Page 23 of Liam (Preston Brothers #4)

Addie

The loose gravel crunching beneath my feet seems rougher than usual.

Maybe because the world is quieter today.

Or maybe the thoughts in my head aren’t so raging.

Or it might be the boy sitting on the porch steps, his smile crooked as he watches me approach.

Maybe it’s him silencing the world around me.

Liam waits until I’m close enough and nods toward the skateboard held to my front. “You skate a lot?”

I shake my head, lifting the board higher to inspect it. “I found it under Roman’s bed. It was this or an old bike next to the abandoned couch near his apartment.”

His smile widens, his perfect teeth on full display. “Not a fan of bikes?”

I shrug. “It didn’t have a seat.”

He laughs at that, just as Lincoln pulls up in a four-wheeler. Liam stands, rubbing his palms over his shorts. “I’ll catch you later?”

Hopefully. “Yep.”

An hour passes, and I’m not at all distracted with re-reading our text exchange from the night before.

He didn’t respond after my last message, and it took a while to settle my heartbeat long enough to actually fall asleep.

When I finally did, he was still there—in my dreams. I woke up in a sleepy haze, unable to remember the specifics.

There was him, a row of endless cars, and hope .

I distinctly remember the hope. I woke up with an undeniable flutter in my stomach.

One may even go as far as calling it butterflies. I’m yet to decide if that’s the case.

Still, I chased that feeling throughout the morning. Craved it even.

The front door bursts open, bringing with it the chattering of twins. They’re discussing work—camera angles and edits—and when they’re like this, both speaking at the same volume, same tone, it’s hard to tell them apart.

I focus on the mundane task in front of me while they continue to talk, and I imagine Liam sitting at his desk, his three screens in front of him, while Lincoln looks over his shoulder.

Soon enough, the voices quiet. The front door opens and closes, and I listen intently, trying to predict what’s next.

A second passes.

Two.

Ten.

Then Maggie Rogers fills my ears as “Alaska”—the acoustic version—plays through speakers.

I smile, as ridiculous as it is, and go to him.

The curtains are drawn, and when I part them, Liam is there, sitting at his desk, pretending as if he hasn’t just tilted my entire world off its axis.

He waits until I’m beside him to flick his eyes to mine.

Just his eyes. A slight smirk tugs at his lips—shy, quiet, unassuming.

I melt at the sight of it. Just a little bit.

I raise my hand between us, do the universal sign to request he stand.

He doesn’t. “What’s up?” he asks.

“Stand up.”

This time, he does as I ask, and I reach up, throw my arms around his neck and bring him close. The warmth I felt in my dreams surrounds me in reality, and it settles something deep in my bones. In my marrow.

His arms circle my waist, hand flat on the small of my back, holding me to him.

There are no apologies.

No words of forgiveness.

But there’s this. A single moment shared between us. An act that reveals everything we don’t say out loud.

Hope.

I pull away, but the pressure on my back only strengthens, keeping me there, and for a long moment, we stay that way, nothing between us. No space. No air. Just… us. Connected. I miss his warmth when he rears back, but he doesn’t let go of me completely.

Oxygen traps in my lungs the moment his eyes meet mine. He reaches up, his fingers brushing along my forehead, down to my temple, shifting a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

Slowly, his eyes move, scanning my face.

We’re so close, our exhales merge, become one.

The door opens, and we instantly pull apart, our arms falling to our sides.

My heart… my poor, vigilant heart, strains against the weight of what might’ve been.

“This curtain is so fucking dumb,” Lincoln whines. “Why is it even here?”

Liam and I laugh under our breaths—the sudden memory of why it exists hitting us both. Liam looks over my head, asking, “You got it?”

I glance behind me, see Lincoln holding up a GoPro. “Right here.”

Liam nods at his twin, then turns his attention to me. That slight smirk returns. “I’ll see you later?”

It’s the second time he’s asked me today. The first time, I thought “Hopefully.” This time, I say it loud.

Liam holds my stare a beat, then sidesteps me to join his brother. Before they disappear from my view, Lincoln asks, “What the fuck are you listening to?”

I don’t hear what Liam says in return. I just watch through the living room window as they walk toward the minivan, in sync. Then open the car doors, in sync. Sit down. In sync.

They both pull out their phones, in sync, and a second later, my phone vibrates in my back pocket.

Liam

I hope so too.

I stare at the message for far too long, and when I look out the window again, they’re gone.

The song has ended now, another replacing it, and I look over at Liam’s computer screens. A playlist is up on one of them. Untitled. Only two songs. My favorite is the first, and “The Way” by Fastball, which is currently playing.

I move closer. Curious. And check out the rest of his things.

His desk is tidy, everything in its place.

The keyboard and mouse are faded in areas that have the most contact, and beside it, beneath a pen, is an open notebook.

