“I’m coming—” I managed to say.
“Yes,” he whispered, then a few times more.
I let out a long groan as I filled him, holding onto his hips for dear life as I came. It was amazing how nothing else mattered in that moment—none of our history, none of the tiny things we’d ever worried about.
We could just be us. Together, perfectly, making each other feel as good as we possibly could.
We stayed like that for at least a few minutes, breathing deep, holding each other, and coming down. My face was pressed up against his chest, just below his shoulder, and his fingers stroked through my damp hair.
“Come on,” he said softly a minute later, and in my half-dazed state I somehow knew what he meant. He lifted off of me and we made our way to the shower, the hot water pounding all around us.
“I love showering with you,” I said calmly, finally regaining some sense of reality.
“I love doing anything with you,” he said.
“Good point.”
A few minutes later he turned off the water. I couldn’t stop staring at him, the planes of his muscles, the lines of his tattoos, the way tendrils of his hair clung to his skin in the water.
I stopped him as he was reaching for a towel, reaching out and resting my palm on his arm. I leaned in, kissing him slowly, with no plan in mind other than needing to feel my lips on his at that moment. We kissed for at least a minute, still in the shower as the water droplets slowly dripped off of us, our skin wet and clean and sliding against each other’s every time we moved.
It was a moment I could have lived in forever. But then, I could have lived in the moment before it happily, too, or the one before that, and probably also the one that was about to happen, too.
The thought was almost silly in how beautiful it was, and in my delirious state, I laughed softly, my lips curling up as we kissed.
“What?” Liam said, a smile landing on his lips, too.
“You know what,” I said.
“So tell me.”
“I love you.”
He puffed out a small laugh, reaching for a towel and draping it over me. “I really did fuck you senseless, didn’t I?”
“I’m… more than a little giddy right now, yes,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” he said. “It’s fucking magical.”
When we were in his bed ten minutes later, dry and cozy beneath his hodgepodge of soft blankets, he curled up near my chest and kissed my collarbone.
“I’m glad I came to the tavern that night, too, by the way,” he said. “I almost didn’t.”
“Really?”
He nodded, nuzzling a little closer to me and taking a deep breath. “Guess it was meant to be that I was stubborn enough to walk back into your world.”
“Stubborn, sexy, incredible… all very true things,” I said.
“Oh, please, you’re stubborn, too.”
“Very much,” I said. “Damn right about that one.”
He laughed softly.
“Well, be stubborn here from now on,” I said.
“In Amberfield? Done.”
“Close to me,” I said. “As close as you want. Any and every time you want.”
“You’re gonna regret saying that, you know.”
For some reason my heart was pounding a little harder now, even in the cozy, sleepy, insanely relaxed state we were in.
It was because I knew this night was something I’d remember for a long, long time.
Forever, probably. The night that Liam and I both admitted we were stupidly fucking in love with each other, and that it was never going to stop being the case.
I held that knowledge in my heart like a glowing ember, bringing Liam closer toward me and pressing a kiss to the side of his head as we both started to drift off to sleep.
I shook my head. “Nope. I’m never regretting anything with you again.”
18
Liam
As soon as I pushed through the front door of the tavern, I saw a flash of neon green behind the bar.
“Liam!” Sam said, beaming at me. “Welcome. Come, sit.”
“Oh, hi there, Liam,” Perry said, setting down a big tray of prepared strawberries behind the bar. “Red actually isn’t here right n—”
“Shh,” Sam said quickly, staring at Perry. “Ignore him. What can I get for you, Mr. Hardy?”
I sat down at the bar, taking a deep breath. “I know Red isn’t here,” I said.
Sam frowned. I never thought I would see a grown man frown like that while wearing a green tank top that read Free Hugs (and Licks, and Sucks if You’re Into It). “Please don’t leave just because he isn’t around,” Sam said. “We love having you here.”
I smiled. “I’m not leaving. I’ll take whatever virgin cocktail you want to whip up. I want to talk to you guys about something.”
“Us?” Sam asked. “Fuck yes. Let me make you one of my melty mint cocktails.”
I’d purposely come into Red’s Tavern early on a weekday evening, the one day I knew Red wasn’t working. Twenty minutes ago, he had sent me a ridiculously sexy selfie of him running outside shirtless, so I knew he was nowhere near the bar. There were only a few customers in the bar at the moment, grouped up by the jukebox on the other side of the room.