Page 59 of Fix Them Up
A hysterical giggle escaped my lips. ‘Hot?’
‘Yeah. I’m not going to analyse that.’ Liam grinned. ‘C’mere,’ he said, opening his arms.
I instinctively stepped into them, not caring what this meant. I didn’t want to overanalyse this gesture of kindness. Liam’s arms wrapped around me, and his chin rested on my head. He was solid and so, so warm.
‘I’m sorry about your dad.’
I felt the word rumble through his chest.
‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ I said into his chest. ‘Aren’t we a pair?’
Liam pulled back and looked at me. I probably had snot all over me and looked like a blubbering mess, but he smiled. Something had shifted between us – a new understanding. Itwasn’t a tentative truce based on a silly pinkie promise but something deeper – a friendship, maybe. A green shoot bursting from under the soil; it was delicate and new.
In my bones, I knew Liam was someone I could trust.
A part of me was comforted by that, and the other part of me… the part that had been hurt before.
Well, that part was terrified.
Chapter Nineteen
The drive back was quiet, but not the quiet that made my skin crawl. It was comfortable. Familiar. And thanks to my outburst in the graveyard, my brain was at rest for once. Liam hummed along to a song on the radio and occasionally glanced at me like he was checking I was still breathing. As Liam pulled into the driveway, I realised I didn’t want to go to the annexe. I wanted company. Liam’s company specifically.
But Liam’s words about boundaries rang in my head as we sat in the van, neither of us moving to open the door and walk into the house. It was like we were both content to sit in the car with this new energy humming between us.
Eventually, Liam’s security lights extinguished.
‘Thanks for –’
‘No problem.’
‘Night, Liam,’ I said, my hand landing on the van’s door.
‘Do you want to come in for some food? You haven’t eaten dinner.’ He said it so quickly that I almost didn’t hear each word. ‘And you drank a lot.’ He scratched the back of his head, not looking me in the eye. ‘I could make us cheese on toast, if you fancied it.’
‘That does sound good,’ I admitted.
Liam finally looked me in the eye and nodded, a small smile on his face. ‘Come on then.’
As I headed for the front door, my foot hit the wrong angleon the pavement. Pain shot up my leg. I swore under my breath. Liam was next to me instantly, holding my arm at my elbow.
‘What’s wrong?’ Alarm filled his voice.
‘I just rolled my ankle. It happens a lot. Weak ankles. I’m fine.’ I put some weight on my ankle, and the pain throbbed there, insistent. But I’d done worse.
Liam frowned, his lips straight. ‘It doesn’t look okay.’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ll walk it off. Honestly, I always do this. My ankles are like paper thin.’
‘You need to watch where you walk,’ Liam grunted.
I rolled my eyes. ‘Yes, thank you. I’ll work on that.’
If he thought this was bad, he would have kittens if he saw all the random bruises that appeared out of nowhere. I could never remember how I’d got them. But then again, I walked through a room like I could move through solid objects. I always bumped my arm on doorknobs or my hip into the corners of tables.
Liam’s hands came to my arm, holding me up like I was made of nothing. His shoulders were tense as he unlocked the front door and I realised since that first night, I’d never walked through the front door. I’d always walked around the side of the house so Liam could have his privacy. And now he was basically holding me up, his hands all over me. If it wasn’t for my ankle, it felt like we’d come back from a date tipsy and a little handsy.
‘Liam, I can go around the side.’
