“No, Parker, you don’t get it,” Max snarled, still holding Liam up with one hand. “You don’t get how many days she wouldn’t even get out of bed because some fucker used her and then broke her heart. She’s just getting back on her feet. She didn't need another asshole doing the same thing.”
Is that what he had done? He hadn’t thought so, but now he didn’t know anymore.
“I do understand, Max. If I had known what was going on, I would have put a stop to it. But, as much as we would both like to kill Liam right now, that’s not going to help anything. Why don’t you take Chiara home? We’ll revisit this tomorrow when everyone’s had a chance to calm down.” Parker had worked his way over to Max. He slowly laid a hand on his shoulder to calm him.
Landing one last punch to Liam’s abdomen, Max stormed back inside. Liam felt his legs give out from under him. He landed on his hands and knees. He heaved up everything he had eaten in the last day. If that wasn’t bad enough, he had to do it while trying desperately to regain his breath.
“Come on, Liam.” Parker pulled him off the ground. Right as Parker had wrestled him to the keypad, Ronan threw open the door, almost knocking them both back on their asses. “Help me get him upstairs.”
They managed to get Liam up the stairs and into the apartment. A very worried Astrid followed them. Depositing him on the couch, both men squatted down, trying to assess his injuries.
“You two go back downstairs and help Dean,” Astrid said, shooing Parker and Ronan away. “Max dragged Chiara and Karlie out a few minutes ago, but the bar is still in an uproar. Go,” she added when they just stood staring at her. “Go, I have this.”
When they were finally resigned to heading back to the bar, she turned to look at Liam. “Well, I guess that’s a no to being a bare-knuckle boxer.”
Liam tried to laugh at the reference she had made the first time he met her to his name. It turned into a moan instead as pain seemed to lance through every part of his body.
“Sorry,” she continued, helping him lay back on the couch with a pillow behind his head. “Let’s see what we have. Looks like two to the face and one very painful one to the solar plexus. We should probably take you to the hospital.”
Liam shook his head carefully. “Just ice and tape what you can. I’ll be fine. I can get it checked on base if it causes problems once I get back,” he wheezed. “Chiara?”
He needed to know if Max was right. Had he just been another asshole looking to get his rocks off on a damaged soul? He knew without a doubt that he loved her, but he had never tried to find out how she felt. It just seemed easier not to know.
“She was crying, but she’s tougher than Max gives her credit for,” Astrid said.
Getting up, she retrieved a rather impressive first aid kit from the other room before sitting back down on the edge of the couch. She cleaned the cuts on Liam’s face and applied a butterfly to the one across his cheek. She had him open his mouth so she could check for missing teeth, then gave him a large bag of peas for the swelling.
“Astrid? Do you think I’m the kind of man that would prey on someone? Do you think that’s the reason I’ve never found anyone? Because I’m nothing more than just another one of those assholes?” It was getting hard to speak between his sore jaw and puffy lips, but Astrid’s face said she had heard him.
“God, Liam. Why would you ever think that? Max reacted on instinct, but do you want to know what I saw at that moment?” Liam nodded his head slightly. “I saw a man in a hopeless situation. Did you think you could be with Chiara and not fall in love? You love too hard to ever use someone like that.” She sighed. “Let me help you to bed. I need to go see what fallout is happening downstairs.”
When Astrid finished helping him strip down to his briefs and crawl into bed, she left him to his thoughts. She was right. He hadn’t thought through the consequences. He had completely fucked up everything. He put a wedge in Max and Parker’s friendship, embarrassed his family in front of the entire neighborhood, and, worst of all, he had hurt Chiara.
Astrid and Parker entered his room later to check on him. He pretended to be asleep so he didn’t have to see the disappointment on his brother’s face. Sometime in the early morning, he settled on a plan to avoid fucking up the situation any worse than it already was.
ChapterEleven
Astrid woke upthe next morning with a start before she remembered the kids were staying the weekend with one of Parker’s aunts. Deciding she had listened to Parker snore long enough, she slipped out of bed to start the coffee. She didn’t know how he was going to survive on so little sleep. But Liam had to leave in a few hours to make his flight back to Oklahoma City. She figured she would fill him full of painkillers for the flight.
Flipping the switch on the coffeemaker on the way by, she headed to the guest bedroom to check on Liam. She had made the supreme sacrifice of buying pork sausage patties to go with his breakfast this morning, which would, hopefully, cheer him up.
Poor guy. She had become all too familiar with helping him through breakups in high school, but this time seemed different. She had never heard him sound so heartbroken as he had last night.
Walking into the living room, she stepped to the familiar door and pushed it open slowly in the hope he was still asleep. She sighed when she found the bed perfectly made with military precision and Liam gone. On the bed sat two envelopes. One was addressed to her and one to Chiara. Oh, Liam. What had he done?
“Parker,” she yelled, picking up the envelope addressed to her. In a few minutes, her husband came stumbling into the living room, looking lost. Parker had never gotten better at waking up early in the morning. “Your brother’s gone.”
“What?” he said, scratching his bare stomach.
“Liam is gone. You remember Liam, right?” she asked teasingly.
“Yeah, I know the little shit. Where’s he gone?” Even after everything that happened last night, she smiled. The worried look crossing Parker’s face attested to the fact that he would always love his little brother, no matter what stupid thing he did.
“I don’t know, but he left me a letter.” Astrid sat down on the couch. She began to read out loud, trying to interpret Liam’s typical chicken scratch. She swore he still wrote about as well as Brendan.
Dear Astrid,
I’m sorry for all of the misery I’ve caused. It seems like I always make the worst possible decisions. I know I’ve taken the coward’s way out, but I don’t think I can face the look of disappointment on Parker’s face. Please tell him I’m sorry for causing him any embarrassment and for the damage to his friendship with Max.
