Page 18 of Liam (Preston Brothers #4)

Addie

“What do you eat every day?” The question comes from behind me, and I turn swiftly to see Liam leaning against the open doorway of the kitchen. He didn’t return to the cabin after our conversation at the dock a few days ago, and I haven’t seen him since.

I look down at the lunch bag in my hand, then up at him.

“Turkey sandwich,” I answer and offer a shrug.

“Roman makes it for himself, so he makes me the same. I think, in his mind, he still sees me as that little girl who needed saving…” Clearly, my nerves have gotten to me, because I’m rambling, providing way more information than he asked for, but I can’t help it.

I am nervous. His absence had me convinced I’d never see him again, let alone speak to him, and there was no one to blame for that but myself.

My past actions were abhorrent, at best, and the guilt that’s come with it has had me sitting in limbo for days.

Liam nods, his ocean-blue eyes made even brighter by the sunlight filtering through the kitchen window. “You want to grab something from the diner instead?”

My pulse kicks up a notch. From fear or excitement, I can’t be sure. “Yeah, I’d like that… a lot.” I conceal my smile while returning my food to the fridge, then recompose myself before turning back to him.

“You really saving that for later?” he asks, motioning to the fridge.

“I have a… thing. ”

He leads the way outside. “A thing? ”

Dayna calls it food insecurity, a by-product of the days I went without. But… Liam doesn’t need to know that, and I don’t know why I mentioned it at all. “It’s nothing.”

We’re by his older-model minivan now, and he opens the passenger door for me, waiting until I’m settled in before closing it.

I’ve seen the minivan plenty in the days I’ve been here, but never had a peek inside.

There are cables everywhere and camera mounts on the dash and windshield.

Some of their most popular content is their “car videos,” where he and Lincoln just sit in the front seats, eating junk and talking shit.

They always do it in the middle of the night, when they’re bone-deep tired.

Apparently, it makes them more entertaining.

Liam gets behind the wheel and doesn’t say a word as he brings the engine to life. We’re halfway down the driveway before either of us speaks. “No offense,” I start, at the same time he asks, “How have you been?”

“Good,” I answer.

“No offense, what?” he asks, focused on the road ahead.

I adjust in my seat, trying to ease the nerves pulsing through my bloodline. “I was just going to say that I don’t really see you as the minivan type.”

Gaze remaining forward, he tilts his head slightly, and for a long moment, he doesn’t respond.

I’m about to apologize in case I actually have offended him.

“The car was my mom’s,” he reveals. “It’s one of the last physical things we have of hers.

She only got it, like, a year before she died.

It’s gone from one of us kids to the next and, honestly, I think it costs more to run than to sell, but no one’s ready to part with it yet. ”

My chest tightens at his words. “I’m sorry,” I tell him as he pulls onto the road. “How old were you when?—”

“Four.”

His phone rings before I can respond, and he’s quick to answer it with a “Yeah?”

The name on the car stereo appears as “Lachy”, and his voice plays through the speakers. “Can you pick me up from school? It’s eleventy-three degrees out, and I don’t want to ride the bus.”

“No.”

“Bruh.” He pauses a beat. “There’s a literal trail of sweat streaming from my balls all the way down my leg.”

I don’t stifle my giggle in time.

“What the fuck?” Lachy says. “Who is that?”

“Ride the bus,” Liam deadpans.

“You’re really going to let your baby brother melt to death on the leather seats of a school bus? On the last day of school? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m telling Dad.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m telling Lucy.”

“Lachy…”

“What?”

“You realize you’re fifteen, right?”

“I’m telling Mia.”

Liam sighs. “I’ll be there in five.”

Seeing Lachlan Preston from afar makes me want to gather all the Preston brothers and force them to form a line from oldest to youngest so I can pick apart all their physical differences. I haven’t met two of them yet, but I bet they’d all look similar.

Lachlan’s eyes seem to narrow more and more the closer we get to him, and as soon as we’ve stopped at the curb, he opens the back door, throws his backpack inside, followed by himself, but he doesn’t sit.

Instead, he slips the entire top half of his body between the two front seats and looks from me to Liam, over and over, again and again.

He ends on Liam. “I need you to take me to the store.”

Liam eases off the brakes. “The hell you do. I’m dropping your ass home?—”

“No, actually,” Lachlan says, his tone serious. Almost pleading.

“Sit back and put your belt on,” Liam orders.

