“I’ve loved you this whole time,” I say, heart raw.
That fist in my hair tightens. “I know you have, baby, I know.”
He starts to really work me now, thrusting and holding and fucking and clutching, and he swallows down my audible relief when it hits my body, spreading to every corner.
Soon after, Liam grabs my leg and yanks it over his shoulder, then rocks into me the wayheneeds it. With power and abandon and constantly lapsing control.
“Love. Of. My. Fucking. Life,” he says again between each thrust, and buries his head in my neck when he’s through.
We migrate to our sides at some point. Liam holds my cheeks and pushes kisses into my forehead, whispering his praise and affirmation. I feel like a spring flower blooming in sunlight. At the height of its beauty, the beginning and end of its purpose.
“We can do this,” he whispers, more to himself than to me. “Because I’d make anything work to keep you with me.”
“And I’d give anything up to stay.”
Liam smiles, thumb dancing over my nose. “I love that you would,” he says. “And I swear you’ll never have to.”
Chapter 28
June, Four Years Ago
Liam is near the tail end of his regular season, playing against Vanderbilt in Nashville, when he pulls himself from the game in the fourth inning because his shoulder hurts too badly to pitch.
Folly and I are at my apartment, watching on TV when it happens.
Whenithappens.
When the defining moment of Liam’s future happens.
The pitch is good, and the batter smacks it, so for a few moments, the camera is focused elsewhere as the grounded ball is passed from glove to glove. But when the first baseman tries to throw it back to Liam, he comes into view on the screen, shaking his head and ungloving.
The TV announcer says, “Looks like Bishop is requesting a relief pitcher.”
And the bottom falls out of my stomach.
My eyes search his when the camera zooms close to Liam. He makes his way to the dugout and converses tensely with his coach, who sends in another pitcher.
The coach has Liam raise his arm out to the side of his body.
Liam winces in pain, dropping the arm immediately. The coach says something else, and Liam shakes his head.
“He might’ve torn something on that last pitch,” the announcermuses. “Wouldn’t be the first time for this player. He had an elbow injury last season, though that was on his left side, and this appears to be the right.”
“That single throw,” the co-announcer says, “could be detrimental to Bishop’s professional prospects.”
It’s their tone I can’t move past. Serious, but calm and detached. Meanwhile, inside my cage of fragile bones, I’m shaking so hard I could jump-start an earthquake.
The camera moves off Liam and I want to shout at the screen, demand they go back so I canseehim. But gameplay resumes, and I’m still frozen in shock, my knees against my chest and my eyes wide with horror.
I turn to look at Folly on the other end of the couch. Her face makes it clear she has no idea what to say either.
“Call him?” she finally suggests.
I pull my phone off the side table, fingers trembling as I unlock it and call him.
Liam answers after two and a half rings. “You saw that?” Underneath the pain in his voice, he sounds disappointed, humiliated, even, and I immediately recall his fear of choking in front of his family. But this isn’t that—it’s so much worse.
Detrimental.
