Liam’s house sat quietly under a flickering streetlight with both of his cars parked in the driveway and looked dark and empty inside. My car idled against the curb while I nervously tried to gain the courage to step out and knock on the front door. I argued internally with myself that my nerves were coming from the danger of his high-crime neighborhood, and not from the fear of facing the man inside. Neither thoughts sat well with me, though.
Finally, I pushed my door open and speed walked to the front porch, jamming my finger into the doorbell and banging my fist on the door before fear took over and I stopped myself. I waited for a few moments, glancing around behind me to make sure no one was watching, before I pounded my fists on the door again, louder this time. The hollow bangs they made echoed through the empty street, but no one bothered to glance outside to see where the noise was coming from.
I knew he was there. I could feel his presence inside the house, drawing me in like a magnet. But there wasn’t any noise coming from inside, and when I tried the knob, it was locked. Remembering that his room was downstairs, I slowly crept around to the back and twisted the knob on that door, finding it to be unlocked. I pounded on the hard metal, waiting a considerable amount of time in the darkness before letting myself inside.
The soft glow from the TV illuminated the base of the stairs, confirming my suspicion that he was home. I didn’t have a plan for what I would say when I was in front of him. I wasn’t even sure which version I was walking into.
Would he be the cold man who chose Kelsey over me, the distant man he was toward the people he didn’t care about, or the soft man I fell in love with? All three options terrified me, but I pushed through the fear again and slowly descended the stairs with caution.
My heart broke into pieces when I reached the last step, each shred sending vibrations through my body as it crashed onto the ground at my feet. Liam sat shirtless on the floor, his back against his bed and his knees pulled up to his chest while he sobbed into his hands. The broken sound his quiet cries made filled my ears and everything else around us faded away.
I wanted to wait for him to notice me standing there before I made a move, but anticipation had me rushing toward him prematurely. It wasn’t until I wrapped my arms around his shoulders that he looked up at me, his usually dark oceans pale and bloodshot.
I shushed his cries, running my fingers through his thick, unruly hair in a feeble attempt to comfort him. We didn’t speak, but our body language communicated the messages our mouths couldn’t. His long arm wrapped around my torso, pulling me further into his side. I looked around the floor and spotted a piece of paper with female handwriting sitting next to his left leg. I couldn’t make out most of the words, but “Mom” was written in large swirls at the bottom of the paper.
He was reading a letter from his mom.
Time didn’t seem real while we sat together on his basement floor and waited out the storm inside his head, just as he had done with me so many times before. I held him in my arms protectively, allowing him to release years of pent-up emotions and abuse. The devil on my shoulder reminded me we were on borrowed time, and when the storm passed, he would still be the man who broke my heart into pieces. But love was selfless, and it made me ignore the warnings. It had me leaving my own gaping wounds exposed to tend to his instead.
“What are you doing here?” he asked when he calmed down enough to speak.
My arms were wrapped around his middle now while his head rested on my shoulder. Neither of us had moved a muscle in what felt like hours. I was too afraid to break the spell we were under and face reality.
The question was innocent, and his tone wasn’t rude when he asked it. But it still stung. There shouldn’t have been any doubt as to why I was there. I loved him, and he was hurting.
Isn’t that explanation enough?
“Niko asked me to stop by,” I explained cowardly, leaving the unspoken words lingering on my tongue.
And I miss you; life isn’t worth living without you.
He accepted my answer with silence, staring back off into the distance. “I’m sorry you had to see me like this. You don’t have to stay if you have somewhere to go,” he finally said, his cold dismissive words sending shivers down my spine.
I wasn’t ready to leave, and I had nowhere to go even if I was. The apartment was lonely, and the silence gave my mind too many opportunities to stray and think about us. What we were, what we could have been. I took a deep breath, considering my words carefully before I decided to just go with the truth again.
He’s already destroyed me, what more could he do?
“This is exactly where I want to be.”
Liam groaned beside me, lifting his head so he could level his eyes with mine. His blues had returned to their usual darkness, defeat swishing around his stare. “Luna, I can’t do this.”
“Do what?” I asked more fiercely than necessary. My brows pulled together defensively. I was so sick of him calling the shots. Neither of us was surviving this way.
The hard, intimidating look he usually wore to protect himself was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I saw a broken little boy who had just lost everything. But I wanted to show him there was still something left to fight for.
“I can’t deal with you dangling what I can’t have in front of my face. I don’t have the restraint not to take what doesn’t belong to me anymore. I can’t stand that I’ve lost you, and I can’t even think about us without it eating me alive. Having you here is killing me right now.”
We were both tired of fighting our internal battles alone and losing. I hated him for what he did to me. I hated that he destroyed what we had with someone as cheap as Kelsey. I hated that he was a Reaper.
But more than all of that, I loved him.
I didn’t want to talk. We’d spent enough time talking and it got us nowhere. We still ended up losing each other. Actions were more effective at communicating for us.
