Page 54 of Hired By the Enemy
My forehead furrows. “What for?”
“I’m sorry if what I did to you growing up made you feel like the kind of shit Paul’s doing to you now is a part of life you have to accept. Because it’s not.”
Hearing him say those words causes something inside me to cleave in two. For a few seconds, I struggle to get my breathing back under control.
“I’m sorry too,” I say softly. “I’m sorry for hassling you about your intelligence and making you think you weren’t smart.”
Liam shifts away from me, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. “I was so jealous of you,” he says finally.
I blink. “You were jealous of me? Are you kidding? You were the good-looking guy everyone loved. I was just the geeky nerd.”
He shrugs, his eyes still glued to the ceiling. “Everything in school seemed to come easy to you. And you had the perfect family, while I had a mom who was busy rebuilding her life on the other side of the country without me and a dad who really didn’t give a shit.”
The pain in his voice has me drawing in a sharp breath. Oh, holy god. I had no idea he felt like that.
“You say you feel like you pretend you know what you’re doing in your job. I feel like I’ve been pretending everything’s okay since I was eight years old.” His voice is quiet, but it clobbers me.
I stare at the side of his face, facts from the past shifting and reforming into a new shape.
How had I not worked out how fragile we both were underneath the personas we projected to the world?
“Oh, Liam,” I say, shuffling closer to him. He turns to face me, and the vulnerable look on his face slices something inside me.
The kiss happens because I can’t help myself.
I want to kiss away the pain I can see on his face. I want to kiss away the hurt of the eight-year-old boy who was suffering, and I did nothing but make it worse.
Liam said I was smart when I was a kid. But I wasn’t emotionally smart enough to see Liam properly, to see what lay beneath the cocky persona he projected to the world.
Liam kisses me back, his lips gentle and tender.
We kiss softly because it’s about connection, nothing else.
But gradually, our kisses get more intense, and our hands start wandering the well-traveled paths over each other’s bodies.
Can sex be atonement? Can it heal past wounds?
It feels like whatever is happening between Liam and me now is more powerful than words could ever be.
The way his hands slide down my skin. The way he kisses me so deeply, like I’m a fundamental substance he can’t survive without.
I’m aware that the way I’m touching him back is different from what I’ve ever done with any otherpartner.
I’ve never felt soseenduring sex before. Liam is making love to me, Matthew O’Conner, with all my flaws and imperfections.
And I’m doing the same back to him. We know the worst of each other, all our pettiness and deep-seated insecurities.
And yet…we’re at the point where there is nothing but desire between us.
Chapter Fourteen
Liam
Oh, holy fuck.
Sex with Matthew has always been spectacular, but this is something else.
I’ve never felt so connected to someone, ever.
