[Odette’s POV]
Three days of Liam in Harrowcliff, and the pub has developed its own weather system. Callum pours Liam's pints with a grin so perfectly constructed it’s a dentist’s dream, and I carry plates between them pretending that it’s fine and perfectly normal.
Tonight the pub is closed. Callum's driven to a supplier in the next town, and the building exhales. I'm upstairs when the knock comes, and I know who it is before my hand touches the handle, because my body has developed an early warning system for this man.
"Can I come in?" Liam stands in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, his voice doing the thing it does when he's trying to sound casual and landing somewhere near panicked.
"There's nowhere to sit except the bed." I step back, gesturing at the room's entire offering. "Interior design wasn't high on my list when I moved above a pub."
He sits on the edge of the mattress, and I take the opposite end with my knees pulled up because proximity is not my friend tonight. His eyes drift across the bare walls, then land on my notebook.
"Don't." Too late. He's already picked it up, turning it, reading the tabs along the cover edge. "'Reasons I Hate Him.' 'Reasons I Miss Him.'" His thumb traces the labels and my neck goes hot. "'Names That Work—'"
He tries to figure out the next word in the bad lighting and my rushed handwriting, but I know what it says next. And it’s not his to look at anymore.
I snatch it out of his hands so fast the spine bends. "Give me that." I shove it under the pillow, my pulse hammering in places pulses shouldn't reach. He didn't read the full tab, but my hands are shaking.
Then he laughs. Not the polished sound from company dinners. Real, rusty, cracking at the edges like something opened after a long time sealed. "You still make lists for everything."
"Only when reality needs organising." I hug my knees tighter. "Which is constantly now, in case you were wondering about the volume."
"I remember the fridge lists. The holiday lists. The list ranking our arguments by severity." His mouth curves. "You gave the milk fight a six."
"The milk fight was at least a seven. You bought semi-skimmed, Liam. Like a sociopath." My voice comes out softer than intended, and the distance between us shrinks without either of us moving. I miss the milk arguments." The words escape before I can stop them. "More than the restaurants and dates."
His jaw tightens. "The grand gestures were easier. Booking a table, buying flowers—anyone can do that with a credit card and fifteen minutes." I wait, and my silence asks the question my mouth won't. The milk was the hard part.”
He sighs and explains, as if that’s something that needs explaining. “Being the person someone trusts with the boring, unglamorous, eleven-PM stuff." He turns and looks at me, and whatever is behind his eyes makes my ribs contract. "I took that for granted. I took you for granted."
The silence fills with harbour water lapping against stone below. My fingers grip the pillow's edge because gripping something is the only alternative to reaching across this bed.
"What are you thinking?" His voice is low, careful, a man crossing a frozen lake with the cracks on it.
"I'm thinking you've always known exactly what to say to make me forgive you." My throat works around the sentence. "And I hate that it still works."
His hand moves to my jaw. Slowly—giving me time to flinch, to pull back, to tell him to leave. His thumb traces my jawline and every nerve in my neck fires, and my breath stops somewhere between my lungs and my teeth.
"I'm not trying to make you forgive me." His voice is barely air, his thumb still moving, and I can feel my own pulse beating against his finger.
I turn my face into his palm. The sound he makes—a sharp intake—travels through his hand into my skin and down my spine. His fingers spread against my cheek, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth, and my eyes close because keeping them open means making a decision.
He kisses me. Gentle at first, his mouth careful against mine, and I don't stop it. My hand fists in his shirt and pulls, and the gentleness shatters. His hands slide into my hair and my back meets the headboard, wood cold through my shirt while his mouth opens hot against mine.
I pull his shirt over his head. The mark on his deltoid—the one I could draw blind—and my mouth finds it, and the sound that tears out of him is guttural and raw.
He lifts me onto his lap, my knees bracketing his hips, and his mouth traces down my neck, teeth grazing the tendon. My hips roll against him and the friction whites my vision at the edges.
His hands grip my waist, thumbs pressing into bare skin above my jeans. My head drops back and his mouth follows my throat to my collarbone, breathing ragged. I drag my nails down his chest and his hips buck up, and every argument about why this can't happen dissolves.
My hands find his belt. The buckle cold against my fingers, the leather sliding through, and his hands close around my wrists.
Not rough. Not sudden. Just stopped. His forehead drops against my collarbone, breathing in ragged pulls that I feel against my sternum, and his fingers are shaking where they grip me.
"I can't." Two words into my skin, burning worse than his mouth did. "If I do this while she's carrying my child, I'm the man in those photographs."
My wrists are still in his hands. My body still pressed against his. The distance between the belt and the rest of the night is measured in his fingers and his father's voice and my sister’s pregnancy, and I can't tell him without detonating everything.
"Do you really believe you're that man?" My voice comes from somewhere scraped raw. "The Liam I knew couldn't even return a library book late."
His laugh is damp against my collarbone. "The evidence says I am." His voice has gone hollow, a man who has stopped fighting a verdict he never deserved.
"The evidence was sent by my sister. From a burner phone." My hands turn in his grip, fingers wrapping around his wrists now. "Maybe evidence isn't everything."
His head lifts. His eyes find mine, and what I see behind them is desire and duty and a code eating him alive, all of it fighting behind an expression so open my sternum aches.
He lets go of my wrists. His lips press against my forehead—tender, final—and then he's off the bed, pulling his shirt on, not looking at me.
The door opens. Closes. His footsteps on the stairs—fourth step, ninth step, front door.
I sit on the bed with my shirt twisted and his taste dissolving on my tongue. My body is furious at my mouth for saying the right thing instead of the selfish one—she's not the only one pregnant, you idiot, come back, the only baby that should matter to you is under my jumper.
Below me, the pub door opens. Footsteps—heavier, unhurried, familiar. The kitchen light clicks on. Callum's back early.