The silence in the apartment after Bennett’s Mercedes whispered down the street was a physical weight. It wasn’t a peaceful quiet; it was an absence, a hollowed-out space where his presence had been. His cologne, a sharp, expensive scent of sandalwood and citrus, still clung to the air, a ghost of the control he’d tried to exert all weekend.
Chloe stood in the middle of the living room, wrapping her arms around her waist. She felt… scrubbed raw. The night before, Bennett had moved over her with a practiced, artful passion. He’d murmured all the right things, his hands finding all the right places, but it had felt like watching a beautiful, critically-acclaimed film. She could admire the technique, the flawless execution, but it hadn’t touched her. It had only served to highlight the chasm between the woman she was pretending to be—the polished, successful fiancée—and the woman who felt like she was splintering apart inside.
She couldn’t stay here. The pristine apartment, which Bennett had complimented for its “potential,” suddenly felt like a cage. The lingering scent of him felt like an accusation.
Needing an anchor, something real and solid, she grabbed her keys and fled. She didn’t consciously decide where she was going, but her feet carried her the three blocks to the library. The sun was setting, casting long, golden fingers of light through the tall arched windows, illuminating swirling dust motes like tiny, forgotten stars.
She bypassed the main circulation desk and the half-finished adult fiction section, her steps taking her to the back corner of the building. To the new children’s section.
It was the one part of the project that was truly complete, and it was her favorite. The scent of fresh paint—a cheerful, buttery yellow—and new pine from the custom-built, waist-high shelves filled the air. A large, whimsical mural of a forest scene covered the back wall, and little red-and-white toadstool seats were clustered around a low table. It was a space built for wonder, a stark contrast to the calculated ambition that had just vacated her life.
She ran a hand along the smooth, lacquered top of a bookshelf, the wood warm beneath her palm. This felt real. The splinters she’d gotten helping Liam install it, the ache in her back after a day of painting, the satisfaction of seeing it come to life—that was real. Bennett’s world of leveraged buyouts and cocktail parties felt like a dream she was trying desperately to wake from.
A wave of profound sadness washed over her, so potent it made her knees weak. She sank onto one of the ridiculously small toadstool seats, burying her face in her hands. The tears she hadn’t let herself cry all weekend finally came, hot and silent. They were tears for the girl who had dreamed of a life bigger than this town, and for the woman who was discovering that ‘bigger’ was just another word for ‘empty’.
“Tough weekend?”
The voice was low, and so close it made her jump. Liam was standing in the archway, holding two steaming mugs. He wasn’t wearing his tool belt; he was in a clean t-shirt and jeans, his hair slightly damp. He must have been working late in his office. His expression was stripped of its usual teasing banter. In its place was a quiet, unguarded concern that somehow hurt more than any condescension.
She hastily wiped at her eyes. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t call her on the obvious lie. He just walked over and placed one of the mugs on the low table in front of her. The earthy scent of chamomile tea rose from it. He took a seat on a toadstool opposite her, his large frame looking comically out of place. He didn’t speak, just took a sip from his own mug, giving her the space to breathe.
The simple, unconditional comfort of his presence did what Bennett’s sophisticated seduction couldn’t: it made her feel seen. He wasn’t trying to fix her or manage her emotions. He was just… there. The silence stretched between them, thick with everything they’d never said.
Finally, he set his mug down with a soft clink. “He’s not right for you, Chloe.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of fact, delivered with a soft, aching finality.
“You don’t know him,” she whispered, the defense flimsy even to her own ears.
“I know you,” he countered, his gaze unwavering. “I remember the girl who wasn’t afraid to get mud on her jeans, who argued with Mr. Henderson about the thematic significance of The Great Gatsby until she was blue in the face. I don’t see that girl when he’s around. I see someone holding her breath.”
Her throat tightened. He saw right through her. He always had. That quiet, observant nature of his had been both a comfort and a terror to her younger self. It was why she’d fled.
The last of her defenses crumbled under the weight of his steady gaze. The air between them shifted, the comfortable silence becoming charged, electric. Years of unspoken history pulsed in the space between their knees.
