Chapter 2

"Nova, baby, it's not what you think."

I stared at him.

"It's really not what it looks like."

"Liam."

"She means nothing, you know that, you know I love you —"

"Liam."

"Just let me explain, please, just five minutes, I swear on my mother —"

"Do not swear on your mother."

He closed his mouth.

I sat on the edge of the bed — the very edge, as far from the Daisy situation as the mattress would allow — and looked at the wall while he talked. He was good at talking. Three years and the man had never run out of things to say in this specific scenario. I'd started to think he rehearsed.

The story this time was stress. Work pressure. A moment of weakness. Daisy was a mistake, Daisy was nothing, Daisy was a symptom of a problem he was going to fix starting right now, starting today, he meant it this time.

He always meant it this time.

I nodded in the right places. I let my eyes do the glossy thing. Somewhere around the twelve minute mark I produced two tears — not on purpose, they just showed up, which was honestly rude of them because I wasn't even sad, I was mostly just thinking about whether I'd left my good umbrella at the last interview location.

By the time he finished talking he had convinced himself that we'd had a breakthrough.

Men are incredible.

"I'm going to make it up to you," he said. He was holding both my hands now, the full eye contact, the whole production. "Dinner tonight. Wherever you want. Just us."

"Okay," I said.

"I love you."

"I know."

He kissed my forehead. I let him.

He took me to the Italian place on Kensington Road, which was his go-to apology restaurant. I had eaten my feelings there three times in the last eighteen months. At this point the waiter knew my order.

Liam was good at apology dinners. Attentive, funny, the version of himself that had made me say yes in the first place. He asked about my interviews — actually asked, actually listened, didn't interrupt. He refilled my wine before I had to ask. He laughed at things I said like I was the most interesting person in the room.

This was the version of Liam that made the arrangement confusing.

If he were awful all the time it would be simple. But he wasn't. He was awful some of the time and wonderful the rest of it and the ratio had been shifting lately in a direction I was trying not to examine too closely.

"My family's doing dinner this weekend," he said, over dessert. "Mum's been asking about you."

That part was true. Eleanor Holt was one of the few people in Liam's life who treated me like a person and not an accessory. She asked real questions and remembered the answers and sent me recipes she thought I'd like for no reason. I had no idea what she saw in her son but whatever it was I was grateful she existed.

"Sure," I said.

"It'll just be the usual lot. Mum, Dad, probably Cole." He paused. "Rhett might be there."

I said nothing.

Rhett Holt was Liam's older brother and the subject of approximately forty percent of Liam's bad moods. I had met him twice and on both occasions he had looked at me the way people look at mildly interesting weather — present, briefly noted, forgotten.

"Fine," I said.

Liam smiled. Squeezed my hand across the table.

At least I'll be seeing his mother. The only sane one in that family, if you ask me.

I smiled back and ate my tiramisu.