Page 242 of The Girlfriend Clause
“My what? Oh no, I won’t be leaving now. I’ve made enough mistakes already this year.” He smiled and reached for me, and I felt his lips press into me, softer now.
“I meant it, though.” He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to mine. “I love you, Andrea. I have for ages. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, what you mean to me. And being apart like we have been just made it worse. When you said you didn’t want to speak to me again, I thought that was it, and I tried to tell myself to move on, but I just… couldn’t.”
So he did feel it too, and we’d both sat there, in our stupid, separate lives, too scared—or stubborn—to do anything aboutit.
“I’ve thought about so much since that night when we fought at your flat,” he said. “What I wanted, with you. Not having you near me just made it even more clear.”
I get that, completely.
“But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Because a certain someone wouldn’t return my calls or messages,” he said, then smiled. “You kicked me to the curb, Andy… like an old kebab…”
“Like a—? Oh.” What I’d said to him before, when we’d fought. Trust Liam to remember the little details. He always did.
He raised a brow. “Yes, a kebab.”
“Oh, okay, just rub that in, won’t you.” I laughed a little and shook my head, and he squeezed me tighter.
“I’ve known for a while, Liam,” I added quietly. “That I loved you. And I wanted to tell you, but… I didn’t.”
Because I knew this was real, and that was what made it soscary.
“You do?” he said.
I nodded.
“Because I want it all with you, Andrea. I’m not playing. Everything I’ve never had, that I didn’t know was so important before you came into my life—that’s what I want now.”
My lip wobbled again.
“You’ve given me things I didn’t know I needed,” he said. “You saw who I was, right from the start—you didn’t care about my money. It made me feel like you saw me… the real me, not the stuff on the surface. And even when it got hard, you were there next to me, supporting me, holding me to account, and making me the best version of myself. And I need that in my life, Andy. I need time, with you. Years of it.”
“That’s what I want too, Liam,” I said.
Nothing had ever been soclear.
“I wasn’t expecting to find this,” I said. “I didn’t know something like this was possible, until I met you. You show up for me when things go wrong, you don’t bring the chaos… you make it… bearable.”
He didn’t just survive that fall in that lift with me, he’d stayed steady with me until I could breathe again. He saw me for whoIwas, too, and he didn’t leave, even when I was messy, or embarrassed, or objectively having the worst Monday a human could have.
“You make me feel like I’m not just… useful,” I said. Liam didn’t need me to fix him, to sort out his life, to be his mum. “I feel like you actually… want…me.”
My stupid throat was clogging with unshed tears again, but I had to get it out.
“And I don’t have to hold back with you, Liam. I don’t have to soften things because you’re too fragile to handle me. If I speak up and say what I think, it doesn’t destroy things between us. It just makes them stronger.”
He chose me when I was one step away from totalcollapse.
When I made an idiot of myself checking into a hotel in terrible French, when I accosted him at a meeting full ofpeople.
When I stood in front of him dressed like a Wookiee, sweaty and blotchy, damp fromtears.
“You didn’t flinch. You stayed. And I’m not with you because you need me, Liam. I’m with you because you choose me. And I get to choose you back. Because I want a life with you. And if that means more lifts, more boardrooms, more awful Mondays, and the occasional cross-dressing elf, then fine. I still want that. I want you.”
*
Liam was standing by the window of his apartment, jacket off, sleeves rolled. The city glowed behind him.
