Every moment somehow both felt completely organic and completely insane.
It felt like literally every corner I turned, there was a new surprise waiting for me. Today had already given me, let’s see, the realization I needed to go grocery shopping, seeing Liam, seeing Bucky not bite Liam’s hand off, me letting Liam into my car, Liam being a gentleman in the car, Liam looking at Charlotte as I’d always hoped her father would…
As I opened the door and Liam walked in without a thank you, though, I was still reminded that I wasn’t yet on great terms with him. I still felt this weird attraction I could not explain, and I still wanted him to be close to Charlotte, but to pretend that I liked him now, was…
Well…
Fuck, why did he have to be so handsome? Why did he have to be so fucking sexy? Why did my daughter and my dog, who hated men, take to him so easy?
Why did it seem like he was supposed to be here this whole damn fucking time?
“Holy shit,” Liam kept saying over and over again.
I was beginning to feel a little self-conscious about the augustness of the house, but I kept it to myself. I reminded myself that I’d invited him over so that we could see if there might be something for Charlotte, and being a jackass would only push him away. I only needed to look to yesterday to see how that went.
“I know how lucky I am to have inherited this place,” I said. “Not every day you win the genetic lottery and get a mansion passed down like this to you.”
“And this all happened, what, in the last few years?”
“More or less. My whole life kind of hit rock bottom a couple years ago. I saw an opportunity to escape out here, to get away from the rat race of sorts, and so I took it. It can get lonely sometimes here, but that’s why I’ve got Bucky and Charlotte.”
I decided not to make mention of how two years ago was when “Trent” had shown up and upended my entire life. Liam already knew well enough.
“Did you know this was here?” Liam said, literally pausing at every window to take a look outside. It was admittedly quite majestic.
“I spent a lot of time here as a kid, but I never really appreciated it. Of course, how could you when you’re six, seven years old? I lived in a de facto bubble. I grew up in Miami, came here in the winter to ski and have Christmas, and then my grandparents would come to Miami. So we basically lived in two rich worlds, so to me, that was just how it was.”
“And I guess you and Emily had a fight, huh?”
It took me a second to register Liam’s smirk for me to sense it was sarcasm.
“Right idea, wrong person,” I said. “When my husband and I at the time split, I started taking stock of my life. What the hell did I want to do? I had money. I had a nice place. I had a job people would supposedly be envious of. But I was miserable. I started to ask myself where I’d be happy. My parents’ home in Miami was one possibility, but it was too close to my misery. So it was this.”
“Not a bad alternative.”
I shrugged.
“Once the divorce was finalized, we sold the Miami house and split the profit. I quit my job, told my boss I was retiring, and moved out here to escape.”
“And ever since, you’ve been living here.”
“Yep. And for a while, I still wasn’t happy. But…”
Then you came into my life.
And then Charlotte.
And now…it’s better. Still figuring things out. Maybe this puzzle piece will fit together. Maybe it’ll be a massive disaster. But it’s not the disaster that it once was.
“But you pulled it together,” Liam said. “Not bad, Kelly, not bad.”
The way he said my name sent a warm glow through my stomach. But I wasn’t going to do anything with Charlotte here.
I put her in her high chair, asked Liam to put the groceries on the kitchen counter, and started unloading them. I got through two bags when I paused, seeing something that both made me very nervous and very emotional.
Liam and Charlotte were sharing a look. No words, no sounds were being made, but it looked so precious. Both looked like they were truly seeing each other for the first time, wanting to hold and hug the other but unsure of how to do it.
Or maybe I was just overselling the situation as an emotional parent and there really wasn’t that much to it. But still…
And then Liam stepped forward and grabbed her.
“Li—”
I cut myself off. Charlotte didn’t scream. She didn’t cry out. Quite the opposite, in fact. She started cooing, laughing and giggling as he bounced her in his arms. She even tried to reach for his facial hair.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Liam said, trying to push her away.
I laughed so hard. So much harder than the scene itself called for.
But you know what? After two years of wondering if a moment like this would ever come, after months and months and months of fearing that I’d never meet her father again, after yesterday going as disastrously bad as it had, I think I deserved to let a loud laugh out. I deserved to let some steam off.
“Hello, little one,” he said.
Charlotte was captivated by her father’s voice. Her father.
“Aren’t you an angelic-looking thing?”
It was kind of funny how the man that had once so dominated me in bed, who had been such a beast in the bedroom, who had given me the best sex of my life, was now nothing but a goo-goo ga-ga talking head
