“I’m not going to give you a blowjobeverymorning,” I tell him cheekily, and he grins at me, grabbing my waist and pulling me towards him.
“You were a bad girl this morning,” he says in a low and husky voice, tapping the bridge of my nose. “I can’t resist you, you know that.”
“Are you going to punish me?” I flutter my eyelashes at him, and he groans, taking the plate and walking around the counter to the other side and sitting down on one of the barstools.
“You’re going to be the death of me, little lass,” he says, pointing at me as he picks up the bagel. “But I’ll die happy.”
I stay on the other side of the counter, nibbling at the fruit on my plate. He narrows his eyes, watching me.
“You’re going to eat all of that, aren’t you?” Liam gestures to my own bagel next to the strawberries and banana that I’d sliced up. “You promised me you’d eat.”
“I’m trying.” I poke at it. “It was hard for me to eat back in Paris, too, even as good as the food was. When I was a ballerina—” I hesitate, swallowing hard. It still feels so difficult to say that, to saywas, when it was everything to me for such a long time.
“I know you said what you could eat was very strict.” Liam eyes my plate. “As long as you’re trying. I’ll think you’re beautiful, Ana, even if you’re not exactly as you are now. You’re more to me than that.”
I feel my cheeks flush as I look down at my plate. I don’t want to admit that I’d worried about that—whether or not he would still want me if I didn’t have the same dancer’s body. I’m frail now, thinner than I was even as a ballerina, without the muscle tone I used to have—but I have no idea what I’ll look like in six months or a year. But the way he says it, I believe that he’ll love me and want me regardless.
It’s so different than anything I’ve ever had before that I want to burst into tears, but I fight them back, forcing myself to keep talking. I don’t want to keep crying in front of him. “I want to ask the doctor what I can do to work out.” I pick up the bagel, forcing myself to take a bite. “It’s not as if I can run anymore or dance like I used to.”
“Whatever they say, there’s a good gym that I go to if that’s what you want.” Liam takes another bite, stabbing a piece of strawberry. “And your physical therapy will help—as long as you go,” he adds pointedly. “I want you to feel good, Ana. That’s all that matters to me.” He tilts his head towards the French doors leading up to the balcony. “There’s the pool upstairs, too—it’s private,” he adds. “No one will see you up there or your feet. You can swim as much as you like or get in the hot tub, and you won’t be bothered.”
“I meant to tell you, too—” He sets the bagel down, looking at me with a sort of sincerity in his eyes that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen in anyone’s face before, almost an earnestness. “I want your friends to be welcome here too, Ana. If you make friends here in Boston, if Sofia and Caterina, and Sasha want to come to visit you—you don’t need to ask permission. Let me know, of course, so I can let security know—but you don’t need to ask me if it’s okay. This is your home too, for as long as you want to stay here.”
I blink at him, startled, and this time I can’t keep the tears from welling up. “Thank you,” I whisper. “Liam, I’m sorry—”
“For what?” He looks genuinely startled.
“That I still—” I take a breath, wondering if I should even say it, if I should take the chance of ruining this moment by bringing up Alexandre. “That I still have feelings for—you know. That I’m not all in, not yet.”
Liam goes quiet for a moment, and my heart turns over in my chest.Fuck. I’ve fucked everything up—I shouldn’t have said anything. Fuck—
“It’s okay,” he says finally, and I blink at him.
“It is? I mean—”
“I’m not going to pretend that I’m not hurt by it or that I understand,” Liam says quietly. “What you’ve told me—I don’t understand how you could want that, or him. But I do understand thatyoufelt it, that it meant something to you, that you needed at the time. And I’ve never been through anything like you have.” He pauses, pressing his lips together for a moment. “I’ve dealt with loss, Ana. I’ve dealt with things changing in my life that I never thought would, with having to learn to see myself as a different person than I thought I would be. And I hope, in time, I can share that with you and that maybe I can understand parts of you from that perspective. But for now, I haven’t wanted to talk about it because I didn’t want to take away from what you’ve endured. You’ve been through so much, things that I can’t even imagine, and it’s not for me to judge you for what you’ve done to survive it or what you’ve felt.”
I can’t speak. The tears are welling up now, dripping down my cheeks, and Liam gets up, coming around the counter to gently rub his thumb over my jawline where the tears are falling. “I’m sorry I was angry yesterday, Ana. It’s hard to see you think about him, to know you care for him. You called out his name while I was inside of you—” He pauses, closing his eyes. “But that’s not your fault. I know that. I’m trying too.”
“Should we have to try this hard?” I look up at him. “What if I’m too broken? What if what he did—”
“I don’t want to believe that.” Liam shakes his head. “Not yet. I want to keep trying, Ana. You’re the only thing in this world that I want to fight this hard for. More than my place at the head of the Kings, more than anything else. I promise I’ll keep fighting for as long as you want me to. I—”
He breaks off then, and I feel my heart twist in my chest at the expression on his face.
But at the same time, I can’t help but think that there’s something he’s not telling me—something that he wants to say, but isn’t. I don’t know how I can say that, though, how I can ask him when there are things that I’m not ready to tell him yet, either.
“I have to go.” Liam drops a kiss on the top of my head, his fingers still stroking his cheek. “I’ll be home tonight, Ana.”
I watch him go, my heart pounding in my chest. I feel conflicted, torn, confused. Even before all of the terrible things that happened, when I was a normal girl with a normal life, I never had a man treat me the way Liam treats me. It’s not just the clothes and the beautiful apartment and the spa appointments, not just him taking care of me. It’s the way he looks at me, the way he touches me, the way he seems to want tounderstand.
I’m afraid to trust it. And I’m afraid not to.
And more than anything in the entire world, I want to stop being afraid.
21
LIAM