Page 53 of So Bad It Must Be Good

Chapter Thirteen

Kayla knew it was silly to fuss. After all, Liam wasn’t a fussy kind of guy. Still, she wanted to fuss and she had given herself permission to do something for herself even if Liam wouldn’t particularly appreciate it.

So she hummed as she set the table. She’d bought some fresh vegetables at the orchard she’d interviewed at this morning and made a salad and some pasta, and had tried very, very hard not to think about how much she wanted the job.

So she focused all her energy on getting ready for Liam coming over and making it the perfect date-night-in kind of evening.

When the knock sounded at the door, her heart beat in extra time. Odd to be nervous, and yet this was still so new. No matter how he made her feel so comfortable, so brave or right, this was still like walking some kind of tightrope and holding her breath hoping she didn’t fall off.

Because she so wanted to get to the other side.

She opened the door, nervous smile plastered on her face, but it immediately died. Liam looked . . . gray almost. His mouth drawn, shoulders drooped. He looked, quite frankly, like he’d been to hell and back.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, immediately touching his arm and ushering him inside.

He moved, but he looked at her quizzically. “How do you know something is wrong?”

“You look . . .” Telling him he looked terrible was maybe not the kindest route to take, but then again Liam didn’t exactly need kind. Or maybe he did. Maybe kind and care was exactly what he needed if no one saw him looking like this and asked him what was wrong. “What is it?”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s something,” she said, firmly leading him to the couch. She pushed him until he sat down.

“It’s . . . something that will be fine.” He pulled her to sit next to him and then dropped a kiss to her mouth, but she found that no matter if she should or not, she didn’t want to let it drop.

“If it will be fine, then you can tell me what it is.”

He studied her, and she didn’t know what he saw, but she thought it might be good because he reached out and drew a strand of her hair through his fingers. He took a deep breath and released her hair and then offered the most pathetic smile she’d ever seen.

“My dad has to get a few stents.”

“Stents. That’s like for heart—oh, he had a heart attack a few years ago, didn’t he?”

Liam nodded. “They did the whole bypass surgery, but I guess it’s not doing quite what it’s supposed to. They’ll try stents first and if that doesn’t work, they’ll suggest surgery again. But . . .”

“But what?”

Liam shook his head. “It’s all conjecture crap at this point. We do the stents first and see how it goes.” He pushed off the couch, clearly agitated and not at all as Zen as he wanted to be about the whole thing. “I just . . . He says if he needs another bypass, he won’t get it, but how do you do that? There’s a fix and you’re just going to say no?”

“But he’s already had one, and it didn’t fi—” She clamped her mouth shut at the horrified look on his face. She pushed off the couch too, willing herself to find a way to comfort him. “The first step is the stents. That’s the most important thing.”

He raked his hands through his hair. “It is. That’s exactly what I told Mom, and I got her calmed down, at least for a while. And I’m sure the stents will work. He’s done everything right. He . . .” He tensed his jaw, trailing off, clearly working through some heavy emotion before he pushed it away, blanking his expression. “Something smells very good.”

He was so good at that, erasing that moment of pain that had been on his face. Changing the subject. She could almost believe that that’s what he wanted. To move on and away, but he fancied himself such a fixer of things, and this was quite certainly something he couldn’t fix.

It would be a blow, and she wondered if anyone in his life would see it? Or would they all be so worried about his father, and rightfully so, that they missed each other’s stress and pain over it? Liam had calmed his mother, and probably done the work of two men today, and now he was here, and didn’t he deserve somewhere he didn’t have to be the fixer?

She crossed over to him where he stood looking very blankly at the kitchen. His gaze didn’t move to hers, but she didn’t let that deter her. She wrapped her arms around him, no matter that his were crossed over his chest.

“Everyone expects you to be the rock, don’t they?”

He was so still, utterly stone-like for the longest minute, and then ever so slowly his head moved against hers. A very minor nod, but a nod nonetheless.

She squeezed her arms tighter around him. “I can be your rock for a little bit,” she whispered, because while she had often stood in the wake of Dinah’s storms and shouts, offered encouragement here and there, being a rock was never needed. Dinah was her own force. Dad had never been anything other than cold and distant even before Mom had left.

Kayla had tried to comfort and always failed at it, but she wouldn’t step back from Liam when she knew she could give him something.

Eventually, he uncrossed his arms and maneuvered so that he held her as she held him. His breathing wasn’t quite even, and though she couldn’t see his face because his cheek rested against her temple, she could feel a sort of crack in that stone-like veneer.

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