Tell Me It’s Right (Sweetspire #1)

Chapter 48

Chapter Forty-Eight

GRACIE

I don’t have a plan for what to say when I show up at Liam’s door. Don’t have any plan at all, really.

“ Gracie ? I—what are you doing here? I didn’t know you were coming to town—” Liam stops short when he opens the door and his gaze falls on my face. Wordlessly, he steps aside so I can pass.

“I’m sorry if this is a bad time. I know you’ve had a lot going on.”

“No, no. It’s fine. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. Here, sit down.”

I take the kitchen chair he pulls out, a wave of déjà vu rolling over me from the conversation I had an hour ago.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

He sighs as he takes the seat across from me. “Casey’s been getting into some trouble.”

“ Casey? ” Granted, I don’t know the kid well, but he didn’t seem like the troublemaking type.

Liam pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. And my dad has no patience for it, as you can imagine, and Christine is at her wit’s end with my dad. Anyway. What’s going on with you? Is everything okay?”

I thought I’d cried myself out at my mom’s, that it wouldn’t be physically possible for me to do it anymore, and yet…

Liam’s eyes widen, and he pulls his chair around so he’s beside me.

“I think I made a mistake with this job,” I whisper. “I feel like I’m playing dress up in someone else’s life. And I thought at first it was just new and I needed to give it time for it to start to feel like home. And I have. I’ve tried. But it doesn’t feel right… But if it’s not this, then I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what to do. I went to talk to my mom today.”

“Okay.” He rubs his thumb over my knee. “What did she say?”

I throw my hands up. “That I’m not giving it a fair chance. That I went into this with one foot already out the door because of…”

“Because of what?”

My shoulders slump. “Because of you.”

He leans back in his chair, his eyes searching my face. “Did you… Did you come here to break up with me?”

“No!” The tears break free onto my cheeks. “I mean, I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t want to. But what if she’s right?”

He stares at me for a long moment, and the look on his face gives nothing away. I have no idea what he’s thinking.

“You said the city doesn’t feel right, so then tell me what does.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Come on. You have things that feel right. No matter how small.”

I swipe the tears from my face with the back of my hand and flick my wrist. “The water. Being close to the water. The ocean, I miss it.”

He leans closer, his gaze boring into mine. “What else?”

I shake my head.

“You know, I can probably think of a few things,” he says. “Your books. Being a vegetarian. Photography. You know what else I think feels right to you? Us. And I think that scares you. I know it scares the hell out of me.”

I bite my lip, and he moves closer.

“Tell me what you want, Gracie,” he says lowly. “Not what you think you’re supposed to want, not what everyone says you should want. What do you want, Gracie?”

I throw my hands up, hot, frustrated tears filling my eyes. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t buy that. I think you do know. What do you want?”

“I don’t know!” I repeat, louder this time, but Liam doesn’t back off. He leans in closer.

“What do you want?” he pushes. “Come on, Gracie. Stop overthinking every little thing. Stop trying to find the perfect answer. The first thing that pops into your head—what do you want?”

“I want to come home,” I croak, and as soon as the words hit the air, it’s like all of the tension in my shoulders deflates. “I want to come home,” I repeat in a whisper. “But if I do, I’ll feel like I failed.” I roll my eyes against the tears and the cracks in my voice. “Again.”

And Liam, like a complete psychopath, as he watches me crumble into a million pathetic pieces at his feet, smiles.

“Why are you smiling?” I demand.

“Because I’m a selfish bastard and I want you here, but also because I can tell you meant that. So now all that’s left to do is for us to find a way for you to get what you want without you feeling like you failed. We’re going to work this out. You and me. So break it down for me. You don’t like the job.”

“I hate it,” I whisper.

He nods thoughtfully. “What would make you like it? What is it missing?”

“It feels like…filler. Like filling time just for the sake of it. Wasting time. I feel like I could be doing so much more. Even the small tasks they occasionally throw my way feel so…lifeless. Like I can’t remember why I enjoyed designing in the first place anymore.”

“But you didn’t feel that way working for me?”

“Liam,” I sigh.

He holds up a hand. “I’m not trying to get you to come back to the shop. I’m trying to understand why it’s different.”

I pause, turning the words over in my head. Why is it different?

“I guess when I look around at other people in the company—the people higher up than me, the jobs I could have one day if I stick it out and pay my dues—there isn’t a single job there that I want. I think I’d have the same complaints.”

He runs his thumb over the back of my hand. “Is it the company? Do you think you’d like it somewhere else if you were more passionate about what they were selling?”

