Tell Me It’s Right (Sweetspire #1)

Chapter 35

Chapter Thirty-Five

GRACIE

I don’t have to worry that I’m too late, that Liam already left, because he’s frozen at the end of the porch. As I get closer, I see why.

A woman is standing in the driveway.

One with red hair and a very familiar face.

Because I’ve seen her picture appear on Liam’s phone time and time again with each call that he declined.

She gestures wildly with her hands while she talks, and Liam flinches—physically, visibly flinches away. Heat sparks in my chest, and my heels click loudly against the porch as I approach. Liam whips around with wide eyes, but they soften in surprise when he realizes it’s me.

The redhead’s eyes turn into slits as I stop at Liam’s side. “This is a private conversation.”

“This is private property,” I counter.

“So this is why you haven’t called me back? I knew it. I knew it the second I saw this.” She waves her phone around, but I can’t see whatever she has pulled up on the screen.

“How did you even find me here?” Liam demands.

“I went to your apartment first. Was planning to swing by Leo’s, then I remembered I follow Keava’s accounts.” She shrugs and crosses her arms. “She posted on her stories.”

Okay…that’s incredibly stalker-ish.

“You need to leave, Hailey,” says Liam.

“So ending a nine-year relationship doesn’t even warrant a conversation, huh?”

“We’ve been over,” snaps Liam. “There’s nothing left to talk about.”

“We’ve been on a break .” She flicks her wrist toward me. “Something you’ve clearly taken full advantage of. You said you needed some space to think. To think about us . To figure out how to make this work.”

Every word that comes out of her mouth is dripping with spite and vitriol, the same way it did in those voicemails. And I don’t know a damn thing about her, but everything about her energy feels wrong.

And yet. Her words poke at something soft and vulnerable inside of me.

I turn to look at Liam’s face.

Is that what Leo knew that I didn’t? Why he didn’t want me involved with him?

“Do you…do you want me to…?” I start to take a step back, suddenly feeling very stupid. Like I inserted myself somewhere I don’t belong.

But Liam’s hand shoots out and lands on the small of my back. His eyes are wide, earnest, as they stare into mine. “No,” he murmurs. “No.”

Hailey scoffs and paces through the gravel.

Liam’s jaw hardens as he turns to her. “If you came all the way down here for this, you wasted your time. Since apparently I wasn’t clear enough before, this is over, Hailey. Completely. I don’t want to hear from you again. I don’t want to see you again. And I definitely don’t want you showing up around the people I care about. So you can either leave now or I can call the police.”

She laughs, the sound loud and mocking. “The police? Really, Liam? Is this act supposed to impress your new girl? You’ve always been so fucking dramatic.”

“If he doesn’t, I will,” I say. “Get the fuck off my parents’ lawn.”

Liam blinks at me, surprised. Honestly, I’m surprised too at how hard my voice comes out. But the patronizing way she was talking to him snapped something inside of me.

I whip out my phone for emphasis.

Her nostrils flare as she glares at me, and after several moments of tense silence pass, she turns around and climbs into her car.

Liam and I don’t move until her brake lights disappear in the distance.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “About your birthday. I’ve really screwed everything up?—”

“Shh.” I lay my hand on his arm. And when he turns, he looks at me like a desperate, cornered animal. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Liam drives us to his apartment, but we don’t get out after he parks. He didn’t say a word on the way over here, and neither did I. I didn’t know what to say, if saying anything would help or hurt. I’ve never seen that look in his eyes before, and his grip on the wheel the entire way over here was bone-crushing. I can’t tell which he’s more affected by—Hailey showing up or that argument with Leo. Maybe it’s both.

“I need you to know that Hailey and I were never just on a break,” he says suddenly. “We’ve been broken up for nearly a year. And even before that, we were on and off.”

I nod but say nothing.

“And what Leo said—I know you heard all of that—it’s not true. I know why he thinks that, and I’ve never corrected him because…well, he doesn’t know…” He sighs and roughs a hand through his hair. “It’s complicated. I just, I don’t want you to think of me like that. Because I’ve never—after Hailey?—”

“Liam.” I lay my hand on his arm. “Take a breath. It’s okay.”

He stares at my hand for a moment before gently laying his on top. “I didn’t mean for you to leave your party.”

“I wanted to.” I tighten my fingers around his arm. “How about we start with one thing at a time?”

He nods.

“Why did she show up tonight? What was she showing you on her phone?”

That, finally, loosens the tension in his shoulders. He lets out a disbelieving laugh and shakes his head. “ That .” He fishes his phone out of his pocket, swipes around for a second, then hands it to me.

It’s pulled up to one of the shop’s social media pages. I haven’t logged in since work a few days ago, but there’s a post from today. One I didn’t schedule.

I click on it, and blink in surprise when my face appears. It’s of me at the beach the other day, my eyes closed as I smile and the sun sets behind me.

Wish our social media savior—ahem—manager a happy birthday!

Liam shifts his weight in his seat. “You said I should practice posting, and that personalities and faces are important, and I just thought it was a good picture and?—”

I laugh at the nervous edge to his voice. “ This is what she was so upset about?”

