Audrey scooped up a stack of endorsement deal paperwork from her desk in the little makeshift home office she’d set up in one of the spare bedrooms.

She hadn’t spoken to Liam directly in a couple of days, not since her declaration on the front steps of her parents’ house. It was easy enough, since he’d been benched from practice with a sprained ACL.

Between visits from team doctors and spending long hours on the couch, Liam simply hadn’t needed much from her other than refilling the fridge and making sure there were plenty of over the counter pain medicines within reach.

Every time she walked through the house, she felt his gaze on her, making her tense and nervous. So much so that she’d begun to search for new apartments nearby, just to get some space.

Though it wasn’t her intention, she’d made things super weird between them.

This is why you don’t make out with your boss, dummy, she scolded herself for the hundredth time. No matter how hot he is…

Today, though, she’d picked up a fat sheaf of business documents from his lawyers. He needed to read and sign them in the next couple of days, which meant that Audrey needed to actually talk to him.

Truth be told, if she didn’t resolve this tension between them soon, she was probably going to have to quit. Might as well test the boundaries now, right?

Heading downstairs to the living room, she stopped short. The room was empty.

“Liam?” she called out, walking to his bedroom.

The door was open, no Liam in sight.

It took her a couple of minutes of searching to find him sitting in the back yard in the fading evening light, a bottle of whisky sitting on the table beside him.

He was staring out into the yard, looking contemplative.

“Hey,” she said.

He started and glanced at her, then looked away again. “Hey.”

His voice was rough and gravelly, almost as though he’d been weeping. There was no trace of tears on his face, but he was clearly in some kind of distress.

“Are you okay? Do you need me to get your pain medication?” she asked. “I know you don’t want to take narcotics, but—”

“No,” he said, cutting her off.

She sighed. “Okay. Well… what can I get you?”

Liam looked at her again and then shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Let me call the doctor for you,” she insisted, walking over to set the papers down beside his bottle of whiskey.

“It’s not that.” Liam waited a beat, then said, “I just got a call from London. My mum died this morning.”

Audrey’s heart flip-flopped in her chest.

“Oh, Liam… I am so sorry…” she said, then bit her lip. “Can I sit?”

He shrugged. She grabbed a lawn chair and dragged it over beside his, then sat down, unsure what to say.

“What happened?” she asked after a second.

“She was an addict,” Liam said. “She has — had, I mean — been clean for a few years, mostly because I paid to have her kept in a full-time patient care facility. But her heart finally gave out, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” Audrey said, reaching out and putting her hand on Liam’s arm. “Really, I am.”

Liam released a heavy sigh. “She was a shit mum, I’ll tell you that. I guess Jack never told you the story, but… he came home with me one Christmas, when we were in school.”

“No, he never said anything about it,” Audrey said.

Liam snorted. “We showed up at the flat, and it was empty. I mean, some of my things were still there, but Mum was gone. The landlord evicted her, and she’d just moved down to the closest place where people could score and sleep. It was pretty grim.”

“How did you end up in a fancy Swiss boarding school?” Audrey asked.

“My coach at school helped me apply,” he said. “He saw that I had a gift, saw that my Mum couldn’t care for me… Looking back, now, he probably saved my life.”

He picked up the bottle and took a slug of whiskey, making a satisfied sound as he swallowed it. Audrey watched him, unsure what else she could say.

“Sometimes I think, the way I am with women? Lots of different girls, can’t stick with one, can’t trust one…” Liam said, seemingly half to himself. “Sometimes I think that’s because of Mum. Like I’m broken, you know? Inside. Can’t be fixed.”

“Oh, Liam. I’m sure that’s not true,” Audrey said, taking his hand.

He shook her off, looking her right in the eye.

“No? You as good as told me that yourself, not a handful of days past,” he said. His voice was toneless, lacking in accusation, but it still made Audrey cringe.

She had implied that, hadn’t she? Or close enough.

“Liam, I—”

“Leave me,” he said, pulling away from her. “Please. I can’t handle your pity right now.”

Audrey hesitated, then stood and picked up the papers.

“I’m just inside, if you need me,” she said.

When he didn’t speak again, she turned and headed in, heart heavy.