WHENIGETHOME, I manage to avoid my dad. The atmosphere in the mansion is brutal, and I know it isn’t a good idea for us to be around each other right now.
I’d gotten halfway home by the time Liam texted me, saying he needed to see me.
I reluctantly agreed and asked him to meet me at “my apartment” in a few hours. That gave me just enough time to get home, shower and change, and get to Breckin’s building. I don’t want to explain why I look like I just came from fucking battle.
Since I was too tired to bother dressing up, I settled on jeans, a cropped t-shirt, and my leather jacket. Despite not wanting to put a lot of effort into my outfit, I finish the outfit with the stilettos I didn’t get to wear earlier.
Liam’s waiting outside when I get to the apartment building. He leans against his car, fully focused on his phone, making it easy to slip in behind someone exiting the building, so it appears I came from inside.
His head comes up, and his blue eyes narrow on me as if sensing my presence. He tucks his phone in his pocket and pushes off his car, meeting me at the passenger side door to open it for me.
He shuts my door, walks to his side, and slides in without a word.
Cracking the window, he pulls out a cigarette and lights it while settling into his seat. The events from tonight must still weigh on him. Support is foreign to me, so I decide it’s best just to sit here until he’s ready to talk.
He releases the brake and shifts the car into first gear, slowly taking off down the road. I pluck his cigarette out of his mouth and begin puffing on it, stealing his attention.
Liam looks at me and raises an eyebrow. “That shit will kill you,” he says with amusement, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Says the dickhead I stole it from,” I quip.
He chuckles and steals a few glances at me, silent now as he drives us out of the city.
“I can feel your judgy eyes, Mila,” Liam says when our location becomes more wooded and less city.
“No judgment here, Officer.”
Liam snorts his response, tilting his head to meet my stare. Something about his icy blues is different tonight; they’re almost haunted in a way I don’t quite understand.
“I just want to know where we’re going and why you needed to see me.”
“I wanted to show you something,” Liam says, staring out the windshield.
His eyes are focused but almost disassociated, making me want to take over driving.
Finally, after another twenty minutes of silent driving, we come to a stop in a gravel parking lot surrounded by a wooded park.
“You want to show me something in the woods?” I question, my eyes immediately searching for a threat. Liam turns his head and watches me. “In the middle of the night? I won’t be dying tonight, copper.”
Liam huffs out a laugh, but I miss the joke.
“Jesus.” He chuckles, resting his head on the headrest. “Try not to be a pain in the ass for once, please?”
Shutting the car off, Liam opens the driver’s side door.
“Joke’s on you,” I quip. “If I’m such a pain in the ass, then why the hell do you keep trying to spend time with me?”
He groans, stepping out of the car and shutting the door without answering me. He walks over to the passenger side, opens the door, and offers me his hand.
I narrow my gaze at him and reject his help. Liam smirks, placing his hand on my lower back to point me in the direction he wants to walk.
Today was abnormally warm for late November, but the temperature dropped roughly thirty degrees as night fell. And, with the night sky full of heavy clouds, there wasn’t much light to help us see where we were going.
Liam leads me towards a thick patch of trees that blocks out any light from the park's streetlamps, my fight-or-flight kicking in the closer we get. Call me paranoid, but if I found out my arch nemesis’ daughter was playing undercover and fucking with my life… I’d shank a bitch, too.
His arm snakes around my waist to help guide me through a small path. This is my second walk through woodlands tonight, and I’m thinking something is telling me to take up hiking.
Thanks to the day’s high humidity, my heels sink into the damp earth, and I nearly lose my footing and faceplant in whatever fuckery the woods want to stab me with. Liam chuckles as he catches me before I surrender to Mother Nature’s assassination attempt.