CHAPTER 14
Jul 10, 2025
LIAM’S POV
The moment my lips touched hers, everything else ceased to exist. The parking lot, the campus, the entire world – it all disappeared until there was nothing but Kate and the way she felt against me, soft and warm and perfect in a way that made my chest ache.
She tasted like vodka and cranberry juice and something uniquely her that I’d been craving without even realizing it.
Her lips were soft under mine, trembling slightly from the cold or shock or something else entirely. For a heartbeat, she was perfectly still, and I thought she might pull away, might slap me, might tell me I was insane.
Instead, she made a small sound in the back of her throat – half sob, half sigh – and kissed me back.
“Kate,” I breathed against her mouth, her name like a prayer on my lips.
Her hands came up to fist in my shirt, pulling me closer despite the awkward angle across the center console.
The kiss deepened, became desperate and hungry, like we were both drowning and this was our only source of air.
I could taste the salt of her tears, could feel the way her body was shaking, and it broke something open inside my chest.
This wasn’t how I’d imagined it would happen – if I’d ever been brave enough to imagine it at all. Not with her crying over my brother’s betrayal, not with alcohol clouding both our judgment, not in a parking lot after I’d just destroyed her relationship.
But I couldn’t stop. God help me, I couldn’t stop kissing her.
“Liam,” she whispered when we broke apart for air, her forehead resting against mine. “I can’t… this is…”
“I know,” I said, my voice rough with want and guilt and about a dozen other emotions I couldn’t name. “I know it’s fucked up. I know the timing is shit. I know I’m the last person you should be doing this with.”
“Then why?” she asked, her dark eyes searching mine in the dim light from the parking lot lamps. “Why did you kiss me?”
“Because I’ve wanted to since the moment I first saw you skate,” I admitted, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. “Because I’ve been going insane watching you with Nate. Because I’m a selfish bastard who can’t stand the idea of you belonging to anyone else.”
Her breath caught, and for a moment I thought I’d said too much, revealed too much. But then she was kissing me again, fierce and desperate, and I was lost.
“We shouldn’t,” she murmured against my lips, even as her hands slid up to tangle in my hair. “This is insane. You hate me. I’m supposed to hate you.”
“I don’t hate you,” I said, pressing kisses along her jaw, down to the sensitive spot just below her ear that made her gasp. “I’ve never hated you. I tried to, but I can’t.”
“Liam,” she said again, and there was something broken in her voice that made me pull back to look at her.
Tears were streaming down her face again, catching the light like diamonds on her cheeks. She looked beautiful and devastated and so vulnerable that I wanted to wrap her in my arms and never let anything hurt her again.
“Don’t cry,” I said softly, brushing her tears away with my thumbs. “Please don’t cry.”
“Everything is so messed up,” she whispered. “Nate was using me. Our whole fake-or-not-fake relationship was a lie. And now you’re being kind to me, and I don’t understand any of it.”
“It’s not that complicated,” I said, though that was a lie. Everything about this was complicated. “I care about you. More than I should, probably. More than you want me to.”
She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes wide and uncertain. “You care about me?”
“Yes,” I said simply. “And I’m sorry about tonight. About exposing Nate’s motives like that. You deserved to hear it from him, not from me in the middle of a fight.”
“Did you mean it?” she asked quietly. “What you said about him using me to get to my father?”
I wanted to lie, to soften the blow somehow, but she deserved the truth. “Yes. I’m sorry, Kate, but yes. He’s been researching your father’s training methods for weeks. The timing of your relationship… it wasn’t a coincidence.”
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, and I felt like the worst kind of bastard for being the one to confirm her fears.
“I’m such an idiot,” she said, her voice thick with self-recrimination. “I should have seen it. The signs were all there.”
“You’re not an idiot,” I said firmly. “You trusted someone who didn’t deserve it. That’s not your fault.”
“Isn’t it?” She laughed bitterly. “I agreed to the whole charade in the first place. I knew it was fake, but I let myself believe… I let myself hope…”
“Hope what?”
“That maybe someone could actually want me for me,” she whispered. “Not for my father’s connections, not for my trust fund, not for the publicity. Just… me.”
