I walk over to Liam's place along with Reece later that night after dinner. As Sam opens the door, she almost immediately spots Reece and I see her expressions change from confusion to happiness to excitement within a second.
"I hope you remember me," she asks Reece smiling at him.
Have they met before?
"Of course I do, Gran Sam." Reece replies with an adorable grin of recognition.
Sam reads my puzzled expression and she tries to hide her worried face and distract me, "Liam is upstairs. He told me you had plans."
"Can I have the chocolate chip cookies you baked from me last time?" Reece asks Sam looking at her with a hopeful expression.
With Sam's purposeful distraction and worried face, curiosity gets the best of me and I ask her, "Last time?"
"Erm...Luke came home like two years ago. He stayed here for quite some time," she says though her expressions seem as if it was not a happy memory.
"Oh! Mum never told me." I say trying to remember if she did.
"It must have slipped her mind. Let it be," Sam says now avoiding eye contact.
Something happened.
"Erm...yeah" I say deciding this was not the time to probe further.
Sam continues to talk to Reece asking him if he would like to help her with the cookies as we walk inside the house and into the living room.
"Why don't you go upstairs, Kiera? I'll send him upstairs in a while" Sam says as an excited Reece answers a yes to her question.
"Okay"
I reach the second floor to find the common space empty with the door to Liam's study partially opened. I walk inside further and find Liam sleeping on the armchair with a docket that has now fallen on his lap, the light from the lamp accentuating his features. I move closer to him stealing away this time to look at him in peace not realizing the smile that has crept on my face from the moment I saw him. He is sleeping with his mouth partially open with his glasses on.
He looks sexier with glasses on.
I take the docket away carefully, hoping to not wake him up, and place it on the table.
I bend down and move closer to his face, looking at him, tempted to ruffle his hair and wake him up only because I knew how much it annoyed him. Resisting my temptation, I slowly bend forward as I attempt to slowly take out his glasses. He shakes because of the moment and partially opens his eyes. My heart sinks and my hands are frozen in air holding his glasses, feeling like a kid who has just been caught stealing candy from the kitchen.
He smirks as his eyes adjust to the light, "I haven't woken up to this face in a while," he says in a soft whisper smirking, just loud enough to give me Goosebumps as the realization of our proximity is dawning on me now.
I jerk away in motion, standing straight up, fidgeting with his glasses and awkwardly attempting to explain myself.
"Erm, you were sleeping and you look tired," I say avoiding eye contact.
"I wasn't complaining, love. It is so much better than waking up to Seth's shouting face," he says now moving closer to me, "better than anyone actually" he mumbles softly in my ears.
I try to hide away my smile and the semi eye-roll on his corny comments as I look at him.
"Well, the day is almost ending and you look tired. Why don't you go sleep in your bedroom? You'll sprain your neck this way," I say changing the topic and taking a step back before my knees give up from the dizziness his proximity is causing me.
He rubs his eyes now making sense of the time and says, "What? No. I am up now and I won't be sleeping anyways now."
"What do you mean?" I ask puzzled now looking at him.
His eyes widen with I think was fright before he goes back to his calm exposure. "It means that I can't possibly sleep and break my promise to a little boy and on that note, where is Reece?" He says averting his eyes from me and moving away, collecting his things from the table.
He is not telling me something.
"He is downstairs with Sam. They are baking cookies so it's going to be a while," I say as I look at him trying to figure out what he meant.
"Okay. I'll just freshen up then. Give me minute?" he says looking at me.
"Erm, yeah. I'll be outside," I say handing him his glasses.
Liam brings me out of thoughts a few minutes later as he closes his bedroom door.
"Hey," he says with a small smile as he sits beside me on the couch, his aftershave almost immediately filing the space.
"Fifa?" he asks me picking up the controller, "I mean you do need to work hard if want to set up that world record of the fastest lose," he says taunting me.
I glare at him throwing a cushion on his face and he just chuckles as he catches it in mid-air.
"Is everything okay, Kiera?" he asks in a serious tone now putting the controller back on the table and shifting closer to me.
How does he always know?
"Erm, yeah, no, erm, I just wanted to talk," I say trying not to scare him.
"Yeah, I can sense that. What's wrong?" he says his smile dissolving into a straight line.
