Page 11 of Liam James
Liam closed her door gently, scanning the street before glancing back at Fraiser. “Keep me updated,” he said.
Fraiser nodded. “Go buy us some time. We’ll find him.”
As the engine rumbled to life and the tires crunched over the gravel, I realized my hands weren’t shaking anymore.
Maybe it was because we were finally moving.
Or maybe it was because Liam James James, was behind the wheel, looking like the kind of man who could stop the world from breaking apart if he wanted to.
And God help me… maybe I wanted him to.
8
Liam
The highway stretched out before us, long and empty, with the mountains shrinking in the rearview. My dad’s old truck rumbled like a warhorse past its prime, but it was still kicking hard enough to win the fight.
Poppy sat in the back with a book open, earbuds in, her legs swinging as she hummed along to something only she could hear. She watched the trees go by, but every now and then, her eyes flicked to the side mirror—like she half-expected a shadow to crawl out of the past and follow us.
Jenny sat beside me, one leg pulled up, arms wrapped around herself as if the seatbelt wasn’t enough. Her hair was down now, long and blonde at the roots where the red dye had grown out, catching bits of sunlight through the windshield.
“Hungry?” I asked.
She looked at me like she wasn’t sure if it was safe to smile yet. “Depends. Is this one of those road trips where we stop for decent food, or the kind where we end up regretting a gas station burrito? But then we have all those snacks also.”
“Decent food,” I promised. “I don’t hate you enough for the other thing.”
That earned me the tiniest grin.
Good. I wanted her to smile again.
Jenny
He kept his eyes on the road, but I caught the curve of his mouth when I smiled back.
And that was the problem.
Liam James didn’t look like a man who made mistakes. He looked like a man who stepped into chaos, sorted it out, and left everything in its place when he was done. Which made me wonder why he kept glancing at me like maybe I was the puzzle he hadn’t figured out yet.
“So,” I said, because the silence was getting thick, “you do this a lot? Protecting people?”
“Sometimes, not as much as the others, but I’m going to start working with them.”
“And are you going to take them on road trips?”
“That part’s new,” he said, and there was something in his voice—low and amused—that made heat crawl up the back of my neck.
I looked out the window before he could see.
Liam
We hit a small town around noon, one of those blink-and-you-miss-it places with a single diner leaning against the edge of the highway.
The sign out front readThe Griddle Palacein crooked red letters, like someone’s kid painted it twenty years ago and no one bothered to fix it.
“Palace, huh?” Jenny murmured.
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” I said, pulling in.
