“Why?”
“Why?” Terry echoed, leaning her head forward, her brow furrowed. “I guess because we’re both going that way, and so we can, I don’t know, keep each other company.”
He nodded at her backpack. “You a backpacker.”
“Not professionally, no.”
“So what are you doing out here?”
“Smells like crap in there,” Terry said, jerking her head to the side.
“In there, too,” he replied, and this time he actually did smile. It was just a quick flash, as though momentarily a happy emotion had broken past his otherwise dour demeanor.
“So, why Vietnam?” Terry asked, leaning on the railing beside her. He leaned back against the door, and folded his arms across his chest. He wasn’t beefy, but he was definitely big, a lean strength to him. Even at an angle, feet out and upper back against the door, he was still far taller than her. The man was simply huge.
“I’ve been before, and I liked it. So I’m going back.”
“Yeah? You liked it?”
Liam shrugged. “Yeah, I did. It’s a nice country.
She nodded. “That’s why I chose it.”
“Chose it?”
“Yeah. Like, when I was picking a place to go. I wanted to see Asia-”
“Asia,” Liam interrupted. “That’s a pretty general want.”
“It is, isn’t it? So I had to narrow it down,” Terry said, nodding at him. “So I asked around, looked on the internet, read a few books, and chose Vietnam.”
“Why?”
“Well, I guess because they say that the people are nice. Food’s supposed to be great. I mean, the baguettes in Hanoi are said to be amazing. Isn’t that weird, that they do French bread?”
“No,” Liam replied, his tone matter-of-fact. “They were occupied by the French before.”
“But it’s still weird, right? You just don’t expect to find a baguette in a country where the main dish is rice noodles.” Terry shrugged at him.
“It’s not really that weird to me.”
The impression that he was doing his best to kill their conversation was nearly impossible to ignore. “When was the last time you went?” she asked.
“During the,” Liam began, before stopping.
“During the?”
“It was a while ago.”
Terry wondered what he had meant to say. During the what? Was there a festival or something he had went to? Perhaps the lunar new year? “A long time ago?”
“You could say that. But to me, it doesn’t feel that long ago.” He looked up at the sky, and beneath the shadow that darkened his lower face and neck, she saw a thick vein, and tendons.
“Yeah? How old are you?”
“Sorry?”
“I’m not being rude, am I? Come on, you’re a guy. You can tell me your age.”
“How old do you think I am?” Liam asked.
“Hmm, late twenties or early thirties, probably.”
“Bingo.”
“How old do you think I am, Liam?”
“Hmm,” he sounded, before pausing. “You must only be nineteen.” His eyes smiled, but his lips did not.
Terry grinned. There was a flash of character! “Ha! I wish. I’m twenty eight.”
“So,” he said, gesturing at her. “What brings you out here?”
“I took an impromptu holiday.”
“Why?”
“Argh, why,” Terry repeated, running her hand through her hair. “Lots of reasons. Bad job, bad boss, crazy family, and I just couldn’t take it. That’s the short version, want to hear the long one?”
“Not really,” Liam said. He shrugged at her, but it didn’t seem like he’d said it to be cruel.
She compromised. “Good, because I don’t want to tell it. But basically, I was being overworked, and asked to do things that were dubious with regard to their legality, and so I quit.”
“I thought you didn’t want to tell it.”
“I don’t,” Terry said. “But, come on, I was being asked to possibly break the law. I had to quit.”
“Where was this?”
“London.”
“I’ve been,” he said, nodding. “A long time ago.”
“Somewhere else you’ve been a long time ago,” Terry mused. “You must have done a lot of traveling in your youth.”
“Yes,” he said.
“So,” Terry said. It was becoming quite clear that she was going to have to handle brunt of the conversation. “When were you there?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Liam murmured. “Anyway.” He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he straightened up, turned, and began to slide open the door to the carriage she had come from.
“No, wait,” Terry blurted. “I’m serious, it smells terrible in there, and it’s so full of people you won’t even get in.”
“Well you got out, right?”
“I only barely got out,” Terry said. “And that seat is most likely gone.” She put her hands up in an exaggerated shrug.
“You had a seat?”
“Yeah.”
“Better than I managed.”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Terry said.
Liam stopped opening the door then, and he let go of it, letting it slide back shut of its own accord. He folded his arms again, looked at her, a very slight expression of curiosity in his features.
Eventually, he spoke. “What do you want?” It was accusing without sounding harsh.
“Nothing,” Terry said. She felt like she was having a confrontation with him, only the emotion on his side was vacant.
“So you just want to go across the border together?”
Terry grew frustrated. “You know,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t really care.” She turned, and looked back at the scenery sweeping past her. More muddy green fading into a blurred line which turned into bright blue. She peeked over her shoulder a few minutes later, just to see what Liam was up to, if he was even still there. He was sat down on the ledge, his legs hanging off the side of the train, staring out toward the horizon.
And Terry smiled.
