Page 4 of Liam James
Liam
Idecided to take a ride around the town and check it out before the barbecue. I stood back and watched as all the guys arrived with their wives. So I watched as they all mingled. I knew my buddies were very much in love with their wives.
Max’s place sat on the edge of town, a big, beautiful B&B with a wraparound porch and the kind of yard that called for long summer evenings and a cold beer in hand. The smell of charcoal was already in the air when I parked my bike and walked up.
Voices drifted from the backyard—laughter, kids squealing, the clatter of plates. For a moment, I almost turned around. I wasn’t used to this kind of thing anymore. Noise, people, normal life. It felt like a shirt that didn’t quite fit.
Then I saw her.
Mom, I chuckled—why wouldn't they find out her name? Just because Tessa told me not to question her—she was standing near the picnic table, head tipped back in laughter at something Max’s wife, Tessa, said. Her red hair caught the last rays of the sun, a wild mess of curls she hadn’t bothered to tame. Cleo darted around, chasing another kid with a squirt gun.
She looked… happy. The last time I’d seen her, she had that tension in her shoulders, like she was about to bolt.
I saw Tessa hug her, and then she spotted me and waved me over. “Liam, grab a plate. Max is burning the burgers just for you.”
“Hey, I don’t burn anything,” Max called from the grill. “I sear for flavor.”
I smirked, grabbed a plate, and found myself next to Mom before I even realized what I was doing. She didn’t look at me right away, just scooped some salad like I wasn’t standing there.
“Your brakes fixed yet?” I asked.
That earned me a glance. Those brown eyes were sharp, wary. I knew right away they were contacts. “Max said he’d look at them tomorrow.”
I nodded toward her bike parked near the porch. “Might need more than a look. That thing’s a death trap.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “It gets me where I need to go.”
“Barely.”
That earned me the faintest smile before she caught herself and looked away.
We ended up at the same table—her because Cleo wanted to sit near the other kids, and me because Max shoved a burger in my hand and told me to “quit brooding in the corner.”
She didn’t say much. Neither did I. But I noticed the way she kept pushing food around her plate like she wasn’t really hungry. The way her eyes scanned the tree line every so often, like she expected someone to come out of it.
“You from around here?” I asked after a while.
She stiffened, then shook her head. “Just passing through.”
“For over a year?”
That got me another glance. “Some places are harder to leave than others.”
There was a story there. I could feel it. But I didn’t push. Not yet. Instead, I looked at my SEAL buddies. What was the matter with them? I know they aren’t fucking blind.
I leaned back in my chair, watching her laugh again as Cleo squirted Max with the water gun. For the first time in a long while, I felt something shift, like maybe I was exactly where I was supposed to be, even if I didn’t understand why yet.
I knewCleo wanted to say something to me; she had been watching me ever since she walked inside. I stepped outside to take a deep breath, and she followed me.
“Can I talk to you in private?” She asked.
“Sure, you can.”
“You can’t tell anyone. It has to stay a secret until the right moment. I just don’t know when that is. She seemed pretty guarded for a thirteen-year-old.”
“Let’s sit down, and you can tell me everything,” I said, taking her hand and guiding her to the chairs. She didn’t sit down. She was wringing her hands.
“I’m not supposed to say anything. Are you a Protector?”
