Page 58 of Falling for my Brother's Best Friend

“Shit. I should’ve tested these.”

“Fast forward and see if it starts after the sales pitch.”

He nods, and his thumb slides across the screen. The woman is giving instructions on how to meditate, telling us how to still our body and be aware of our breath.

“Okay, now we start,” he says.

I bite my lip to stop my laugh and close my eyes, trying to take this seriously. He put a lot of time and effort into this.

The sounds of birds behind her, along with a wave slowly cresting on the shoreline every few seconds, fill the room. My mind is still on Liam’s ass in those lounge pants, then it travels to how I’m here for a week alone while Denver is away. Then I think about the charity event we need to nail down some specifics for. How the workers’ union wants more money and better benefits. Grandma Dori telling me she wants to lower her hours. The contractor saying he has to wait two weeks for the matching tile to arrive.

Liam hasn’t made a sound or moved a muscle. Of course he can sit quietly with his own thoughts and push away his worries. If anything, the quietness of the room is making me less relaxed and more anxious.

“Relax,” Liam says as though he can feel my nervous energy.

“I’m trying,” I bite back.

“Try harder,” he whispers.

“I can’t erase my calendar from my mind.”

He chuckles but stops, and I peek an eye open. He’s staring back at me.

“Your eyes aren’t closed,” I whisper.

“We’re doing this for you. I’m being nice by doing it too,” he whispers back.

Oh yeah. I forgot about that. “I’m not sure I’m a meditation kind of person.”

“Well, we’re going to do it for seven days. So you need to just sit there for fifteen minutes each time. It’s not going to come with immediate results, Sav.”

I shut my eyes tightly and listen to the woman.

Silence falls around us as she stops talking. All the worries and fears and to-dos pop up in my mind like file folders stacking on top of one another. I keep my back straight. If anyone walked in right now and they didn’t throw up from the smell, they’d think I was a master of meditation. But I’m far from relaxed as our session draws to a close and the woman tells us it’s like exercise and we must do this on a daily basis to reap the results. Great.

My eyes open before Liam’s, and I use the moment to soak him in. The calmness over his body compared to the chaos inked on his skin. His lap looks so inviting, I wish I could crawl into it and have him kiss my forehead and tell me all will be well one day. How I’m navigating my path the best I can, given the circumstances. That one day in the future, I’ll have a man who loves me for me, even though I might make more money than him and my hours are crazy, and I like things just so and I put capitals T and A in Type-A personality. There’s a man out there who thinks I’m worth the sacrifice.

His eyes open and I stand, picking up the pillows to put the room back to normal.

“Getting right to it, huh?” He follows suit, helping me tidy up. “We could have done another one.”

“No need to do squats and bicep curls all in one day.”

He laughs, grabbing the pillows from me.

“Mind if I blow out some candles?” I ask.

His smile vanishes. “Go ahead.”

He helps me. It seems like a waste for only a half hour of our time. Though technically we only meditated for fifteen minutes. I notice Liam’s shoulders are hunched and he’s quiet.

“Hey, Liam?” I say before heading toward the stairs to go back up to my room and work.

He peers up from sliding the couch back into place. His smile has dimmed slightly, like a disappointed kid who showed his parents a drawing and they asked what it is.

“Thank you.”

He nods, his lips tipping back up into his amazing smile. “Any time.”

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