Chapter 14

ROWAN

This garden must have been rubble too once. Someone laid waste to this walled-off corner of it before rebuilding, before replanting, before sunshine and rain worked their magic. New life got a chance to take over. And that's what sends up tendrils inside me—new life at hearing that walking disasters like me do it for him.

We aren't far from where Luke described trauma responses to me. Liam, on the other hand, describes a fighter, not someone who freezes or takes flight. I'm tempted to fawn like that lamb did after Liam saved us, but now isn't a time for nuzzling under his chin because he isn't done yet.

"You've got grit, remember? You'll be fine with the kids because of that. They're lucky to have you."

Who the hell knows why that wrenches this from me. "I told you I played a stupid game once, right?" I can't remember what spilled out while spinning on the end of a rope. He reminds me.

"The game you ran away from school for?" He squints. "You said you'd have to be desperate to go back and play it again." I must blink. He adds more detail. "You said wild horses couldn't make you sing for them ever again. Anyway, what about it?"

I'm tempted to say, "Nothing" again if that means avoiding this discussion, only he just told me that word hurts him. Plus, he called me fearless, so I try my best to speak up right here over swaying poppies. "My stupid game involved a soldier. He'd left the army. That was spun as him not being brave enough to stay."

"Not brave enough?" Liam comes to attention, his jaw clenched. "People who haven't served can fuck right off with their opinions. Even peacekeeping can be dangerous. I should know."

I nod because he's right, and I'd tell him so only past-me hears that same studio door thudding shut as ever. I also stand outside a headmaster's study, dreading having to make more "I don't remember" excuses like a little kid in trouble. This comes out sounding just as cornered. "I could have helped him."

Help him?

I made things so much worse.

That's what I confessed a week ago in these same gardens—what I wrote down on sheet after sheet of notepaper and then folded. Even now, those sheets are hidden in my suitcase, but I'm still so sorry for keeping my mouth shut when speaking up might have mattered. Instead, I only opened my mouth to…

Save my own bacon?

I didn't end up any safer, did I?

Liam's glance is steely again but he speaks softly. "Regret is such a useless fucker. I thought I was invincible when I signed up. Rock solid. Just wanted to see the world and be active with my mates. My brothers. Never pictured slinking home while they were still… Are still…"

He touches that sign describing combat while the sea glitters in the distance. So do his eyes as the sun dips to kiss the horizon, and that's what I want as well—to kiss Liam who is the opposite of someone who would slink away from danger. He crosses the bridge before I get a chance to. His footsteps are a hollow, thumping reminder of Jamila dancing over spilling water. Now the only spilling is Liam's next low-pitched confession. "I miss building with those wazzocks."

"Building?"

He nods. He also faces the sea again, standing head-on towards a sunset that doesn't only gild him. He's burnished like something left out in all weather, rough and tarnished. "Royal Engineers don't only blow shit up or dig trenches. We rebuild infrastructure." He must take my silence for a question. "Otherwise peacekeeping can't happen, can it? How do you think aid gets to civilians without roads and airstrips? Without…" He glances back at the bridge. "We rebuild. That part of the job is quieter, but?—"

I'm not sure if he means rebuilding is less noisy compared to the blast that brought him home, or if he means that the rebuilding aspect of engineering isn't common knowledge. I've never thought about military logistics. I don't now, either, not while focussing on him stopping mid-sentence, then continuing with his voice pitched even lower.

"But it doesn't matter. None of it does. Not after some fucker didn't listen one time too many." I'm almost certain he means himself. He winces, and I'm not sure if that's for tinnitus-related reasons until he adds a hoarse, "Only I got to walk away from that last pile of rubble."

Someone else didn't?

He touches my face for a third time before I can ask. This touch feels different, more needed by him than conversation, so I tilt up my own chin and go up on tiptoe, and we're kissing.

We've done this before.

I've kissed him plenty of times already: first in a pub, then in a shadowed alley, then for longer in a bedroom. I kissed him behind construction netting yesterday, and he kissed me in a near-empty car park this evening.

Each one might as well have never happened.

This isn't new. Something still ignites at how right his tight hold is, my heart pounding to violent life right beside a flower-filled crater, and all because his mouth moves from my lips to the hinge of my jaw, then to my ear where he rumbles another confession. "I got to walk away, Row. And this?"

He steers me off the path and between bushes where he drops a bombshell.

"It's the very first time I've felt grateful."

