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Chapter Nineteen
LIAM
Something was fucking bugging me, and I couldn’t push the thought out of my mind. Not after the swim lesson, and not after I went to the facilities for a particularly brutal session with our conditioning coach.
It wasn’t anything Zoe had done or said. There wasn’t a specific action I could point to.
Maybe it had happened when I set up the girls’ night for her—shouldering responsibility for her well-being and something that didn’t involve Mira.
Maybe it had happened when Mira decimated the last of my reserves and I slept on that fucking couch all night, just so I wouldn’t have to move her.
I’d hardly noticed the slow crumbling until it was all too late.
Not long after my mum married Nigel, we went on holiday in Wales, the first time I’d ever been to the beach. For hours, I slid wet sand into a massive pile, cupping my hands and patting it down into place, crafting a structure that seemed, to my mind, indestructible.
It wasn’t one wave that knocked it over. Nothing that came in from the offing to bring all my progress down. It was gradual. Little laps of water at the base until the top started to slide out of place and the whole thing went sideways.
I still wasn’t sure if Zoe was the water or if the passing of our days had simply slowly destroyed something that I’d built over time.
Whatever it was, my mind couldn’t stop spinning around the question that I’d never really gotten an answer to.
Whatever it was ... I felt off-balance. Exposed.
“You okay?”
I glanced over at Richards, dipping my chin in a brief nod. “Fine.”
My brusque reply didn’t deter him, and I had to give him credit for that. Kid might’ve had a rocky start to his time here, especially with me, but he’d mellowed the last couple of months.
No tabloids. No strip joints. Just keeping his head down and working his ass off as we rounded the corner to training camp.
One of the veteran linemen gave Richards a friendly shove. “Don’t let him off that easy. We all know when he’s in a normal pissy mood and when he’s extra crispy.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not extra crispy, you twat.”
“You did almost rip Coach’s head off during the tackling drill.”
“You also set the Denver record for most curse words dropped in a thirty-second span when Richards knocked you over that one time.”
Richards grinned, holding his hand up for a fist bump, which I ignored. But hehadplanted his feet well and managed to knock me over, so I smacked him in the stomach instead.
“All of that usually adds up to an extra-bad mood for Liam Davies,” Richards continued. “I know the variations well enough by now.”
“Yeah? Tell me what this means.” I flipped him off and increased the length of my stride as we neared the locker room.
“Come on, Liam,” he said. “It’s never healthy to keep all that shit bottled up. My mom used to let me scream into a pillow whenever I got mad.”
He meant it to be funny, but I was too worked up and had too much energy still pulsing unchecked through my veins with nowhere to go. I gave him a look, and his smile faded.
To his credit, he squared his shoulders and didn’t drop my gaze. “Just trying to say that we’re here for you, if there’s anything you want to talk about.”
I held his stare for a few seconds longer. “There’s not.”
I kept my shower quick and cold, and when I finished rinsing off, I whipped a towel around my waist and marched back into the room.
“I’ll tell you what my fucking problem is,” I barked. They all turned toward me, not a lick of surprise on any of their asshole faces. “It’s going fine at home, yeah? We’re getting along, and I’d probably die for that little girl, and it feels like this weird little family unit that I don’t understand, and Zoe is ...” My chest heaved, and I was unable to follow the threads of that thought. She felt likehome. One that I didn’t deserve. I didn’t deserve either of them. “We’ve got to take Mira to some fucking shrink tomorrow to talk, but what the bloody hell am I supposed to say? I still can’t fucking tell you why my best friend chose me for this and didn’t explain it to me. Didn’t ask if I wanted all this responsibility.” I could hardly breathe because the words were coming out so fast and furious. “Heneverasked. And it pisses me off.”
Trey looked around the room, then settled his steady fucking eyes on me. “Would you have said yes if he did?”
