You Can't Catch Me(84)

He’s watching me, though, so I take a small bite of the fish. It’s delicious, cooked in a mix of wine, lemon, capers, and dill, but I can’t get it past that ever-present lump, not even with a large gulp of wine.

“You’re not eating,” Liam says as I put down my fork.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I haven’t been eating well these last couple of days.”

He frowns. I like the way his forehead crinkles and then relaxes. When I was younger, I used to say things to make him frown on purpose. It was easy to do. What a punk I was. He should’ve remembered that. People don’t change; they just get better at hiding who they are.

“I’m sure it’s just the . . . stress,” I say. “Like the tears earlier. It’s all catching up with me.”

“You’ve been through a lot.”

“Have I?”

He stares down at his plate. “I shouldn’t have let you go after her alone.”

“Let me?”

I say it with a challenge, which he hears.

“You know what I meant.”

I reach my hand across the table and place it on top of his. We lock eyes for a moment, his gaze intense and probing. “Liam, let’s not fight my first day back.”

“Okay.”

I let go, then try another bite of food. The wine goes down easily, which I should watch because drunk Jess is not a good idea right now, if she ever was.

“Thank you for making this,” I say. “Maybe I’ll be able to eat it for lunch tomorrow.”

“Whatever you need.”

“I missed you.”

He smiles again, less intense this time. “I’m glad to hear it.”

He is so far away from me even though there’s only two feet of concrete between us. I need to see if I can bring him close again. I need to feel something other than this.

“Are you going to stay on the other side of the counter all night?” I ask.

He puts his fork down deliberately and stands. He walks around the edge of the counter until he’s in front of me. I turn on the stool and raise my arms up to him. He steps into them, and I wrap my legs around his and bury my head in his chest.

I breathe him in. He kisses the top of my head and I look up. There are so many reasons why this shouldn’t work, whatever there is between us, but it does work in moments like this. Because now he’s kissing me gently with his soft lips, his stubble grazing my chin, and I can push the thoughts away.

I can bury them in him.

I wake up two hours later shaking and naked in Liam’s bed.

“Jess! Wake up! Jess.”

“What? Where am I?”

“You’re here,” Liam says. “With me.”

I feel like I’ve been drowning. Like I can’t get enough air. The room is pitch-black, Liam’s blackout curtains doing too good a job at keeping out the light from the streetlamps.

“You were yelling,” Liam says.

Oh God. “What was I saying?”

“Nothing, just no, over and over again.”

He snaps on the light on his side of the bed. I pull the covers over my face.

“What’s going on, Jess?”

“I was having a bad dream.” The blankets muffle my voice. I sound like a child.

“Clearly, but—”

“Can you turn off the light?”

It turns off with a snap and I feel safer again. Why do I feel safer in the dark?

I lower the covers and Liam is there. I can see his profile. I reach up and stroke his face.

“Will you talk to me?” he asks.

“I had a bad dream. It happens.”

He rolls onto his back. “When I first helped you escape, you used to have bad dreams all the time.”

“I did?”

“You don’t remember?”

“No, tell me.”

I reach out for his hand. Our fingers interlock, and he moves his thumb over my knuckles in a circular pattern. “Not much to tell; you’d start thrashing in the middle of the night until I soothed you.”

“How would you soothe me?” I ask teasingly.

“I’d rub your head and tell you everything was going to be okay.”

I prop myself up on my elbow and reach out to Liam’s head. I run my hands through his close-cropped hair; I’ve always loved the silky thickness of it. “Like this?”

“Well, not exactly like that. That would’ve got me arrested.”

“I was eighteen.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

“It wouldn’t have been illegal, though.”

“Maybe not. But not right.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“It was.”

He turns over and kisses me, then breaks away. “What’s brought the nightmares back?”

It’s Jessie, but I can’t tell him that. But I feel like I have to tell him something. If we have any chance of surviving this, I need to open up to him.

Lucky me, I have so many stories to choose from.

“Has Covington ever told you his theory about how Todd died?”

Liam stiffens next to me. “No. What?”

“I just wondered because he mentioned it to me a while back. Anyway, he has this whole theory that someone poisoned Todd’s IV solution, because Todd was an exercise freak, and he died of a heart attack.”