"Oh no, no. Everything's alright. It's just—", I say as I try to figure out how to actually say.
Heck! I don't even know what I want to say.
"Hey K, it's alright. It's me," he says holding my hand in assurance. He lifts my chin up and looks at me with the utmost sincerity whispering, "I am right here."
I sigh, closing my eyes, "I know we talked about taking baby steps and this is going great, I mean us doing this but a lot has happened in these three years, Liam and I cannot just let it go like everything is the same."
"Mhmm," he says and I see fright flicker in his eyes.
"I feel somewhere before we can move forward, I need to move on from that and I can't do that if I don't know what has happened."
"K, I don't understand. What are you talking about?"
"It's just... I feel like in these three years everything has changed so much and I can't come back pretending it hasn't. There is so much that I don't know now. I didn't know Mum lived here with you all," I start again and realization strikes him with exactly what I am talking about, "I didn't know that Luke came back here in these three years, I don't know why you have this scar now," I say now caressing his scar without any inhibitions, so wrapped up in worry.
His jaw clenches as if suppressing a painful memory as soon as I touch his scar, making me scared to even imagine the story behind it.
I should have been here for him. I should have been fucking here.
He takes a long breathe as his expressions soften giving me a half-smile. He engulfs my hands in his, rubbing his thumb softly to console me, "You're right that a lot of things have changed and there's a whole lot that you don't know about. As much as I hate to make you a part of everything that happened and make you go through it, you are right. We can't truly move on from what that night brought us, until we make peace with everything that has happened. How about we start right now? Where do you want to know first?"
"...about Mum. She told me about her meltdown and that you made her stay here. In all these years, she n-never mentioned a word to m-me. I could have just come back. Every time I asked her how she is, she would sound so fine. How could I have been so fucking dumb?"
"Hey, hey, calm down. All of us were going through a lot, K. She thought she will never see you smiling again. She was glad that you weren't here to see it because it would have hurt you even more and that would have devastated her."
"But I should have been here Liam. It's always been Mum and me for such a long time and I just didn't care, I was so selfishly wrapped in self-pity and misery that I didn't notice. Maybe on some level, I didn't even want to know." I say trying to hold back the tears, thinking of the pain I caused Mum.
"Kiera, she is a very strong person. Despite everything that happened, she always held her own. I don't know how she made it sound like but even though she lived here and all of us were here, she got through it on her own. There is no point in blaming yourself, you cannot turn it around now and I know you cared. You knew she was surrounded with other people that cared about her and loved her and I know you wouldn't have left otherwise."
"No Liam, she is my Mum and I didn't know how thinks would have ended up here."
"So, you thought what? That I would just leave her be, that I wouldn't care?" he says his jaw clenching now as hurt flashes through his eyes.
"No, but Liam that night took so much from you and instead of being there for all of you I ran like a coward, leaving you to pick my broken pieces," I say as tears are running down eyes.
He cups my face, wiping my tears as he looks at me, his eyes tearing up too, "Love, I am not whole if you are broken."
I don't deserve this. I don't deserve him.
"You can't overwhelm yourself like this. I know we need to talk about everything that happened that night too but today is not the day for that. I told you, love, I will be here. I'll always be here and just to clarify things I didn't take care of Sarah, it was both ways and I didn't do what I did because she my mum's best friend or your mum, I care about her too. She has been there for me like my Mum. What happened that night was not her fault."
I look at him and I break apart all over again. I hug him to stop him from seeing me crying, "How does she not hate me, Liam? Why don't you hate me?"
I feel him stiffen before he engulfs me and I didn't know that is all I need to be at peace.
"No one hates you, love. She loves you which is why she never told you what happened. You are a good person, K. You always have been. That night broke all of us and you left because things were really bad and that is the only way you could have healed. Staying here would have made it more and more difficult for you and Sarah understands that. I understand that too."
I hug him more tightly afraid of letting go now. I know there is so much that he wanted to say right now and I know he is holding back just to spare me from hurt.
He reciprocates my hug and I close my eyes hoping to stay like this forever, nothing else mattering anymore in this moment.