He laughs too and covers his eyes as I hand the phone back.

“Anyway, she’s back in town for this thing with my sister. They’re working together on a new branch of the business. And this is just something Hailey does. Every time we break up, if she feels me moving on, she likes to pop back in.”

Every time we break up.

“How many times have you ended things?”

He shakes his head. “Since we first started dating in high school? At least half a dozen.”

I don’t know why my stomach twists at that. Liam must see it on my face because he hurries to add, “This time is nothing like those, I swear. This one was for good.”

I wish that made me feel better.

“Please come inside. I’ll explain everything. Answer any questions you have.”

I don’t respond, but I let him take my hand and lead me up the stairs. He doesn’t let go, not even after we’re inside his apartment and on the couch, and there’s a slight tremor in his fingers.

He said there were things Leo didn’t know.

I’m starting to think there’s a lot of things that maybe no one does.

“Look, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t have any idea where to start, so I’m just going to start talking, okay?”

I run my thumb along the back of his hand, desperately wanting to believe there’s an acceptable explanation for all of this, but I can’t get Leo’s words out of my head.

If you want me to get on board with this, I’m not going to. And that should mean something to you.

Because no matter how angry I am with him for how he handled things tonight, his opinion does mean something to me. It means everything to me, actually.

But then I think of the past few months with Liam…all of our conversations and little moments, the way he took care of me, how he remembered all the tiny details about me that no one else ever has…I don’t want to lose that either. But was any of it real if I’ve been in the dark this entire time?

Liam keeps his focus on our hands and lets out a long breath. “Hailey and I met my sophomore year of high school. She’s two years older. She was my first everything, but she’d dated other guys before. So everything with her…I guess I just assumed she knew more. That that was how relationships were supposed to be. I thought it was normal.”

His forehead creases as he says it, and he pauses long enough that I wonder if he’s waiting for me to respond. But then he adds, quietly, “It took me a long time to figure out that it wasn’t. Normal. The fighting, the yelling, the hitting, the insults, the going through my phone, the silent treatment, the not wanting me to go places without her…” He sighs. “We’d started dating a few months before my mom died. I wonder a lot if things would’ve been different if that hadn’t been the timing. Because even when things were bad between us, she was there for me. In a way no one else was. And I kind of…clung to that. And I think that made it easier for her. She didn’t want me spending time with other people, and I was at such a low point that I didn’t want anyone else around. She was my whole world, and she knew it.

“Anyway, after she graduated high school, she went to a community college about an hour down the road, so we stayed together. Even if it wasn’t that far, the distance was tough. She’d get mad if I took too long to respond, if I didn’t drive up to see her enough… We broke up a lot during that time. Once I had some distance from her, I started to see I felt better when she was gone. But I also had this, I don’t know, attachment to her. It was hard to let go. After pushing everyone else away for so long for her, if she was gone, I didn’t have much left.”

For the first time since he started talking, he meets my eyes.

I remember those years, vaguely. Leo’s first two years of high school, Liam was around as usual. I saw him a lot less those final two years, but I’d assumed that was because they’d both gotten their driver’s licenses and didn’t need to ride with me and Mom anymore.

Hailey I have virtually no memories of. At the time, I’d assumed it was because she went to Liam’s old private school, and it’s not like the kids there tend to socialize much with the Edgewater public schools.

Of course I remember the first time I heard Leo use the words Liam and girlfriend in a sentence, but social media wasn’t that big back then, and twelve-year-old me hadn’t honed her internet stalking skills yet.

“After she finished college, she went up to New York,” Liam continues. “Wanted to pursue modeling. We agreed to try the long-distance thing again. It seemed to be going well. She seemed more trusting, less controlling. I thought maybe it was because she’d grown up a little. Then I drove up to surprise her for Valentine’s Day, and realized she was seeing someone else. She apologized, of course. Promised it was a mistake. Just a one-time thing. I don’t know why I bought it. Why I was willing to still try after that. I was so…clueless. I actually thought that us always going back to each other meant something important.” He barks out a laugh that has no amusement in it. “But the final straw was when I found out she’d been seeing him the entire time. He helped her get a job. She knew him before she moved up there.”

I scoot closer to him on the couch until our legs touch. I can’t tell if he wants me to touch him, to talk. He seems barely aware that I’m here.

“And Leo…” He swallows hard. “What Leo thinks he saw after she and I broke up is me going out and sleeping around with basically every woman in town. Hailey was the only girl I’d ever been with. And after we broke up, I was fucking terrified I’d never feel like that for anyone but her. So I went out. I met women. I tried to force myself to feel something. I took a few of them home, but I could never bring myself to go through with anything. One-night stands felt so…detached.” His eyes flick to mine then away. “Except one. I tried it once, and it just made me feel worse. So, I, um, I think that’s everything. And if this is too much?—”

I throw my arms around his shoulders and pull him close. My chest shakes on my inhale, and I feel tears burning in the backs of my eyes, but the overwhelming emotion flooding my veins is rage.

“She’s so goddamn lucky I didn’t know all of that before seeing her tonight,” I whisper. “Or I probably would’ve punched her.”

He lets out a startled laugh.

