“You scared me.” She put her free hand over her heart. “Are you okay?” she asked as her eyes focused. She set the juice on the counter as she crossed the room, stopping in front of him.
He shook his head.
“Liam, what’s wrong?” Her hands touched his chest as she looked up into his face. The warmth of her palms did nothing to combat the cold that had settled into his bones.
“I thought…I thought I could do this. I thought we could do this. That we were figuring this out. Moving forward.”
Her hands stilled, her eyes going wide. “W-we are.”
“No. We aren’t. We’re right back to where we started. I’ve been terrified to talk to you, terrified to push because all I can see is you running again. All I can think about is what it was like to wake up four months ago with you gone. And I swear to God, Harper, I woke up just now and I thought you’d left.”
“I’m not running anymore.”
“You aren’t? Then why have you been lying to me since the concert?”
She took a step back, her hands falling from his chest at the same moment her eyes left his, her gaze moving off to the side.
“You’re not going to deny it?” he asked.
She shook her head, a low sniffle filling the kitchen as she reached up and wiped at her face.
Her crying was breaking him…everything about this moment was breaking him.
“I asked you flat out what happened, and not once did you mention Kiki. I know that she was there. I know that she might not have been the catalyst for what upset you, but she was part of it. And whatever that catalyst was I think it was much more than you being overwhelmed. You don’t think I see that you’re scared, Harper? Because I do.”
Her head came up and she looked at him again. That fear was right there at the center of her eyes, but it was surrounded by hurt and anger and confusion. “What do you want from me, Liam? It’s scary, okay? It’s scary that you’re famous. Scary that you’re only going to get more famous. That you get up on that stage and almost every woman in that audience wants you.”
“I don’t want them back.”
“It doesn’t change it. It still is what it is, and it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying to see a line of more than willing and able women.”
“Don’t you trust me? Don’t you believe me when I tell you that you’re all I want?”
“I do trust you, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about not being able to control…any of it.”
“You don’t think you have control?”
“No, I don’t, Liam. I can’t control those stupid tabloids and how seeing you linked with someone else makes every part of me hurt. Or this thing with Kiki, and her vendetta against you and now me. Or how much it hurts when you’re gone for weeks on end and I don’t get to see you. How much it hurts me when I wake up and you aren’t in bed next to me. You’re scared of me leaving? Well I’m scared of the same thing, and a life with you will always involve you leaving me.”
And there it was. The truth.
“But I’m always going to come back.” He took a step forward, reaching for her, one hand at her waist and the other palming her cheek. “I want this life with you. I want to build something with you. I want our daughter, and God willing more kids, running around a home that’s ours.”
“I want that, too…but…”
“But what?”
“Just because you want something doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.”
His hands fell from her body and he took a step back. The ground beneath his feet was unsteady, his world tilting on its axis. Here he was thinking that a life without her wasn’t a possibility…where she was still trying to figure out if a life with him was a possibility.
How had he missed that one?
“Liam.” She reached out for him, but he took another step away.
Her touch would surely break him. The hurt in her eyes was unmistakable, but the pain radiating through his body was more than he could overcome.
“What are you saying?” He somehow managed to get the words out.
“I just need more time to figure this all out. I still need to catch up. I thought that was what we were doing. Catching up.”
A bitter laugh escaped his mouth as he shook his head. “I don’t even know what the fuck catching up means anymore. I don’t need time to figure anything out. You’re what I want. What I’ve wanted from the start. And you’re right, you don’t always get everything you want in life. Especially when you aren’t fighting for it.”
“You don’t think I’m fighting for this? For us?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Because when it gets hard, you don’t close in on yourself and shut the other person out. You don’t try to figure it out on your own. You fight together. You tell each other the truth. You don’t lie.”
“I shouldn’t have lied to you, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not the first time, Harper.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair. When it gets hard you run. That’s why you were up here in the first place. You didn’t want to be in Mirabelle the weekend that would’ve been your wedding. So you ran. You ran when you realized you were in love with me. You ran from the truth when you suspected you were pregnant. You’re running now. And I don’t know how long I can keep chasing you before it kills me.”
She stared at him for a second, her shaky breaths filling the air. “So what are you saying?”
“I can fight for you for the rest of my life, but this is never going to work if you don’t let me in.”
“Where do we go from here?” She wiped at her face again; the constant stream of tears running down her cheeks hadn’t let up for even a moment.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t, either,” she sniffed before a sob broke free from her mouth. Her head bowed as she folded in on herself and lost it.
He couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t just stand there and watch her break down. He crossed the few steps between them, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her in close. She pressed her face to his neck as she started to shake uncontrollably, each sob ripping through her one after the other.
His entire world was in his hands, and the only thing he could think about was he might lose it all.
Chapter Twenty-Three It Was Always You
Harper’s flight back to Mirabelle was that afternoon, and her leaving really couldn’t have come at a worse time.
It would be a week and a half before she was going to see Liam again, and that fact had her stomach all tied up in knots. Yeah, she’d asked for more time, but time apart didn’t feel like the answer.
But what was she supposed to do? She needed to get back home to her job…to her life. She’d already pushed the limits with so much time off. All she needed was to lose her job on top of everything else.
And while she was returning to Mirabelle, Liam would be spending a few more days in Nashville shooting the music video for “Forever.” They were starting it that morning, and the plan had been for Harper to go with him and spend a couple of hours watching and hanging out before taking a car to the airport.
But the painful uncertainty between them was too much. There was a space that neither of them knew how to cross, and it was way more than she could handle. Add to that the fact that they were filming at the Second Hand Guitar? Yeah, there was no way in hell she’d make it out of that and not have a breakdown.
Who was she kidding? She lost it anyway when she said good-bye to him that morning. He was a mess, too, and she had no doubt he would’ve canceled that day’s shoot if he could’ve. But he’d be rocking a boat that was already close to tipping.
He and his manager had fought pretty hard with the record label on what they were shooting. The label had wanted to tell the love story of the song with one couple in various stages of their relationship, Liam as the lead with some woman as his co-star.