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My routine had been obviously ruined along with whatever was left of my sanity.
It was the morning after walking those miles with Liam and our collective demons that I decided I needed to take control of whatever I could. Which wasn’t much. But my morning routine might work.
I dressed in leggings and an oversized tee, yanked my hair into a messy bun and did a quick lot of stretches in the small amount of floor space available to me. No way was I trying it in the common room, not just because of the littering of condom wrappers, empty bottles, unconscious bodies and whatever bacteria resided there—though that was a big contributor. No, because I didn’t want to run into Liam, skulking around from wherever he was staying.
I hadn’t asked him where he was sleeping, though our exchanges didn’t really have space for benign questions such as that. We only had space for those big, yawning, gaping, painful questions. Like ‘why did you fake your own death and leave me alone with my broken heart, you miserable bastard?’ kind of questions.
And I wasn’t strong enough for the answer just yet.
Me, the person who made her living out of asking some of the hardest questions in the world, did not have enough courage to ask the one question that mattered.
It rang around in my skull as I tried to repair my aching body.
Once finished, my stiff and sore body was loosened somewhat. But no matter how much yoga I did, I wasn’t going to stretch away the tension that was coiled in my soul.
I dressed in my last lot of clean clothes, reminding myself to venture around the clubhouse, or at least ask Macy, to find out where to do laundry.
I thought I’d feel more comfortable in my boyfriend jeans, black tank, Gucci sneakers, and red lipstick—not wearing scant and tight clothes and enough makeup to sink a ship.
My hair was slowly returning back to its normal color, though it was a strange in between now. Though that worked, since I felt like I was in between. Halfway from that girl in miniskirts and crop tops, but somehow still miles from the woman who routinely wore bulletproof vests with ‘Press’ plastered on them in block letters.
As if a collection of five words on the vest would provide me with some other layer of protection. Words protected no one. But I had experience in knowing they could harm just as well as any bullet.
Maybe that was why I was too scared to ask Liam those questions.
Because I didn’t have on my emotional bulletproof vest.
I had considered myself and my fragile mind lucky that I encountered no one while thinking these thoughts, pouring my coffee in the thankfully clean kitchen off the common room.
The kitchen was well stocked, with a mixture of extremely healthy food—even fricking kale, which apparently Claw put in his smoothies—and total junk. I veered toward the total junk.
I was halfway through a bagel when my luck ran out.
No, that wasn’t quite right, my luck ran out about ten days ago, with a bullet in an alley.
No, that wasn’t quite right either.
My luck ran out when I heard a scream down the street and my blood went cold almost fifteen years ago.
Liam didn’t look like he was expecting me when he entered the kitchen.
I wasn’t expecting him either. Not just in the kitchen, but here, walking the earth at all.
You’d think I would’ve gotten used to it by now. Not just seeing him when I thought he was dead for fourteen years, but seeing this new, hard, scarred version of him.
You’d think someone as accustomed to trauma as me, to seeing all sorts of horrors, I would’ve been able to brace for impact.
I couldn’t.
There was a handful of seconds, every time I laid eyes on him, when his presence tore through every single shield I’d managed to build. Like knives. But it wasn’t the pain that was the worst, I was used to that, it barely went away. No, it was the sheer and primal joy that came from my heart before my brain could catch it up.
Because those few seconds weren’t full of ugly truth and reality of what him living, breathing, walking around in a motorcycle cut meant.
No, those seconds were simple. Liam was alive.
It was the transition from simple to painfully complicated that was the worst thing. Having to let go of that warm joy and replace it with the cold truth.
I quickly swallowed my half-chewed bagel, the sides of it scraping my throat. For a second, I thought it might lodge itself in my airway, a panic came with the thought of standing there choking in front of Liam, on a fucking bagel. But then a strange sense of longing overtook me. I wanted to choke in front of him. Give him something tangible to be presented with. Show him what his presence did.