Lachlan does what he’s asked, saying, “I’ve invited some people over to the lake. I need to get snacks and drinks for them. It would be rude not to. Plus?—”

“Okay!” Liam snaps. “Just don’t take forever. We had plans.”

“You’re my favorite brother,” Lachlan says, and I find myself smiling. “Also, who is the we in your plans?”

I turn to look between the seats, but Liam introduces me before I can do it myself. “This is Adelaide. She’s working?—”

“Mini Roman!”

Within minutes, Liam’s driving through Main Street and finding a parking spot in front of the grocery store, but Lachlan doesn’t leave. He just sits there, expectantly. “Are you not coming with me?” he asks Liam.

“Why would I?”

“Because you hate being alone?—”

“You coming?” Liam cuts in, opening his door.

It takes a moment to realize he’s talking to me, and I nod, murmur, “Sure.” But I’m still stuck on what Lachy said. Liam hates being alone? Why?

As I follow the Preston brothers around the store, it becomes very clear, very quickly, that neither of the boys knows what they’re doing.

Add that to the fact that Liam seems to be in a rush, and Lachlan is indecisive, and I can feel the frustration brewing between them.

We’re standing in the soda aisle, where we’ve been for far too long, and I finally speak up from behind. “Do you need help?”

They both turn to me, identical looks of gratitude. “Please,” Liam groans.

I smile, focus on his brother. “How many people?”

“Like, eight?” It comes out more like a question than an answer. I push between them and gather what we need, dumping the items in the cart one by one.

Back home, Griffin and Dayna often host the team, including coaching staff, so “like, eight” teenagers is light work.

Within minutes, we’re at the registers, checking out, and when the middle-aged woman gives the total, Lachlan looks at Liam.

“What?” Liam asks him.

Lachlan shakes his head, as if Liam should already know the answer. “How the fuck would I have money?”

“Language,” the clerk admonishes.

Lachlan rolls his eyes. Then repeats himself, in Spanish , “Y cómo chingados tendría yo dinero?”

I stifle my giggle while the clerk glares at Lachlan. “I meant watch your language. Not change it.”

Liam sighs, pulls out his phone, and pays for the goods. We head to the exit, Lachlan pushing the cart in front of us while Liam tells him, “You don’t have to be so disrespectful.”

Lachlan stops so abruptly, I almost run into him. He turns, looking from his brother to the clerk, then back to Liam. “You know she got charged last year for attempting to sell dogs online.”

“So?”

“They weren’t her dogs. They were other people’s. She planned to steal them if they sold. So no, she doesn’t get my respect. In fact, she can suck my?—”

“Adelaide!” a woman’s voice calls from behind, and I turn slowly. “Oh, my… I thought that was you.”

I don’t recognize the woman rushing toward me.

Not right away. But the second it clicks, my body turns to stone…

then ash. Nerves flow through me in waves, ricocheting against my flesh.

I take a step back, only to be met with the warmth of Liam’s arm brushing against mine.

Instinctively, I push into it, needing the touch, the comfort.

Suddenly, I’m eight years old again, sitting in the nurse’s office, asking myself, “Where does it hurt?”

My third-grade teacher, Miss Harden, stops in front of me, her blonde bob unchanged in the years since I’d seen her. Her gaze moves to Liam, her smile soft. “Hi, Lincoln,” she says.

Liam doesn’t correct her, just greets her the same way. “Hey, Miss Harden.” Then to me, his voice low, “We’ll be in the car.”

I don’t speak. Can’t. But the moment he starts to leave, I grasp his hand, a silent plea begging him to stay. With me. Here. And in that room all those years ago.

Miss Harden’s smile falters when she turns her focus to me, then my hand gripping Liam’s. “Oh, Addie…” she coos. “I’ve always wondered what happened to you.”

Without meaning to, I squeeze Liam’s hand tighter.

“Sorry, Miss Harden,” Liam says, his voice cool, calm, the complete opposite of everything I’m feeling. “My brother has some people coming around, so we have to get going. But next time…” His words hang in the air as he releases my hand to physically guide me to turn, then walk.

I make it two steps.

Beside me, Liam offers his hand again, and I carefully take it before half turning to the woman still standing there, still watching me. A part of me wants nothing more than to hug her. Tell her I’ve always wondered about her, too.

The days after my visit with the nurse, she often—and inconspicuously—asked me how I was doing.

If I was okay. But then I’d think about what Roman said the morning after he found out about my parents.

“I want you to look taken care of, Addie. Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

No one has to know how you’ve been living, okay? ”