“Does Leo know about…?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m sure he put some things together. He saw how much we fought and how often we broke up. But…”

“You’ve never talked to him about it.”

He shakes his head, and I run a hand down his hair. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess…” The way he looks up at me, all of his usual ease and confidence gone, breaks my fucking heart. “Maybe I was embarrassed. And I think part of me believed a lot of the things she was telling me. About how things were my fault. That I was pathetic. And I just…didn’t want my best friend to think those things about me too.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, tears rapidly building in my eyes. “About tonight.”

“No, no, Gracie.” He cups my cheek.

“I don’t want to come between you and Leo. I never wanted?—”

“And I don’t want to come between you and Leo. But it’s going to be okay.”

“How can you be so sure?” I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Leo that angry, seen him like that. Especially not directed at Liam. I figured telling him would make things weird, at least for a while, but I never thought…

“This was a shock to him. Leo’s always needed some time to process things. And I get where he’s coming from. He loves you and he’s worried about you and he wants to keep you safe. He just needs time to see that’s all I want too.”

I blink the tears away. “And if he doesn’t?”

“He will. I’m going to make him see that, Gracie. I promise you, I’m going to make things right with him. But I’m not going to walk away from this either.” He swallows hard as he looks from my eyes to my lips. “You know how I told you you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time?”

“Yeah?”

His hands skate up and down my back, and I shiver as his fingers trace along my bare skin where my dress ends.

He shakes his head, looking up at me with something that looks like wonder in his eyes. “That wasn’t true. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Gracie Collins. The best thing.”

My nose burns at the threat of tears. “You’re my best thing too,” I whisper.

We lean in at the same time. I try to put everything I don’t know how to say into the way I kiss him. How much more he deserves. That he has nothing to be unsure or embarrassed about— she does. That he never should have had to shoulder all of this alone.

“I’m so sorry I ruined your birthday,” he whispers against my lips.

“You didn’t ruin anything.” I kiss him harder, deeper.

His hand tangles in my hair, and I straddle his lap, pulling myself as close to him as I can.

He groans low in his throat. Every part of me is somehow cold and on fire all at once. I have no idea what I’m doing. All I know is I don’t want to stop kissing him. I don’t want him to stop touching me. I don’t want to do anything in the world except this, this, this . The fervor he kisses me back with melts away any thoughts, any fears. This is a side of him I’ve never seen before, and now that I’ve gotten a taste, I’m dying to know every piece of it.

His arms fold around my waist, pulling me flush to his chest, then he stands. Before my feet can brush the ground, he flips me so my back hits the couch and his weight presses down on me, my legs parting around his hips. The hard press of him between my thighs has my breath leaving my lungs in a rush.

I gasp as his hands run along the silky fabric of my dress, down my ribs, my hips, and hook beneath my thighs. His lips trail to my cheek, my jaw, my throat, places I’ve never been kissed before, his hands finding places I’ve never been touched, and my body flames with feelings I’ve never felt.

For a moment, my brain is stuck in a loop of I’ve never, I’ve never, I’ve never , and it’s enough to break through the haze of want.

Liam pauses with his face inches from mine. “Do you want to stop?”

“No, it’s—it’s not that. I just?—”

He waits, his thumb rubbing my arm.

I don’t have to say it. His eyes widen slightly, and he pulls back another inch. “This is your first time,” he breathes.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more mortified in my life that it was that fucking obvious.

Liam must see it on my face because he quickly shakes his head. “I don’t want to rush this, Gracie. I don’t want to rush you. I don’t want to do anything a single moment before you’re ready.”

I’ve heard something similar from other guys before, ones who didn’t mean it. Ones who thought saying that would make me change my mind, and when it didn’t, they disappeared from my life.

But they never looked at me the way Liam is.

I never trusted any of them the way I trust him.

And I never wanted any of them the way I want this right now.

“I know,” I murmur. “And I’m not rushing.”

He gives me a small, cautious smile as I pull his lips to mine.

“You’re sure?” he whispers.

I nod.

“If you want to stop, just say the word.”

“Liam, shut up and kiss me.”

And God, does he. He kisses me so hard I feel it in my soul. His hands dance across my body like they want to touch all of me at once—down my arms, my sides, my legs, up into my hair, the sides of my face. I grip his shoulders, the muscles flexing beneath my hands, then trail down his back, his sides, and he shivers beneath my touch. I pull at the hem of his shirt, desperate for more, to feel his skin against mine.

He leans back on his knees and pulls the shirt over his head with one hand. My mouth runs dry. He pauses as I hesitantly run my hands along the planes of his stomach.

His body is a beautiful mosaic of his art. It tells a story. The progression, the growth of his craft. The growing confidence in the placements that are more visible. I want to know about every single one, the story behind it. It would probably take all day.

His next kiss is achingly slow and tender. It makes everything inside of me feel like liquid.

“All right, birthday girl,” he whispers. “Hold on.”

He loops his arms beneath my thighs and scoops me up in one swift movement. I barely manage to lock my arms around his neck before he stands, and my gasp turns into a laugh as he heads for the bedroom.

“Of course I’m not doing this on the couch,” he says.