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Provocationcame the closest.
Yup. That was it. Liam provoked me more than any man I’d met in my entire life.
We talked the most in the mornings. Especially on the rare days when Mira slept in past six thirty. He’d already gone for his run, and now he was drinking his coffee, his sex-soap smell wafting around him, while I was taking advantage of the quiet morning by getting a bit of work done.
Or had been until Grumpy Pants decided to critique my posture.
“Itislikely that I’m bollocks at polite conversation,” he said slowly, eyeing my face as he answered. “But I can’t help noticing that you don’t ... go anywhere.”
See? Provoking. The man must’ve had a weird argument kink.
I crossed my arms. “I go places. Mira and I ran errands yesterday; we sawyouat the facilities.”
“Yeah, but don’t women need to do, like, self-care shit?”
“Self-care shit,” I repeated slowly.
“You know what I mean, and don’t pretend like you don’t. Massages and facials and I don’t fucking know—going for a walk or hanging out with friends. You have friends, right?”
A hot prickle of defensiveness clawed its way up my throat, and I fought very hard to push it down. “Of course I have friends.” Who I never saw. Hardly talked to.
“Who?” he asked.
“Well, I had friends I worked with at the hospital. But they’re busy; they work full-time and have families of their own. And I have Rosa—she’s my friend. And Martha and Phyllis.”
“Why’d you quit at the hospital? Didn’t you love it?”
I blew out a slow breath. “I did. It is possible to love your job and still need a break from it. After the divorce, it just felt too hard to try to find a new job at a different hospital. I couldn’t stay where I’d been and not run into Charles all the time—he was still the hospital’s legal counsel. And with the settlement, I could afford to reduce my hours. I wanted something flexible in case I decided to travel or volunteer somewhere.” I sighed, waving my hand around the room. “And then ... all this. I can’t imagine going back full-time right now. Not until Mira is in school.”
“Let me get this straight. You were burned out, so you quit your job, and now you go even fewer places in order to fix that?”
“I’ve been a touch busy raising my friends’ child, if you hadn’t noticed,” I said, desperately trying to keep the edge from my tone.
There was the tightrope again, only this time it wasn’t a wobble that I worried about. We hadn’t fought in weeks, and I wasn’t looking to break that streak. Something like that could snap the rope in two.
“I have,” he said in a rough voice. “But you’re not doing it alone, if you hadn’t noticed.”
I snapped my laptop shut and pinned him with a searching look. “Obviously I know you’re helping, but you’re heading into training camp shortly. Then the season starts. It’s not like I can run off and spend half my day trying to relax when you’re traveling to away games and practicing every day.”
He nodded slowly. “You’re right. Once the season starts, you’ll have the lion’s share of the work.”
We’d stuck so firmly to our one-month-at-a-time motto that we’d never tiptoed into these conversations about the future.
What would the fall look like? As much as I missed my house, and I did, it was strange to imagine us moving back after just a few weeks in this new setup.
Already, this felt like home too.
“I’m prepared to carry my weight during the season,” I told him. “Why bring this up now?”
He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw, and the sound it made, the scratch of his facial hair against his skin, had me fighting a shiver. “You should get out of the house.”
My chin notched up an inch. “What if I like being at home? It’s not like you’re Mr. Social.”
“I spend all fucking day with my friends,” he said. “I had breakfast yesterday with the defensive line and our coach. Today, I’m having lunch with Trey and his QB coach so we can discuss a few things. Who do you see besides me and the kid?”
I swallowed.
No one. That was the answer. I’d hardly even seen Rosa the last few weeks because I didn’t need her babysitting services and didn’t have the energy for her book club once the evenings hit.
