Page 147 of Liam

I press my lips to his—the first kiss in almost twenty-four hours, and it takes my entire breath away.

“So do you have plans to see him again?” he asks, his mouth an inch from mine.

“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “There’s a part of me that wants to put all of that behind me, but at the same time, I don’t want to forget it happened at all. Like you said, our past is what got us here, right?”

“Right.” His smile is soft, filled with admiration. I can feel it deep in my bones. In my marrow. I take a mental snapshot of his face, of this particular smile, just so I can spend the rest of my life remembering how I feel right at this moment. “I don’t mind if you see him again, Addie. He’s an important part of your story, and I don’t want you to deny him a part of your life for me.” His eyes stay locked on mine a moment—thekindnessin them overwhelming.

I’mreallystarting to lovelove.

He pulls away, looking out at the view again. “So you’re good?”

I lay my head on his chest, listen to his heart beat a steady rhythm. “I’m much better now that I’m with you.”

He holds me to him, and for minutes that feel like seconds, we stay that way, content in each other’s presence.

“I just have one more question, and then I’ll let it go.”

I tilt my head back, so I can look at him.

“Does Pierson look like Olaf?”

My eyes narrow.

“Or more like Gaston?”

“Oh, no,” I laugh out. “What crazy thoughts have been spinning in your mind today?”

He shakes his head, faces forward. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

57

Addie

“I’m worried.”

Amanda, my therapist, looks at me over the frame of her glasses. “Girl, you gotta give me more to work with here, becauseworriedcan mean a lot of things. Are you worried about world hunger? Peace in the Middle East? Taxes? Death? That Mexican place now serving French cuisine?”

I giggle, get more comfortable on the couch. This is my third week with her now. The first week and a half, we had daily sessions. Now, we’re every other day. That, to me, is progress. “I worry that I’m doing… better than I should be?”

She adjusts her glasses and sighs. Then murmurs jokingly, “That’s not really a vote of confidence for my life’s work, but sure… tell me more.”

I smile. “I just mean… the first week I was here, I was so low. And then…” I trail off.

“And thenwhat?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “It’s like Liam tells me he loves me, and all of a sudden everything is great. And I keep thinking,maybe I’m just climbing that peak and waiting to reach the top so I can jump… but I keep climbing and climbing and the peak is nowhere to be seen. It’s like he said those words, and everything else just faded away. It doesn’t seem right.”

Amanda takes in my words, her eyes distant as she mulls them over. Then she shifts the notepad and pen from her lap and sets it on the table beside her. “Can I tell you something, off the record?”

I sit taller. “Sure.”

“You know that Logan Preston is a client of mine, so that’s not a secret, but… I also have interactions with him outside of these four walls, so while I can’t tell you the things we’ve discussedinthis office, I can tell you about the things he’s brought up when we’re just two people talking.”

“Okay…”

“Logan used to be really worried about Liam. He saw a change in him earlier this year, kind of like he was isolating himself in that cabin, and he didn’t interact much with the family. Logan called it a…stillness, like he wasstagnant. Almost frozen in time.”

“So what changed?”

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