The pain in her voice was like a knife to my chest. I wanted to tell her that I wanted her for exactly that – for her strength and her talent and her fire, for the way she’d stood up to me in that hallway, for the grace with which she moved on the ice. But the words felt too big, too dangerous to speak out loud.
Instead, I kissed her again, trying to pour everything I couldn’t say into the contact between us. She responded immediately, her arms winding around my neck, pulling me closer despite the awkward confines of the car.
“Come home with me,” I said against her lips, the words slipping out before I could think them through.
She went still in my arms. “Liam…”
“Not for what you’re thinking,” I said quickly, though that was only partially true. “You’re upset, you’ve been drinking, and you shouldn’t be alone right now. My room is closer than yours, and my roommate is at his girlfriend’s place tonight.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, but her voice lacked conviction.
“Neither do I,” I admitted. “But I don’t want to leave you alone tonight. Not after everything that’s happened.”
She was quiet for a long moment, and I could practically see her internal struggle playing out across her face. Finally, she nodded.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “But just to sleep. I’m not… I can’t handle anything else right now.”
“I know,” I said, though the promise felt like it might kill me. “Whatever you need.”
The drive to my dorm was tense and silent, both of us lost in our own thoughts. I kept stealing glances at Kate, noting the way she was staring out the window with her hands clenched in her lap. She looked fragile in a way I’d never seen before, like she might shatter at the slightest touch.
My room was on the third floor of the upperclassmen dorm, a single I’d been lucky enough to snag thanks to my status as team captain. It was sparse but comfortable, with hockey posters covering most of the wall space and my equipment scattered around in organized chaos.
“Sorry about the mess,” I said, quickly gathering up some stray gear and tossing it into my closet.
“It’s fine,” Kate said, hovering near the door like she might bolt at any moment. “I should probably go. This is a bad idea.”
“Stay,” I said, the word coming out more desperate than I’d intended. “Please. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I just… I don’t want you to be alone right now.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “Do you have something I could sleep in? This dress isn’t exactly comfortable.”
I pulled out one of my larger hockey t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants, handing them to her. “These should work. Bathroom’s down the hall.”
When she returned a few minutes later, she looked impossibly young and vulnerable in my oversized clothes. The shirt hung to her mid-thighs, and she’d rolled the sweatpants up several times to keep them from dragging on the floor.
“Better?” I asked.
“Much,” she said, offering me a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
I gestured to my bed, which was the only place to sit besides my desk chair. “You can take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, settling onto the mattress. “It’s your room. We can share. We’re both adults.”
Famous last words, I thought, but I didn’t argue. I changed into a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt, trying to ignore the way Kate’s eyes followed my movements.
When I slid into bed beside her, maintaining a careful distance, I could feel the tension radiating from her body. She was lying on her side facing away from me, but I could tell from her breathing that she wasn’t anywhere close to sleep.
“Kate,” I said softly.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
She was quiet for so long I thought she might not answer. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think I am.”
Without thinking, I reached out and pulled her closer, until her back was pressed against my chest and my arm was wrapped around her waist. She tensed for a moment, then relaxed into my embrace with a shaky sigh.
“Better?” I asked, my lips close to her ear.
“Yeah,” she breathed. “Better.”
We lay there in the darkness, her body warm and soft against mine, and I tried to ignore the way my heart was racing. This was dangerous territory, emotionally and physically, but I couldn’t bring myself to let her go.
“Liam?” she said after a while.
“Mmm?”
She turned in my arms then, so we were facing each other in the dim light filtering through my window. Her eyes were still puffy from crying, but there was something else there now, a heat that made my breath catch.
“Liam,” she whispered, and then she was kissing me again.
This time, there was nothing hesitant about it. This time, she was the one taking control, her hands fisting in my shirt as she pulled me closer. The kiss was hungry and desperate, full of all the pain and confusion and want that had been building between us for weeks.
I knew I should stop this, should be the responsible one. She was vulnerable, we’d both been drinking, and this was going to complicate everything in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
But when she whispered my name against my lips like a prayer, when she looked at me like I was the only thing keeping her from falling apart, I was lost.
