AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The weight of Liam’s stare was tangible, but I kept my focus on Mira. She smiled sleepily.
“I have a sleepover with Liam,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep.
“I see that.” I sat on the floor, crossing my legs underneath me and opening my arms. She clambered onto my lap and snuggled into my embrace. I pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
Finally, I brought my gaze up.
With his hand free of hers, Liam had crossed his arms, and I did my very best not to study how the black cotton shirt stretched over his chest.
His expression wasn’t blank, but it was brimming with reserve.
“You look tired,” I told him.
“That your way of telling me I look like shit?” he asked, voice a slow drawl. I’d never heard him speak after just waking, and at the scraping roughness of it, like a cat’s tongue over my skin, I fought a shiver up my spine.
Instead of answering, I kissed Mira’s forehead.
“How’d she end up down here?” I asked.
“She woke up around three and saw me down here. Said she wanted to sleep by me, and I couldn’t fucking say no.” He arched his back and winced. “I’m too old to sleep like this.”
I hummed, hiding my smile in Mira’s hair. She had this big, surly man wrapped entirely around her little finger, and he would rather die than admit it. He’d fight it the entire way, and I wondered what would happen if I pointed it out.
My mom used to tell us all the time,Look for the ways people show their love; don’t just wait for the words. Not everyone can say them easily. But they almost always prove it with their actions.
Should’ve been my first clue with Charles, because he had all the words. In the beginning, he told me all the time how beautiful I was. How much he loved me. How good we were together.
In hindsight, it would have been so easy to berate my past self for how easily I’d fallen for those words. And in the end, they were fairly empty. Because his actions indicated something else entirely.
“How’re you feeling, duck?” Liam asked.
“I okay,” she said, still nuzzling into my chest.
He looked at me. “Should we take it again?”
“We can,” I told him. “But I think the fever broke.”
“You cannot fucking know that just by kissing her forehead.”
At his dry tone, I smiled. “No, but she’s sweaty, which probably means it broke during the night.”
He eyed me carefully, then grabbed the thermometer. He scanned Mira’s forehead, and when he rolled his eyes, I laughed quietly.
“Don’t be so smug,” he said. “It’s rude.”
“Should we go make some breakfast?” I asked Mira.
She hopped out of my lap. “Can we have doughnuts?”
“Maybe later,” I told her. “How about some eggs this morning?”
“I don’t like eggs,” she said.
“Sure you do. Remember when I put the cheese on them a couple days ago? You ate every bite.”
She thought about that, then nodded. “Extra cheese.”
“You got it.” I motioned for her to come closer so I could open the back of her pajama pants and check if her overnight pull-up was dry.“Nice work, Mirabelle.” I pointed across the hall. “Pee first, and then we’ll go downstairs.”
