Page 50 of Peyton's Price

Silence.

His friend looked confused. “And you’re sure it’s not some kind of transference thing?”

Liam wanted to throw up his hands or hit him with something. “Calen, shut up.”

The other man cocked his head. “Do you mean fucking in the traditional sense?”

“Seriously, shut up!”

Naturally, that didn’t faze Calen at all. He just blinked a few times. “How long have you felt this way?”

“I don’t know. Forever? I tried not to think about it.”

“If that’s true, then why didn’t you do anything about it? I mean, she was right there at your side all this time. Poor Peyton. It was killing her, too.”

Liam scrubbed his eyes in a half-hearted attempt to gouge them from his skull. “I—I couldn’t. At first, it was because she was too young. Then, when she wasn’t, it still seemed wrong. That was around the time I met Matthias. When I was with him, I felt great, but after it ended…I don’t know. I didn’t feel clean enough to touch her. How could I? She deserves someone normal. Someone decent.”

“There’s nothing indecent about you,” Calen said loyally. “But normal, yeah. We all told her that. She still wanted you anyway.”

Or she used to. Liam hadn’t taken his shot. For years, he’d ignored and suppressed his feelings until he’d genuinely convinced himself they weren’t there.

It took her walking away to crack that the veneer around his reality. When she’d disappeared, it felt as if his entire world had shattered.

“I don’t think your feelings for her change what was happening with you and Raske, though,” Calen observed, still mulling. “Don’t forget I saw you two together back then. It was one of the few times you looked happy.”

Liam shrugged. He didn’t analyze his time with Matthias. It had just been one of those things.

Calen reached for the open bottle, tipping it up to drink from it directly. Finding it empty, he put it down with a thump. “So, let me get this straight. The man you might have been in love with two years ago with has run off with the woman you’ve secretly been in love with for years but were in complete denial about?”

“Basically.” Calen was a succinct bastard sometimes.

“Then can I ask something else?”

“What?”

“What the fuck are you waiting for? Call off the wedding and commandeer a boat or something. Go after them.”

“And do what? Ruin Peyton’s chance at happiness again?”

Even if he somehow managed to get his head screwed on right, it was too late. Matthias and Peyton were together now. He couldn’t mess that up for her, no matter what he wanted. He’d hurt her enough.

Chapter 24

Liam resisted the urge to batter the phone in its cradle. Instead, he set it down gently, so maintenance wouldn’t have to replace it again.

More than a week had passed since he’d talked to Calen in New York. He was back in Boston, barreling through the dissolution of his intended merger with the Wentworth chain. Predictably, it was going badly.

Caroline was really sticking it to him in the backend. But he couldn’t blame her. Even Trick didn’t blame Caroline when he and Maggie discovered Liam had called off the wedding. But the actual details were dreary and painful. Which was why he had to handle them himself. It was his mess, and he wasn’t going to subject his siblings to the aftermath, even if they pleaded with him to be allowed to share the burden.

He half-suspected Trick wanted to celebrate the end of his engagement with a parade, but his younger brother kept his mouth shut. Maggie had been even more circumspect, but he suspected her mind was on Peyton and how she was faring in Raske’s company.

If Peyton had gotten in touch with either of them, they didn’t share that with him.

The phone rang before he’d finished approving the final changes to the settlement Caroline was demanding for the straggling Wentworth hotels. Ignoring it, he doubled down, determined to finish before someone charged in demanding he put out some other fire.

Liam wasn’t giving Caroline everything she wanted. He couldn’t—not without introducing some strict austerity measures for his own hotels. But he did want to give the Wentworth chain, a sincerely valuable property, its best chance.

It was a simple matter on paper. In reality, it was a bear. But he had reached the end of the tunnel, enough to feel some light on his face. He just needed to dot hisI’sand cross hisT’s.

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