The Enemy Series

by M. E. Clayton

  It was also one of the very few times where I was immensely grateful for Joseph’s money. I put my plane ticket on his little back card, and I hadn’t cared how much a last-minute flight from California to Florida had cost. I had just needed to get the hell out of Sands Cove and away from Liam.

  What had surprised the hell out of me was when I had gotten a text from Brandon asking me if I was okay. Apparently, Liam had gone straight to our house, hoping to find me there, but after Brandon had let him search the house, he had left, and Brandon had texted me asking me if I was okay. I had text him back that I was fine, and while it still felt weird making nice with him, I answered because I still wanted to be a decent human being. I also texted him I’d be with my mom, so not to expect me home until next week, maybe. And now I was sitting in my mom’s dayroom looking out at the ocean with a book in my lap that I couldn’t get out of my head long enough to enjoy.

  When I had shown up, she had immediately known something was wrong. When I threw myself in her arms and cried in her embrace, there had been no doubt. But she hadn’t hovered or demanded an explanation. She just let me cry and held me until I had fallen asleep. Showing up on her doorstep at two in the morning had to have been a shock. I’m sure she was worried, but she was waiting for me to come to her.

  I had slept through breakfast, and when I woke up, I had fired off a text to both Emerson and Brandon, letting them know I was safe in Belle Isle. After that, I stayed holed up in the guess room I had stayed in during the weekend. It wasn’t until an hour ago that I came out ready to face the music.

  I must have drifted off because, the next thing I knew, my mom’s sweet voice was in my ear. “Roselyn, honey,” she whispered.

  I opened my eyes and my body automatically stretched awake. “Oh, god,” I moaned as my body came to life. “That chair is not comfortable.”

  Mom laughed. “It is if you sit in it correctly,” she teased.

  I sat up and stretched a bit more, but I knew that unless I started a full-on yoga class, I was going to have to come clean with my mother. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I told her. “It’s just so…peaceful in here.”

  My mom scanned the room with a sweet smile. “It is. It’s my favorite room in the house.” She looked back at me. “I might ask Joseph to get me one for our house.” She said it like she’d be asking for a nice purse she saw, and I was still stunted in surprise by the little differences in her now that she’s been married to Joseph for so long.

  I decided to bite the bullet. “I’m sorry for showing up the way I did last night, Mom.”

  “Oh, Roselyn, there’s nothing to be sorry for,” she replied. “You are my child, Rose. You are welcomed wherever I am, always.”

  “I know, Mom, it’s just…showing up here unexpectedly was rude and-”

  “Stop it, Roselyn,” she chided. “Look, honey…I know…I know what kind of parents live in Sands Cove. I…” she drew a deep breath “…I even know the kind of parent Joseph is. But, honey, that’s not you and me. That will never be you and me. Even though I’m with my husband all the time that does not mean I’m not still your mother. If you needed me home, then that’s where I’d be. I just thought…I guess I was just trying to let us both fit in with our new world.”

  She was sitting on the opposite settee, and there was a small decorative glass table between us, so I leaned forward so she could feel my words. “No, Mom,” I whispered. “This has nothing to do with your marriage to Joseph or my life in Sands Cove.” I shrugged a shoulder. “I mean, sure, I miss you and it’d be nice to spend more time together, but I understand why you want to be with Joseph all the time. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be with a guy who treats them like gold all the time?”

  “Then tell me what’s going on, Roselyn,” she replied. “What would make you jump on a plane and fly to Florida in the middle of the night?”

  “Liam…” I whispered dejectedly.

  “What’d he do?”

  Jesus.

  What a question. And how do I even begin to try to explain to her what he did?

  “I found out he was keeping a secret from me and…that hurts, Mom,” I told her. “It hurts that he couldn’t trust me with it.”

  “Did he…did he cheat on you or something?”

  I shook my head. “No, no. It’s nothing like that,” I assured her.

