Page 12

Chapter 12

Liam

I ignored calls from my sister. She had every right to be worried about me, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with angsty Carol. Oren had called me after getting in touch with the lab a final time. I still wasn’t sure how to feel about losing that last little bit of Piper, but honoring her wishes was the right thing to do.

My turbulent thoughts about it had me wandering town like a zombie for a couple of days. I wanted to see Brodie again, but he hadn’t reached out. I needed to do something before I went insane.

On the evening of the third day, I showed up at the doorstep of Brodie’s brother again. This time with a pizza without olives, a cooler with drinks, and a couple of blankets.

The tips of my ears heated and I fought the urge to rock on the balls of my feet as I waited for someone to answer the door.

I heard a thud, and a faint commotion from the other side of the door and then Brodie shot out of the house and yanked the door shut behind him.

“Sorry about that.” He made no move to explain and I didn’t ask. We were both the youngest in our families and I imagined the commotion had something to do with his brother.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “I, um… brought dinner. Pizza again, but no olives this time.”

Brodie looked at me and then at the pizza box and the blankets. Before I could parse what he was thinking, a flick of movement caught my attention.

“I think we have an audience.”

Brodie whirled around to see the curtain fall back into place. He turned back to me and raked his fingers through his hair.

“I can go if you’re not comfortable with me being here.”

“No, you’re fine. It’s those idiots inside I can’t stand.” Brodie looked up at me. “Do you think we could go somewhere?”

“I’d like that.” I stepped off the porch and waited for him to fall into step next to me. He surprised me by taking the blankets and the cooler from me so I could unlock the car. Once they were stowed in the back seat, Brodie climbed in the front and I passed him the pizza.

I took a deep breath as I rounded the car and climbed in the driver’s seat.

“Anywhere in particular you want to go? If you don’t want pizza, I could take you somewhere.”

“Pizza’s fine. I’ll give you directions.” Brodie put his seatbelt on. “Just get me away from Kieran and his boyfriend.”

I put the car in gear and followed Brodie’s directions out of the neighborhood. “Kieran is your brother, right?”

“Yeah. He and Shane are both older than me. And Clay is Kieran’s boyfriend. Kieran thinks you’re bad news, but Clay is totally team Liam. He’s apparently a sucker for a second chance.” Brodie huffed out a breath. “Long story.”

My chest puffed a little at the fact that someone in Brodie’s circle was team Liam. Brodie cut me a glance and a smile tugged at his lips. An ache erupted in my chest at the sight of it. I’d missed his smiles and the way they lit up my universe.

“Don’t let it go to your head, Liam.”

The grin that broke out couldn’t be stopped if I’d tried. And I didn’t want to stop it. I’d spent so long being sad and I didn’t want to be that anymore. I’d grieved and mourned. And I’d moved on. For the living, there was life after death. There had to be.

“Too late. I have a fan club. I think I like Kieran’s boyfriend already.” I waited at a stop sign for Brodie’s instructions.

“Take a left,” he told me. “Can I eat in here?”

“Go ahead.”

Brodie popped the box open and took a slice out. “Is this your car? It’s nice.”

“It’s mine until I return it. I’ve rented it from a car service. It could have come with a driver if I wanted, but I like driving.”

“I hate it,” Brodie said after swallowing. “I know how, and I’m decent at it. I just prefer to be a passenger. I guess now that I’m staying, I’ll have to get a car again. I sold my rust bucket when I started to travel. There was no point in paying storage fees on it or having it sit in my brother’s driveway collecting dust.”

“Or you could keep me around and I’ll be your personal driver.” I shot Brodie a look to let him know that despite the light tone of my voice, I wasn’t joking.

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

“There’s not a lot I wouldn’t do for you, Brodie. I know I’ve done a shit job of convincing you of that, but maybe one day you’ll believe me.”

From my peripheral, I was aware of his gaze on me, but I drove as though I were oblivious to it. Unaffected. As though my heart didn’t beat faster whenever he looked at me. As if oxygen didn’t get thinner and my head didn’t swim whenever he was near.

“Take a right,” Brodie said before going back to his pizza.

We turned onto a street that was lined with trees. In a few weeks, when the leaves had turned fully, it was going to be a gorgeous sight.

“Pull in there.” He pointed to the driveway of a startling yellow house. I wasn’t sure what the style was called, but one side of the house was remarkably taller than the other, giving the flat roof quite a slant. The paved driveway led to a detached garage that was done in the same style as the house.

Brodie unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out of the car, leaving me no choice but to follow him. He stood in front of my car and I followed him as he slowly walked toward the house.

“What do you think?” Brodie asked.

“Of the house? It’s very yellow.”

Another megawatt smile flashed my way. “Yeah, I know. It’s great, right?”

In my head, tires squealed as my brain came to a stop. “Wait. Is this yours?”

“The paperwork wrapped up a couple hours ago.” Brodie pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and gave them a jingle. “Want to see?”

“Yeah, I do.”

