Page 61 of So Bad It Must Be Good

Chapter Fifteen

Kayla hadn’t slept much after Liam had left. She was too worried, and sort of vaguely irritated in a way she couldn’t work through. She wasn’t mad at Liam for leaving. He’d done the right thing. So maybe she was mad at Aiden. Or at a family who had somehow decided Liam had to solve all their problems.

Which wasn’t fair. She didn’t know much about his family, even if she knew Liam himself.

Fair or not, right or not, it was a simmering irritation in the back of her head as she drove from the donut place where she’d picked up some breakfast to Liam’s house.

He’d said to call, but she didn’t want to talk to him on the phone. She wanted to talk to him face to face and hear what had happened.

Maybe it was needy or insecure, but she needed some reassurance that this wasn’t . . . Well, this also probably wasn’t fair, but she was over worrying about fair for everyone but herself. This whole bravery thing meant not just saying what she wanted or going after it, but working toward it.

She pulled up in front of Liam’s house. It was six thirty and his truck was parked at the curb, so he should be home. He might be sleeping, considering he’d left her place in the middle of the night, but if she knew Liam, he was probably awake and getting ready for work.

No matter how few hours he’d slept, no matter how much he’d helped his brother, he would consider it necessary to get up and work and make sure his dad didn’t worry.

It was such an odd thing to be so impressed by that, but also a little irritated by it. Didn’t he ever think to take care of himself?

Well, maybe that would just be her job. No one had ever let her take care of them before, and she liked taking care of Liam. It made her feel good.

She marched up to the front door, box of donuts in hand, and knocked firmly.

She waited. And waited. And waited. Maybe he was asleep. Or in the shower. Or maybe he’d gotten a ride from his father or something.

She should have called. This was stupid, inserting herself where she didn’t belong.

Then the door opened and she exhaled.

“Hey.” His voice was weird, more like a rasped whisper, and he had a baseball cap pulled low on his head, which was shading most of his face.

“Hi, I brought donuts. I thought you could use a sugary breakfast after last night.”

His mouth curved, and that’s when she noticed how puffy his lower lip looked, and the cut that definitely had not been there a few hours ago. “What happened to your lip?”

“Oh, that.” He lifted a finger to his mouth, then angled his head down so the hat shielded her view of him almost completely.

She shied away from jumping to her own conclusions. Surely it was something innocuous. But he didn’t explain either, or move to let her in.

Maybe a better person would have turned around and gone, but she didn’t want to be a better person right this second. She reached up and yanked the hat off his head, and maybe it was overdramatic, but she gasped.

His cheek was visibly bruised and looked swollen. She reached out to touch his face, under the mark. “Liam.”

“It’s nothing. Really. A split lip. A bruise. I’ve had worse.”

“How did it happen?” she demanded, and he finally met her gaze, everything about him looking exhausted and just . . . beaten.

“It’s not important.”

Rage propelled her forward. She nudged him out of the way so she could step inside. She dropped the box of donuts on an end table and marched into the kitchen.

“Not important,” she muttered angrily as she wrenched open his freezer. He’d been hurt. Hurt. This man she lo—Well, she wasn’t letting herself think like that quite yet, but Liam was important to her and it was physically painful that he’d been hurt and was saying it wasn’t important.

She rummaged around until she found a frozen bag of vegetables. That would work. Then she marched back out to the living room where he was slowly closing the door. She pointed at his recliner.

“Sit.”

“Kay—”

“Sit.”

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