"I know this not what you had in mind when you invited me for Fifa,"
He breaks away from the hug and slowly cups my face, "It's already better than anything that I had in mind," he says with a half-smile, making me realize about the almost non-existent distance between us. He moves closer to me, my eyes closing in anticipation, his aftershave now making my heart quicker as he shifts slowly. I feel his soft lips kiss my forehead. I open my eyes as he settles back into the seat, his face dangerously close to mine. I look into his eyes; his expressions suddenly changed making my heart beat so hard and my body too stiff to react. He slowly leans in as if scared that he will scare me. I see him lower his eyes to my lips and I don' think any thought enters my mind after that. He leans more, slowly--
"Liam, let's play Fifa?" we jerk away at the sound. We turn around to find Reece at the top of the stairs, looking at us curiously, and I am consciously keeping my eyes at him, well aware of the mesmerising brown ones on me.
I need to get out of here.
"Ye—," Liam starts and clears his throat before he continues, "Yeah, buddy. I have it all hooked up. Where are the cookies?"
"They are going to take a while to bake, so Gram Sam told me to come here and play. Will you play with us, Aunt Kiera?" Reece asks me.
"How about you and Liam play and I will go and help Sam. We can watch a movie after the cookies? But don't tell your Mum, okay?" I ask as the escape idea enters my mind.
"It'll be our secret," he says with a finger on his lips.
I go to the kitchen to help Sam and distract myself from what just happened entirely. Trying not to think too much about what would have happened and hoping Liam does too, I go back with the cookies to find them engrossed in a game a while later. I go on and sit in the extreme right of the sofa in front of the TV cheering Reece who is sitting between Liam and me.
Yes, distance is good.
I glance over at Liam, his brows knitted in concentration as he struggles to win against Reece; he is scrunching his nose to push his glasses up every now and then, not wanting to let go of the controller.
Cute
I glance back to the game just as Reece scores the winning goal.
"That's twice in a row!" Reece says teasing Liam.
"Don't tease him, Reece. He needs to work hard if he needs to set up the world record of the most consecutive loses," I say high-fiving Reece while eyeing Liam teasingly.
He narrows his eyes at me before asking Reece if he wants to play another game.
"Yes," Reece says and Liam starts setting it up.
"Can I ask you a question Liam?"
"Yeah sure buddy," Liam says while still setting up the game.
"Were you and Aunt Kiera kissing before?" he says making me mildly choking on the cookie in my mouth and Liam deleting the entire game by clicking the wrong button.
"Erm," Liam says glancing at me as I pick up my phone immediately to prevent any confrontation.
"Erm, no, we were not," he says.
"Have you kissed a girl before, Liam?" Reece continues with his questioning and suddenly the memory of the fair hits me. I keep looking at my phone pretending to be engrossed in it as if I have not heard any of this conversation.
"Yes, I have. Let's play now?" he says to Reece but I am well aware of his eyes on me.
Liam gets back to the game when Reece asks another innocent question, one that intrigued me too much, though I tried to be subtle about it.
"How many girls have you kissed, Liam?"
"Erm," he glances back at me, "I am not sure, buddy. Oh! look out," he says to distract Reece from the conversation but my mind had already left this space.
HE IS NOT SURE!
Did he...?
No, that's not possible
Then, how many girls have been there that he is not sure of!
My heart is sinking now and my mood is suddenly angry and sad. Too disturbed to sit there, I excuse myself to grab something to read from his study.
I am staring blankly at the bookshelf in front me, all the book titles blurring into just one thought of what Liam just said. I try to shake off this feeling and try to distract myself, consciously trying to look for a book.
I find one and go on to reach for it when I feel a presence behind me.
Liam.
His aftershave hitting me before my mind could process his presence.
I can feel him moving closer to me, so close that his breath is fanning my cheeks, making me shiver. He moves his arm, grazing mine slightly before grabbing the book that I was about to pick up and gently putting it in my hand but he doesn't move back. Instead, he moves closer to my ear to whisper in heavy pitched voice softly, "One, only one. Always" and then exits the room not waiting for me to react.
Once I gain my senses and I control my breathing, I could not stop blushing almost scared to go outside because I know my expression will say it all.
My irritated, angry-sad mood suddenly disappeared.
Arsehole.
**********
Author's Note:
This was an intense chapter to write, though I tried to end it on a light note. There story is picking up and there's a lot of fun stuff coming up.
If you enjoyed it, do vote.
I am always waiting to here what you all think, so let me in the comments.
Happy Reading ❤❤