Page 24 of Liam (Preston Brothers #4)

Addie

It took a while, but I finally found my place with Roman again.

Not just emotionally, but physically, too.

I’ve become fond of the sliver of floor space between the couch and coffee table, and most evenings, he sits on the couch; I sit on the floor, and we eat dinner together while I force him to watch a show about over-dramatized young adults consistently making horrible life choices.

I only know of it because the girls in the team group chat tell me I need to watch it. That I’ll literally die if I don’t.

I don’t know if I actually enjoy the show or if I enjoy the little noises Roman makes whenever he gets annoyed by a character’s aforementioned horrible choices, but still—he hasn’t asked to stop. In fact, most of the time, he’s the one who cues it up and hits play.

Now, he’s in the shower between episodes, and so I do what I’ve made a habit of doing whenever I have a free moment. I grab my phone, load The Preston Twins’ YouTube channel, find a video I haven’t seen yet, and settle in.

This one is a car video posted about a year ago titled “We finally caved. AMA, Anyone?” It starts with their regular intro before they appear on screen, Liam behind the wheel, and Lincoln right beside him.

It’s dark outside, so I can’t tell where they are.

“What’s up, guys? We’re back!” they almost yell, then Lincoln takes over.

“We finally caved to your demands, and we’re going to answer your random questions from the comments.

And since Liam doesn’t read the comments, and I didn’t want to spoil it for myself, we had our brother find some questions for us. Which brother, you ask?”

Logan pops up between the seats. “I can’t believe you had me hiding all that time.” He jokingly rolls his eyes—eyes the same blue as the rest of the Preston boys, but somehow completely different from Liam’s.

“As some of you already know, this is Logan,” Liam says. “Logan, say hi.”

“Hi.” Logan smiles at the camera before grasping Liam’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll ease into it.”

“I’m definitely worried,” Liam murmurs, and I can’t tell if he’s being serious or not. He turns to his twin. “I told you we should’ve gotten Lucy to do it.”

“She’d just get distracted trying to pick out girlfriends for us.” Lincoln glares right into the camera. “That’s not an invitation.”

I giggle.

“Okay,” Logan announces, bringing his phone to his face. “Question one: Do you play any sports?”

“No,” the twins answer in unison.

“We used to,” Lincoln adds. “Pretty much anything we could get into, we did. We started with baseball, then once we got to school, we did it all. We stopped once we got to high school.”

“Once we dropped out of high school,” Liam corrects.

“No,” Lincoln says. “We stopped before then.”

Logan pipes up, speaking directly to the viewers, “They stopped because they were too good at everything, and people started getting pissed.”

Both twins turn to their older brother.

Logan continues, “I’m not here to praise you more than the Internet already does, but jealousy is a bitch, and that bitch took your love of sports.

Think about it. You’ve never not gotten onto a team you’ve tried out for, and that’s because y’all had an advantage.

You always had someone in your corner, someone to practice with, someone to push you that extra step.

It makes sense that people would be pissed, but fuck them. ”

The twins eyes shift to each other, then back to Logan. “Yeah,” Liam agrees, and Linc finishes their thought. “Fuck them!”

“I got you,” Logan says through a laugh, and they do a three-way fist bump before Logan focuses on his phone again. “Okay, expose the weirdest things y’all have done. No limits.”

“No limits?” Lincoln says, his smile mischievous as he faces the camera.

“When we were little, like eight or nine, Liam had the biggest crush on this girl and he would—” The audio gets cut off by a long bleep, censoring what Lincoln’s saying, and a black bar appears over his mouth so no one can read his lips.

It goes on for a few seconds before it cuts to Liam up close, smirking, with a caption over his head that reads: I’m only smiling because I’m already planning how I’m going to edit this out.

I giggle under my breath.

On the screen, Liam waits for Lincoln to finish before speaking. “Lincoln used to bite off his toenails and keep them in a little jar beside his bed.”

I laugh out loud.

“ I forgot about that jar,” Logan muses.

Lincoln’s eyes narrow at his twin. “Liam can’t play with LEGO because when he was, like four, he realized the little LEGO people live in houses made of their own flesh and it traumatized him for life.”

I cackle.

Liam takes his turn, holding up his middle and ring finger. The act alone has Lincoln surging forward, trying to forcefully hide Liam’s hand. “Those are the fingers Linc still sucks when he can’t get to sleep!”

