Page 127 of Off The Ice

She yawned, turning against me, eyes closed.

“I’m here.” My grip on her head tightened, guiding it down to the crook of my chest.

“You’ll stay with me?” I asked, needing to hear it.

It was the only thing that could stop the incessant pounding of my heart.

“Mhm,” she murmured, too sleepily for me to be sure she was conscious of what she was saying.

“For good?” I asked.

She didn’t respond, but her arm moved around my body, grabbing hold of my vacant arm and using it to drape it around herself.

Was that an answer? Probably not, but I was too much of a coward to ask her in the daylight. Too scared to hear a refusal to what I needed more than air.

“I need you, Cass,” I told her, but by then, she was already too far away to reach.

Chapter Forty-Three

Cassie

“Ineed to talk to you,” Liam said, the words guaranteed to make my heart stop beating in my chest.

It was morning. I had one leg up on the stool while the other dangled lazily as I ate my bowl of cereal. Everything was normal, and I was oddly relaxed, given everything that had happened with my mom the night before.

But those words… they sent something in me into overdrive.

We need to talk.

About what? About how I’d been here almost two months already?

Or maybe about my perverse lack of boundaries and the fact that I’d taken up permanent residency in his bed every night?

He said he didn’t mind, but I should’ve known he was just being polite. I mean, how often didItell people I didn’t mind something when I clearly did?

“About what?” I asked, preparing for the blow.

“Thanksgiving,” he said, and everything in me relaxed.

“Oh,” I said in relief, though my heart still hadn’t managed to return to a normal rhythm yet. “Next time, please don’t start a sentence with‘We need to talk.’That’s practically code for ‘I’m breaking up with you.’” I played it off humorously before cringing and realizing that maybe he’d read too much into that.

He raised a brow at me.

“That was a joke.” I blinked at him. “I mean, obviously. It’s not like we’re dating. I only meant that’s a surefire way to get someone’s anxiety up.”

He stared at me, smirking.

“Anyway,” I said, my voice high-pitched, “What about Thanksgiving did you want to talk about?”

He cleared his throat. “I want you to come with me,” he said, clearing his throat awkwardly. “To my family’s house.”

“What?”

Whatever I was expecting him to say, it wasn’t that.

“I don’t know if you had plans with your mom or whatever. But I was hoping that you’d come with me.”

I immediately felt my walls going up. He felt sorry for me. He’d seen my mom, seen our dynamic, and now he was giving me a pity invite.

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