Page 45 of So Bad It Must Be Good

His eyebrows drew together and he moved his gaze to her as if the question didn’t make sense.

“Aiden isn’t an it, any more than he’s someone who’s your job to fix,” she said gently.

“He’s my brother.”

“Yes.” Kayla accepted the plate he’d handed her and took her time taking a bite of pizza. “You know, I’ve spent the time since I stood up to my grandmother and father and quit waiting for something to happen. I did the hard part. I stood up to them, and the world was supposed to reward me with some grand sign or gesture.”

He didn’t say anything, and she took another bite of pizza while trying to organize her thoughts. “But in the end, the world couldn’t magically give me what I wanted. I had to . . . Don’t you see? Six months ago, I never would have shown up here with a pizza. I never would have gotten drunk and insisted on coming to your workshop. I would have retreated into some safe place, no matter that I had been told my whole life that that’s what I did. I had to decide I didn’t want to be that anymore.”

“He stood—okay, well laid there—and told me I fixed things, but I never . . .” Liam stopped talking, shaking his head and looking away from her.

And clearly this was not some misunderstanding, some little blip in his relationship with his brother, but something far bigger, because Liam held his jaw tight, his eyebrows furrowed, and though outwardly he looked stoic, Kayla thought there was a vulnerability in that stoicism.

She sat her plate down on the counter and crossed to him, placing her palms on his chest. “He said you never what?”

Liam’s blue gaze met hers for the briefest second, but he didn’t hold it, so she couldn’t be sure it was a naked hurt that had lingered in their depths. “He said I’d never even tried to fix him.”

Kayla shook her head. “That isn’t your job.”

He was silent for a while, but she noted something that maybe shouldn’t have brought her pleasure, though it did. He didn’t step away from her hands, didn’t push them away. In fact, as she rubbed them up and down his chest in what she hoped was a comforting gesture, he even seemed to breathe a little easier.

“Why are we talking about this?” he asked, a forced smile curving his mouth but not reaching his eyes.

Still, she smiled up at him, because she didn’t know the answer. This wasn’t exactly what she’d come for, and still . . . She wanted it. Those moments of getting to know a person, because she was finally brave enough to open up to that instead of shy away from it. “I don’t know.”

His fingers brushed over the hair that waved over her shoulders, rubbing the ends of a few strands between his thumb and forefinger. His gaze moved from her hair to her face, and everything inside of her mind went totally blank.

He was just so handsome, and . . . He was something she struggled to define. Not fierce, exactly, but something more dazzling than sturdy and sure.

Slowly, stretching out the moment until it was nothing but vibrating anticipation, his mouth lowered closer to hers. When his lips finally touched hers, feather light, sweet and seductive, it had the power of a gunshot. Loud and disorienting, a bolt of feeling that was so sweet it was almost painful.

And that was all the kiss was. A brief, sweet thing that left her shivering and desperate for more, especially with his mouth still so close to hers.

“I like you,” she blurted out, feeling somehow half brave and right and half embarrassed beyond belief.

But his smile shifted from that fake, blank thing it had been before to something warm and exciting. “I like you too,” he said in his low gravelly voice, his hands sliding over the backs of hers, still on his chest.

She had to look down, to swallow at the way that waved through her, strong and potent. It even made her throat a little tight, but it also made her think of last night. “So why’d you lie to Dinah?”

“I don’t know. There was an awkward silence, and I just . . .” His fingers curled around her hands, but he didn’t remove them from his chest. He just held them there. “I thought maybe you didn’t want to tell her. Or maybe you didn’t want anyone to know.”

She forced herself to be the brave, take-a-stand woman she wanted to be in this . . . relationship. “I don’t care who knows,” she said firmly.

He inclined his head. “Okay.”

They stood there, for she wasn’t sure how long, just staring at each other. She’d come here and he’d welcomed her. She’d broached an uncomfortable subject and they’d talked it out.

But she was done talking. She slid her hands up his chest, his hands falling to his sides as she wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged his mouth down to hers. They’d talked and shared and opened up to feelings, but she wanted different feelings now.

She didn’t want to talk about how she felt. She wanted to show him. So she pressed her mouth to his, outlined his lips with her tongue. She curled her fingers in his thick hair and poured every ounce of herself into that kiss.

He banded his arms around her, pulling her so close she could feel his erection against her belly. She pressed against it, satisfied at the groan that emerged from the back of his throat. She wanted him desperate and needy for her. The way she was for him at something as simple as that little whispered kiss.

She scraped her teeth across his bottom lip and he pressed her firmly against the counter behind her. She tried to angle her hips, to rub herself against him, but he was so much taller and broader and stronger, she didn’t have any leverage.

But leverage didn’t matter with his mouth hot on hers, his beard abrasive and wonderful against her chin.

He tugged her shirt up and as they had to break contact she realized neither of them had eaten very much. “Oh, the pizza . . .”

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