  She bit her lip and then curled them inward like she was trying to stop her next words. Eventually, she said, “Roselyn, honey, I can’t help you if I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I didn’t want to tell her about Brandon.

  At all.

  So, I lied just enough to be able to sleep at night still. “He found out a girl who doesn’t like me was planning an awful prank, and instead of telling me about it, he took upon himself to make a decision he thought was best for everyone all around. He didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was going on and it left me feeling stupid and…like an outsider.”

  She shook her head. “That always seems to be the universal problem with men,” she mumbled. “They’re fixers. They always seek to fix things. And they always seem to think they know what’s best for the women in their lives. It’s like a sickness, really,” she tried to tease.

  “I just…all I asked from him was to include me. I already feel like such an outsider living in that town and going to school with those kids,” I said trying to explain. “I didn’t need to feel it from him.”

  “I can see how that would make you feel,” she agreed.

  I let out a deep breath.

  This was pointless.

  There was no way my mom could give me real worthy advice if she didn’t know the entire story, but I just couldn’t. If she knew what I’d done with Deke and Liam, I wasn’t sure if I could ever face her again. And if she knew the depths of Brandon’s hatred for me, and it was that very hatred that prompted Tiffany to do what she did, it could ruin her marriage. And I know if I told her what Liam said to me that morning, she’d never accept him.

  Never.

  And then, just like a baseball bat to the head, everything shifted into focus.

  Why would I be worried that she’d never accept Liam if I had no plans on forgiving him and taking him back?

  I wasn’t telling my mother the extent of Liam’s betrayal for the same reason I wasn’t telling her about Brandon’s. Telling her would change the entire trajectory of both our lives for good. I didn’t tell her because I didn’t want her or me to make a decision we couldn’t come back from.

  I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to forgive Liam eventually and downplayed the rest of my troubles. “I just felt stupid, Mom. Liam keeping me out of the decision making made me feel as if I didn’t matter in our relationship. As if my voice wasn’t as important as his.” She cocked her head and was quiet for a bit.

  After a few seconds, she said, “Balancing the roles of the man in the relationship and the woman in the relationship is a tricky thing, Roselyn. A real man is going to always screw up because he doesn’t know how not to be the man in the relationship, and that role entails protecting you, as well as providing for you and loving you. You matter, honey. You are probably the only thing that matters to him. Unfortunately, in their warped macho minds, they think we’re not strong enough to suffer the bad. Or, simply, they just don’t want any bad touching us, and so they go off and make those ridiculous decisions without consulting us.”

  “And…what…what if they’re cruel when they’re making those decisions?”

  “There’s no excuse for being cruel to someone,” she replied, “but there’s being cruel and treating you cruelly. Does he treat you cruelly? Is it a pattern? A habit? Is that the person he is with you?” I shook my head. “Then he wasn’t cruel, honey. He just made a mistake. Granted, a big one if it caused you to fly all the way down here to Florida, but a mistake, nonetheless.”

  Suddenly, there was a pounding on the front door. We both stood up and looked at each other in surprise.
“What the hell?” I muttered.

  “I don’t-”

  “Roselyn! Goddamn it, Roselyn!”

  “Holy shit,” I breathed, stunned to my core.

  My mom’s brows shot up. “Liam?”

  I nodded. “Liam.”

  And then she stunned me to my core. She started laughing.

  Chapter 34

  Liam~

  I owed Emerson my life.

  After Roselyn flew out of Ramsey’s house, hopped in Emerson’s car and took off, I had been seriously beside myself.

  I lost my motherfucking shit.

  I lost my shit, and it was that rock-bottom drop into insanity that convinced Emerson to help me.

  After I watched Emerson’s car round the corner, I had jumped in my car and took off. I went straight to Roselyn’s house and Brandon-smart guy that he was-let me tear the place apart to look for her. When I couldn’t find her anywhere, I had returned to Ramsey’s and showed Emerson just what was a stake if I couldn’t get Roselyn to forgive me.

