Bayou Stix Series: Bayou Stix Limited Edition Box Set (85 page)

Clove

W
e sit in companionable silence for a bit and look through the trees at the moon reflecting off of the water.

Well, that was scary as hell. Just when I decide to take a chance and I finally have a shot with Liam after all this time, he decides to run scared.

I can’t believe I slapped him. The expression on his face was one of utter shock.

Picturing his face, I start to giggle.

I feel him smile into my hair. “What’s funny?”

I chuckle and lean back to snuggle further into his chest. I can’t believe that I’m here and I can’t believe that I fit with him so well. Leaning my head back, I look up at him. “I slapped you.”

He grimaces. “You did. Hard, too.”

I shrug and feel my cheeks redden. “I’ve never hit a man. I didn’t even know I was going to do that.” Looking at his cheek, I see the outline of my hand. “Does it still hurt?”

He chuckles. “It doesn’t feel good.” He flexes his jaw and I frown. Leaning down, he kisses my mouth softly, before saying. “It’s ok. I deserved it. But you pack a wallop.”

Well, he did deserve it. He pissed me off. But I can’t believe I hit him. I have to tell Dade that one. And Bradi and Blue. They’ll get a kick out of it, I’m sure.

A few minutes later, Liam breaks the silence again. “So, you wanted to know about my family. What do you want to know?”

Turning slightly, so I can see him, I trace his face. It’s suddenly lined with tension, so I know this must be a hard subject for him to talk about. His arms tighten around me.

“Whatever you want to tell me.”

He sighs and closes his eyes before he looks at me. His bright eyes are full of emotion. “Ok. I’ll start at the beginning. Stop me anytime you have a question, ok?”

I nod.

He starts talking. “When I was three, my mom dropped me off with my grandparents. My brother was eight and was already at their house. I remember that she was not around a lot when I was a young child and when she was, she was flighty and always nervous. She’d dropped me off there before, sometimes leaving me there for more than a week before she’d come back to get me. Sometimes she’d take my brother, John, too, but usually just me. Anyway, this time was different. She dropped me off and cried and cried. She hugged me for a long time and she called my brother out of the house… she never went inside… he walked out and she hugged us both and cried for a long time. She unloaded a suitcase and a box full of toys and she drove away. That was the last time I saw her.

As I got older, my brother and I became really close. He was a really talented musician and he taught me how to play the guitar. My grandparents raised us and we never wanted for anything. They had a house here in town, but my grandfather had a house in Lafayette. It was his family home and they were always working on it, trying to restore it. We’d go there every weekend.

John was older than me, so of course, as he got older, he started doing his own thing. When he’d go off, I’d work furiously at the guitar my grandfather gave me. It was my father’s. Apparently he was in a band, too. I quickly mastered the art of mimicking anything I heard. I could listen to any song and within ten minutes, I could replicate it.

When I was ten, John was fifteen. He was a looker, too. He always had girls around him. We looked a lot alike, but where my hair is dark, like our mother, his was light, like our father. He was Mr. Popular and a football star. I was younger, but by the time I was twelve, I realized that I must be good looking, too. He was seventeen and always surrounded by girls. Some of them would flirt with me. It made me feel like a man.

About that time, he started really looking into what he was going to do after high school. A lot of colleges were looking at him and he was offered several football scholarships, but he told me he didn’t want to play football. He wanted to join the military. Paw was a Veteran and had been in the Navy during World War II and John wanted to follow in his footsteps.

Paw and Maw were the best. They raised us both and we were a handful. I was a typical boy and always getting into mischief, while John was the good son. He was smart, athletic, and had all the girls. When I was thirteen, they called us into the kitchen one day. They had both been crying, so of course John and I were concerned. We sat down and they told us that our mom had been sick for a long time, since she was a little girl. They’d tried to get her help over the years, but she resented them and thought they were judging her.”

He stops and swallows. This is so hard for him. I need to let him know he can stop. He doesn’t have to tell me. I squeeze his hand and he looks at me. “You can stop. You don’t have to tell me all this, Liam. It’s ok.”

He shakes his head and smiles sadly. “No, I want to. I need to tell you, Clove. Just give me a sec, ok?”

I nod and just hold his hand.

After a bit, he sighs and starts back up. “My mom was bi-polar. She didn’t always take her meds and well, when she didn’t, she was also really paranoid about a lot of things. She gave us to my grandparents because she wanted us to be cared for properly. My father had left her when I was a baby and never looked back. Anyway, that day, they’d gotten word that she’d driven her car off of a mountainside in Colorado. Apparently, she hadn’t been taking her medicine for a while and she never called them for help…

The news hit John hard and he was a mess. I barely remembered her and hadn’t seen her in over ten years, so it wasn’t as bad for me.

But it killed my grandmother. She’d already been ill, but the news of losing her daughter was just too much and she had a stroke. She never recovered and passed away a few months later.

We were all devastated. John graduated high school and enlisted in the Army. He left for boot camp on my fourteenth birthday. I took it really hard. Maw was gone and he was far away, so it was just Paw and me. We made do, and my guitar and girls were my focus, but I missed my brother.

He went off to Afghanistan after boot camp and he did a couple of tours there. Meanwhile, I was growing and filling out. Ladies loved me. I was fifteen and women in their twenties were suddenly all over me. I was a wild child and lived it up.

Once I graduated high school, Paw decided to sell the house here in town and move to Lafayette. I stayed. He helped me get an apartment and told me as long as I worked, he would help me with my bills, but I was not going to be a freeloader. I hated school, so college was out of the question.

I started modeling. One night I was playing guitar at a dive in town and I met Cruz and Jessie and they introduced me to Jude and Dade. They were looking to start a band and asked me if I was interested in joining. I didn’t have anything else going on, so I did.