He went to the front door and slid the key in. “I realize that not everyone can close on a house in a few days, but when you’re paying up front and bypassing all the loans and shit, it gets a bit easier.”

“I wouldn’t know. I inherited my condo.”

Brodie unlocked the door and stepped inside. He toed his sneakers off by the door and I followed suit.

The inside was as bright as the outside. The kitchen was on the shorter side of the house, but it was open to the living room that had a twenty-five foot ceiling and a wall of windows. The interior was painted in sunset colors. Oranges and pinks and little splashes of yellow.

“It suits you,” I told him. “From that first moment I met you, it was like looking at the sun.”

“The owner wouldn’t budge on the price and he wouldn’t let the agent paint the house in neutral colors. This house was his artistic vision and even though he was selling it, he wanted to at least believe it would remain unchanged.”

“It’s like living in a sunset. I can see why you love it.”

Brodie looked at me, his expression soft around the eyes. He licked his lips and stuffed his hands in his pockets like he wanted to keep them away from me.

“I figured I should bring you here, you know, so you stalk the proper house.”

“Is it stalking if you invited me to do it?”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know. Is it stalking if I say you can come knock on the door?”

“I don’t think that qualifies as stalking.” The distance between us made me long to close it. I wanted to kiss him in his sunshine house. I wanted to strip him bare and watch the light bounce off his skin as he bathed in the sunlight from the wall of windows.

Brodie let out a shaky breath. “I’m not ready to give you the grand tour, Liam.”

The closed bedroom door sat at the other end of the room. Maybe one day I’d earn the right to be invited in there, but until then, I wouldn’t give up trying.

“I can get the pizza if you want to have a picnic in your living room with me,” I said. “And maybe next time I could come pick you up and take you out somewhere. I’m not ready to give up on us.”

Brodie paused, and then he licked his lips and gave me a tight nod. “I’d like that. The picnic, I mean. And maybe the date.”

I reached for him and brushed a strand of hair off his forehead. The gesture felt almost too forward after days and days of not touching him, but I couldn’t resist. “I’ll be right back.”

The walk to my car and back gave me time to get my dick under control. I grabbed a blanket and the cooler from the back and the pizza from the front and carried everything into the living room. Brodie took the pizza from me and I set the blanket out in the middle of the empty room.

I took one side of the blanket and he took the other, sticking the pizza in the middle as though it were a chaperone. From the cooler, I grabbed a couple drinks, just pop tonight.

“I figured we’d work our way up to wine dates,” I told him as I passed him an orange soda, his favorite.

“You’re really going to date me?” Brodie cracked the can open and it echoed in the empty space like a gunshot. A laugh bubbled out of him and he took a sip. “That was louder than I expected.”

“Of course I’m going to date you. I fucked up, and you deserve better. The way we met was magical, and our time together was something I’ll cherish, no matter what. But out there wasn’t the real world. I want to know the real world Brodie and I want you to know me that way too.”

He nudged the pizza box closer to me, prompting me to take a slice.

“I’d like that. I’d also like it if you used my phone number. You can text me and stuff, you know. You don’t have to just pop up every few days like the world’s slowest whack-a-mole.”

“Okay. I’ll text you.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes, both enraptured by the way the light moved through the room. Whoever painted the inside of the house was a magician. The colors and the light blended together and created this soft, glowing atmosphere.

“I think you have the most romantic living room I've ever seen. The realtor should have shown this house at sunset only.”

“Well, it was my luck that they didn’t. This was the second place I looked at. The first was this massive, modern monstrosity. Everything was very in style. Very white and gray. I hated it. Besides, what do I need with two and a half bathrooms?”

My own apartment was much larger than I needed, but it wasn’t something I’d thought about. Having money meant having space. An abundance of it. Houses were status and my parents had loved status. And their parents before them and so on for generations.

My apartment was one of their properties. Not that they’d ever lived in it. I doubt they ever saw the inside. They likely bought it to say they had a unit in the building because everyone wanted to live there. They’d rattle off lines about how it was a good investment, of course.

“Maybe there’s a place for sale nearby. We can be neighbors,” I said, only half joking.

“If you want the number of my agent, I’m sure he’d be glad to land another sale.”

“I’ll text you for it later. I’d love to not sleep in a hotel for a while.”

“God, I know. I can’t wait to get my shit out of storage. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I had an amazing time. A once-in-a-lifetime kind of adventure, but I’m looking forward to having my own space again. The lack of room service is the only downside.”

“There’s always Door Dash. Or you can call me.” I took a slice of pizza. My excitement finally curbed enough for my appetite to make an appearance.

“My very own delivery driver?” Brodie laughed. “You’d do that too, wouldn’t you?”

“There’s not a lot I wouldn’t do for you,” I repeated. Maybe it was a bit too honest, but not being honest with him had got us in this position in the first place.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, his voice rough and deep. Then he turned his attention back to his house and the way it seemed to glow as the sun crawled down the sky to tuck itself into bed. He watched the sunset and I watched him, and I was certain I had the better view.