CHAPTER TWO
“It’s hot today,” Terry chirped, and Liam looked at the girl he’d just met. There was a quality to her that both attracted him, and irritated him, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on why that was. She was striking, that was undeniable. With curious sea-green eyes, and a seemingly infinite repertoire of expressions, he found himself watching her face more than anything else. She was a bigger girl, curvy and sumptuous. It was just the sort of body he liked, but that was a pleasure he could no longer allow himself. Even though time had cooled his furnace, and loss had quietened his urges, he found himself entertaining thoughts that hadn’t surfaced in his mind for a very long while. And it worried him in a distant sort of way, like he were on a ship at sea in a thicket of fog, with a shadowy, uncertain mass looming ahead.
Standing now, on the nearly empty platform which was nothing more than bare concrete and a few rotting wooden benches, he watched her as she walked around, took a photo or two on her phone, and all with a focused look of interest on her face. The rest of the train’s passengers had long since disappeared, but she had insisted that they wait for the throng to disperse before they made their way to the border. In that time she seemed quite happy to simply explore the crappy old train station in a gentle, if a little methodical manner. With caution, too. Her steps were short, and she looked first around corners before going around.
The behavior seemed to conflict with what he had gleaned from her, personality-wise, in their short conversation aboard the train. Where there it was fire and confidence, a willingness to take the lead, here she seemed a little reserved. He was not so blind as to overlook that it might be his presence that was affecting her. He knew that he was difficult to get along with, and he knew that he generally made people feel awkward.
Liam put his hands on his hips, fingers outward with thumb on the bone, and looked, a hint of i
mpatience slithering through his thoughts. A guard was half-asleep in his chair at one end, cigarette burning close to his fingers, and down the other end was a homeless person, wrapped in more clothing than the weather warranted, and hunched over against a pillar, likely asleep. The floor of the platform was cracked, one side of the station sinking into the wet earth beneath.
“Yeah,” he said, wiping beads of sweat from his upper lip. “Hot.”
“And humid,” Terry remarked.
“Let’s go.” He looked at her, watched as she regarded him briefly before nodding.
“You’re travelling light,” she said to him as she approached, pointing at his bag. “What’s that hold, like a pair of jeans and two t-shirts? Can you even get a bottle of water in there?”
“Clothing is cheap in Vietnam,” he replied. It was the truth. “Besides, it’s all I got.” He set off, not bothering to look back to see if she was following him or not.
“All you got? What do you mean?” she asked, jogging to catch up, and then falling into step beside him.
Liam shrugged. “What I said. It’s all I got.”
“Like everything you own?” she persisted.
“Pretty much,” he replied, looking at her. He didn’t smile or offer any expression of modesty. He simply looked at her.
“Oh,” she croaked. The discomfort was obvious in her face, and it even extended into her walk. She stiffened up, held the straps of her backpack with her hands, and looked away as though there was something more interesting to look at. But on the edge of a run down, depressed, and sad town, there was nothing else to look at.
Liam wondered if her spunk was an act. He’d met enough people like that in his lifetime. They weren’t bad, but they could be grating. But he knew himself well enough to realize that he hadn’t gone into the next carriage on the train for a reason. He couldn’t deny what he longed for, even if he wouldn’t confront the thought head-on. It was a long time ago that he had given all that up. It was not worth it. It was never worth it.
“God, it’s filthy around here,” she said.
He looked down at the pavement, saw litter scattered about, piling in the drains. “Yeah.”
“You’d think they’d do a better job when it’s such a tourist hotspot.”
“The tourists don’t bring money to this town.” He looked at her, the sun behind narrowing his eyes. “They simply walk straight through it. Transients.”
“Someone must buy something.”
“Yeah, but the guy selling drinks in his cart probably came over on the first train. This place,” he said, looking around. “There’s not much going on here. We’re on the edge of the city, too.” Silence encased them for a while. “What were you saying about your illegal job?” he asked. They had a long walk ahead of them, and it would probably best to make it as smooth as possible.
She waited for a moment before answering him. “Yeah,” she said, her voice flat, and her eyes still roaming across the boring scenery of a town that had seen better days. “My boss wanted me to print something and it could have amounted to being illegal.”
“What was your job?”
“I edited for a publishing company.”
“A publishing company?” he echoed. “For what, the web?”
“No, we were print only. You know, like, we handled some property and tech magazines, a couple of free newspapers. One hairdressing quarterly.”
“There’s an industry without much life left.”
“I disagree,” she said, and she stopped. Liam didn’t, and he kept walking. She continued: “Print publishing will never go out of fashion, no matter what all the tech-heads say.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s too ingrained.”
“So was the abacus and counting frame.”
“A digital calculator is just a modernized form of the abacus.” Liam could hear the roll of her eyes in the tone of her voice.
“Digital media is just a form of print media. The words are the same, aren’t they?”
“Do you own an e-reader? Or a tablet?”
“No,” Liam admitted. “But I don’t read the newspaper, either.”
“There’s a surprise.”
Now Liam stopped. He turned and looked at Terry who was walking a few steps behind him. He grinned at her. “Tell me more about your illegal job.”
