Spiralling Skywards: Falling (Contradictions #1) (28 page)

“What did she say to you, Sarah?”

“You told me that you’d had sex with her the night before you left, right?”

“Yeah, I told you that, and I told you why I didn’t admit to it,” Liam said, taking a seat next to me on the sofa.

I wasn’t interested in any of that, there was something else that was bothering me. Why would he admit to that but not to the other nights they’d supposedly spent together? Why hadn’t he told me about them?

“When was the last time you’d seen her previous to that?”

“Two years ago when I caught her fucking Sebastian Markham at our apartment.”

His answer was instant.

“You hadn’t been seeing her in the months prior to leaving? Going out on dates, sleeping together? You weren’t trying to work through your problems?”

“Is that what she told you?” His voice rose at the same rate as he stood up from the sofa.

“Answer the question, Liam”

“I swear to you, the only contact I’ve had with that woman has been via my solicitor for the past two years. Luke can vouch for that. He was there.”

“Where?” Luke asked.

He passed Liam a tumbler half filled with amber liquid. They tapped their glasses together.

“The whole time you were working and living with me in Sydney, did I at any time have any direct contact with Olivia?”

My brother shook his head slowly. His eyes met mine.

“Did she tell you he did?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, she fed me the same bullshit when she showed up at my house before you two walked in.” Luke tilted his head and looked at me.

“I thought that you knew all of that, knew that it was all bullshit?”

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath through my nose.

“Why did the pair of you split up in the first place?”

I think I actually felt my blood pressure rising as I waited for his answer.

“I caught her in bed with someone, you know this.”

“No, no. What led to that? What was the main issue between you?”

I studied Liam’s face, I had no clue what I was looking for, but it wasn’t the gentle look and almost smile that he was giving me right then.

He looked at Luke. He looked down at his glass of whiskey, and then he looked straight into my eyes and let out a long sigh.

“We didn’t love each other enough to stop sleeping with other people.”

My blood was no longer flowing through my veins, it was stomping, marching, pounding its way around my system as I asked him my next question.

“Were you at any stage trying for a baby?”

He recoiled as if I’d just thrown acid in his face and then laughed.

“Me and Olivia? Fuck no.”

He narrowed his eyes, and I watched him as they darted all over my face. “Why would I want to bring a child into a relationship like ours? Olivia wanted children even less than I did. The only reason she’s pregnant now is because she planned it that way. She thought that by getting pregnant she would stop Markham from leaving her and going back to his wife.”

“You’re still adamant that her baby’s not yours?”

He raised his eyebrows and lowered his chin.

“We really gonna go over all of this again?

That bitch. That devious. Scheming. Spiteful bitch. Anger bubbled and churned inside me. I gulped my wine. The alcohol, the warmth from the fire, and pure, unadulterated rage caused my chest, neck and cheeks to heat and my skin to prickle.

“Did she tell you she was pregnant that night? Is that why you left?”

Liam frowned, and I knew instantly that he had no idea what I was talking about. I watched him work it out. I watched as the realisation of what she’d told me caused his mouth to drop open and his eyes to widen.

“Did she tell you I left because she’d told me she was pregnant? Is that what she told you?”

I nodded.

“She told me that your marriage ended because she couldn’t fall pregnant, but you reconnected, and before you left Sydney, you were trying to work through your problems. Then, when she told you she was pregnant, you panicked.”

“And you
believed
her?”

I looked down into my wine glass and nodded.

“I thought I was doing you a favour. I thought if I stepped aside, you’d go back to her.”

I looked up directly into his eyes, blue met blue, and I told him the most honest thing I’d probably ever admitted to in my life.

“I love you enough that I stepped aside for the sake of your baby. I didn’t want to be the reason your child didn’t have a father around. I didn’t want to be the other woman. I didn’t want to be like her, my mother, and I didn’t want your baby to be me, to grow up with all of the issues that I have.”