He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a near whisper, laden with a decade of hurt. “Why, Chloe? Why’d you never come back? Not once.”
The question landed like a stone in her gut. It was the one question she had been dreading, the one she’d been running from.
She shook her head, unable to look at him. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?” he pressed, his voice still soft, but with an edge of steel.
She finally lifted her head, and her eyes, still shimmering with unshed tears, met his. The honesty she saw there demanded the same from her.
“Both,” she admitted, her voice cracking. “I left here thinking I had to prove something. That this town, my family… that it wasn’t enough. I had to go out and become someone else. Someone… shiny. Successful.” She gestured vaguely, a motion meant to encompass her entire life in Chicago. “I met Bennett, and he was everything I thought I was supposed to want. He’s powerful, ambitious. He fits in that world.”
She took a ragged breath. “And every time I thought about coming back, even just for a visit, I felt like a fraud. Because that shiny person would have to face the girl she left behind. And I was afraid… I was so afraid that I’d see you, and I’d realize that I’d chosen the wrong life. That the ‘more’ I was chasing was never going to feel as real as what I’d run away from.” Her voice dropped, thick with confession. “I was a coward, Liam. I ran, and I didn’t know how to find my way back.”
The devastation on his face was a mirror of her own. He looked like she had just confirmed his worst fear, a fear he’d nursed for ten long years. “So you just erased it? Erased us?”
“No,” she cried, the word tearing from her. “Never. It was the one thing I couldn’t erase, don’t you see? It was the thing I was always measuring my new life against. And nothing ever… nothing ever measured up.”
The space between them vanished. He was off his stool and kneeling in front of her before she could process the movement. He cupped her face in his hands, his palms rough and calloused against her tear-damp skin. His thumbs gently stroked her cheekbones. His eyes, the color of moss and whiskey, searched hers, raw with a decade of longing and loss.
“Chloe,” he breathed, and her name was a prayer, a curse, a homecoming.
Time stopped. The library, the town, her life in Chicago—it all faded away until there was only the heat of his hands on her skin and the shattering truth in his eyes. This was it. The precipice she’d been teetering on since the moment she’d walked back into this library.
And then she was falling.
His mouth crashed against hers.
It wasn’t a gentle or tentative kiss. It was a collision of past and present, a desperate, fiery claiming. It was ten years of missed phone calls, of wondering, of aching loneliness poured into one searing moment. His lips were firm and demanding, tasting of coffee and a uniquely masculine heat that was all Liam.
A guttural sound escaped her throat, a mix of protest and surrender, and she fisted her hands in the front of his t-shirt, pulling him closer. This was wrong. A terrible, catastrophic mistake. She had a fiancé. A life. A plan.
But his tongue swept against her lips, begging for an entrance she was powerless to deny, and the plan shattered into a million pieces. She opened for him, and the kiss deepened, becoming a frantic, hungry exploration. It was a conversation held without words, a litany of every ‘what if’ and ‘I miss you’ they had ever swallowed down.
He shifted, one hand sliding from her jaw down the column of her throat to the back of her neck, tangling in her hair and tilting her head to a better angle. The other hand splayed across her back, pressing her flush against the hard planes of his chest. She could feel the frantic hammering of his heart, a wild rhythm that matched her own.
This was not Bennett’s polished performance. This was raw and real and utterly consuming. This was a homecoming. It was the feeling of a key sliding into a lock you’d forgotten you even owned.
She was drowning in him, in the scrape of his stubble against her sensitive skin, in the possessive grip of his hands, in the sheer, undeniable rightness of it. For one terrifying, transcendent moment, she wasn’t Chloe from Chicago, Bennett’s fiancée. She was just Chloe. And he was Liam. And this was the only thing that had ever made sense.
They finally broke apart, gasping for air, their foreheads resting against each other. The sound of their ragged breaths was unnervingly loud in the silent library.
Liam’s eyes were closed, his expression a mask of anguish and ecstasy. Chloe stared at his lips, swollen from her own, and a wave of ice-cold reality crashed over her.
“Oh god,” she whispered, the words catching in her throat. “What have we done?”