Page 14 of So Bad It Must Be Good

Chapter Four

Kayla sat in the passenger seat of Liam’s truck quite proud of herself. Liam might think drunk Kayla was not cute, but she thought drunk Kayla was something of a genius. Drunk Kayla followed her instincts. Drunk Kayla was spontaneous. Drunk Kayla had figured out the next step in her life.

Do. Make. Create.

She wasn’t going to be taken home and shuffled into her under-decorated apartment to be depressed about the turns her life had taken all over again. She was going to see Liam’s workshop.

She’d never spent any time wondering what Liam did with his free time. Where he might live, what his friends might be like. She’d always considered him something of an imposing, irritable rock.

Only because he thinks you’re fragile.

She scowled at the memory. She supposed it was nicer than him hating her, and there was a little curl of something like sympathy over him thinking he only knew how to fix things, but mostly she hated that he’d seen her as nothing but a breakable thing.

He was wrong. He had to be wrong. She’d stepped away from Gallagher’s, hadn’t she? That was no fragile feat. Not in that family.

“Well, we’re here,” Liam muttered gruffly.

Funny, a little meal with him and suddenly his gruff made her smile. She looked out the window. It was nearly dark, but she could see he’d parked on the street like many in the neighborhood.

Out the window was a little brick house, kind of gingerbread-like with a pointed eave over the door. The porch light was on, and she supposed Liam was the kind of guy who’d always remember to turn on his porch light if he went out at night.

The yard was neatly kept, with a little sidewalk up to the front door and a concrete pathway toward the back, from what she could tell in the dusky dark.

“I like it,” Kayla offered.

“My life is complete,” he said drily.

She smirked at him and pushed open the truck door. “Is your workshop inside?”

“No.” He gave a gusty sigh and got out of the truck.

Kayla didn’t wait around for him to round the truck or lead the way. She walked straight for his door, though the ground seemed strangely uneven and she couldn’t quite seem to walk in a straight line.

Suddenly, his hand was gripping her arm, helping to keep her upright in a sea of swaying grass.

“For fuck’s sake, you’re going to break your neck.”

She opened her mouth to tell him he was wrong and she was fine, but she stumbled a bit—surely over a hole—and had to hold on to Liam to keep herself from taking a header onto the sidewalk.

He was so very tall, and sturdy, like you could lean and lean and lean and he would never bend. The direct opposite of her, who bent and bent and bent until she snapped.

She frowned at the depressing thought, even as she leaned harder against him. He led her around the house to a patchy little backyard and what appeared to be a detached garage that faced an alley or street behind his house.

All the homes around were built in a similar fashion, separated by chain-link fences, but when Liam unlocked and pulled open his garage door, flicking on a light, she doubted any other houses in the neighborhood boasted this.

There was a big table across the far side, various machinery on it as well as hanging from shelves and corkboard across the walls. To the far corner there were stacks of wood and a little table full of paints and paintbrushes.

On the opposite side of that were shelves and boxes of what looked to be finished carvings or child toys or what have you. She started to move toward them, but his grip tightened on her arm.

Warm and strong. She looked curiously down at his fingers around the pretty purple and green pattern of her dress sleeve. Rough and scarred and fascinating, she thought she could look at his hands forever.

“You’re not stumbling around my workshop, breaking my stuff or hurting yourself.”

“I can walk,” she replied, still staring at his long fingers curled around her arm.

“You’ve proven you can’t,” he replied.

She harrumphed, though she had to admit the floor in this room seemed a bit topsy-turvy too. “I want to see . . .” But she trailed off as her gaze landed on one of the tables.

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