Bellamy

 

We had a lot of talking to do, a lot of figuring things out.

He was here. That was all that mattered.

He was here, and he promised he wasn’t leaving.

I went to make some coffee. Liam liked coffee. As the rich brew began percolating, I realized I was still wearing my coat. Grabbing the sleeve to yank it off, I heard the crumple of paper in the pocket and remembered what I’d found at the house yesterday.

It was just paper.

What I read on that paper blew up my world. Liam got a letter from Perry Crone and never told me about it.

Worse: Liam got a letter that claimed my debt was paid in full.

The price?

The death of his father and the fact that it would ultimately tear us apart.

In the end, Crone was getting exactly what he wanted, wasn’t he? This was far worse than my death could ever be, because instead of dying all at once, I would die a little every single day.

Thousands of tiny deaths that would chip away at me and Liam day after day, month after month. To spare us both a lifetime of pain, I should leave.

I couldn’t.

I’d cost Liam enough already. I couldn’t take his child, too.

Now here we were in the kitchen, standing so close, sharing the same air. I was suffocating, and based on the look in his eyes, so was he.

All we had now was the truth. Cold, hard reality.

“Yes?” I whispered.

His eyes fell from mine, but not before they flashed with guilt. “Yes,” he repeated, husky. “I blamed you.”

The frost within Liam I sometimes felt reached out and bit me.

Slipping from between the counter and his body, I moved to put some distance between us. I knew he blamed me. Deep down, I knew this. Why was it ten times harder to hear when he admitted it out loud?

Liam’s hand wrapped around my wrist, holding gently, just enough to keep me from getting too far.

“When I was kneeling over my father…” He began, and the crackle in his voice made me think of ice on the verge of shattering. “As he was gasping and bleeding out all over our kitchen floor and I pleaded with him not to die—”

His pain was so thick, so stagnant that it became mine, too. It didn’t even matter he blamed me or that I had no clue how we moved on from here. All that mattered was he was standing in front of me, breaking into a million pieces.

I moved into him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and squeezed, pressing my head against his chest. He didn’t push me away, but he didn’t embrace me either.

It was okay. I didn’t need comfort right now. He did.

“I did blame you. Beneath the panic and fear, even beneath the bargains I tried to strike up with God, all I could think was that if you hadn’t come home alone that day… If you hadn’t been so careless… If you had just answered the phone when I called you…”

I looked up. A tear trailed down his cheek, leaving a glistening path from his frigid, silvery eye. He felt my stare, and his snapped to mine, stricken.

“It’s okay.” I comforted him, snuggling a little closer.

“It’s not,” he murmured. “It’s not okay. But in those moments, when his hot, sticky blood stuck to my fingers as I tried to push it back into his body and his unfocused eyes ate up my face as if he were trying to remember it one last time…” He paused, swallowing thickly. “I did blame you. I was so goddamn angry at everything and everyone. But mostly you.”

“I never should have come to BearPaw,” I said. Living alone in hiding for the rest of my life would have been better than causing him this pain.

Liam made a sound and wrenched me away from him, holding me out just at arm’s length. His eyes burned into mine. “No.”

I tried to turn away, but he wouldn’t let me. Instead, he lifted me up so my feet dangled over the floor and we were eye level.

“Then Dad said your name. It snapped me out of that weird place I was spiraling into. I heard a gun go off… so many fucking shots. All the blame I felt in the previous thirty seconds? It evaporated. It vanished like it had never been there. All I could think was that you could be taken from me, too.”

I hung on his words, and not because I was literally dangling over the floor. Because he spoke with such emotion that I would have bought tickets just to listen to him speak.

“When I saw you standing over Spidey, when I saw you were the one doing the shooting”—his lips curled up a little devilishly—“I was so fucking proud of you.”

I gasped.

He nodded, sage. “Relieved, too. So goddamn relieved.”

My feet touched the floor again, but my legs were wobbly and weak.

Liam wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me into his body. “There’s no way in hell I could live in a world without you. I would never survive. Even though I’ve stayed away these past few days, you’ve been the only thing keeping me sane. So yes.” He gentled his voice, stroking a thumb across my cheekbone. “I blamed you for a fraction of a minute in the heat of a moment when my father was dying and I had a bullet hole in my shoulder. But then it was over. I haven’t blamed you since.”

“Really?” I asked. It was pathetic. He just poured out his heart, and I was standing there bumbling so badly, wanting to believe.

“I swear to Christ.”

“Please don’t.” I grimaced. He had a filthy mouth.

His low chuckle eased so much tension I didn’t even know I’d been holding. “I don’t blame you for my father’s death, Bellamy. He stepped farther into me, his eyes boring into mine. “This was not your fault. I want you here, so don’t ever, ever say you never should have come here. I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”

Tears of relief, joy, and pain slid over my cheeks.

Liam swiped them away. “I don’t blame you,” he whispered.

I dissolved against his chest, my whole body quaking with relief and sadness. He held me tight, in only the way he could, and in all honesty, it was his touch that convinced me more than all those beautiful, perfect words.

Touch didn’t lie.

After I pretty much drenched his shirt with tears, I pulled back, dabbing my eyes with his satin tie.

“Help yourself,” he muttered, amused.

“Liam?”

“Sweetheart?”

“If you haven’t blamed me these past three days, then why? Why haven’t you been here? Why didn’t you tell me about that letter? Why have you been avoiding me?”

His body stiffened a little, but he didn’t pull away completely until he was sure I was steady on my feet. Then he paced over to the small window above the kitchen sink.

With his back to me, he answered, another admission that rocked my world. “I might not blame you, but I sure as hell blame me.”

I gasped. “What?”

He didn’t say anything or react to my shock. He just stayed at the window, staring out.

I raced over, grabbed him by the arm, and tugged until he glanced down at me.

“You deserve better than me, Bellamy.”