“There was a new magazine,” she said, missing his grin, her eyes glued to a rusty shovel that was lying on the ground. “It’s a spade.”
“Yeah.”
“Why leave it out here to rust?” She looked up and down the empty street. On the road beside them were two cars stopped at a light, but otherwise the area was barren. “God, that’s weird.”
“Not really,” Liam said, shrugging. He kept walking.
“Anyway,” he heard her say. “There was a new magazine that we were contracted to handle. It was a bit different from our usual stuff.”
“How so?” Liam pointed toward a pothole in the ground where the concrete pavement had sunken in. He looked around, saw the dead stump of a tree not far away. It was probably a large root that had rotted, and the soil beneath had caved. “Watch out,” he added.
“Thanks. Um, well basically it was a gossip mag.”
“That sounds boring.”
“Well, it can be boring,” Terry said, and Liam nodded. “Anyway, libel laws are pretty weird back home, and I wanted to edit some stuff out that could get us in trouble, but he told me to keep it in. He being my boss, I mean.”
“So? That’s his call, right?”
“Right, but it was a lie.”
“So?”
“That’s illegal.”
“You can go to jail?” Liam asked, stopping and turning. He had walked a little ahead, and with the sun high behind Terry, he had to squint.
“You should get some sun specs.”
“Yeah.”
“You sure you don’t have one in amongst all your worldly possessions?” She nodded at his bag.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not that good at communication, are you?”
Liam chose not to respond.
“Well, anyway, yeah, I’m not sure if you can go to jail or not. I remember researching it briefly, but all that I really found out was that though technically you can go to jail, it’s archaic and no judge will do that.”
“So your main concern was being sued.”
“No, that wasn’t it,” Terry said, shaking her head. She sped up and walked past him, and Liam fell into step beside her. “It would just be the company that got sued, not me. I’d be protected from all the fallout.”
“Unless they put the blame on you. Use you as an out.”
“Yeah, there is that,” she conceded. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“No?”
“No,” she said. Liam watched her as she mulled the thought over in her mind. “They probably would have, you know.”
He smiled. “Probably.” He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. “So?” he prompted.
“I just didn’t want to be a part of it, you know? Lying about someone just to sell a few copies of a goss magazine? It just didn’t sit right with me.”
“Well, it’s not like you wrote the lie,” Liam said, looking at her sideways. He liked her profile.
“No, but it passed through me. Anyway, I think that was more the last straw, you know. The company had changed ownership not too long ago, and things were going in a different direction than I wanted to go. Plus, with everything going on at home, it just felt right to leave.”
“Good,” he said. “Change is good.”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “No regrets.”
“Good.” Liam wasn’t entirely convinced by her, but he mirrored her nodding anyway.
“What about you? With all your worldly possessions in that tiny thing? You know, you still haven’t told me what you’re doing out here.”
“Just visiting.”
“Okay,” Terry said, and he he
ard annoyance in her voice.
He looked at her, and relented. He may as well be fair. “It’s nothing really that interesting,” he said. “I’ve just got a bit of savings, and so I’ve been doing some traveling. I like to travel light. I don’t care about possessions, and I go where I want.”
“You know,” she said, looking ahead. “I’m not forcing you to tell me stuff. We don’t have to talk about it. Or at all.”
“Nah, it’s not like that,” Liam murmured. He looked at her again, waited for her eyes to meet him, and then he smiled. “I’m not trying to spoil the chat.”
“If you say so,” she said, breathing out. “We’re nearly at the crossing, right?”
“Yes. Got everything ready?” He asked her the question, ignoring that she probably thought he really had spoiled the moment.
“Yes,” she said, tapping her chest. Two strings disappeared from around her neck into her top.
“Keep everything there?”
“No,” she said. She smiled, pursed-lipped, and Liam found it quite disarming. “Everything important is hidden away somewhere on my body.”
“Nice.”
“Nobody’s stealing my shit,” she said, laughing.
But Liam had already stopped listening. The border crossing was close, and he was thinking about what he was going to do. Past the small building that regulated human traffic, Liam could see a wide cement road lined on either side by a tall fence topped with barbed wire, behind which was the kind of thick sub-tropical vegetation native to the region.
“Hey, Terry,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got to use the toilet. Meet me on the other side.”
“Of what?”
“The building,” Liam said, pointing at it and already beginning to walk away. “It spits you out right onto that big road and that’s where you walk across to Vietnam.”
Terry looked at him for a moment, before agreeing. “Sure,” she said. “See you there.”
“Cool.” He turned and made for the stall of what he knew would be filthy toilets.
* * *
The border crossing was heavily guarded, with armed soldiers, trained dogs, and outgoing x-ray machines for baggage. Terry was queuing up with mountains of people, many of whom were travelers and backpackers. A man in the line next to hers, rake thin and tall as a basketball player, smiled toothily at her.
Fated Mates: The Alpha Shifter Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle) (Insatiable Reads) Page 125
