The Virgin Next Door by Stasia Black

27

LIAM

Liam wasstunned frozen for a moment. And then his brain started processing again.

Brigid was kissing him. While Calla and Mack watched.

He wrenched back from Brigid to glare at her and his da. Only to find Calla skirting them and running toward the elevators while Mack looked at him murderously.

“Shite. Calla!” Liam went to chase after her but Mack stopped him with an iron grip on his elbow. Calla opened the door to the stairs and disappeared. Dammit. He had to go make it right.

“Let go of me,” Liam spoke to Mack through gritted teeth. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

Mack’s jaw worked. “It better not be. If you hurt her, I swear I’ll—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Liam muttered, jerking out of Mack’s grasp and running up the stairs after Calla. Mack was right on his heels. Jaysus, talk about déjà vu.

“Liam!” Brigid called after him right before the door to the stairs shut. “Wait. I just want to talk. Please!”

What a clusterfuck. Liam ignored Brigid and caught up to Calla right before she shut the door to her room on the second floor.

“Calla,” he breathed out, stopping her door from closing. She stepped back and allowed him to push his way in.

“That down there, it’s not what you think. She doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.”

Calla’s head came up, hazel eyes vulnerable and full of uncertainty. “But she did? Once?” Then she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m acting like this.” She turned away from him. “It’s not like we have— We’re just—” She waved a hand. “I know we agreed it’s not a relationship or anything—”

Liam went to her and spun her around to look at him. “That’s shite and you know it. This summer’s been—” Now it was him who didn’t know the right words to say or how to put it. One thing he did know. “It’s sure as fuck a relationship.”

He took her shoulders and dropped his mouth to hers but she pulled away at the last second. Her eyes were still full of hurt. “She kissed you.”

Liam squeezed his eyes shut and breathed out. “I’m sorry, baby. She’s me past. We were together for about six months a couple years ago. That’s all.”

Calla nodded but her mouth was tight like she was barely holding back her emotions.

“She’s nothing to me. What you, Mack and me have, it’s everything. Do you understand? Now, I have to go down there to talk to me Da and Brigid. It might take a bit, but I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

Calla nodded rapidly, swallowing hard as she met his eyes. His brave girl. “I promise I’ll explain as soon as I can.”

She nodded again and he pressed a quick, hard kiss to her forehead.

When he turned to go back downstairs, he found Mack standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. He watched Liam like he was sure Liam was about to fuck them over.

“Take care of her until I get back,” Liam said to Mack, meeting him glare for glare.

“I’m okay, don’t worry about me,” Calla said, joining them at the door and running a hand down Liam’s back comfortingly. “You talk to your dad. We’ll be here when you get back.”

Liam swallowed, then ran back downstairs where Da and Brigid were waiting for him.

“What was that?” Brigid asked, eyes narrowed as she looked past him up the stairs.

Liam could only stare at her incredulously. “As if you have any right to ask me that. Tell me, how’s Sean these days? What, did he lose all his money in another get-rich-quick scheme? That why you’re here? Your personal ATM run out again?”

Brigid winced and pursed her lips. “That’s not fair. Liam, please, we just need to talk. Your da and I have things we need to—”

Liam scoffed cynically. “I think we all said everything there was to say two years ago when I left. Right, Da? Oh wait,” he paused dramatically, “I might not have the right to call you that. So, Ciarán, you disinherit me yet? That why you’re here? So I can sign the papers freeing you of me legally?”

Learning Ciarán O’Neill might not actually be his father had been one of the great blows of his life. At the same time, it explained so many things.

It was two years ago. His mom had been sick. Dying of liver failure. They hadn’t spoken in years but he remembered the ma she’d once been. How they used to spend summers together in the country. Riding horses and painting. How loving and happy she’d once been before the drinking and drugs.

He was in the first stable relationship of his life with Brigid and he thought, maybe, just maybe, he could reconcile with his ma and find some real sort of happiness. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do when you were an adult?

Ma had looked terrible when he visited her in the hospital. Her skin was yellowish and papery, with her veins standing out in her thin, emaciated body. She was short of breath and seemed easily confused. It was right near the end.

“Ma,” he’d leaned over her hospital bed, taking her hand. “It’s me. It’s Liam.”

Her eyes had slowly drifted up to his face.

“You,” she rasped.

“Yes, Ma, it’s me.” He’d swiped at the stupid tears in his eyes. She’d been so beautiful once, so kind and loving. His earliest memories were of her holding him close and singing to him before bedtime. She was still in there somewhere, beneath the husk of woman destroyed by drugs and drinking, he had to believe that.

Her eyes slowly tracked up to his face and she met his gaze. “You ruined me life.”

Liam yanked away from her like she’d struck him. Maybe he’d heard her wrong. “Ma, I don’t know what you—”

She fell into a coughing fit that shook her entire body. He sat there helplessly, not knowing what to do.

He reached out for her arm but she batted him away. “You and your da ruined me.” Then she laughed and it was a dry, brittle sound. “Course he might not be your da at all. I hope you are the stablemaster’s bastard.”

“What are you talking about?” Liam asked, so loud she winced away from him. Shite. He ran a hand through his hair. But what she’d just— No, she was just confused. The nurses warned him this might happen. This wasn’t his ma at all. She didn’t m—

“Not that your da ever had the balls—” another long coughing fit “—to find out for sure if you were his or not. Didn’t trust himself not to disinherit ya and kick ya to the streets. And what a scandal that woulda been. His pride couldn’t have borne it.”

