Chapter Four
Leni
A COUPLE OF WEEKS PASS without another Liam encounter. I sometimes hear him working in the barn and see him driving his truck out toward the pasture, but I don’t dare to let him see me. I’ve pretty much become a twenty-three-year-old recluse. I’ve ventured out to the city once to buy a cell phone charger. Mimi shoved a twenty-dollar bill in my hand and insisted I go get one, so I could catch up with all my friends. I know she’s worried about me.
So, after a week of zero contact with my New York friends, I power up my phone, expecting to see hundreds of notifications and text messages. There are none. Literally not one call, text, or tag. Okay, so I didn’t expect any voice mails because who calls anymore? But I definitely thought I’d have plenty of text messages and tags to go through. There wasn’t one photo compilation post of me and my friends on Facebook where they tagged me in a heartfelt message of how much they missed me.
Come on, Jennifer. We were roommates for five years, and you can post pictures of your pumpkin spice latte but not me?
I’ve never felt lower or more lost in my life. My phone shut off a few days later since I hadn’t paid my bill, and I have no desire to turn it back on. What’s the point? I’m twenty-three and have nothing to show for my life. I have an expensive college degree that I can’t use and no true relationships. My entire existence is a facade.
My days are spent watching daytime soap operas, which, truthfully, I had no idea still existed. Mimi doesn’t have cable, so there is no HGTV or A&E. There are three numbered channels—four if the aluminum foil antenna is pointing directly toward the eastern corner of the living room. I’ve also been helping Mimi can everything from peaches to pickles. We have more jars of tomatoes than I could eat in a lifetime.
“All right, Mimi. Last box.” I pick up a cardboard box full of glass jars of mushy red tomatoes.
“Just put it in the basement with the rest, Leni love. Thank you. I’m going to run into town for a few things. Would you like to come with me?”
“No, go ahead, Mimi. I have stuff to do here.”
She presses her lips together and squints her eyes but decides against arguing about it. “All righty then. Any requests for dinner?”
“You know, whatever you make, I’ll love,” I answer.
“Okay, I’ll be back in a bit.” She lays her apron on the counter, grabs her purse, and heads out.
I cautiously step down the old wooden stairs to the basement. I’ve always found this part of the house so creepy. I don’t think the basement has been remodeled since the house was built a hundred or so years ago. The floor is a cold concrete, and the walls are made of stone. It’s dark and musty—the complete opposite of the rest of the farmhouse.
I begin to remove the jars from the box and place them on the appropriate shelf. It’s like a library of mason jars. I suppose the shelves are more recent, probably something my pops put in to store all of Mimi’s jars of veggies. As I pull the last one out of the box, I feel something run across my bare foot. I shriek, yelling out as though I’d just been stabbed, and the glass container slips from my hand and crashes to the floor.
Globs of tomatoes, water, and shards of glass now cover my foot as I turn to run upstairs. I sprint up those old creaky stairs faster than I thought possible in an effort to distance myself from the basement and the horrors that reside down there. I race out to the back porch and start shaking my body, my hands rubbing across my arms and down my body to make sure nothing is on me.
“Yuck! Yuck! Yuck!” I yell.
I consider myself pretty tough, but I cannot do mice or rats or whatever it was that just scampered across my foot.
Gross!
Liam appears before me, winded. “Are you okay? I heard screaming,” he says quickly before he pulls in a large breath.
“I’m fine. It was just—nothing.” I nonchalantly wave my hand, the gesture contradictory to my racing heart. I’m not a wimp—or at least, he doesn’t need to know that.
“Oh my God, Leni. Your foot!”
My eyes bulge when I look down to see my foot covered in blood. My adrenaline subsides, and I can feel the intense throbbing pain radiating from the top of my foot. The jar must have dropped right on it. In my frantic fight-or-flight reaction—where I clearly chose to run like hell—I didn’t feel it.
Suddenly, I’m overcome with emotion—pain and sadness. I drop my chin to my chest, and I start to cry. I’m powerless to stop the tears now streaming down my cheeks.
I’m lifted off the ground as Liam takes me in his arms. I don’t question it. I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face against his shirt. One of his arms holds me under my knees, and my bloody foot swings as he walks somewhere.
I melt into him. My tears continue to fall, but now, they’re quickly absorbed by his shirt. He smells amazing—an intoxicating mix of fabric softener, hay, and work. He feels so powerful and strong beneath my touch. I know I hate him for some reason, but right now, I need him.
He sets me up on a countertop.
I look around. I’m in a bathroom but not one in the farmhouse. “Where are we?”
“In the barn,” he answers as he looks through a cupboard.
