by Callie Henry
“Who…what?” she asked, brown eyes luminous.
He dropped his hands from around her and gestured to the metal gate that opened into the apartment complex courtyard. She pulled a keycard from her purse and held it up to the reader. Following behind her, Liam scrambled to come up with a plausible way to finish the sentence that wouldn’t have her running for the hills.
“Who what, Liam?” she asked again, softer this time, over her shoulder.
“Who I’ve wanted to ask out on a date.” They were walking around a luminescent aqua-blue pool and she stopped, turning around to look at him. He did his best to look pitiful. “And you won’t even say yes.”
She rolled her eyes, then turned back around and kept walking toward her sister’s apartment.
“I won’t give up, Hannah,” he said to her back. “Just so you know? My goal by the end of tonight is for you to say yes. ‘Yes, Liam, I would love to see you again.’”
Hannah stopped at a bright-orange door and held the keycard up to the reader, waiting until the light turned green. Then she turned the knob and opened the door, flicking a switch in the doorway to flood the hallway with soft light.
“We’ll see,” she said, stepping inside.
For Liam, it was a small but significant victory. For the first time since he’d started asking her out tonight, she didn’t flinch or run to the bathroom or try to slap in him the friend-zone. Progress. I’ll take it.
“Want a soda?” she asked, placing her purse on a table by the door and turning left into the kitchen.
“Sure,” he answered, continuing down the hallway into Bree’s living room.
He wasn’t surprised to find that, like Bree, it was warm and homey. Knickknacks, framed photos, and tons of books lined shelves flanking an electric fireplace. A flowered couch looked plush and comfortable, and a pair of slippers waited by a cozy leather chair.
Hannah joined him, offering him a glass bottle of Coke and holding one of her own.
“This is the good stuff,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, her wide eyes sparkling. “It is.”
Aw, Hannah, what you do to my heart.
“What are we drinking to?” he asked.
“Umm.” She took a deep breath, and her face softened just a little. “Shakespeare’s plays?”
“How about we drink to seeing one together?”
She didn’t say anything, but he saw the slight trace of a smile as she raised her bottle to touch his before putting it between her lips. He stared, transfixed, as she settled her lips around the head of the bottle and tipped it back—it was so unintentionally sexy, he couldn’t have looked away if he tried, and his whole body tightened.
When she lowered the bottle, she grinned at him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. “I’m going to throw on some jeans.”
He nodded. “Mind if I lose the dress shoes?”
“Go for it,” she said. “You know, there’s a fire pit out by the pool. Are you any good at making fires?”
“I think I could generate a little heat,” he said, winking at her. “Meet me out there?”
She nodded before slipping into a dark back hallway. Liam toed off his shoes, grinning to himself as it occurred to him: when he’d asked her to see a play with him, she hadn’t said no.
CHAPTER 5
Liam
After pulling two lounge chairs from the pool over to the fire pit area, he gathered an armful of available logs from a pile by the fence and built a fire, tepee style.
Hmm. So she wasn’t saying no to a date anymore, but she still hadn’t said yes, and Liam couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she didn’t trust him. After all, he’d alluded to a “checkered past,” but he hadn’t come clean with her about what had happened.
And then he remembered something his mother was fond of saying: “If you want someone’s trust, offer them your honesty.”
Looking up, he saw Hannah walking over from her sister’s apartment, wearing jeans and a loose-fitting gray sweater. Her hair was down, and her feet were bare, and she looked so natural and casual and pretty, she made his heart ache.
He lit the fire and stayed squatting beside it as Hannah took the lounger directly behind him. Once the fire had caught, he swiveled to look up at her.
“Why won’t you go out with me?” he asked directly. “Is it because of my past? Because I told you I got into trouble and needed to repeat a year?”
Her eyebrows knitted together, and she shook her head quickly. “No. Not at all, Liam. Gosh, I hate it that you even wondered that.”
He stood up and sat down on the middle of the lounger beside her, facing her. He didn’t know if he believed her or not, even though she sounded genuine. She was a nice person, and in his experience, nice people said what you wanted to hear, even if it wasn’t 100 percent how they felt.
Suddenly something occurred to him, and it made his stomach drop like he’d swallowed a boulder. Maybe Todd had pulled her aside at the reception and told her about his past. Maybe she already knew what had happened. Maybe she’d never say yes to seeing him again because she thought he was too screwed up.
His frustration mounted.
“I think it’s hard for people to give second chances, to believe that someone can really change, but I promise you, I have.”
She shifted her body, lying on her side, her pretty face looking at him. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
“Oh, okay,” he said sarcastically. “I’ve never heard that one before.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means nice girls don’t date guys who got busted for drugs.”
She gasped. “Whoa! What?” Her lips parted in shock as she stared unblinkingly at him. “I had no idea—I mean, I didn’t know you—”
“I thought maybe Todd told you.”
She gulped, her eyes wide and concerned as she shook her head. “No! He didn’t say anything. I promise.”
Liam winced at her expression, wondering if he was doing the right thing but desperately needing to come clean to her. “Can I tell you what happened? Can I be honest with you?”
