She knew his childhood had been really hard. She had always known that his mother had died from an overdose, but she just didn’t know any real details. Before he’d told her about the book. That had cleared up all her confusion in a way that gave absolutely no other details. It had hurt him to even tell her that much, and it had hurt to hear it. She didn’t want him to have to go through anything else like that tonight.
“Complicated,” she offered quickly, giving him an out in case he, too, wanted to avoid dissecting painful memories.
If she had her way, she’d know every single part of him, from his past, to the way he thought, to all his future plans... But it really wasn’t her right to ask any probing personal questions. No matter how nice they both agreed it had been to be around each other again, he wasn’t going to be around that long. Once he was back on his feet, her usefulness would be at an end.
* * *
“Complicated.” Liam echoed the word. His childhood wasn’t high on his list of things to talk about tonight. The waiter arrived and he tried to think of the least drippy foods to order, and shifted conversation on.
His list of things to talk about really only had two items: that night and that trench coat.
But that felt like an after-dinner conversation. So he steered them back toward small talk, safe and focused on subjects that would make her feel comfortable.
Memories they’d shared after Liam had been placed in foster care near the Watsons’ home, and how he’d befriended Nick.
How she’d ended up at The Hollywood Hills Clinic.
Why she’d left professional sports.
Things he’d never let himself know about her, even when he’d wanted to know.
“I saw you once at a game,” he said, as their dinner plates were taken away. “You were working on one of the players’ knees. You want dessert? I want dessert.”
The dessert he wanted definitely wasn’t on the menu, but in the interest of sublimating his carnal desires...
“I don’t think I need one.”
“Split one. They have this chocolate cake thing with fruit that’s really good.” He ordered one and then took the ice off his ankle, sat up straighter, and slid toward her in the booth.
“If you don’t want to eat it, just take one bite and I’ll pretend we split it equally.”
“I could move over there to you so you could keep your foot elevated.”
“It’s okay. We’re not going to be here much longer anyway. And I think that those pain tablets are kicking in.”
With a nod, Grace went about clearing a spot between them, shifting water bottles and cutlery as needed. Keeping busy.
“Grace, I need to talk about—”
Before he even got the words out her perennially straight posture went rigid, and beneath that California glow he could see her cheeks pinking up.
She still didn’t want to talk about it.
“It’s not what you think.” He caught her hand before she could tidy any more and dragged it to his lap in the hopes that her attention followed.
“Oh, I’m sure it is.”
“The thing is—and this is pretty selfish of me—I need things to be good between us. And be honest. You don’t really owe it to me to listen to my explanations...”
“You really have nothing to explain.” This time, catching her hand didn’t settle her down and her voice rose a little as she looked everywhere but at him. “I don’t blame you. I’m not mad. It was all my fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. I put you into an unwinnable situation because I was young and stupid. Inexperienced in reading people’s intentions...”
“Grace?”
“You’ve become really good at it, not that I blame you. How else are you going to keep out of those kinds of situations, especially now that you’re on the Freebie List of at least seventy percent of the married women in North America, and probably a significant number of women abroad?”
“Stop.”
“Barring sexual preferences, of course. Oh, then probably men too. I just couldn’t even ballpark a figure on that one.”
“Grace, I wanted you,” he blurted out, his heart suddenly thundering in his ears, and his confession probably carried halfway across the restaurant. The waiter arrived right then and wordlessly placed the plate between them, then placed the silverware and left.
Grace rolled the hand that he held, not pulling away but as if she couldn’t dispel the tension in her body unless she moved something.
“Take a bite of this thing. Strawberry. Chocolate brownie thing. Cream. Get all of it. One big bite.” He kept her hand, and she still didn’t pull away, but she also didn’t look at him, focusing heavily on the dessert instead.
“I’m eating more than one bite of that,” she finally said, and when he let go of her hand, she reached for her spoon.
“You don’t have anything to say about my declaration?”
She glanced up, an uneasy smile on her face now. One of her hands slipped up to cover her collarbone protectively, then gave it a little rub. “You mean besides I don’t believe you?”
“You think I’d yell that in a crowded restaurant if it was a lie?”
“I think...you’re trying to make things right.” She chose her words slowly and carefully, he could see, but the self-comforting actions had already started. “And I appreciate that, but you don’t have to.”
He reached over and pulled her hand from her chest, once more holding it in his own as the other fiddled listlessly with her spoon.
“What are you doing?”
“Comforting you,” he murmured. “You covered your jugular notch, it’s a self-comforting technique. Women often do that when they’re feeling unsettled or emotionally unsafe, while men usually rub the back of the neck... There are other things that could be called tells. Like when you got out of the pool and you saw me there, your feet were pointed toward the closest door, and I knew you wanted to run.”
“I wanted to go to the locker room and get dressed. And please don’t do that,” she muttered, bouncing the spoon in her fingers, having yet to use it for anything useful.
“Don’t hold your hand?”
“Don’t tell me what I’m feeling based on what my extremities are doing!”
“Fine. How about I tell you this instead: I wanted to drag you into that apartment, tear off every scrap of black lace, and make sure that you could never forget me. That’s the truth.” It was still the truth, but not one he was going to admit. He still wanted her in a way that defied logic, in a way he still had to fight his way through even when she was quarreling with him. “But because I couldn’t