“No, we’re not,” I say, confused.
“I had a bathroom built out here after I bought the property. I spend more time here than I do at home, so it comes in handy.” He pulls a big blue box with a red label that reads First Aid Kit out of the cupboard. “This is what I was looking for,” he says to me with a kind smile.
He wets a towel and starts to gently clean my foot. “So, what happened?”
“I dropped a jar of tomatoes on it.”
Liam nods. “Must’ve hurt really bad. That was quite a scream.”
“I actually didn’t feel it hit my foot.”
He brings his gaze up until he’s looking directly at me, and his intense brown eyes stare at me in question. And, all at once, I don’t care about any of it anymore—my need to seem tough or in control, my commitment to hating him, any of it. It’s all just so stupid, and I’m so tired.
“Well, before I dropped the jar, a man-eating mouse ran across my foot. It was quite terrifying. My adrenaline must have been pumping through me in full force because I didn’t realize I’d hurt my foot until you pointed it out.”
“Man-eating?” Liam asks with a solemn nod. “Yeah, we’ve had quite the problem with those monstrous rodents around here lately. I saw a barn mouse yesterday, and I barely escaped with my life,” he says seriously.
I can’t help but laugh. “I’m not a fan of mice.”
“Evidently.” He grins back.
He focuses his attention back on my foot. I watch in awe as he takes such great care of me.
“Well, I don’t think you need stitches. It’s just a surface cut, and it should heal up fine. Sometimes, those surface ones are the biggest bleeders. You already have some bruising starting here though.” He lightly traces his finger across my skin, and it causes me to shiver.
After he bandages me all up, he hands me an ice pack. “This will help keep the swelling down.”
“Thank you, Liam.”
He raises his arm toward my face, and I hold my breath as I watch his hand get closer. With his thumb, he wipes the stray tears still resting beneath one of my eyes.
“You’re welcome,” he answers.
When he pulls his arm back, I’m able to breathe again. “You know, you don’t have to be so nice to me. I don’t deserve it.”
“Whether or not that’s true, it doesn’t matter. You’re a person who needed help. Of course I was going to help you. It’s called, being a good human being. I realize that you have built me up to be this awful person in your head, but I promise you, I’m not him.”
He smiles, and as always, it says so much. He’s such a good man. Besides Mimi, he’s probably the kindest person I know.
Why have I always pushed him away?
Chalk it up to me being an emotional wreck, but I keep talking. “I know you’re good, Liam. It’s me who’s the horrible one.”
“You’re not horrible, Len. You’re just lost.”
His words strike me deep, like a blow to my gut. How does he see me so clearly? He’s right. I’ve been so lost for such a long time, and the harder I try to find myself, the further away I get.
My lip begins to tremble, and I will my tears to stay at bay. The sentence leaves my mouth before I can stop it. “I could really use a friend,” I say to him.
The corners of his mouth turn up into the most beautiful grin I’ve ever seen. “I told you, I can be a really good friend.”
“Okay.” I nod.
“Okay then.” He lets out a content sigh.
He cleans up the bathroom while I sit on the counter, icing my foot.
“You know what I think you need?” he asks me.
“What’s that?”
“A bonfire and beer. It’s going to be cool tonight. It will be perfect.”
“I don’t like beer. It tastes like urine. Can we do a bonfire and martinis or a bonfire and wine?”
“Hell no. You’re not in the big city anymore, sweetheart. We’re doing beer, and I promise, you’ll like it. You’re not drinking the right beer if you think it tastes like piss. I’ll get you the good stuff, okay?”
“Well, I’m not drinking any beer because it’s gross. Can you bring a backup beverage just in case?” I ask with a smirk.
“I’ll think about it.” He shoots me a wink. “Hop on my back.”
He turns around and leans back against the counter. I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
“I think my last piggyback ride was with you. We must have been . . . gosh, ten and eleven or so.” I chuckle.
“Well, we can’t have you hurting your foot, can we?” He leads us out of the barn and toward the house. “I’m going to take a quick shower, go grab some beer and food, and set the fire up. Then, I’ll be back to get you, okay?”
“Sounds good. But can you do me a favor first?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Can you please clean up the broken glass and tomatoes in the basement? I don’t want Mimi to step on it or anything, but I can’t risk seeing that killer mouse again,” I ask sheepishly.
Liam chuckles. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“Thank you. You really are a good human being.”
“Well, I try.”
He leaves me on the couch before heading to the basement. As he walks away, I smile wide. What a difference an hour makes in one’s outlook on life. I don’t feel so alone. I can’t help but grin because I feel like things are starting to look up—well, that, and the fact that Liam’s ass was made to wear those jeans.