I licked my top lip, not sure if I was licking snot or tears at that stage, but I didn’t care.

“I didn’t wanna be the cause of that.”

“Christ, Sarah.”

He put down his tumbler, took my glass from me, and put it on the floor next to it. Then, before I could stop him, he pulled me onto his lap. The familiar smell of his aftershave, deodorant, and shower gel combined to engulf and overwhelm me. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

“You should’ve spoken to me. Four fucking weeks I’ve been tying myself up in knots over this. I couldn’t understand why you were so adamant.”

The doorbell rang.

Luke left the room without a word. For a few seconds, I’d forgotten that he was even there.

“You should’ve told me,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry. She was so convincing.”

“You’re shaking,” he said into the side of my neck. His nose was in my hair and all over my skin.

“I’m so angry, Liam. I’m angry with her, but I think I’m even angrier with myself for believing her.”

“You had no reason not to believe her. You’re a good person, Sarah. You’ve probably never come across the likes of Olivia in your life.”

“Well, I’ll be better fucking prepared next time. What a bitch. What did she hope to gain? Surely she must realise that the truth would eventually come out? Is she even pregnant?”

“Very much so, about four months apparently. I think after the baby’s father left her, she turned up at my office determined to fuck me so that she could pass it off as mine.”

“That evil fucker. How could she use a child like that? How could she lie to you like that? Get you to raise another man’s child as your own?”

He rained kisses down on my head, neck, and throat as I spoke.

“Because in Olivia’s eyes, it was worth a shot. In her world, there was nothing wrong with what she attempted to do. That’s the type of person that she is.”

He took a hold of my chin and tilted my face towards him.

“You’ve said a lot of swear words tonight.”

“Yeah, well she makes me sweary.”

“So my touching your G spot and the mention of Olivia both make you sweary. Goddit.”

I smiled.

“You have got to be kidding me! Dude, I cannot unhear that. Do not, not ever, under any circumstances mention that word and my sister in the same sentence again ever.” I looked up to see Luke with his hands over his ears. I stopped smiling when I spotted Will standing behind him.

“She’s my sister. She doesn’t have sex. She won’t
ever
have sex.” My brother was still going on. He now had his eyes closed as well as his hands over his ears.

I pulled myself up out of Liam’s lap. He stood too.

Shit. Despite the fact that I’d made no promises to Will, I felt bad.

“Will, can we talk?”

Liam rubbed his fingertips up and down my spine, his hand finally settling against the small of my back.

“I only asked for a couple of things, Sunshine.” Will spoke very quietly.

“I know, and I’m sorry. This . . .” I looked up at Liam standing next to me. He hadn’t even taken his coat off yet and had just started to unbutton it. He removed it and placed it on the sofa.

“We just . . . Liam just got here and we talked.”

“Talked? Is that what you call it?”

His tone was almost vicious and took me a little aback.

“Yeah. That’s what I call it. My brother has been here the whole time . . .”

“Oh, you’ve been here the whole time?” Will turned to Luke and asked.

“You’ve been here the whole time and watched this, and yet you let me walk in here? Let me walk in here and see her with him?”

“What the fuck?” Luke looked at me with total confusion written all over his face. “They’ve talked. They’ve sorted shit out. Why would I stop you walking in here?”

“Well that’s great then.
They’ve
sorted shit out, fantastic. Fucking great. Merry fucking Christmas.”

It was right then that I stopped feeling bad and started to get angry. I wasn’t sure that I had the right to be, but I was. I’d been honest with him from the moment he’d made his intentions clear. I hadn’t flirted with him. I hadn’t kissed him. I sure as shit hadn’t made any promises, other than to let him know if I met someone else. Well I’d tell him, I’d tell him right fucking now.

We’d gone to the cinema together a couple of times, which was something that we had always done. We’d gone for dinner and done some shopping. All things we’d enjoyed doing together my entire life.