But when he’d run out of there and gone to his da’s office to get him to contradict Ma and tell him she didn’t know what she was talking about, his dad didn’t deny it.

They got in a huge row that ended with his da yelling, “As useless as ya are with your life and considering your whore of a mother, of course I wondered every day if you were even me son.”

Liam had always felt deep down his da didn’t love him. At least now he knew why.

“Congratulations,” Liam had said, yanking open the door to his da’s office, “You got your wish. I’m not your son anymore.” Then he’d slammed the door behind him.

They hadn’t spoken or had any contact since. His ma died a week and a half later, and Liam pulled up a map of the United States on his laptop, closed his eyes, and blindly put his finger on the screen. Couldn’t say he’d ever heard of Wyoming before, but he looked up jobs that would let him have a low profile and was on a plane the next day. Working on a horse ranch had a certain irony. After all, there was apparently just as much chance his real da was a nobody stablemaster as a billionaire media mogul.

“If you’d let me get a word in edgewise,” Ciarán said, red faced. “I could tell ya why I’m here.” He looked around the lobby where people were staring at them. They were making a scene. Something he knew Ciarán hated.

Liam smiled. “No, you know what? I think I prefer how we’ve communicated the past two years. Not at all.”

Liam knew he was being immature. But everything had been going so good. Calla and Mack, it was all—

“It’s time to end this charade and come back home where you belong.” Ciarán stood up straighter, speaking with that superior tone that always put Liam’s teeth on edge.

But he wasn’t a child anymore. Ciarán might have held him at an arm’s length his whole life, but it was Liam’s choice to do the leaving for once. He left Ciarán. Ireland. Everything.

And if Ciarán thought he had the right to just march right back in, he had another thing coming.

“You should go now.” Liam walked back toward the front sliding doors of the hotel. “You aren’t welcome here.” He looked past Ciarán to Brigid. “Either of you.”

Ciarán stared at him a long moment. Then he waved a hand. “It’s late and you’re pissed.” He strode not toward the door, but over to the elevator. “We’ll talk tomorrow, somewhere private, when you haven’t spent the evening swimming in Guinness. We’re staying in the penthouse.”

Liam bit his tongue. He wasn’t drunk. He’d only had a beer and a half earlier, over several hours. Unlike back in Dublin, he didn’t have to drink himself into a stupor each night so he could be numb to just how miserable his existence was.

“I’ll be just a minute,” Brigid called after Ciarán. Then she turned to Liam. He could still feel eyes on them from all sides. If he was really lucky, this little throw down would show up on TMZ tomorrow. As much as he hated that shite, he refused to go anywhere with either Ciarán or Brigid.

“Well, for a getaway, you certainly chose a place that’s,” she looked around, eyes lingering on a chandelier made out of antlers, “eclectic.”

“You can follow Ciarán back to your rooms and then out the damn door tomorrow. I don’t have a thing to say to you.”

Her eyes flashed hurt and she took a step toward him before stopping again, folding her arms across her stomach and looking down. “You don’t know how sorry I am for the things I said that day.” She looked up, eyebrows furrowed like she was stricken. “I wished I could take it back a hundred times. But I couldn’t find you to apologize and beg you—” Her voice broke and she took another step toward him.

Liam’s jaw clenched as she came even closer and ran her hand down his chest. “—Beg you to give me another chance. We were good together.” She bit her lip, eyelashes batting. “Best I ever had.”

Liam jerked back from her and glared, head shaking. “You must think I’m an awful fuckin’ eejit to fall for your shite again. You tossed Sean over for me because he was bust and I was bank. Then when it looked like I might go bust too, you were just as ready to drop me and go looking for another lad.”

“That’s not true,” Brigid said, coming up to him again. He grabbed her wrists before she could land them on him. “I just got scared. Haven’t you ever been scared? Liam, I loved you.” Her voice was impassioned as she searched his eyes. “I still do.”

He shook his head in disgust. When he’d gone to her after the fight with his da, all she could focus on was the money. Saying he needed to get DNA tested to prove who his da was since only Ciarán’s ‘natural born son’ would be given a ten percent share in the company he’d built. That was the language Ciarán had the lawyers put in the legal paperwork—just one of the little details that had come out in the row earlier. Just in case Liam wasn’t his son. He’d been hedging his bets where Liam was concerned his whole life. Never willing to quite invest all his money, or his time, or his love—

And then there Brigid had been doing the same.

Liam grabbed her hands and begged her to come.

To run away with him.

No money, no prospects.

Just him.

And she’d backed away from him like he’d been diagnosed with leprosy.

“You lost your chance with me,” Liam said, affecting a hard grin. “But seems like you’ve been spending some quality time with Ciarán. You’re the type he usually goes for these days. Young. Pretty. Willing to play the slut for—”

She slapped him.

The sound of her hand against his cheek echoed around the empty room. Gasps came from the small crowd that was gathering in the lobby to watch the show.

“Shite,” Brigid swore. “Liam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” She reached for him again but he pulled back.

“No, don’t take it back.” He stretched his jaw. She packed quite a wallop. “I think that’s the fitting end to us.” He shook his head. “If you knew me at all, you woulda known all I ever wanted was someone who wanted me for me. Starting the way we did, I don’t know why I ever thought that person would be you.”

“Liam, I can be that pers— Wait, where are you going?” She followed him as she went out the front door and headed for his truck. He needed to take a drive. Clear his head.

“Wait. Liam. Please!” she pleaded.

He slammed his truck door in her face, then peeled out. Then he sped out of there, leaving his da and the woman he once thought he loved in his dust.