I don’t ask any of the questions flying through my head:what does this mean? What now? How was that for you?
Instead I take Liam’s hand, and when he looks at me, brow furrowed and expression as haunted as I feel, a small smile rises to my lips. “Liam,” I say.
His eyes glitter. “Yeah.”
“Take me home.”
7
Liam
It shouldn’t be this easy.
Life’s too tricky, too trip-wired, too wary, like a hungry animal in the woods. I know I can’t just walk back into Lexie’s life like this, three years after walking out.
But for once, for today, I’m not gonna think about it. I’m not gonna think about Jockey or Milo or whatever the fuck I’m going to have to do to get this town back under control. For once, I’m going to let myself have this.
Her.
The car ride over to her place was quiet. I blasted the heat and she sat in the passenger’s seat, gazing out the window with a faint smile on her face. As the neon pulses of downtown blazed on, she flipped on the radio, and some vulgar, sugar-sweet pop ballad played and she didn’t turn it off.
There was something about that that struck me: she didn’t care if the music was shitty or if I hated it or if it didn’t fit with the moment, the dangerous electric moment—she just took up her space, and it made me want her again, as more than a good fuck, so badly I ached.
Her friend, the office guy, gave me a once-over when she told him she was leaving with me. I didn’t hear what he said, but he said it with a smile—a mean little cold one—and gave her a half-hug goodbye.
“He gonna be pissed later?” I’d asked as we went out to the lot, where the Miata was waiting, agleam under a streetlight. “He’ll give you shit?”
“He’ll get over it.” She said it with a smile, but there was guilt in the set of it. Intuitively, I went to take her hand and tell her it’d be OK, that he could fuck off, that a real friend gets it when you have more important shit to do than drink and dance.
But I stopped myself. I still have no idea where we stand. Maybe even less after what happened between us in that alley.
Now I’m at her place, the night steeping darker and deeper. There’s evidence of her kids everywhere: toys scattered and in little bins in the corners, horrifying crayon-renditions taped to the fridge, despicably cute trios of everything: TV show sippy cups, stuffed animals, raincoats on pegs in the entryway.
Wistfulness twists inside me, looking at all that. My dad wasn’t perfect, but he was a good guy, and a better parent. He loved me and Margot ferociously, and some part of me thought, or really believed, that he’d always be around. That he’d meet our kids and take them fishing and sit them on his knee on the holidays.
I didn’t realize, actively, how badly I want this kind of thing.A family.Not just a family, but a woman. An ally, a friend, a confidant, a protector, a lover. Someone at my side, facing the world with me. Someone who calls me on my shit. Someone who elevates me, makes me better.
I’m sitting on the edge of Lexie’s bed, her bathroom light falling hard on the floor and steam pluming out in coconut-scented whorls. She’s humming faintly. And it feels so forbidden and perfect that suddenly it also seems inevitable. Me and her, circling one another like stars on the same event horizon. Destined to meet. To crash, or burn, or shine brighter.
I get up and go to the doorway, knock softly. “Lexie.”
“Hmm?” Her voice is faintly surprised, like she forgot I was there.
“Can I come in?”
She’s silent a long time, then I hear the sliding door glide open. She’s wreathed in steam, her wet hair dripping. She gives me a grin that could pierce steel.
I give her one back, then strip, and step in under the hot spray.
A wave of want washes over me, looking down at her, naked and dripping. She’s curvier now, after the kids, with hips that beg to be held and sweet full breasts that rest heavily, salaciously. She’s always been beautiful, but now she’s irresistible, and the way she looks at me—with such blinding confidence, such a fine, strange balance of self-deprecation and awareness—makes me want to do some seriously stupid shit.
Like get on my knees.
Like tell her I love her.
Fuck.
She touches my chest, her eyes widening slightly, and I realize she’s looking at my tattoos. They’ve spread over my shoulders, my collarbone, my ribs, up and down my arms. I don’t know why, but it hooked me in prison, this delicious pain, this forbidden thing. It was my drug in there, the humming buzz of the homemade needle, the sting of black ink and the tang of my own blood in the air.