I was already angry with the fact I’d fallen for Olivia’s bullshit, so I wasn’t about to take crap from him too.

“I love him, Will. I never lied to you. I told you all along that we were just friends. I love you, too. Just not in that way.”

Perhaps if there’d been no Liam, I might’ve felt differently about Will, but that wasn’t the case. I loved Liam. I’d said it aloud now. Admitted it not only to myself but to everyone else too.

“I asked you to let me know. If there was someone else, I asked you to tell me.”

“It’s only just happened. Right now. You’re walking in on it happening right now.”

I was so grateful to Liam for staying quiet. I’d worried when he took his coat off that he was looking for a fight.

“Is there anything I can say? If I tell you that I think
I’m
in love with you, will it stop whatever ‘it’ is that I’ve just walked in on?”

I shook my head.

“No. I love him.”

“He’s got a wife. A pregnant fucking wife.”

“He’s in the process of divorcing his lying bitch of a wife, and the baby’s not his.”

Liam took my hand and squeezed it. Will threw his head back and laughed.

“Fuck me, Sarah Sunshine. Are you really that naïve? Are you really that much like your mother?”

Despite Liam jumping over the back of the sofa to reach him, Luke got to Will first and knocked him onto his arse with a single punch.

Merry fucking Christmas.

Men are strange
creatures, different entirely from women. Less than fifteen minutes after my brother had punched Will on the jaw, he was pouring him whiskey.

I wrapped the sandwich bag I’d filled with ice in a tea towel and passed it to him, he grabbed my wrist. Luke stilled the bottle of whiskey mid-flow and Liam stepped forward from where he was leaning against the kitchen worktop.

I looked down at where Will held on to me. He let go.

“I am so sorry, Sunshine.” He gave a deep sigh. “I was bang out of order. That was a terrible thing to say.” He looked up at my brother.

“You too, man. I am seriously sorry.”

He held the ice pack against his jaw with one hand and raised his glass with the other.

“Here’s to great right hooks from friends. Christmas just wouldn’t be the same without them.”

I stepped back to Liam’s side and raised my glass of wine. I was still pissed off at Will, but I wasn’t going to let him spoil things.

My anger at Olivia had cooled, and I could feel happiness creeping in. Liam and I hadn’t had a chance to talk yet, but I hoped everything that he’d said before her arrival still stood. I hadn’t told him directly that I loved him, but I’d put it out there, he knew.

He laced his fingers through mine and turned to look at me.

“Merry Christmas, pretty girl. Here’s to the first of many.”

He kissed the top of my head and then pulled me over towards the sofa. I flicked on a music channel and The Killers blasted one of my all-time favourite songs, “Somebody Told Me”, into the room.

Sasha came through the door right then.

“Merry Christmas mother fuckers.” She shouted, and knowing that I loved the song, she grabbed a hold of me and pulled me into the middle of the room and we danced around like a pair of lunatics. Wolf Mother’s “Joker and the Thief” was up next and we carried on.

Liam watched and laughed at our antics. Then, when the song ended, he pulled me down into his lap.

“So, Sarah Carter, now what?”

His lips were pressed against my ear, his warm whisky scented breath and just about everything else about him sent goose bumps marching across my skin, despite how hot I was from dancing.

The chair we were sitting in hid us from my brother and Will’s views, so I wrapped my arms around Liam’s neck. I may’ve been pissed off with Will’s attitude and what he’d said to me earlier, but I didn’t want to rub his face in what was going on between me and Liam.

“You tell me, Liam Delaney,” I whispered back, still a bit breathless from my dance moves. “You’ve swept into my country, my town, and my life. You’ve taken my heart hostage and have hijacked all my thoughts. What more could I possibly give you?”

He smiled at me, his blue eyes sparkled and caused my insides to do all kinds of clenchy things that I would never admit to.

“Those three words.”

“What?”

He gestured towards the telly with a tilt of his head. Snow Patrol was playing.