  Everything was at stake.

  She finally relented and promised me she’d let me know as soon as she heard from Roselyn.

  It had been the longest night of my life.

  It wasn’t until the next day-school completely forgotten-that Emerson got Roselyn’s text that she was safe and in Florida with her mother. What shocked the fuck out of me was Brandon’s text to Emerson letting her know that he’d received a text from Roselyn too, letting him know she was safe.

  I hated Brandon Greene with the power of a thousand suns, but I knew if Roselyn was finding some middle ground with him, for the sake of their parents, I was going to have to find a way to deal with that.

  Ramsey and Deke had driven me to the airport, and I had jumped on the first flight out, making sure there were no layovers, because I was positive I had been one universal hiccup away from losing my goddamn mind.

  The flight had been torturous, but I had done my best not to appear like a madman. The last thing I had needed was to get kicked off a flight for appearing unstable.

  Because. I. Had. Been. Unstable.

  And, now, I was banging on Roselyn’s mother’s rental in Belle Isle. Ramsey had gotten me all the necessary information to find them and had texted me everything as soon as my plane had landed. There were many times in my life I cursed my parents and what horrible people they were, but this was one of the few times where I was grateful that they were money-hungry vultures. I wouldn’t have been able to go after Roselyn if I didn’t have the money my parents had.

  “Roselyn?!” I yelled against as I kept banging on the elaborately decorated front door. As soon as I had pulled up in my rental, I noticed right off that the house wasn’t much different from all the homes in Sands Cove. “Roselyn?!”

  The door swung open, and I came face to face with what Roselyn was destined to look like twenty years from now. Mrs. Greene had her blonde hair piled up on her head in a casual-but not-knotted bun. Her face was older, but graceful, and those blue eyes were the same blue eyes I was helplessly in love with. She was also petite like Roselyn and I towered over the woman, but she didn’t seem fazed in the least.

  “Liam, I presume?” she asked, her voice clear and tinged with a bit of…mirth, I think.

  I took a step back. “Yes, ma’am,” I answered as politely as I could. My skin felt like it was trying to crawl off my body knowing that Roselyn was in that house and I had to wait until, or even if, her mother would allow me inside to get to her.

  Aurora Greene cocked her head, and her blue eyes were knowing and judging all at the same time. She was sizing me up and, whatever her summation, that would decide if she was going to let me in or not.

  After a million agonizing hours, she finally smiled at me, took a step back, and allowed me entrance to her home and access to Roselyn.

  The door shut behind us and I turned to face her. “Thank you, Mrs. Greene.”

  She smirked. “Don’t thank me yet, young man,” she replied. “Just because I welcomed you into my house doesn’t mean I won’t back my daughter if she tells you to leave.”

  I didn’t have time to fuck around. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” I told her and left it at that, because I wasn’t certain what all Roselyn has told her, and I didn’t want to dig myself deeper into a hole if I didn’t have to.

  Her face softened that of a woman who has lived a life of pain, disappointment, and happiness. “If I thought you did, I wouldn’t have let you inside this house, Liam,” she said. “She’s in the sitting room, but before you go in there, know that…well, Rose loves you. She loves you, and if she forgives you, it’ll be because of how much she loves you. It won’t have anything to do with what you tell her.”

  I understood all too clearly. “Meaning, it’s her choice and her choice only,” I concluded.

  Aurora nodded. “If she forgives you, it’ll be because she chose to forgive. You have no power over her, Liam,” she bluntly delivered. “Her love for you is what has power over her. Remember that.”

  I nodded because I knew she was right. I mean, that’s why I was here, right? I wasn’t here because Roselyn called for me. I wasn’t here because Roselyn expected me to chase after her.

  No.

  I was here because of my love for her.