“Fuck off!” Linc laughs, and he’s all the way across the seat, trying to get Liam into a headlock. “I haven’t done that in weeks!”

I’m laughing so hard, tears are blurring my vision.

“How long have you been watching their videos?” Roman asks from behind.

I jump, hiding my phone beneath me as if he’s just caught me watching porn. “A few days. Why?”

He shrugs, stepping over me to take his spot on the couch. “Just wondering if that’s the reason for your late-night giggles.”

“You can hear that?” I ask, eyes wide.

He taps the wall behind him. “You’re literally one wall away.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you kidding? It’s so good to hear your laugh again.” He smiles, ruffling my hair the way he used to. “Have you seen the one with me in it?”

“No.” I lift my phone and start searching through all the twins’ videos. “Which one?”

“I got it,” he says, tapping his phone to stream it to the TV. A second later, I see Liam on a much larger scale. I smile, tucking my legs beneath me, and get more comfortable as the intro plays.

It opens with the twins in the waiting area of what I assume is Roman’s work.

Not with the Prestons, but at the auto shop.

The name of the mechanic is blurred out, just like the company logo on Roman’s shirt when he appears from a door behind the reception desk.

“I assume you’re dropping off Luke’s car? ” Roman asks, clearly hesitant.

The camera pans to Linc, which means Liam will be behind the lens in most of this video, as he is with the majority of the other vlog-style ones. “Yeah,” Linc says. “We already talked to Dylan about it.”

I get up from my spot and sit beside my brother. “Who’s Dylan?”

“He owns the shop. We went to high school together.”

On the screen, Roman says, “You realize Luke’s my boss, right? I don’t know how comfortable I am doing what you’re asking.”

“That’s why you need to sign this,” Linc tells him, slamming a piece of paper down on the reception desk. The camera zooms in on the page, and the only thing on there is what I assume is Lincoln’s messy handwriting.

“Promise?” On-screen Roman asks. The single word is the only thing written on the page, but it’s spelled pwomis with a backward S.

Lincoln looks proud of his work. “Consider it a guarantee that nothing will happen to your job, or you, and you promise us you won’t say a word to Lucas about it.”

The camera zooms in on Roman, a hint of mischief playing beneath the exhaustion that always seems to be there.

I glance at the man beside me, the one who gave up everything to be my one constant in life.

If I’d known this video existed during the years we were apart, I no doubt would’ve watched it on repeat, just for the tiniest of moments with him.

Even through a screen. A weight tugs at my heart, anchored by the longing etched deep in my chest, and I push it aside, distract myself by finding the video on my phone and reading the comments.

“More Roman!” the top one says, and I read it out loud to him.

“What?” He looks over my shoulder.

“Oh em gee. Roman is sooo hot,” I relay.

“It says that?” he asks, grinning like an idiot as he rests on the couch cushion again. “Look at me go. I’m sooo hot.”

“Okay.” I giggle. “You need to relax.”

“Relax?” he scoffs. “Hell no. I have a fan club. Maybe I should start one of these… these…” He waves his hand between us, trying to come up with the right word.

“Channels,” I offer, and before he lowers his arm, I grasp it gently, something I’ve wanted to do since the moment I saw the tattoos.

It’s impossible not to notice them, but I’ve never inspected them up close.

Initially, I thought they were just random pieces of artwork, and I’m sure some are, but the ribbon, the braided rope, the envelope with my initials on the corner…

those aren’t random at all. I subconsciously rub my thumb over the envelope.

“I told you I got all your letters, Addie,” he says, his voice soft. “And I read every one.”

I glance up at him. “Your tattoo artist must think you’re crazy.”

“Nah.” He smiles to one side. “Juan already knows how much you mean to me.”

“Juan?”

Roman nods. “He was my cellmate. Now he’s one of my best friends.”

I release his arm, sit closer to him while the Preston Twins video plays in the background, completely forgotten. For now. “Does he have tattoos?”

“Nah. His mom won’t let him.”

I rear back. “How old is he?”

“Forty-five.”

We laugh together, this beautiful sound that used to haunt me in my sleep, wake me from my dreams, only to long to hear it again.

“To be fair,” he adds, “his mom is pretty scary.”

Through my smile, I ask, “You didn’t get them in prison, did you?”