I was a drinker, too, of course. I’d opened up Red’s Tavern for a reason, and I loved every minute of owning this bar. But Liam had always been on another level. A level that approached out of control more often than not.
I couldn’t imagine what a sober version of him even looked like.
“I don’t have any money to give to you,” I said. “If you spent your buckets of porn money on drugs, it isn’t my fault.”
“Ouch,” he said. “And no, I don’t need your money. I have enough, for… a little while. In this town, at least. Turns out rent is cheap in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. No wonder you moved out here to the sticks.”
“Rent? The Golden Goose isn’t that cheap—”
He shook his head. “I’m not at the inn. I’m renting a house. Indefinitely.”
I stared at him, frozen in place. I understood the words he was saying, but I couldn’t imagine them coming out of his mouth.
Liam Hardy, a man who lived and breathed city life, was indefinitely renting a house in Amberfield?
Liam Hardy, a man who I had cut out of my life a long time ago, was indefinitely going to be in my small town?
“I meant it when I said I’ve missed you, you know,” he said, his voice soft again. My heart squeezed, as much as I knew it shouldn’t.
I puffed out a hollow laugh. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you actually sounded genuine just then.”
“It’s because I am being genuine,” he said. “I had to get out of Los Angeles. But there’s a reason I came here.”
“Because you wanted me to do porn for you.”
“Because I wanted to be around you.”
“Bullshit,” I said, shaking my head. I felt like I had been snapped back into some alternate version of my life, like against my will, Liam was sucking me back in.
“You were the only one who ever actually cared,” he said quietly.
My whole body was hot. I couldn’t be here anymore. Liam’s eyes, and his face, and his entire fucking being was way too much.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I walked out of the office, making my way down the hall and returning behind the bar. Sam was looking at me wide-eyed as I grabbed a shot glass and poured myself some Maker’s.
As I tossed back the shot, Liam emerged, leaning against the end of the bar, still watching me. He wouldn’t leave me alone with those beautiful eyes.
“You’re the reason Liam Hardy exists, Red,” he told me as whiskey burned at the back of my throat.
The name had been invented over a decade ago, when he and I had been tossing back shot after shot of a much cheaper whiskey. “Liam Henderson-Briggs just doesn’t have the same ring to it, when people are searching for jerk-off material,” I had told him. “You gotta find a punchier name if you’re gonna do porn.”
Liam had chosen the name Liam Hardy, and a gay porn superstar was born.
In fact, I saw at least four guys over by the pool table right now who were staring right at him, practically drooling like salivating dogs. Every single one of them had likely jerked off to a video of Liam at some point. Maybe dozens.
When I looked at him, I saw so much more than that.
Liam was twenty years old when we’d met. The place I was bartending was one of the shittier dives in Los Angeles, and after the first night we fucked, Liam became a regular. Liam was the reason I had ever since had a rule about never sleeping with regulars, actually. Because I had been swept up in him like a damn wildfire. He used to lean over the bar and kiss me, deeply, like nobody else in the bar even existed.
Kissing Liam, holding Liam—talking and being around him and being driven crazy by him—had always been just as good as the fucking sex. Sometimes better. It’s strange when you don’t know if you’re claiming someone or if they’re claiming you with a kiss. We were constantly pulling each other in deeper, and neither of us ever resisted.
Every night that first week, he’d slept over at my place. Zero to sixty in a fucking snap. We devoured each other. We drank whiskey every night. We made each other come so much we had a running joke about who would “run out of cum first.”
He’d told me about his life, too. He was fresh to LA, still reeling from his abusive childhood. He’d been so sweet and eager. Brimming with energy, never knowing where to put it. He was like a bird with a broken wing who wanted nothing more than to fly.
And then I’d watched as Liam learned to fly. I watched as he mustered the confidence to start doing porn, then as he became more and more popular and the money started pouring in. People loved him. Gay men wanted to be him or fuck him. It felt like the whole world was finally seeing Liam how I saw him: a beautiful, lost soul who also happened to be a god in bed.