Chapter Six
Liam
What the fuck did I just do?
Liam slams his door shut and smacks the lock home. Pacing the length of his living room, he aims a punch at the wall beside his door before pulling his fist back. Beating the shit out of his apartment isn’t going to solve anything. Not that there’s anything to solve. He fucked his neighbor and let slip he had spent time in jail.
No big deal.
Except it was. Liam could tell Willow wasn’t the kind of girl who was going to let it go. And truthfully, he wasn’t sure he wanted her to let it go. To let him go. He had too, though. He couldn’t get tangled up with Willow and her kid. Sweet Willow.
He knew that Harriet had a kid. That was a secret that she hadn’t bothered to hide. She was from Minnesota too, but then she never mentioned being a grandma. Nor the fact that she left her kid when she was young. Liam didn’t even know if the kid was a boy or a girl.
Harriet used to fob him off by saying, ‘I hate talking about the past. It hurts too much.’
He never understood why they even got married. Apart from fucking, and talking about where to go next, the only real connection between them was their love of being on the road. Nothing else.
But the hair color. Even though everything was pointing to her being Harriet’s kid. His stepdaughter. The hair color gave him permission to fuck her. He told himself that she wasn’t Harriet’s kid. That fucked up the situation even more. Making Liam even more annoyed. All the fingers were pointing at her being his stepdaughter. Yet he was choosing to ignore it.
Liam drops onto the sofa and buries his head in his hands, yanking at his hair in frustration. He let himself go, let himself relax, and his time it had taught him that relaxing was a bad fucking idea. It’s been so long since he felt human, hell, had someone treat him as human, that when Willow invited him to stay, smiled at him, talked to him like he was just a person, a regular man, he couldn’t resist touching her. And she was soft. And smooth. And smelled so good, like sugar and sunshine. And she felt amazing on his cock.
Just the thought was enough to make his jeans tighten up again. Annoyed with his dick for thinking for itself again, he pushes against it with a fist and wills the thought of Willow’s bouncing tits brushing against his mouth away.
With a huff, Liam kicks off his boots and gets up, heading to the shower. He’s got to wash the smell of Willow off his body. He shucks his clothes and spins the knobs in shower toward cold. Liam stands under the cold stream of water, shivering as it sluices down his body, letting it rinse Willow from his skin. When he looks down and sees the red marks she drew across his torso with her nails, he finally draws back his fist and lets it fly into the slippery tile of the shower.
***
After a night of tossing around in his bed and getting very little sleep, Liam is finally dozing on his sofa, the television turned low for once, when a light rapping on his door pulls him from the edge of his sleep.
“Liam.”
It’s Willow.
He gets up and shuffles quietly across the room in his socks. Peering out of the peephole, he sees the top of her blonde head, her hair pulled up into a high, swinging ponytail. He imagines that he can smell her skin through the door. When she looks directly at up at the peephole, her violet eyes seeming to peer into his own, he resists the urge to step back. His fingers drift toward the door knob but he stops himself before he can open it. Instead, he cracks his neck with a swift twist and steps back, steeling his jaw.
“Liam,” Willow says again softly “let’s talk. Friends, right?”
He doesn’t move.
“I know you’re home. You’re always home,” she says through the door.
Fuck. This chick is nothing if not persistent. He has no idea how long she’ll stay outside his door. She’s drawing attention to them both by doing that. He’s pretty sure she’s running from something and doesn’t want the attention any more than he does. It’s safer for both of them if he just cuts it to the quick now. He’s got to let her know he doesn’t want her around. And he’s got to be a dick about it.
“Go away, Willow.”
He can hear the laughter in her voice when she answers back. “See, I knew you were home. Open up, let’s talk about what happened.”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“I don’t think that was nothing, Liam.” The laughter is gone from her words and he can imagine the skin puckering between her jewel-colored eyes.
He takes a deep breath before he answers. “It was a quick fuck. Done it before and will do it again. Not with you, though.”
He hears her quick intake of breath and keeps himself from pulling open the door to see if she’s crying.
“I don’t think you mean that.” The words are slightly strangled.
“Course I do. We fucked, big deal. Time for you to go away.”
“Liam, I think we should…” her words cut off in a squeal when Liam slams his fist into the doorframe, rattling the wooden door between them.
“There’s no we. Go. The fuck. Away.” He growls, low and menacing. He’s not surprised to hear her running back down the hallway.
Liam turns away from the door, prowling like a tiger across the floor, rubbing at the stubble across his jaw. She’s right, he’s always home. Time to remedy that little situation right fucking now. Liam pulls on his black leather boots and heads out the door, flinging it shut behind him and thudding down the hallway. It might be the middle of the day but it’s time to do the only thing he knows will get this girl out of his mind. Time to get knock-out drunk.