He eyes the clipboard. “Why do you have a clipboard?”
“Because if I leave this up to your emotionally constipated ass, you’ll blow it before we even get to step one.”
He snorts but it’s something. I flip to the first page.
“We’re going to recreate your story. The real one. The parts that mattered. The moments that made Olive fall for you.”
He stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “That feels corny.”
“So be corny,” I shoot back. “Be real. She’s already seen you fail. Now remind her why she stayed.”
He looks away. I give him a second. Then I press.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” I say, watching him over the rim of my coffee mug. “The night you met.”
Liam’s face shifts like he’s trying to fight a smile and loses. There’s warmth there, underneath all the wreckage.
“It was at a bar in Sheridan,” he says, voice low with memory. “She was on stage, getting water dumped on her.”
I bark out a laugh. “Right. Some wet t-shirt contest. She looked like a drowned cat, right?”
He grins. “Yeah, but she still looked good.”
“And didn’t you call her the wrong name and then ask her friend out?”
He winces, chuckling. “Not my best moment.”
“No, but it was memorable,” I say, flipping the page on my clipboard. “So we recreate it.”
His brow arches. “What, you want to pour water on her again?”
“No,” I snort. “We use my bar. Stage a lowkey night. Open mic, maybe. You don’t flirt with anyone else this time. You see her first. Only her.”
He gives me a long, skeptical look. “And that’s supposed to win her back?”
I shrug. “No. But it’s a start. You’re not trying to impress her. You’re trying to remind her of who you were before you let fear turn you into a damn wrecking ball.”
He looks away, and I don’t push. The silence stretches until I hear the soft scratch of pen on paper he’s jotting something in the margin of the clipboard.
Progress.
“What else?” he asks.
I flip the page. “The baby-making room.”
He nearly chokes on his coffee. “Jesus, Will.”
“Relax,” I say, deadpan. “Not that kind of reenactment. But that’s where the magic happened, right? Where you think y’all conceived the babies?”
I got that little bit of information from him on the drive last night. Not sure what a baby-making room is, but it must have done it’s job.
Liam sighs, his expression sobering. “I guess so.”
“You guess?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “We weren’t in a good place then. The real magic happened when she moved in here after Lura passed away… that’s when it started to feel real. Like home.”
I nod slowly. That’s the key. Not perfection but effort. The two of them, bruised and stubborn, still trying to build something that looked like a future.
