Page 24 of Say You Love Me

“So what are your plans now that you’re home, Ava?” Megan asks loudly and deliberately.

Ava sits and stares at Hudson in disbelief. Moving my chair closer to Hudson, I thread my arm through the crook of his elbow. I look over at her, pointedly, obviously. “Yes, tell us your plans, Ava.”

Her eyes move to mine and I see the smallest flicker of hatred before she recovers, stretching a defiant smile across her face. “I’m going to law school, actually. Dad pulled a few strings and got me a late enrollment. I can think of nothing better than to follow in the footsteps of my older brother and Hudson.” She takes a sip of her wine. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll all work together one day.”

The rest of the evening goes by reasonably uneventfully and it’s only once everyone has left that I realized my mother never said a word after our announcement. Not one.

chapter eleven

NOW

~

HUDSON

Ever since I took this job, I feel like a fire-fighter battling the flames rather than preventing them, but I finally think I’m getting ahead of things. Production is up 2.3% and waste is down 1.7%. I’ve gotten rid of some of the dead weight staff, mainly from the management roles, and created a roster system that sees all employees in the bottling plant get adequate time off without delaying the assembly line.

But as soon as I pull into the carpark at work and see Dwayne, the 2IC waiting for me, I know the next fire has already been lit. We spend the morning attempting to brainstorm our way around the fact that we have a machinery failure, no one to fix it, and staff just sitting around waiting for us to do something.

I don’t get a chance to take a break all morning. In fact, it’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon before I even get to go to my office and I’m surprised to find Liam waiting for me.

“Busy day?” He’s playing with a snow globe on my desk. I don’t know where it came from, it was here when I arrived and I’ve never bothered to throw it away.

“You could say that.” I take a seat, watching Liam throw the snow globe, tossing it into the air and catching it with one hand.

“Why aren’t you at work?”

Liam travels to the city each day after our morning run.

He shrugs. “Didn’t feel like it. It’s the pleasure of not being the boss. You can pull a sickie whenever you feel like it.” He places the snow globe back on my desk. “Want to grab some lunch?”

I should say no. I should stay and catch up on the work I didn’t get done this morning when I was fighting fires. Instead, I get to my feet, pushing closed the drawer of my desk firmly.

“Fuck yeah, I do.”

Liam raises his brow at the vehemence in my reply but all he does is get to his feet and walk out of my office, expecting me to follow.

We park at one end of the main street of our town. It’s the street that all the cafés and restaurants are on. In fact, it’s littered with them. The smells wafting down the road are enough to make my stomach grumble.

“Any preferences?” Liam asks.

“I don’t care. As long as they serve alcohol. Strong alcohol. The sort of alcohol that will fuck me up.”

Liam lifts his brows again. “Everything okay?”

“Fine and dandy.”

“Wow. Okay. I didn’t realize things were that bad.” He chuckles and elbows me in the side.

“What about here?” He stops in front of a café. One of the ones which does its best to be delightfully quaint and peculiar but comes across as painfully staged. There are strollers parked outside, kids laughing in the play area off to the side.

It’s my turn to raise my brows. We keep walking. Up ahead is a tavern, the type with hardly any windows, darkened tables, dart boards on the walls and non-judgmental staff. I jerk my chin in its direction. The waitress is overly friendly when she seats us, her eyes skipping excitedly between Liam and me. Even though Liam has the day off, he’s dressed as though he’s going to work. I guess she doesn’t get to see many men in suits frequenting the joint.

We both take off our jackets and loosen our ties before we take a seat. The waitress takes our liquid only orders and in no time at all she’s back to deliver the drinks to our table. Two beers and a shot of bourbon for us both. We drink the first beer quickly, the cool liquid sliding down our throats a little too easily, and then we toss back the shot and lean back into our chairs, content to sip our other beers.

Liam keeps looking over at me as though he’s got something serious to talk about and is unsure how to broach the subject. It’s making me uncomfortable. We don’t talk. It’s our thing. I mean, we talk a lot, a lot of nonsense and drivel about trivial matters, but we never bring up the serious topics.

I get in first, before he decides to blurt out whatever it is on his mind. “How’s Sookie?”

---