“But they’re said too much,” I told him quietly.

“Never. Not between us. Tell me. You told everyone else, now tell me.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

He kissed me gently on the mouth and then pulled me up to dance with him. We moved slowly around my brother’s living room, our bodies melded together, my fingers laced around his neck, his hands on my arse, pressing me into him as he quietly sang the words to “Chasing Cars” into my ear. Me and him, we didn’t need anyone or anything. Just each other.

The rest of the evening was spent playing our favourite songs, drinking, talking, laughing, and occasionally dancing around my brother’s living room.

When the drinking games started in the kitchen, Liam and I slipped away upstairs and headed to my bedroom.

In the room that had been designated as mine since my brother bought the house, I watched in silence as Liam slid into bed beside me. I wasn’t shy, I wasn’t nervous. If anything at all, I was desperate. Desperate for his touch, his taste. I needed to feel him inside me. I
needed
the intimacy that I’d only ever found with him.

He climbed between my legs and held himself above me on his elbows. His forehead rested against mine.

“Fuck I’ve missed you.”

My hips were raised off the bed, circling and searching for what? A connection? Friction?

“Keep still, pretty girl.”

His words vibrated against my throat as he kissed, licked, and sucked, right in that part where it dips into a hollow. It drove me in-fucking-sane—sweary insane.

I shuddered.

He chuckled.

He sat back on his knees and looked down at me. The very tip of his tongue swept across his bottom lip, and I couldn’t stop myself from raking my teeth over my own bottom lip as the memories of what pleasure that tongue was capable of floated in my mind.

I watched his face intently, my breaths becoming heavy as I fought the urge to squirm whilst his eyes roamed my naked body.

He swallowed so hard I saw the column of his throat move with the intensity. His blue eyes met mine.

“Looking at you naked . . .” He paused, his voice was thick with emotion and he cleared his throat, aiming, I think to gain some control of what he was feeling. I, on the other hand, just let my tears fall. It had been too emotional of a day for me to hold anything back.

And why should I? I’d spent years hiding from what I wanted, looking from the outside in. I always felt unworthy of love. Tainted by my mother’s actions. I knew now that wasn’t the case. I was as worthy and entitled to love and to be loved as the next person and was prepared now to give Liam my all. Every part of me.

“Looking at you naked.” He started again. “Feeling your legs wrapped around me. Knowing that you’re mine.”

He stopped talking again and drew in a shaky breath.

“I could cry, Sarah. You make me feel so fucking much that I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do with it. These past few weeks without you . . .” He shook his head slowly as he looked down over my body again. “I don’t know how to say, how to explain in a way that would justify how painful it’s been without you and how fucking happy I am to be with you, here, right now.”

Tears slid backwards across my face and pooled in my ears and around the back of my neck. My breaths became ragged and shaky as I tried to control the sob that was becoming desperate for release.

“What made me think I could live without this? What the fuck was going through my head when I thought I’d be able to walk away and leave you with him?”

The noise I made was more of a whimper than a sob when it finally came. He leaned in and kissed both my eyelids.

“Saying ‘
I love you’
is putting it in the plainest, simplest terms and doesn’t even begin to cover what I actually feel
for
you. All of me, every aspect of my life, every beat of my heart and every breath from my lungs. Each and every thought that crosses my mind. . . All of everything about
me
, will now become all about
you
. Are you ready for that, Sarah Carter? This isn’t my proposal, not here right now, not like this, but one day soon. Very fucking soon, I want you to become Sarah Delaney.”

The next sound I made was most definitely a sob.

“Will you say yes, pretty girl? Will you let me make you my wife?”

I nodded.

“Yeah?” He smiled down at me, his own eyes shining with tears.

“Say the words. I need to hear them. I need us to tell each other everything.”

“Yes. Yes, Liam Delaney, I’ll be your Mrs Del, your Mrs Pretty Girl. I’ll be your wife. And yes to telling each other everything. No more lies. No more not mentioning things, and no more hiding our own feelings from each other. Life’s too short, let’s just live it and see where it takes us.”