  I was here because I loved her in a way that I couldn’t live without her. I was at the mercy of my feelings for her and that’s why I was in goddamn Florida instead of fifth period class. I was here for the same reason she’ll forgive me if she does.

  Goddamn love.

  “I understand, Mrs. Greene,” I told her.

  She gave me a tight nod. “Head on behind the stairs and it’s the third room on the right,” she replied, and walked off to…God knows where. This house was fucking huge.

  I followed Aurora’s directions and, no lie, I had to count to ten in front of the sitting room doors before drumming up the balls to go in. I wasn’t too testosterone driven not to realize my entire future was sitting on the other side of these doors. If Roselyn didn’t forgive me, I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do.

  Fuck, I’d probably go to jail for stalking and eventually kidnapping, truth be told.

  I turned the doorknobs and pushed the dual glass doors open. I walked in and the view was a stunning vision of deep blue Florida waters. But the only vision I was interested in was that of Roselyn standing next to the bay windows looking out at the beautiful view of nature.

  My feet didn’t stop until I was standing behind her, my arms itching to wrap themselves around her body, and never let her go.

  But I didn’t.

  I failed to respect her in enough ways that I didn’t need to add one more. “Roselyn.”

  I counted to thirty before she finally turned around to face me. She looked up at me and I wasn’t even sure if I had the right to ask her to forgive me. I knew I couldn’t take back the words I said, but I had needed it to be a swift hit. Had I not been so cruel, Roselyn would have started asking questions and arguing with me, and I could admit, I don’t know if I would have been strong enough to pull it off had she started begging for an explanation.

  I did what I thought I had to do at the time, and while I’m not sorry because it was the right thing to do, maybe I could have examined other avenues rather than the one I focused on and ran with.

  “Roselyn, baby-”

  “Don’t, Liam,” she said cutting me off. “Just…don’t.”

  How could I not? I flew all the way here to beg her to forgive me. How in the fuck was I supposed to accomplish that if she didn’t let me speak?

  “Ros-”

  She jerked her chin towards the side. “Why don’t we have a seat?” she suggested sounding like she was conducting a goddamn job interview.

  I stepped back and my brows shot up? “A seat?”

  She nodded already making her way around me towards one of the settees that undoubtedly costs the same as a car. I followed like a chump because I didn’t know what the
fuck else to do. She was giving nothing away, and I was about to lose my shit with her indifference.

  Roselyn sat down and, instead of sitting next to her, I sat on the table across from her. I should probably care that this wasn’t my furniture, but I didn’t.

  Nothing mattered but these next few minutes with Roselyn.

  Deke and I have given Ramsey a lot of shit for his crazed ways when it came to Emerson, but I so got it now. You find that person…that only person in the world who pulls at you and it really is a case of insanity. What you feel for them is so intense it scares you but not as much as the possibility of losing them scares you. We see it all the time with those couple we see fight more often than not and wonder what they’re doing together.

  Well, now, I know.

  “Liam,” Roselyn started snapping me out of my doomsday thoughts, “let me start off by say…” she took a deep breath, “…what you did was unforgiveable.”

  Chapter 35

  Roselyn~

  The tick in Liam’s jaw was the only sign that he heard me.

  I hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but there couldn’t be any confusion about what was appropriate and what wasn’t if we were going to make this thing between us work.

  When Mom and heard the banging on the door and his voice calling for me. She had started laughing and snickered something out young love. I had looked over at her, and when I had confirmed that the screaming maniac at the front door was Liam, she had simply asked if I wanted to talk to him or if she should call the police.

  And all I could think about was that Liam had followed me to Florida.

  I wasn’t sure if it was Brandon or Emerson who told him where I was at, but it didn’t matter. He was here. He was here and, just for the sake of our friendships with Emerson and Ramsey alone, we needed to talk about where we stood and what was next. So, I had told my mother to let him in, but even the few precious of solitary moments I had to prepare myself, hadn’t been enough.