Unplugged (Blue Phoenix, #3)(68)

“You can live your own life and still love her,” I say. “Don’t throw this away.”

“I’m not! I just need time out until this mess is sorted, Liam. Please. I don’t want to lose her.”

I sit next to Cerys on the bed and take her hands in mine. She’s avoiding looking at me again, but I want her to see what she means to me. “Did I not stay with you enough? Am I not showing you how much you mean to me? I try.”

“Sometimes, I think you try too hard, Liam.”

“I try too hard to show you I love you?” I ask, stunned that someone could see that as a problem.

“You try too hard to fix everything. I know how much you care about the people around you and that you want their lives to be easy, but you end up making bad decisions.”

“Bad decisions about what? You’ve lost me.”

Cerys takes my hand. “Don’t get mad with me for this.” The wary look in her eyes worries me – so she’s going to end this? “When you told me about you and Honey, you said what a mess she was and how you wanted to help her. You made it sound like you wanted to marry Honey to look after her, not because you loved her.”

I drag my hand away. “What the f-uck has this situation got to do with Honey?”

“This.” Cerys waves her hand, indicating the room. “Me. My life’s a mess, too; sometimes I think you’re trying to fix me.”

“That’s bullshit, Cerys! I’m doing all this for you because I love you!”

“I’m not saying you don’t love me; but it worries me that I’m a new Honey, someone else for you to look after.”

“Stop talking about Honey! You’re nothing like her! This is nothing like her! Why are you twisting it round to this?”

“Because if you’re too busy looking after me, you’ll stop loving me!”

“What? How?”

Cerys stands and moves toward the window, as if she needs to keep a distance. A distance I think she’s about to make permanent. “You stopped loving her when you woke up to what you were doing.”

“No, I stopped loving her when she had an affair.”

“Liam, you went back to her when it wasn’t right for you. You did that for her, I think; but look at what happened. It’s like you’re afraid to hurt people, and then you hurt them more by ignoring what’s really happening until it’s too late.”

“Jesus, Cerys, how much time do you spend obsessing about me and Honey?”

“I do not obsess! I see similarities! What if one day you wake up and realise doing all this for me isn’t what you want, but hang around because you think you should? What if you stay with me because you don’t want to hurt me, and then end up hurting me more?”

Cerys shakes, pointing to the real reason behind her desire to ‘pause’. I can’t take in everything she’s accusing me of. What the f-uck have I done wrong here? Nothing.

“You’re crazy,” I say quietly. “How can you even begin to compare how I feel about you to what I felt about Honey? She doesn’t even come close!”

“When you can’t fix my life, you’ll go!” she shouts.

“No! I won’t! How is my wanting to take care of you wrong, Cerys?”

“Because you think the more you do for me, the less likely I’ll reject you.”

I rub my temples, blown away by the criticism for doing the right thing by her. The frustration builds pressure in my head; this is as far as I go with confrontation. “f-uck this, I’m going.”

Cerys’s eyes widen, confusing me further. Didn’t she just say…? I don’t f-ucking understand women. I give her my heart and she tells me I don’t love her?

I take a calming breath. “Cerys, I’m going. If you want me to stay away, I will. Sounds like you need to decide what you want. But don’t think I’ll let you go so easily.” The emotion surges inside and I’m desperate to grab Cerys and kiss her until she can’t breathe, to hold her and never let her go. The ferocity of my emotions around this woman and her little girl surprise me. I never realised how attached I was and how big a gap in my life there would be without them.

But apparently, loving them is the problem.

CHAPTER 30



LIAM



I’d cleared this week so I could spend time with Cerys and now I’m alone. I kick around my London flat for a couple of days, debating whether to go back to the States for a while. I want to take Cerys back there; I want to spoil them after the crap they’ve been through. Now the dickhead ex is making their life worse, and it appears because I’m not a dickhead, I’m too nice.

Last time I met him I bit my tongue against saying a lot of what I thought of him. If I saw him again, things wouldn’t be pretty.

Two days of sulking and Xbox later, I call Bryn after a couple of beers and ask what he’s up to.

“Am I just the go-to guy for all your broken hearts?” he asks, and I know he’s half serious.

“I don’t have a broken heart,” I snap and almost add ‘just a bruised one’.

“So what’s happening? I haven’t heard from you since the night at Plan B, so something’s wrong.”

f-uck it, I need a second opinion; and of all the guys, Bryn’s the one who won’t take the piss. “Am I too nice?”