Page 90 of Just Between Us

He’s on his feet, sprinting to the kitchen with Mutt and menot far behind. Grabbing potholders from the counter, Liam yanks open the oven door and a plume of slightly too toasty air billows out. He pulls out a round cake pan, looking devastated.

“What is that?” I ask, peering around him to the too done surface.

Liam turns, scratches at the back of his neck and shoots me a sideways glance. “A birthday cake.”

My heart clenches inside my chest, so tightly I press a palm to it.

“You baked me a cake?” I take a step closer to look at it. Yes, it’s more brown than golden, but there are spots where I can see the pink spongy texture of a strawberry cake.

“Correction. I burned you a cake. Penny asked Austin your favorite cake. He then asked your aunt, who said strawberry. Straight from a box. Nothing fancy.”

Liam grabs a plate and tilts the pan so the cake slides right onto it. The bottom is also pretty brown, and I can tell how disappointed Liam is by the “fucking hell” he mutters to himself. But there’s no way I’m letting a little mishap ruin this sweet gesture. I swipe a knife from the block on his counter and begin to shave the burnt layer, revealing a perfectly cooked strawberry cake beneath.

“See? Underneath, it’s perfect.”

Brightening, Liam pops open the container of store-bought icing, and I watch as he sets his jaw in concentration and drags a spatula through the pink frosting to swipe it across the top. It’s still too hot, pieces crumbling under the weight of the spatula, but I’ve never seen a more lovely birthday cake.

I lean a hip against the counter, content to watch him work. There’s a profound intimacy in this, watching Liam’s careful motion after he’s just done possibly the hardest thing, gifting me with his poems, and cracking open his heart for me to peer inside.

“Oh!” I gasp suddenly. “I have something for you, too!”

I’m out the door before he can reply, jogging to the G-wagonto grab the small gift bag from the passenger seat. When I return, he’s just swiping the last of the frosting, and he looks up, eyeing the bag curiously.

“Merry Christmas,” I say, thrusting the bag his way. “It’s not much, but I think you’ll like it.”

Liam takes the bag in one hand, and lifts the cake with the other, moving across the kitchen to set them both at his table. He grabs two forks from a drawer and we sit side by side to eat straight from the plate.

While I eat, he picks up the bag, pulling out tissue paper until he reaches what’s inside.

“For your fridge,” I explain around a bite. “Magnetic poetry. That one is Shakespeare and the other is the original set.”

Abandoning the cake for me to devour alone, Liam dumps both sets onto his table and begins sifting through the tiles, brow furrowed, that brilliant mind of his mind working to wordsmith a line or two.

“How’s this?” he asks, straightening.

Given the heaviness of the past hour, I expect something poignant or eloquent. Something utterly heartbreaking. But what I see causes a quick laugh to burst from me.

Thy bosom is a temptress.

I slap Liam playfully on the arm and he grins, such a devastating sight after seeing total destruction just a while ago.

“Is that a no? Not a good poem?”

“A masterpiece,” I quip back. Shakespeare would be trembling with jealousy.

Liam stands, hovering over the tiles and begins arranging them again. This time he spends more time, picking up tiles, setting them down, arranging and rearranging.

Wordlessly, he relaxes back in his chair while I take a look at what he’s written.

Golden eyes are my home.

All I can do is stare at his profile. I’m frozen in place, a wax figure, my gaze locked onto the sharp angles of his face, musclesjumping in his cheek as he works his jaw. Once again, my chest swells with pride and I think about that feeling I had earlier, out on the deck. The urge to press kisses to his face is so strong, a tangible thing.

“I’m so proud of you I could kiss you.”

Oh my god. Fuckety-fuck of all times to lose my verbal filter. It’s like the words fast-tracked themselves from my brain and out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Liam’s posture goes rigid, and heat floods my cheeks, practically stinging them.