“Come here.”
Standing next to his seat now, I gazed down at Liam, my breaths shallow as his eyes stared forward at my breasts. A solemn look cast over his face, his lips forming a line the way they did whenever he went serious.
“You’re a lot more important to me than you realize, Sasha,” Liam said. “Do you remember who I was when you first met me?”
I wet my lips, suddenly aware of the intimate moment we were sharing in a full room. Thinking about his question, I collected my memories. There was, of course, that first memory I had of Liam – walking in on him with a girl in the bathroom of our parents’ home. She loved every bit of how rough he was with her and neither of them noticed me as he finished inside her. So yes, from the jump, I knew he was a player. A bad boy.
But then we were officially introduced and that night, at dinner, he jumped to my defense over every dicey topic my mom just had to bring up. When I got quiet and nervous, he mercifully changed the subject.
Growing up with Riley, I was used to being interrupted while speaking, but every time someone did it that night, Liam stopped them. He looked me in the eye when I spoke and for the first time in my life, he made me feel like I mattered. He didn’t know yet about the issues that plagued my teenaged years, but I had a feeling that he wouldn’t judge me for them. I had known him for all of an hour but I felt immediately comforted by his presence.
Meanwhile, his dad called him “walking chaos.” “Wasted potential.” He said that Liam’s arrest for fighting that year had been the most humiliating day of his life. But I saw something else. The Liam I knew, despite the first thing I saw him doing, was warm and caring and everything my family wasn’t to me.
“I know what I’m supposed to answer,” I started,
finding myself suddenly seated next to him in the booth, my knees somehow up in my short skirt and resting on his lap. “I’m supposed to say you were trouble back then, or a bad guy or someone with a scary temper. But the first day I met you, you were already the best guy I’d ever known and that hasn’t changed at all in the past eight years.”
I felt our fingers entwine. Liam let out a short breath, the corners of his lips twisting up in a faint smile. “I was a bad guy,” he murmured, gazing down at my hand in his. His thumb stroked my ring finger. “And then I met you and I felt what you saw in me. From day one, you had this faith in me that I’d never had for myself. And I hadn’t known you for long at all but I already knew I had to do better for you.”
My throat tightened because what he described was something I’d distinctly felt on the day that we met. I had felt a different kind of connection, but I never tried to acknowledge it. I figured it had to be silly, too hopeful. I wasn’t sure I hadn’t completely made up the spark out of pure desperation to feel loved. But now I had my confirmation. Whatever I felt with Liam did exist. It was there and it always had been.
I wasn’t just some novelty fuck.
As I played with the edge of his shirt, I felt him watching me, a charmed smile in his voice as he asked if I felt better. I nodded. “But I want to know more,” I murmured. “I want you to tell me your side of it.”
“Of what?”
All the years we loved each other without saying a word.
All the shit you helped me through without ever taking credit.
I didn’t think about it as much anymore, but I’d been a completely different person before Liam.
Before my mother married his dad, she dated a man named Owen. He was the love of her life. The “one who got away.” A year after rekindling, my mother got engaged to Owen, and I’d never seen her more happy in my life.
But I couldn’t let her marry him.
And after the Owen debacle, everything in my family changed. We were back to three, but I felt alone. Mom refused to look at me, Riley hated playing middleman, and I spent two years wondering if my tarnished identity was worth living for.
I didn’t find myself again till Liam came along, and to this day, I wasn’t sure if he knew how much he’d truly dug me out of my depression. We never spoke about the mountain I overcame because we never wanted to bring up Owen again. But a part of me felt like it was a disservice to never acknowledge the magnitude of what Liam had helped me through – the pitch black darkness that he had singlehandedly pulled me out of. There was never a great time to talk about it, but I figured now was as good as any.
Of course, once my lips parted to speak, I was interrupted.
“Hello there – can I get you some drinks?”
And just like that, my window for that conversation closed.
“Absolutely,” Liam replied to the bubbly waitress who came seemingly out of nowhere. She was perfectly polite and sweet as she took my order but I couldn’t help but notice how blatantly she flirted with Liam, leaning against the table and biting her lip as he spoke. Liam’s arms were around my waist as he ordered, his thumb stroking my skin. But the sound of his laugh mixed with hers brought Jenna’s words back to my mind.
“You’re way too nice, Sasha, and that’s not a compliment. You don’t know how to fight, or manipulate or scare off the way hotter girls who are going to go after your man.”
I chewed the inside of my lip. Maybe a girl like Jenna would bark at a mostly harmless cocktail server, but I wasn’t comfortable with that and I was sure I never would be. Does that make me weak? Or does that make me an adult?
“Anything else?” Our server’s voice chimed through my thoughts. I blinked up to see her batting her lashes. Not at me.
“That should be it,” Liam said. Palming my bare knee, he sent a murmur of chills up my thigh. “Do you want anything else, baby?” he asked.
I let his question sink in for a moment. He called me baby all the time, but this time felt better than usual.