She stared back at him, saying nothing, her eyes scanning his face like she was trying to process what he’d just said.
“Please, Hannah,” he insisted. “Please, can I tell you what happened?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Tell me.”
Liam took a deep breath, resting his sweaty hands on his knees.
“I thought we were a happy family,” he started softly, searching her eyes as he started telling his story. “I mean, we weren’t perfect, but as far as I could tell, my parents loved each other, and I always felt sure they loved me. And suddenly it all came crashing down. My dad cheats on my mom with his secretary. My mom divorces him. She and I move to Oregon to be closer to her sister, and my dad and Jill, his secre—um, new wife—move here. So there I was in a new city, and I didn’t know anyone in school. And it wasn’t exactly easy to make friends two-thirds of the way through freshman year.”
“I can imagine,” she said, her voice warm, though her eyes were still cautious.
“I was alone. Really, really alone.”
“I know,” she said softly, nodding at him to continue.
“I literally had one friend. One. Theo. And he had an older brother, Rob, who hung out with this—I don’t know how to put it—group of guys, I guess…but they were rough, you know? Not a gang, but really rough. Drinking, smoking pot. Knocking over mailboxes. Spray-painting graffiti on overpasses. They’d all been busted for destruction of property and stuff like that. Sometimes when I was over at Theo’s place, we’d see them, but I’d cut out of there…mostly because they made me nervous.
“So, anyway, the summer after freshman year, my mom went back to work as the dispatcher at the local police station, where she worked really irregular hours. And I…” He shook his head back and forth, dropping her eyes. “I hung out at Theo’s all summer because I didn’t—I don’t know…I guess I didn’t feel lik
e I had anywhere else to go, and being home alone was too depressing, you know?
“One day we’re playing X-Box, and one of guys comes into the den and asks Theo to take a backpack to the mall. Rob steps in and says Theo can’t because he has ‘stuff to do,’ so the guy—his name was Spider—looks at me and asks me to do it. And I—I don’t know what I was thinking. I was stupid. I wanted to fit in. And I was sort of scared of saying no. So I took the backpack, and I didn’t ask what was in it. I was like, I’ll just get it over with. I’ll take it to the mall, drop it off and go home.
“I rode my bike to the mall and sat down at a table in the food court with the backpack like they told me to—it was bright red with a big spider drawn on it in black Sharpie. Anyway, I put it on the table and waited for a girl named Tina to come and get it.
“Five minutes later, I’m surrounded by police and facedown on the ground. Turned out it was heavy because there was a kilo of cocaine in the bottom of the bag and books on top of the package. ‘Tina’ was an undercover cop named Martina Alessio who’d been trying to bust Spider for months.”
He looked up to meet her eyes and flinched at the compassion and kindness he saw there. She didn’t speak, and she didn’t reach for him. She pillowed her hands under her head and listened quietly as he told his story.
Even though it was s shameful story about a scared and lonely kid, it was a part of who he was, and Liam needed to own it in order to reassure her that it was in his past.
“I never used cocaine. I never tried it. I’d never even seen what it looked like before that day. I swear. But I was arrested for juvenile drug possession with intent to distribute.”
“At fourteen,” she murmured.
He nodded. “At fourteen.”
Hannah took a deep breath and rolled to her back, staring up at the night sky, and it was like a hit to his chest to watch her pull away. So he’d been right after all; she didn’t want to date him because of his troubled history.
While he understood where she was coming from, there was nothing he could do about it. Yes, he’d been arrested. He couldn’t change what had happened, and if his past was a deal breaker for her, he may as well say good-bye to her now before he embarrassed himself any further.
“Well, thanks for listening. I, uh, I guess…I’ll get going.”
“No!” She sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the lounger so her knees touched his. “Don’t go. It’s okay. It was a mistake.”
He swallowed, blinking against a sudden and intense burn of tears.
She reached out, taking one of the hands on his lap and lacing her fingers through his.
“Tell me the rest.”
Looking down at their entwined fingers made him feel so profoundly grateful for second chances, it knocked the wind out him, and for a moment he couldn’t speak. All he could do was squeeze her fingers gently, feeling thankful that he’d met her.
When he finally looked up at her, her brown eyes were dark and shiny in the firelight, full of tenderness and understanding.
“Hannah,” he murmured, his heart swelling almost painfully as her lips turned up in the smallest, gentlest smile he’d ever seen.
Until that moment, he’d never seen anything or anyone as beautiful as Hannah Giacomina. And in that moment, he knew that he was falling for her more deeply than he’d ever thought possible in such a short amount of time. It overcame him and encouraged him, terrified him that something he’d wanted for so long might actually be happening right before his eyes and that somehow, some way, Hannah might give him the chance that no other girl had.
“It’s okay,” she whispered again as the fire crackled and snapped beside them, shooting bright-orange sparks into the sky. “Tell me the rest of your story.”
He swallowed, and his voice was shaky and emotional as he continued. “My mom had started dating this cop, Brian, in August, and when I was booked, he was off duty, but she called him to come in. He was furious, and she was crying, and it was the first time I really realized how much trouble I was in.