There's no one in this garden but us. He still shields me, making sure we're out of sight, tucked into a walled corner with a private view of a blazing sunset. It glows with enough flaming orange for a whole flock, not only a single phoenix, and something in me takes off right along with them as soon as he drops to his knees.

Liam presses his face to the front of my shorts, mouthing the outline of where I harden, and I'd fall over, only I can't. Not while he holds me upright.

I'm braced by a tanned and corded forearm and yet I'm also teetering over…

I don't know what. It isn't over rocks or water. I'm in a garden where something nearby in the greenery thrashes. A blackbird emerges. It launches itself upward, its wings as inky as Liam's hair between my fingers. I lose sight of it the moment he stops mouthing and gets my fly open and gets to sucking. His tongue finds somewhere that almost makes me buckle, but he's still got me, still holds me, and I don't know how to deal with being this supported.

Even the evening breeze is intense. So is his hand sliding up under my shirt, mapping the shape of me like I did to him a week ago now. I can't untangle why each moment with him feels like a first. His mouth is an example. I know there's already a kiss-and-tell story that can't ever be published, thanks to my stepfather, detailing that I've done this to more than one other person.

This—Liam—is more real and raw than a written account I've never managed to read all the way through. Bad enough that I had to stand in a headmaster's study and watch him do it.

Liam's more concrete, right down to the sounds he lets out. I don't know why they make my toes curl or my hips thrust. I can't control either reaction. I can't help clutching his hair tighter either, and his next deep, long rumble has me jerking forward hard enough that his eyes are damp when he pulls off and gives an order.

"Relax."

I don't know how to. Not around him. Especially not when he doesn't suck me again right away. I buckle again instead while he's still painted in gold, tracing the length of me as if he's found treasure, using his fingertips first, then his tongue tip, to follow a vein to where my shaft meets my crown. His tongue flicks there, and I don't have words for that feeling or for the sense of security his fingers wrapping my length give. He's got me, and I don't know how to describe this throb in my chest that spreads like a flood, like a fire, like lightning.

He's got me in the palm of his hand, my precome beading, and I wish…

I wish…

I wish to fuck tonight was the first time I ever did this.

He rumbles again as if in agreement, then he sucks me faster, his head bobbing, and I'm gone, lost, and I should know better, shouldn't I? Should know never to do this without a locked door, like Charles suggested, only I'm also certain of this—Liam wouldn't harm me.

His eyes have closed, but I know they're honest, even if damp again when they reopen. They still shine after he pulls off and gets his shorts unfastened. His cock is as flushed as his face. I only see it for a second before he's back to blowing me, his shoulder shifting with his own strokes, and I stop thinking.

Stop wishing.

Stop regretting.

I rebuild instead, right here in the last rays of golden sunshine. Or I'm rebuilt by his mouth, his tongue, the now slick hold of his hand, a process which could go on forever for all I care, but I'm not a lucky person, am I? Here's evidence of that—a bell tolls, its chime still resonating as Liam breaks off.

"Did… Did you hear that too, or is it just my?—"

He doesn't have to say tinnitus. I hear a second chime, loud and clear, coming from the garden exit.

"No, I heard it."

Those chimes are a signal that it's time to take this to another location. Back to his van. To my rooms in the stables. Fuck it, I'll find the cash for another hotel stay if that means I'll get to return this favour.

Or maybe it's a reminder to do what Charles had suggested and get an early night to do right by his children.

Liam must see all of that flicker. "Time's up?"

It almost is. I know that. I don't mean for this soul-deep sigh to gust out. "Yeah." He smiles then, and I'm well and truly fucked, even though he's still on his knees and I'm standing, because he makes a promise.

"I'm hitting the road tonight for another job. Shouldn't take longer than a week. Then I'll be back to start the library demolition. I'll see you then." He follows it with a quieter question. "Won't I?"

The blackbird that we startled chooses this moment to sing, notes soaring high above us, and here's something unexpected.

I want to join it.

Join it?

I want to sing my fucking heart out. Instead, I pull him upright. His cock is hot in my hand. Thick. Everything I'd want to take my time to map like he just did with mine, only the bell chimes again, giving one more warning for both of us to hurry, but I can't.

I can't.

I kiss him, and Liam muscles me back against the wall, his hand around both of us, and so what if the gates to this garden get locked with us still inside it?

I know someone who can demolish walls and rebuild them.