Without waiting for a response, he turned and headed toward his home office, ignoring the flicker of hurt that crossed Hailey’s face at his abrupt dismissal.
Once inside, he closed the door firmly and leaned against it, exhaling heavily. The charade of normalcy exhausted him. Every smile felt like it might crack his face. Every casual touch was a reminder of how distant he felt from his own body, his own life.
It had been the same after Kate died — this gradual retreat into himself, this inability to connect with others, even those he loved most. The difference was that now he recognized the pattern even as he surrendered to it. He was aware that he was shutting Sunny out, aware that his daughters were picking up on the darkening atmosphere in the household. And yet he seemed powerless to stop it, like watching himself drown from outside his own body.
A soft knock on the door pulled him from his thoughts.
“Liam?” Sunny’s voice was hesitant. “Can I come in?”
He moved away from the door, straightening papers on his desk that didn’t need straightening. “Yeah, sure.”
She entered, closing the door quietly behind her. Even with the physical distance between them, he could smell the faint vanilla scent of her shampoo, could see the slight tremble in her hands as she clasped them in front of her.
“Beth is taking the girls to school,” she said. “I thought maybe we could talk.”
Liam’s throat tightened.Talk. The one thing he couldn’t seem to do, especially about the one subject they needed to discuss most.
“Now’s not really a good time,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward his laptop. “I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on.”
“Liam, please. It’s been days, and we’ve barely spoken about what happened.”
“What’s there to say?” He kept his eyes fixed on his desk. “It happened. It’s over. We move on.”
A beat of silence.
“Is that what you’re doing?” she asked, her voice quiet. “Moving on?”
The rawness in her tone made him finally look up. Pain was etched into her features. He knew that pain intimately — was drowning in it himself. And yet he couldn’t reach across the gulf between them to offer comfort, couldn’t find the words to express the yawning emptiness inside him.
“I’m trying,” he said finally. “The best way I know how.”
“By shutting me out? By acting like nothing happened?” Her voice cracked slightly. “Liam, I lost our baby too. I’m hurting too.”
The words hit him like a body check, driving the air from his lungs.Our baby. The tiny life they had created together, lost before it had truly begun. A future erased before it could take shape.
He stood abruptly, grabbing his car keys from the desk. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Liam—”
“I need to go. I have… things to take care of.”
He brushed past her, ignoring the hurt in her eyes, the outstretched hand that fell limply to her side as he walked away. It was cruel, he knew. Cowardly. But the alternative — facing that pain head-on, allowing himself to feel the full weight of their loss — seemed impossible.
Behind him, the door to his office remained open. He didn’t look back.
The mindless rumble of his SUV’s engine accompanied Liam as he drove aimlessly through the city streets. Traffic moved around him in a blur of color and sound, none of it penetrating the fog that seemed to envelop him. His phone buzzed repeatedly in the cup holder — Sunny, most likely. He ignored it.
He found himself pulling into the parking lot of a nondescript sports bar on the outskirts of town. At 9:30 in the morning, the place was practically deserted — perfect for someone seeking anonymity.
The bartender, a middle-aged woman with tired eyes, barely glanced up as he slid onto a stool at the far end of the bar.
“Little early, isn’t it?” she commented, wiping down the counter in front of him.
Liam shrugged. “Coffee, black.”
If she recognized him, she gave no indication. Just nodded and filled a mug with the day’s first batch, sliding it across the polished wood.
His phone buzzed again. This time, he glanced at the screen. Not Sunny, but Mike — his agent. With a resigned sigh, he answered.
