He’s surprisingly soft despite all his hard ridges.
He gently squeezes me and I snuggle into his side a little more, realizing I was never this comfortable with Elio. Liam feels like home. Maybe it has to do with the one memory I do have. The feelings that came with it aren’t something I will likely forget.
“What do you want to know?” Liam asks, his voice tight with emotion and soft with apprehension.
“Do you know how I got my scar?” I ask, starting light, or so I thought.
Liam’s jaw muscle bounces as he clenches his teeth, then he looks away. I know I didn’t get it from Elio’s attack, so why is he so worried about answering my question?
“You got it before me, but it came from your mother,” he says, still not looking at me.
“And yours?”
The tightness in his features melts away into a proud smirk. I reach up and run my finger along the fresh scar that slashes across the bridge of his nose.
“I’ll save you the gory details, but you’d be proud,” he says with a breathy laugh. “Lamp to the face while defending my sister’s honor.”
I sigh, ready to move on to the next question but trying to figure out how to ask it. I decide to be blunt.
“The baby…” —he stiffens, all lightheartedness falling away— “it was yours? I guess I want to know what we were and how long we were together.”
35
Liam
Theysaidshewasnine weeks pregnant when she miscarried. If that was the case, she must’ve gotten pregnant the first time I fucked her in the interrogation room.
I’ve asked myself this a thousand times since I found out: was that my baby?
Were we already on the road to our future together?
I blow out a harsh breath. I’m unsure if Malia was sleeping with anyone else during that whole fucked-up time. I can only be certain I didn’t, and I know she didn’t sleep with Bastian.
The way both Byrne and Breckin have been fighting with me over Malia these past few months, I’ve had my doubts. But what does it really matter now?
“The baby was mine,” I conclude, because it’s what I want to believe and there’s nothing to prove otherwise.
Malia pauses, her thinking so loud I can almost hear it as she considers what she wants to ask me about us.
“Tell me about what kept you fighting for me,” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.
How do you tell a woman who doesn’t remember you how much you love her without running her off? Malia didn’t exactly accept our feelings when everything started. The fight between us was sometimes brutal, a fight that ultimately brought us together in the end, but we never had a chance to just… be. It’s the whole reason I’ve been holding back since we brought her home.
Would the truth of our chaotic history together be our end? I won’t lie to her. I can’t.
Too much of our time together has already been wasted because of secrets and lies. This time, we have all the information and we don’t have to start the same way we did before. I’ve never stopped fighting for Malia, and I won’t stop now. I don’t know if I’ll get my Malia back but, if not, we can start back at square one and we can do it right this time.
I tuck Malia closer into my side and my chest tightens when she doesn’t pull away. I shouldn’t push her, but this is what we’ve always been—we push and pull each other. Even though this version of Malia is different from mine, some aspects remain the same.
“Our relationship, if you’d call it that, was tumultuous at best.” I sigh. “There was always a pull between us. Something you tried to fight, and I wouldn’t back down until I made you mine. We hit a snag, falling into a web of lies, but we broke through it all. I loved you despite everything and I wasn’t willing to give up what I felt… what I feel for you. Not then and not now.”
Malia lets out a harsh breath, her hand tightening against mine. I know it’s a vague response, but we don’t need to get into all the lows of our beginning. What matters is where we’d landed before she was taken.
“We weren’t given a chance to be together before you were taken from me. I can’t really tell you what we were when we were only starting.”
Malia shifts her head from my chest, resting her chin on our joined hands to look up at me.
“We claimed each other, that was about it.”