That was when I met you…”

He stops talking and looks at me. I can tell there’s more he wants to say. So, I ask, “What else? I feel like there’s more, Liam.”

He smiles at me and kisses our joined hands. “There’s more. Right when we signed with the label, like a few days after, I got a call. It was Paw. He told me I needed to come to Lafayette immediately, but he wouldn’t say why. I’d been drinking, so Cruz drove me to his house. When we got there, Paw was sitting on the front porch, just staring into space. I had to call his name three times to get his attention. He looked at me and I swear he’d aged about twenty years since my last visit, which had been a couple of weeks before. He only said one word. ‘John.’ My heart instantly started racing and I started talking really fast about how I had been waiting for him to call me so I could tell him about the band and how he needed to get home on leave so we could go celebrate. Paw stopped me with a hand on my arm.

I knew what he was going to say. I knew it. In my heart, I already knew. He grabbed my hand and pressed something into it. When I looked down, I saw John’s dog tags. They were full of black soot…”

Tears are running silently down my face. I’m praying that I’m not going to hear the next words coming out of his mouth correctly.

He looks at me and his eyes are glassy too. “He was killed in action. He threw himself on an IED to save his friends. He was twenty-four years old and the person I loved most in the world. He was my big brother and he died on foreign soil, fighting a war we shouldn’t have been in, saving his friends. They say he was a hero and he was, but he was always my hero…

We never got a body to bury. They sent us some remains in a jar along with his dog tags. We scattered them at his favorite fishing spot.”

He looks at me and I can see the pain in his eyes. “I don’t talk about my family, Clove, because there’s nothing to talk about. It’s just Paw and me, now. My mom is gone. My dad is who knows where and I don’t even know his name, and my brother is gone, too.”

He laughs harshly. “There you go. Sorry you asked now?”

Am I sorry I asked? No, I’m not. Not at all. I love that he told me all that. It was painful for him too, which makes me appreciate it a lot more. He’s damaged and he has some serious issues too, but we all do. I love that he trusts me enough to share that part of himself with me. It makes me love him even more.

Wait, what?! I don’t love him. I like him. I lust after him. But, no, I absolutely do NOT love him!

I can’t love him, right?!

Smiling at him and pushing all of that crazy talk to the far recesses of my brain, I lean up and kiss him softly. He pulls back when I stop and looks at me in surprise.

“No, I’m not sorry I asked. Not at all. Thank you for telling me. Thank you for trusting me with that information, Liam.”

His face clearly shows his astonishment. I chuckle. “Why does that surprise you?”

He shakes his head to clear it and shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess because you’re so very different than I thought you’d be. Every reaction I expect you to have, you have the opposite. It’s quite surprising to me.”

I grin in delight at his words. “Good. Who wants to be predictable? That’s so boring.”

He laughs and reaches for me, pulling me into him. My breath hitches and my stomach starts doing somersaults. He snickers at my response to him and leers at me. “You’re so sexy when you react to me. I feel like Superman.”

I laugh at his ridiculous analogy. “Superman? Does that make me Lois Lane or Lana?”

His brows arch. “You know about Superman?” He sounds so stunned.

I’m offended. Of course I know my comic book references!

Sticking my tongue out at him in ire, I retort, “Of course! What do you think I am?!”

Throwing his head back and laughing, he mutters, “Sexy, responsive, sassy, and knows comics… you’re my dream girl!”

My heart takes off like a steam engine!

Grabbing his face, I mesh my mouth to his and explore the innermost angles of his mouth with my tongue. He lets me take the lead and moans with his pleasure.

Before I know it, I’m straddling him and kissing him like I’m possessed. He doesn’t seem to mind at all.

I’m worked up into a frenzy and ready to strip him down and have my wicked way with him when I realize my hands are all over him, but his hands are not even touching me. Stopping my gyrations and trying to rein myself in, I sit back. He opens his eyes and watches me. His pupils are enlarged and the blue of his eyes is so dark they are almost navy.

I’m all over him and he’s totally in control. I’m mortified.

I jump off of his lap so quickly, I almost hit the floor, but I manage to catch myself just in time. My breathing is ragged and I feel like I’m going to burst into tears. He’s watching me scramble away from him with a wary expression. Once I stand up, he stands too and asks, “What’s wrong?”

Turning my back to him, I leave the gazebo and walk out towards the water. I hear him follow.

He calls my name, but I keep walking.

Finally, he asks in exasperation, “Clove. What the hell is wrong? What happened?”

I pick ferociously at my nails and stare at the reflections on the water. “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” He sounds completely bewildered. “Sorry for what?”

My manicure is a disaster. I just chipped all of the polish off of two nails. “I’m sorry, I threw myself at you.”

He touches my arm. “Threw yourself at me? What?”

I chance a look at him and he’s looking at me like I’m crazy. “Just now. I was all over you and I’m sorry.”

He repeats what I’m saying like he’s trying to understand it. “You were all over me and you’re sorry? Clove, why are you apologizing to me?”

God, I’m an idiot.

“I was all over you and you weren’t even touching me. I was literally attacking you, Liam.”

He looks baffled. If I was watching this happen to anyone else, I’d probably laugh at the look on his face. He rubs his forehead. “Wait.” He stares at me and throws his hands out to the sides. “You were all over me, yes. I didn’t and don’t mind a bit. No, I was not touching you, because I was fisting the blanket to stop myself.” My eyes go as wide as saucers. “Did you miss the part where I was kissing you back?!” I gasp. He stares at me long and hard before he closes the gap between us. Staring up into his eyes, I get lost in the emotion. He grabs my hand and presses it to his groin.