Page 33 of Tell Me It’s Right

“But you read about it.”

“I mean, I don’tseek outskating books. This one just had good reviews. And I liked the cover.”

I’ve always been a sucker for the more symbolic, abstract covers. This one has a pair of skates dangling in the center, but it’s the mix of colors and textures in the background—like watercolor paint—that really caught my eye.

He turns the book over to inspect it. One corner of his mouth turns down, and he nods his head to the side. “Okay, so I get it. The art is good.”

He flips back to the marked chapter and starts reading. I stare at the side of his face, the blurry parts of my vision now lingering at the edges. I’ve known Liam practically my entire life, but I’ve never spent this much time around him alone. Most of the time we’ve spent together over the last twenty-two years hasn’t been by choice. Which just makes this entire situation that much stranger.

But there’s no denying how much the distraction helps.

He keeps his voice low and soft as I curl into a ball beneath the blankets and close my eyes. I think he’ll stop after finishing the chapter, but then he moves onto the next, and the next, until I have no idea how much time has passed.

At some point, he pauses and goes upstairs for some water while I set up the heating pad. His footsteps are so quiet that I don’t notice his return until the bed shifts beside me.

Before he can pick up the book again, I murmur, “Liam, why did you really hire me?”

He turns to me with a frown. “What do you mean?”

“Is this some weird loyalty to Leo thing? Or was it pity? Because if it was, we really don’t have to?—”

“It wasn’t pity, Gracie. Okay, yes, at first I offered because I didn’t like the way Keava was talking to you. But I also knew you’d be good at the job. And after, when I started doing some more research to see what I’d gotten myself into, it proved what I already knew.”

“Research into…me?”

“Yes.”

“So you stalked me.”

“Yes,” he says without missing a beat. “And you know what I found? That I’m the luckiest son of a bitch on the east coast because the most promising design graduate just fucking fell into my lap.”

I roll my eyes despite my face heating under the compliment. But it sounds weird coming from him. “You’re so full of it.”

He doesn’t respond for what feels like a long time, and when I glance up, he’s not looking at me anymore. His gaze is focused somewhere across the room, and when he speaks again, his voice comes out softer. “I’m going to tell you something, Gracie. Something no one else knows. The shop’s not profitable. It never has been. But I want it to be. I need it to be. So yeah, when I looked you up and I saw how good you were at what you do, it made me hopeful. Because maybe I hired you on a whim, but call it what you want, I think there’s a reason for it. I think you and I can help each other.”

The sincerity on his face is undeniable. I’ve wondered about the shop’s income, how he was able to pay me so much when I rarely saw anyone in there. I’m willing to bet there’s a lot more to it, but what it comes down to is: “You need me.”

He ducks his head in acknowledgment. “I need you.”

We stare at each other, and there’s an openness in his eyes, almost a vulnerability, that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

The shop isn’t profitable, but he’s able to afford to keep operating, to pay me, to take random days off like today. So there’s money coming from somewhere. His family in some way, if I had to guess. And knowing Liam, he must hate that.

“I see a lot of potential with the shop, Liam,” I say quietly. “It can get there.”

He smiles. Not a smirk or a grin, just a soft, genuine smile.

“And thank you for taking care of me today.”

His smile falters, and he leans back, adding a few more inches between us. After a long pause, he says, “Anytime, Little Leo.”

Chapter Thirteen

LIAM

I hang around for another half hour or so until Gracie falls asleep before slipping out and hurrying to the shop for my afternoon appointment. The design is on the more complicated side—a mixture of vines, flowers, barbed wire, and chains—made trickier by the way it coils around my client’s arm, but no matter how hard I try to concentrate, my mind keeps getting pulled back to Gracie’s room.

The tension that had grown between us—whether it was even there or I’d just imagined it—disappeared in an instant when I dropped that nickname.

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