Not a notebook. A planner. Strange, considering how much technology he has at his fingertips, that he would choose to use a physical planner.

Still, it gives me an insight into who he is.

For a boy, Liam’s handwriting is neat. Each day planned out with the hours to spend on tasks, but no times.

Three hours for content. Two hours for edits. An hour for admin, etc.

Like his desk, the planner is neat. Organized. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is the tiny initials or codes at the corner of some days.

Or.

Pp.

Lb.

I glance outside, make sure their car is still gone, before moving the pen and looking at the previous dates.

Yl.

Wt.

Db.

My curiosity gets the best of me, and I snap a picture, then spend the rest of the afternoon alone, trying to figure out what it means.

Liam

Hugging Adelaide Baker feels exactly how I imagined it.

Not the version of her now, but the one before .

Before we both made irreparable choices that inevitably changed the course of our lives.

The version of her who sat with me in the nurse’s office while I tried to convince myself my arm wasn’t broken, even though I knew it was.

I wanted to appear brave for her then, because she looked like she needed someone to be. She looked like she needed someone to hold her. Someone to protect her.

“Did you hear me?” Lincoln asks, pulling me from my daze.

I focus on sorting the battery packs for our camera equipment—a task I usually prepare the night prior to filming content, but clearly, I was more than a little distracted last night. “Sorry. I checked out.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” he states.

We’re parked outside an old building that our brother Logan is currently working on.

So far, there are shops on the lower level, a gym, and a few offices.

Lincoln invested some of our earnings into the gym part of it, and we’ve been filming and sharing the progress from start to finish.

It was completed a few months ago, but once the signs went up, we had to be more careful about what we posted.

Sharing who we are is one thing. Sharing where we are is a mistake we won’t make again.

Hopefully, I can edit this content enough so we don’t reveal too much.

“I said I’m thinking about moving to Germany,” Lincoln says.

I slip the last of the backup batteries in the bag and zip it shut. “Oh, yeah?”

“Julie’s thinking of taking a gap year, so I might go with her.”

“That’s cool.”

Lincoln laughs, but it’s more of a scoff. I turn my gaze to his, questioning, but he just shakes his head, turns away.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.” He glances out the windshield, and I go back to making sure all our equipment is charged. “Bryson says we need to pivot.” Bryson is our agent, who I’ve met—in person—a total of zero times. “Maybe move to white label products.”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“Like physical products, candy or whatever… and we slap our brand?—”

Internally, I groan. Externally, I say, “That sounds like a hell of a lot of extra work… promoting it or whatever.”

“So that’s a no?”

I shrug.

Linc sighs, slumping down in his seat. “What’s the deal with you and Addie?”

My pulse jumps at the mention of her. Not that I haven’t stopped thinking about her. Or that hug. “What do you mean?”

“You guys were standing pretty close when I walked in earlier.”

“We were?” We definitely were. I was just hoping he wouldn’t notice, and if he did, he wouldn’t bring it up.

When we were as close as we were, I was stunned silent by her beauty, and I realized then that maybe that beauty is part of the reason I spent years hating her.

Because I expected her to be or act a certain way, purely based on her appearance.

Or my attraction to her. My expectations.

Which is dumb, because I didn’t even know her.

Not really. And I sure as hell didn’t know about the trauma and conflicts that raged wars inside her.

I’ve never had this visceral itch before.

The one that makes you want to be around a person just to be around them.

It seems, even when that itch is scratched, it only deepens the need for more scratches.

What the hell am I even saying? This is what being around Addie has done to me—turned me into a mess.

“Are you guys getting close or…?”

I stop from reaching into my pocket and pulling out the baseball fidget clicker.

I’m used to getting interrogated by Linc, but not like this.

And not when I can tell there’s an underlying meaning beneath it all.

I wish he’d just get to the point. “I mean, we’re forced to be in that tiny cabin together for hours at a time, so it’s kind of inevitable that we’d at least talk.

” Lincoln doesn’t respond, and so I face him, prod for more. “Just say it.”

“Say what?” he asks.

I heave out a sigh. I wish he was more like Addie—just says what’s on his mind. In fact, I wish I was more like Addie. “Whatever you’re thinking. Just say it.”

“Just be careful, okay?”

Suddenly, I’m defensive, and I don’t know why. “Careful with what , exactly?”

He shrugs. “Last I checked, she was still friends with Helmet.”

At the mention of Helmet, my gaze lowers and whatever resolve I had turns to dust.

“Sorry,” he says quickly.

“It’s fine,” I return, but it’s not. Not really. I’d been living in an alternate reality where my mind made up a world that was just Addie and Addie alone—no outside forces. Stupid.

“Just forget I said anything, all right?”

I nod, open the car door.

He wants me to forget it? Sure. But the truth is, I worry that being around Addie is making me forget too much.