“Back to you, baby. You are my life, so it’ll always take me right back to you.”

***

I was woken Christmas Eve morning by Liam’s phone vibrating on the bedside table next to where he was still sleeping soundly.

I reached across and picked it up, saw it was his sister Mags, and answered.

“Liam’s phone.”

“Oh, um, hey. Is he around?” A feminine but husky voiced Australian asked.

“He’s sleeping right now; can I take a message?”

“That would . . . um . . . be—who exactly am I talking to? Sorry, don’t mean to be rude but don’t wanna be giving the family secrets to just anyone.”

Direct, just like her brother, who was currently looking at me with just one eye open. He was lying flat on his back, the duvet lying low across his hips. I reached out and traced the trail of hair that ran down the length of his body. He grabbed my wrist, just as I reached the edge of the duvet, before pushing it down onto his hard dick. I wrapped my hand around it and gave a little tug.

“Jesus fuck Sarah.” He groaned.

“This is Sarah, and I swear that you can trust me with all your family secrets, especially the ones that involve Liam.”

I winked at him as I spoke. He uncurled my fingers from around his dick, which put an end to my ministrations.

“Sarah? Oh fuck, you two finally sorted your shit out and got back together?”

“We finally did.”

“Well thank fuck for that. No more late-night calls from pussy of a brother.”

“Umm, I can’t guarantee that, I don’t intend on letting him off too lightly. He may still require back up and support yet.”

“Well fuck me, no wonder my little bro fell so hard and fast, I think I might already be just a little bit in love you myself.”

I grinned both at Maggie’s comment and Liam’s face as he pushed himself up and sat back against the headboard.

“Who is it?”

“Your sister,” I whispered as I pulled the phone away from my mouth a bit.

“Is he awake? Put him on, or better still, put the phone on speaker. I have news that affects both of you.”

Unsure of how Liam’s phone worked, I passed it to him.

“Maggie has news, put the phone on speaker.”

He changed the setting and put the phone on the duvet between us. Lifting his arm, he motioned for me to get closer, without hesitation I wrapped myself around him and rested my head on his chest.

“Morning, Mags. What’s happening?”

“Hey, Lee, you finally grew some and went and got your girl, hey?”

“Not sure if I’m fully forgiven yet, but I did a lot of begging last night.”

“Yeah, I bet. Always did have a reputation for being a dog, so begging would be right up your street. Make him work for it, Sarah. Don’t you be letting him off easily, darl.”

“Don’t plan to.”

It was quite for a beat, and I became aware of the goose bumps developing across my skin as Liam stroked my bare hip with the tips of his fingers.

“Listen, I was gonna wait until tomorrow to call but thought I’d deliver this little gift to you early. It’s made it even more poignant now that you’re hearing it together—”

“Spit it out, Mags. It’ll be New Year’s before you finish.”

I expected bickering to break out between the siblings, but instead, Maggie just went right ahead with the best news ever.

“Porsche Markham has filed for divorce, stating Olivia Romanelli as the other woman. She’s also offered a shit ton of evidence proving that Seb is the father of Olivia’s baby.”

I think we both stopped breathing as Maggie spoke. Liam sat forward, and I moved out of the way to give him room. I also wanted to gauge his reaction to the news.

He cupped his hands over his nose and mouth and closed his eyes.

“You get all that, little brother, Sarah?”

“We got it.”

“Told ya the cunt was making it all up—sorry, Sarah, but there’s no other word to describe that woman.

“Don’t be sorry, I couldn’t agree more.”

“You okay, Lee?”

“I am, yeah. I knew the kid wasn’t mine, but I’m glad the truth’s out there for everyone now.” Liam looked at me as he spoke.

“Well everyone’s harking on about it, Mum and Dad know, so you can expect calls from them. Marie too probably.”