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Damn it.
He had fucking been afraid of that. He had also studiously avoided the subject for a couple of years now. Which wasn’t fair to Lilly.
Then again, she’d never said a word to him.
She probably didn’t want to ruin their friendship. He didn’t want that either. Lilly was really damn important to him. She’d been loyal, helped him whenever he needed her. And most importantly, she was a connection to Kendra.
“I’m not in love with Lilly and I never will be,” he said, honestly. “I love Lilly as a friend, but I can’t ever fall in love with her.”
Sloane studied him and then she nodded. “I get that. And I think you should make that clear to her. But if that’s truly the case, that you’ll never be interested romantically in her, let her explore other men.”
The thought of her exploring his father made him want to lose his lunch all over the patio. He grimaced. “Sure. Fine. But Dad? That’s kind of gross, sis. Hopefully right now they’re realizing they have nothing in common and they’re splitting the check and going their separate ways.”
Liam glancedover at Lilly in the passenger seat of his truck, just confirming visually that she wasn’t regretting her decision to go to Minneapolis with him.
Quite the contrary.
She had the window down, her hair down, and her inhibitions down. She was singing along to the eighties metal he had playing from his phone through the car speakers.
He hadn’t meant to spontaneously invite her to spend the weekend exploring the city with him, but the moment had felt right. She clearly needed a break in her routine. She was thirty years old and going to bed at nine o’clock. Which would be fine if she had to get up at three a.m. to do the morning news, but he knew for a fact she started work at eight.
She either had a vitamin deficiency or she was bored or mildly depressed with the state of her life. Maybe both.
“Kendra loved this song,” she said. “We used to sing it on the bus going to school. She found an old CD that was her dad’s and loved it. Then she found it so we could listen to it on her phone.”
“It’s a great song. I had no idea Kendra was a secret Metallica fan.” He hadn’t. He’d always liked Sullivan’s wife, but she had been shy around him. Her own father had passed when she was sixteen and while Liam had tried to be friendly to Kendra, she hadn’t be entirely open to a relationship with him.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything about Kendra. But sometimes it’s hard not to just blurt something out.”
Lilly sounded so genuinely contrite Liam glanced over at her. “Why on earth can’t you tell me Kendra liked Metallica?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about her in front of Sullivan. So it’s just I never get to talk about her. She was my best friend and I can’t share my memories of her.”
That annoyed Liam. He had certainly noticed that Sullivan chose never to talk about Kendra and he’d called him out on it. But he didn’t know that his son had in essence forbidden Lilly to do the same. “That’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to Kendra, frankly. She was a beautiful soul and a fabulous wife and mother. It’s not fair to Finn, either. He should hear about his mother and how much she loved him.”
“You can get away with talking about Kendra because you're Sullivan’s father and he respects you. I can’t.”
He didn’t think of it as getting away with anything. He said what he wanted to say and so should Lilly. “So, what, he doesn’t respect you?”
“I didn’t mean that. I just know he would be really angry with me.”
“I think that’s bullshit.” An enormous pile of bullshit. He and Sullivan were going to have a chat come Monday. “You can talk to me about Kendra whenever you want. You can spend the whole rest of the weekend telling me Kendra stories and that will be fine with me.”
He truly meant that.
She smiled. “You’re a good guy. Do you know that?”
He liked to think he didn’t suck. But for some reason, those soft-spoken words from Lilly made him feel like a million bucks.
“So that’s why I’m single,” he joked. “Women go for the bad boys.”
“Sometimes people don’t know what’s best for them.”
Was she talking about Sullivan? About herself?
Liam wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
He also wasn’t sure that he wanted his selfish son to be the one who got to be with Lilly after all.