“My mom found a lawyer, but she had to call my dad to ask him to pay for it, and he came up and read me the riot act once I was released to the care of my mother. I mean, I was fourteen years old, facing juvenile detention, and I was scared. Oh, my God, Hannah, I was so scared.
“My mom and Brian tried to force me to tell the police who’d given me the backpack, but I wouldn’t. No matter what, I wouldn’t mention Theo, Rob, or Spider. It’s not that I wanted to stay friends with them—I stayed away from Theo after what happened. But, one, I knew Spider would hunt me down if I ratted on him, and two…I don’t know…I guess I felt like I needed to take responsibility for what I’d done. I took the backpack to the mall. I shouldn’t have, but I did. No one put a gun to my head. I never even tried to say no. So no matter what, I insisted that the coke was mine and only mine.
“When I went to my hearing, I thought my life was over. Detective Alessio was pissed that she’d failed at nailing Spider, and the evidence was undisputed. I was sure I was going to be sent straight to juvie. But luckily, because it was my first offense and Brian intervened on my behalf, I was sentenced to a year of drug counseling at a special school and a year of probation.
“It wasn’t that bad. I mean, the school sucked, and I hated every second there, but at least I didn’t have to go to juvie. I had school from eight to three every day, and then I could go home. Unfortunately, though, my grades at the rehab school were so bad, when I returned to public high school, I had to repeat my sophomore year.”
Her grip had tightened as he spoke, and he raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them, lingering over her hand for a long moment.
“How was that?”
“What?” he asked.
“Going back to the public school.”
He winced. “Everyone knew I’d been busted for drugs and ‘sent away’ for a year. Turns out people aren’t really eager to be friends with an ex-con.”
“You’re not an—”
“Hannah,” he said, giving her a look, “I sort of am.”
She didn’t fight him. “Keep going.”
“But I was tall and in good shape. They had a decent weight room at the rehab school. Anyway, that’s when I met Coach Gardiner. Coach G. Swim team coach at Medford High. He changed my life. He didn’t see me as a bad influence, just a kid who’d lost his way temporarily. He gave me a spot on the team.”
“That’s because you’re not a bad influence,” she whispered. “You just made a mistake. You’re a good person, Liam Callahan.”
His breath caught, and his eyes still burned as he stared back at her. She was all sweetness and understanding, and damn it, he didn’t deserve her, but he couldn’t bear sitting beside her anymore without holding her. He tugged her toward him. “Come sit with me.”
“Where?”
Releasing her hand, he patted the lounger cushion.
Her eyes widened. “Like, sh-share your chair?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think we can both…fit,” she whispered, wincing at the last word.
He huffed softly. “Okay, Hannah. We’re going to do this right now. Are you listening?”
She nodded, her eyes wide and her lips parted as she stared at him with a mixture of hope and fear.
“You are beautiful, Hannah Giacomina. You hear me saying that? You’re curvy, yeah, but I like that. I can’t even think of the words to tell you how much I like the way you look. You’ve taken a few shots at yourself tonight, and I need you not to do that anymore. Not in front of me, anyway, because here’s what I know: you’re so beautiful, I feel it here every time I look at you.” He placed his palm flat over his heart and tapped twice like a heartbeat. “So get up off your gorgeous, curvy ass and come sit with me. I promise you, we’ll fit.”
***
Hannah
Hannah’s eyes had already been glassy from listening to the emotional story of how Liam had acted out during some dark times in his l
ife, but his simple declaration and command reached into her chest and squeezed her heart.
You’re so beautiful, I feel it here every time I look at you.
As she untucked her feet and stood up on shaky legs, a huge lump rose up in her throat. She felt helpless and uncertain, but Liam didn’t let her overthink it. He scooched back on the lounger, lying on his side and looking up at her. Then he patted the cushion again.
Hannah took a deep breath and eased next to him, lying on her side and facing him. He smiled at her, reaching his arm across her waist and pulling her a little closer. She pillowed her head on her bent elbow and stared at his face, now only a few millimeters from hers.
Impulsively, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, inhaling his scent of soap and firewood. His fingers curled into her sweater as they kissed, their breath mingling, their hearts racing.
“Hannah,” he groaned, leaning away to look into her eyes. “Any q-questions? About me? About what h-happened?”
“No,” she said softly, staring at his handsome face in the mix of firelight and moonlight and wishing tonight never had to end.
“I have one,” he murmured. “Now, will you go out with me?”
She smiled at him and nodded. “Which play?”
“Whatever play you want.”
“Romeo and Juliet’s playing through September,” she said.
“Perfect,” he murmured, leaning forward to kiss her again. When he drew back, he raised one eyebrow. “So that’s a yes?”
She nodded. “That’s a yes.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
His chest heaved into hers as his lips found hers again, demanding and hungry. Hannah whimpered softly, reaching up to lock her hands around his neck.
When she finally drew back, her lips felt raw and rosy, and her breath was broken and shallow. What was happening to her? What was happening between them? Could she even stop it now if she wanted to? Because she didn’t want to, but it frightened her to let someone in when she’d done such a good job of keeping herself safe all these years.
