“Liam.” His name comes out as a mumble because I push forward, burying my face into his neck. The butterflies are back, exploding through me again to take my heart on another ride.
He chuckles softly, a hand coming to my face to guide me back. “Don’t hide from me while I’m pouring my heart out to you. This may be a once in a lifetime kind of thing.”
The comment elicits a giggle from me, and I bite down on my bottom lip, but bring my eyes up to meet his. The humor I see dancing in the brown depths of his has me falling in love with him all over again. That he can say all these things, and then make a joke at his own expense in the next breath, makes me happy. It’s so easy with him.
“Look, Nate was right, okay? You won’t change my mind. I don’t deserve you. But I’m going to spend every day of my life trying to earn you, if you’ll have me.”
My fingers slide into the hair at the nape of his neck as I move closer again. This time I don’t shy away from him. I kiss him. Slow and sweet until a content sigh slips between us.
“Of course I’ll have you,” I murmur.
“Good,” he mumbles back, his hand falling back to my waist, both of them sliding around to my back where they link behind me. “Because I also plan on proving you wrong every single day.”
I ease back, my frown returning because I have no idea what he’s talking about. “About what?”
“Well, you were right about me being a coward.”
My mouth opens to protest, but he quickly darts forward and silences me with his mouth. I’m helpless to respond to him, his tongue sweeping through to tangle with mine until I’m feeling dizzy and off kilter. Drunk on Liam. It may be my favorite kind.
When he seems satisfied that I won’t challenge him, he slowly breaks the kiss, but he follows it with three soft, tender kisses. The man may never have been in a relationship prior to me, but he certainly knows how to use his lips effectively.
“I was a coward, Jor. That day, there’s no other word for what I did. I ran scared when I should have wrapped you in my arms and told you we would figure it out.” He unlocks his arms from around me and brings both hands to my face, giving me a moment to catch my breath and meet his eyes. It’s only then that he offers me something that I should be giving him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let you go. I’m sorry I pushed you away. I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you needed.”
Tears sting the back of my eyes. An apology is on the tip of my tongue, but that’s not what comes out of my mouth. “Were you whatyouneeded?”
Liam is taken aback by my question. He leans into the couch, perplexed by what I’ve asked. “What do you mean?”
“Was not fighting for us, for me, what you needed? In that moment, is that what you needed?”
His eyes bounce back and forth between mine as he mulls the question over. It’s obviously taken him by surprise, and I like that he’s taking his time to think it through.
“For months now, you’ve been teaching me that I need to be what I need,” I explain to him, hoping to make the question a little clearer. “You championed me long before Paul and I broke up, but especially after we did. Every time I came to you in tears, you built me up. You showed me how to build myself up. Until I could stand up to him on my own once and for all.”
“The day at the airport,” he states, his eyebrows pulled together in concentration.
I nod at him. “I was what I needed that day. A bad ass bitch who put the asshole of all assholes in his place.”
He’s still perplexed. “But how does that relate here?”
“Well, I’d finally learned how to stand up to him. For years I just took the shit behavior and let him walk all over me. I mean, sure, I’d get angry, and we’d get into a fight, but ultimately I still took it all. The airport was the first time I had truly learned to stand up for myself,” I explain, but then take it further. “And after that, I stood up to Nate.”
“You did?” he asks. Liam’s head tilts to the side, and it’s so adorable it makes me chuckle. He looks like Tosha when he does that. Like father, like pup. Though she’s still fast asleep on the sectional next to us.
Again my head bobs up and down. “Yeah, after I left your place that day. I tore a strip right off him just like he did to you.”
“You fought for me. Even after I didn’t fight for you.”
His eyes fall between us, and he heaves such a heavy sigh that it jostles me against him. His hands had fallen to my thighs sometimeduring our talk, but they’re slowly retreating towards his body now. My own fall to his, stopping them in their tracks.
“As mad as I was at you, I’m also madly in love with you,” I tell him, my fingers hooking under his to hold his hands in mine. “Of course I was going to fight for you. Because I was in a place that I could. And from where I’m sitting, not many have fought for you in your life, and you weren’t able to do it for yourself.”
I lift our hands between us and press my lips to his knuckles. “That’s what a relationship is, Liam. We do things for each other, especially when the other can’t. We lift each other, and while I did a shit job of that because of my own pain, I knew I had to fight for you.”
“You didn’t do a shit job.”
My eyes roll into the back of my head, and my head drops slightly to tell him I don’t believe him without words. “I did. I lashed out at you when you were already down. I shouldn’t have said what I said about Paul fighting harder for me. I’m really sorry that I did.”
His lips purse for a second while a crease in his forehead appears. “You weren’t wrong, though. I didn’t fight.”