I leaned against him, easing our lips together into a tender kiss. Whether I liked it or not, he owned me. Every atom of my body was created for him. Every inch of my soul belonged to his. And I owned him. The second he walked into my bakery, this brooding, damaged man became mine.
Liam’s restraint was nonexistent. The moment our lips met, he responded, opening his mouth to mine compliantly. He wanted this just as much as I did, he just didn’t think he was worthy of it.
I did my best to show him that he was.
We tore at each other’s clothes in a frenzy, unwilling to waste any more time apart. Our lips only separated for the second it took to rip my shirt over my head before they crashed together again, devouring each other, claiming what was rightfully ours. Liam swung me onto his lap before hoisting us onto the bed without breaking contact. He delicately laid me down on my back, covering my top half with his warm, hard body.
“I’ve missed you so goddamn much,” he mumbled against my lips, resting his forehead against mine to take a deep breath.
“I’ve miss you too,” I practically moaned back. I was too caught up in the moment to be embarrassed by my transparency, but it wouldn’t take much for him to get me to fall apart.
“I’m so sorry, Luna. I tried to protect you from my bullshit, but I’m too selfish to keep you away.” A warm tear fell from his eye onto my cheek. “I can’t fucking do this alone,” he quietly cried, tucking his face into my neck against the pillow.
I didn’t know what to do. Liam never showed this much emotion to me. His boundaries were so blurred, I wasn’t sure if comforting him would end with him pushing me farther away or pulling me closer to his heart. This man was such a mystery to me, and I was always two steps behind.
But he supported me every single time I broke down, and I wasn’t going to let him suffer alone like he had been forced to do his entire life. I would be there for him when he needed me, consequences be damned. I rubbed my hand down his back, testing the waters before I dove right in.
“You don’t ever have to be alone again,” I whispered into his ear, running my other fingers against his tight scalp. He remained silent, but his rough breathing told me he was still crying. “I’m going to be here for you, no matter what. Whether you like it or not, you can’t ever push me away again, Liam.”
He pulled his wet face from the crook of my neck, exposing his dark, reddened eyes to me. A hurricane twisted through them before, but now I watched as it moved away, leaving disaster in its wake. It would take time to repair the damage, but I wasn’t willing to give up on him.
Reaching underneath me to unclasp my bra, Liam placed delicate kisses along my chin and neck. The gloominess was gone, and in its place were tenderness and care. When the stubborn clips finally broke free, he pulled the bra away, exposing my breasts to his mouth and the damp basement air.
Liam held onto control possessively, worshipping my body the way he always had. With expert care, he showed me how different he and Cooper were, and the memory of my assault that always infiltrated my mind in moments like this quickly faded away. Every time he placed his lips on my skin, he was once again replacing my nightmares with the best memories of my life.
We didn’t have a condom. Liam brought all his to the apartment when he moved in, but we weren’t willing to let that stop us. I was protected by the pill, and despite his betrayal with Kelsey, I trusted him to be clean. Our naked bodies moved against each other, the friction creating the best kind of foreplay I’d ever experienced.
Liam guided himself toward my center, watching my face one last time for any shred of hesitation as he always did. When he didn’t find any, he pushed forward, easing himself in slowly and filling me more than ever before. The sensation our bare bodies created as they melded together was indescribable. Cara told me sex without a condom was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, and I wrongfully doubted her. Cooper’s violent assault on my body was absolutely nothing like what was happening with Liam.
The warmth of him inside me without any barriers had a primal growl erupting from my mouth before I could stop it. I felt an overwhelming closeness to him that wasn’t there before. For once, it was as if our two bodies were becoming one, and it was a feeling I'd craved since the moment we first kissed. Apart, we were both broken people, but together we made one whole.
He continued to pepper kisses along my jawline and down my neck, working his way back to my hardened nipples. The quiet, satisfied moans coming from his mouth only aroused me more, knowing the effect I had on him and that we were experiencing the same euphoria together. Almost too soon, I could feel him pulsing inside of me, ready to erupt.
Lifting his head, his heavy-lidded gaze met mine, lingering for a moment before he whispered, “I love you so fucking much.”
Before I could respond, he sucked my lower lip into his mouth, pumping his hips a few more times before his heat flooded my center. Another soft moan left his lips while he finished, biting down on my lip and filling my mouth with the heavy metallic taste of blood. The pain and pleasure dizzied me, intensifying the familiar burning I usually felt. My muscles quaked and pulsed around him, and my eyes rolled back as my hips bucked against him in the strongest orgasm I’d ever felt.
When the storm settled, I was breathless, blood pooling down my chin and Liam’s seed dripping down between my legs. His head rested in the crook of my neck, breathing labored hot breaths against my skin. My heart swelled in my chest, practically exploding through and leaving fleshy chunks on everything in the room surrounding us.
I knew going in that there was no way I was going to walk away from this man unscathed, especially when he elicited those kinds of emotions from me. I knew this love was going to make or break me. I decided then I would never let him walk away from me again.