“I don’t think so.”

A slow smile stretches across his face as he looks at me.

“What?”

“Come on,” he murmurs. “You have to see the answer. It’s right there in front of you.”

I frown.

“You liked working at the shop because you had free rein,” he says slowly. “You were never waiting around for approval or having to clear your ideas. You just got to jump in, get your hands dirty, and figure out what worked on your own.”

Well, yeah. But I don’t see how that?—

“Gracie.” He chuckles and smooths his thumb over the tension between my eyebrows. “It’s not that you don’t like design anymore. You don’t like working for someone else.”

I lean back. Cross my arms. Uncross them. Lean forward.

“Well fuck,” I breathe.

That’s the opposite of an easy fix. That’s every plan I’ve ever had for myself, every possible version of my future I’ve pictured gone up in smoke.

But it’s also the first time I’ve felt like I could breathe in over a month.

Because I could do it. I know immediately that I can. That I’d like it.

But no more fixed salary, job security, health insurance—my head starts to pound as each new consequence clicks into place.

Liam smirks as I refocus on his face. “Welcome to my world.”

But even with how much that makes sense…

“I can’t quit,” I murmur. “I can’t come back here and move in with Leo or my parents again. I can’t feel like I’m starting from scratch. I need to feel like I’ve—I don’t know. Like I’ve progressed? Like I can support myself now? I just don’t want to jump the gun, you know?”

Maybe if I’d saved what I made from the shop this summer things would be different. It would be enough to coast along for a few months, at least. But nearly all of it went toward paying off my student loans. And who knows how long getting a new business off the ground and consistently bringing in enough income could take me?

“You know the shop’s doors are always open. You want your job back, you just say the word. Or I could be your first client, if you want to look at it that way.”

“I appreciate that. But I…” I trail off, not sure how to put it into words. I need to feel like I did this myself. And depending financially on a boyfriend, no matter how qualified Liam sees me as, it just wouldn’t feel good. And if I leave Bezzels now, no matter the circumstances, it’ll feel like giving up. The job itself might be a bad fit, but the city…I really don’t feel like I’ve given it a fair chance yet. I settle on: “I need to see this through.”

He rolls his lips together and nods slowly. “So you’re not coming home.”

“Not yet.” I take his hands in mine and squeeze. “Thank you for talking this through with me. It’s given me a lot to think about.”

His eyes search mine. “And us?”

As much as I want to pretend otherwise, my mom was right. I’ve been leaning on the idea of a relationship being the one thing that would make me happy for so long. And it does make me happy. Liam makes me so unbelievably happy. But I need to find a way to feel that on my own too.

“I don’t want to break up, but I think I need some time to figure out how to stand on my own two feet. I want to want to be with you. Not need to be.”

He takes a deep breath, that unreadable look still on his face. “So you want to take a break?”

I chew on my lip, hoping he can see in my eyes how sorry I am, how much I know I’m not being fair to him. It feels cruel, even, knowing what happened with him and Hailey.

“I’m sorry to even ask. I know it’s unfair, and I can’t expect you to just wait for me?—”

He pulls me into his chest and kisses the top of my head. “How long?”

“You mean…you’d…”

“Of course I’m going to fucking do it, Gracie. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be apart from you. But I understand what you’re saying. If this is what you need, of course I’m going to give it to you. I’d give you anything you asked for. So how long?”

My lower lip wobbles, and I suck in a shaky breath. “A few months, I think.”

He runs his hand up and down my back. “So what does this mean? No contact at all?”

I want to say no, that checking in with each other here and there would be fine, but I know myself too well. If there’s even a chance I’ll hear from him, some part of me will be waiting for it, hoping for it, lunging for my phone at every notification, devastated when it isn’t him. It’ll feel like a holding pattern—and how is that any different than the way things are now? I’m not capable of going back to being friends or whatever we were before. I wish I was, but I’m not.

“I think that would be best,” I whisper.

He doesn’t say anything for what feels like a long time. Maybe he knows once this conversation is over, I’m going to leave, and he’s not any more ready to let go of me than I am of him.

Finally, he says, “I’m guessing you’ll be home for Thanksgiving? So we’ll talk then?”

Nearly three months from now.

Three months of not seeing him, hearing his voice, feeling his touch. Three months of no calls, no texts, no inside jokes, no random pictures of his day.

Three months to pull myself out of this hole and stop feeling so damn sorry for myself.

I close my eyes and tighten my arms around his waist. “Okay.”