Page 12

12

Alana

W hy I agreed to let Liam stay in the kitchen was beyond me.

Especially because the last time I’d let him stick around while I made something, I’d realised that I was madly and hopelessly in love with him. I had just found out that I was being made valedictorian and would have to give a speech at our graduation ceremony.

I’d known that I’d had better than average grades throughout high school, but I never imagined they would be ‘best in your year’ level grades, so I never thought about the possibility of being valedictorian.

I hated public speaking. And being the only person being looked at by large crowds. Anything, really, that made me the centre of attention.

So, the day after I found out, I started baking at two a.m. Liam didn’t sneak into the house so much as confidently let himself in through the back door with his key, like it was the middle of the day and not the early hours of the morning.

“Why are you awake?” he’d asked as he settled into one of the chairs in the kitchen.

“I could ask you the same question,” I’d replied, beating together a batter with a manual whisk so I didn’t wake up the rest of the house with my late-night stress baking.

“Woke up to pee, saw the light on, and now here we are.”

“You took quite the gamble on it being me in here.”

“It was going to be either you or Coach. I figured I would get away with it either way.”

We fell into a comfortable silence, and I focused on my whisking while he sat there and watched me with sleep-soft eyes.

I don’t know what it was about him sitting in my kitchen in the early hours of that particular morning, watching me make brownies for the hundredth time, that made me realise that I was in love with him. But when I looked over at him, his head resting on his folded arms, half asleep, it hit me out of nowhere.

I was in love with my best friend and future NHL star. I didn’t see how those two things were going to work together. I’d ruin our friendship with my new feelings, or his career would take off and be his focus, and I’d get left on the sidelines. Either way, I’d lose.

So, I left.

The last time I’d let him stay in the kitchen, teenage Liam had been half asleep, sitting down at the dining table. Present-day Liam was fully awake and still wearing those fucking sweatpants.

And present-day me wished that I hadn’t told him that he could stay. But I knew if he left, he would be subjected to more passive aggressive comments from a father who didn’t understand why he would give up everything he had worked for when he, in theory, still had at least three years left in him. Plus, both our mothers, who were nosy at the best of times, would have more slightly intrusive questions than ever before. I could guarantee one of them would ask if he was satisfying me sexually and, although flustered Liam was one of my favourite Liams, I didn’t want him to be subjected to that when I wasn’t around to protect and deflect.

“It’s really cool that you know how to cook like this,” Liam said, his voice bringing me back to the room. A room I hadn’t realised I’d zoned out of. I’d been lost in staring at his hands, one wrist adorned with an Olympic rings tattoo, chopping mushrooms. An act that should not have been erotic in the slightest, but Liam had the kind of hands that just looked…capable.

“You telling me you don’t know how to cook?” I asked as I added a little cold water to my flour and butter combo, starting to form a dough. At least I had that to take my energy out on now that I had removed my jewellery.

“I can cook, but you came into the room and said, ‘I wanna make a pie’ and you’re making a pie.”

“It’s just a pie.”

Liam laughed. “I bet it will be the best pie I’ve ever eaten.”

“I made you a pie once. You spat it out and said it was almost inedible,” I said, the corners of my mouth turning up as I remembered.

“We were thirteen. And it was! You’d used so much salt.”

“A good friend would have sucked it up. You put me off making pies for years,” I teased, tipping the dough onto the floured counter and kneading. I didn’t miss the way his eyes narrowed in on my forearms. Good. It wasn’t just me being enthralled by innocuous body parts.

“I was being a good friend. Who knows if you would have achieved such great things if you had stuck it out with that particular recipe, and then much later down the line found out that what you had was actually horrible.”

“Owning one bakery would hardly be considered ‘great things’.” It was only because I was still looking at his hands while I kneaded my dough that I noticed when they stilled. That made me look up at his face and he looked borderline angry.

“Is the bakery successful?” I nodded. “Then it’s a great thing, whether you own one or an entire franchise,” Liam continued.

“If you say so.” I knew he was right but sometimes it felt like I should be doing more.

Liam dropped the knife and walked around to my side of the kitchen, settling so close to me that I could feel the warmth coming off his body and the scent of sea salt and almond flooded my senses. Somewhere inside me, that smell felt like coming home.

“You were fifteen when you said you wanted to open a bakery one day. That was your dream. You wanted to create something. You wanted to bring people happiness in the form of baked goods. You wanted to spend hours making something that could be gone in a matter of minutes, but that didn’t matter because those minutes could be the only bright spark of someone’s day, and you loved the idea of being responsible for that. You can take simple ingredients like sugar, butter, and flour, and turn them into the most incredible creations. That’s not nothing. You had a dream when you were fifteen and you made that come true. There are a lot of people out there who can only imagine achieving their dream.”

“You did,” I said quietly. It felt like an easier thing to say than responding directly to the rest of what he said. I distracted myself by wrapping my pastry in plastic wrap to rest while I started on the pie filling.

“Yeah, I did. I worked hard for years and had a great group of people around me that helped it happen. Luck also had a huge part to play in it. Luck that I didn’t ever do some serious damage to my body. Luck that I came up around a time when there were a lot of great defensemen but not a lot of great shooters. Luck that I got to work with some really great teams who made me better. Honestly, I was lucky I got out with all my own teeth. I never really thought about what I would do with my life once I retired. A lot of what I did on that ice are non-transferable skills. But if your business falls apart tomorrow, and it won’t, you could still bake. You could still try again. You still have a lot of great transferable skills that will get you far in life.”

“Do you not have a degree?” I was sure he was drafted during his senior year and had graduated.

“Yeah, in English and Ancient Greece.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d forgotten that was what he was going to double major in.

“Oh yeah, you really backed yourself making it to the NHL, didn’t you?”

“Damn straight. But see, not a single transferable skill in sight. You are way more impressive than me, Len.”

“Your name is on the Stanley Cup, though.”

A flash of surprise crossed his face. I watched that final, mostly because Kai had wanted to, but I also wanted to see Liam win it. He had been incredible in that game, scoring a hat trick and winning it for the Panthers in the dying moments of overtime.

“That is pretty cool.”

He stepped away from me and walked back to his half-chopped mushrooms. I hated that I missed him being close to me.

I focused back on my pie filling. It was just a pie, but it would be the best pie I’d made in a while.