the kitchen, standing so close, sharing the same air. I was suffocating, and based on the look in his eyes, so was he.
All we had now was the truth. Cold, hard reality.
“Yes?” I whispered.
His eyes fell from mine, but not before they flashed with guilt. “Yes,” he repeated, husky. “I blamed you.”
The frost within Liam I sometimes felt reached out and bit me.
Slipping from between the counter and his body, I moved to put some distance between us. I knew he blamed me. Deep down, I knew this. Why was it ten times harder to hear when he admitted it out loud?
Liam’s hand wrapped around my wrist, holding gently, just enough to keep me from getting too far.
“When I was kneeling over my father…” He began, and the crackle in his voice made me think of ice on the verge of shattering. “As he was gasping and bleeding out all over our kitchen floor and I pleaded with him not to die—”
His pain was so thick, so stagnant that it became mine, too. It didn’t even matter he blamed me or that I had no clue how we moved on from here. All that mattered was he was standing in front of me, breaking into a million pieces.
I moved into him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and squeezed, pressing my head against his chest. He didn’t push me away, but he didn’t embrace me either.
It was okay. I didn’t need comfort right now. He did.
“I did blame you. Beneath the panic and fear, even beneath the bargains I tried to strike up with God, all I could think was that if you hadn’t come home alone that day… If you hadn’t been so careless… If you had just answered the phone when I called you…”
I looked up. A tear trailed down his cheek, leaving a glistening path from his frigid, silvery eye. He felt my stare, and his snapped to mine, stricken.
“It’s okay.” I comforted him, snuggling a little closer.
“It’s not,” he murmured. “It’s not okay. But in those moments, when his hot, sticky blood stuck to my fingers as I tried to push it back into his body and his unfocused eyes ate up my face as if he were trying to remember it one last time…” He paused, swallowing thickly. “I did blame you. I was so goddamn angry at everything and everyone. But mostly you.”
“I never should have come to BearPaw,” I said. Living alone in hiding for the rest of my life would have been better than causing him this pain.
Liam made a sound and wrenched me away from him, holding me out just at arm’s length. His eyes burned into mine. “No.”
I tried to turn away, but he wouldn’t let me. Instead, he lifted me up so my feet dangled over the floor and we were eye level.
“Then Dad said your name. It snapped me out of that weird place I was spiraling into. I heard a gun go off… so many fucking shots. All the blame I felt in the previous thirty seconds? It evaporated. It vanished like it had never been there. All I could think was that you could be taken from me, too.”
I hung on his words, and not because I was literally dangling over the floor. Because he spoke with such emotion that I would have bought tickets just to listen to him speak.
“When I saw you standing over Spidey, when I saw you were the one doing the shooting”—his lips curled up a little devilishly—“I was so fucking proud of you.”
I gasped.
He nodded, sage. “Relieved, too. So goddamn relieved.”
My feet touched the floor again, but my legs were wobbly and weak.
Liam wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me into his body. “There’s no way in hell I could live in a world without you. I would never survive. Even though I’ve stayed away these past few days, you’ve been the only thing keeping me sane. So yes.” He gentled his voice, stroking a thumb across my cheekbone. “I blamed you for a fraction of a minute in the heat of a moment when my father was dying and I had a bullet hole in my shoulder. But then it was over. I haven’t blamed you since.”
“Really?” I asked. It was pathetic. He just poured out his heart, and I was standing there bumbling so badly, wanting to believe.
“I swear to Christ.”
“Please don’t.” I grimaced. He had a filthy mouth.
His low chuckle eased so much tension I didn’t even know I’d been holding. “I don’t blame you for my father’s death, Bellamy. He stepped farther into me, his eyes boring into mine. “This was not your fault. I want you here, so don’t ever, ever say you never should have come here. I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”
Tears of relief, joy, and pain slid over my cheeks.
Liam swiped them away. “I don’t blame you,” he whispered.
I dissolved against his chest, my whole body quaking with relief and sadness. He held me tight, in only the way he could, and in all honesty, it was his touch that convinced me more than all those beautiful, perfect words.
Touch didn’t lie.
After I pretty much drenched his shirt with tears, I pulled back, dabbing my eyes with his satin tie.
“Help yourself,” he muttered, amused.
“Liam?”
“Sweetheart?”
“If you haven’t blamed me these past three days, then why? Why haven’t you been here? Why didn’t you tell me about that letter? Why have you been avoiding me?”
His body stiffened a little, but he didn’t pull away completely until he was sure I was steady on my feet. Then he paced over to the small window above the kitchen sink.
With his back to me, he answered, anot
her admission that rocked my world. “I might not blame you, but I sure as hell blame me.”
I gasped. “What?”
He didn’t say anything or react to my shock. He just stayed at the window, staring out.
I raced over, grabbed him by the arm, and tugged until he glanced down at me.
“You deserve better than me, Bellamy.”
Liam
There. I said it. Out loud. In the flesh.
When she said nothing at all, I glanced down at her. She appeared stunned, eyes almost glazed over with surprise.
I made a rude sound. “Why do you have that look on your face?”
She blinked. “I think I misheard you.”
“I said you deserve better than me.”
She laughed.
Straight up laughed.
I scowled. “What the fuck are you laughing for?”
She put a hand over her mouth, stifling it. Apology in her eyes. Lowering her hand, she said, “That’s insane.”
I turned away from the window, fully facing her, leaning a hip on the side of the sink. “I’m a lot of things, sweetheart, but insane ain’t one of them.”
Something passed behind her eyes. Something I didn’t understand. “Of course you aren’t.” She reached out and circled her fingers around my wrist. Her hand was so small her fingers couldn’t reach all the way around.
Or maybe it was just because I was that much larger than her.
“Liam, you really think that?”
Gruffly, I replied, “I don’t think it. I know.” Agitated, I moved out of the kitchen and into the sunken living room. Charlie beat his tail against the couch. The damn dog took up almost all of it.
I scratched behind his ear anyway, then flung into a large leather club chair.
A moment later, Bellamy came into the room, carrying a mug of steaming coffee. She held it out to me, so I took it, not willing to rebuff anything she did for me.
“Where’s yours?” I asked, taking a sip. She’d made it exactly how I liked it.
She wrinkled her cute nose. “I don’t want any.”
“I’ll make you some hot chocolate,” I said, moving to stand.
She gestured me back. “No. I’m fine.”
It was an odd day when she turned down cocoa. I took in her face, the pallor of her skin, the dark circles beneath her eyes, and how her clothes seemed a little loose on her frame.
Frostbite (BearPaw Resort Book 3) Page 6
