Page 16 of After All This Time (A Time For Love #2)

Liam

T he next few days go by in a flurry of activity.

Hearing Nate was almost run down by a car has thrown Cooper and me into caretaker mode, making sure our buddy is looked after and comfortable.

We take turns staying with him in case he needs help with anything, even though he insists there’s nothing wrong with him and he was just a bit bruised and battered from taking a fall while shielding the woman he tried to protect.

Coop and I, of course, completely ignore him and stay anyway, just to give a bit of peace of mind to his mom and ourselves.

Which also offers a great distraction to not thinking about what I can’t stop thinking about.

Thanks to me and Cooper rarely being at Cooper’s apartment at the same time, we haven’t been just the two of us since the day of Nate’s accident.

The moment he melted into me keeps replaying in my mind and I can still feel him—soft and warm. His heart beating against mine, his breath on my skin making my body heat and my blood boil.

We may be spending less time together in the same space but we do spend some of it in each other’s orbit.

I hear him humming when I catch him cooking or folding the clothes from the dryer, and I remain hidden so that I can listen to him moving around, hungrily taking in everything.

My fingers always tingle with the need to touch his skin whenever he’s close, to feel him relax against me, to do anything to take away his tiredness from work.

But it’s the way his gaze seems to linger on me just a little longer that sends my heartbeat haywire, that pushes me to stay with Nate more time than necessary.

Because I can see the way he missed me, just as much as I missed him.

Just not in the same way.

I rub my hands over my face, and I’m grateful that Nate is taking a nap and can’t see me like this and ask me what’s going on.

What’s going on is that I’ve been obsessed with my best friend for half my life and though I all but spelled it out to him when I left, he probably thinks that that was just a product of youth and hormones. That it’s a feeling dead and forgotten, not living inside me, slowly burning through me.

That’s probably why he feels like he can be vulnerable with me, like he used to be.

All I know is that I’m torn between letting Coop do whatever the fuck he wants with me—use me as his full-body fucking pillow for all I care—or talk to him and try to preserve a shred of my sanity, and our friendship.

A sinking feeling in my gut tells me none of these options is something I’ll be able to endure without driving myself crazy.

***

I enter his apartment a bit later after Nate woke up and kicked me out, but not without thanking me and sending me home with cookies.

Taking off my shoes, I hear some movement in the kitchen and follow the sounds that will lead me to Cooper.

I find him in front of the stove in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, an apron tied haphazardly around him.

My chuckle at the image is what alerts him to my presence.

He whirls around, surprised, before a slow grin stretches his lips, transforming his face.

“Shut up. It was a gift.”

Oh, right. The apron.

“From who? Someone who hates you?”

“Ha ha. No, smartass, from Lily at work. She thought I could use one since food and drinks seem to love my clothes.”

“Now that is something I can believe.”

“I know there is an insinuation in there I won’t like if I dig a little deeper so I’m just gonna let it slide.”

“Yeah, that’s for the best.”

We grin at each other from across the room and time stills and accelerates, all sense of it gone, now only measured in heartbeats.

Which is why I have to do this now.

“Hey, Coop?”

“Hm?”

He’s looking at me with big, clear eyes that hide nothing and I hate myself for what I have to tell him.

“Um… about the other day,” I clear my throat. “The day Nate called to tell us what happened.”

His smile slips, his body turning to face me fully.

“Yeah?”

“I think it was a mistake.”

It falls like a bomb between us. I see it in the way he was prepared to take a step towards me but stills. In the way his eyes shutter and his throat bobs as he swallows.

“What do you mean?”

I suck in a breath that feels as if it evaporates before it can reach my lungs.

I avoid his piercing gaze, dropping my own somewhere on the tiled kitchen floor.

“I mean that we can’t do that anymore,” I force myself to say.

The silence that follows my words is deafening and it’s impossible not to seek his eyes out again.

Except he’s looking at me strangely, an unreadable expression marring his features.

“We can’t?” his voice reaches me, small, barely audible. But his expression remains hard and unfaltering.

I shake my head, not able to repeat myself.

He clenches his jaw, an exhale escaping his mouth as he huffs in frustration.

“Why?”

I run my hand through my hair roughly.

“Answer me, Liam.”

“Because I won’t be able to stop myself next time!” I spit out the words and I can taste the loathing and the longing in them.

I expect to see shock or judgment in his eyes, but his expression never wavers. He keeps looking at me steadily and calmly, but for that one moment of annoyance.

That’s when he takes a few steps towards me.

“What if...” he pauses, his crystal-blue eyes unguarded and open once more. “What if you don’t have to stop?”

The fist that grabs my heart squeezes it violently. Viciously. Ruthlessly.

No. I can’t let even a tiny sliver of hope sneak in or else I’ll break. He’s being kind because he loves me.

His best friend. But he would run the other way if he knew the thoughts that plague me.

The craving I feel for him.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I manage to choke out.

He recoils as if I’ve slapped him, the hurt that flashes through his eyes almost enough to make me reach for him.

Cooper presses his lips together, tension radiating off him.

“I don’t, huh?” he mutters.

I open my mouth to say something, though having no clue what that could be, but he beats me to it before I can.

“Okay, Li”, he murmurs quietly, and an awful, serene smile tips up the corners of his lips. “Nothing more like that again.”

He holds my gaze for a couple more seconds before returning to the food he’d been preparing on the stove that has miraculously not spilled over.

“Are you hungry?” he asks as I stare at his back.

“Sure,” I tell him, as far from hungry as a person can be.

It’s for the best , I tell myself over and over.

And even through the feeling of hollowness in my chest, I will myself to believe it.