Tell Them Lies (Three Little Words Book 3) (16 page)

"-- and the main reason for that is because if it puts a smile on your face like I saw when you walked down those stairs, then I wouldn't care much what you were doing."

"You saw that, huh?"

She nodded. "You were in such a blissful state, you didn't even notice me in the hallway."

"Have you always been this sneaky?"

"Sneaky comes with the territory when you raise a son on your own."

There was an affectionate smile on her face when she said it, so Kieran knew she meant it. And just hearing her say crap like that, with that look on her face...

It was as if he missed her already, while she was sitting three feet away from him. Like his heart was in direct rebellion of the fact that someday soon he'd never be able to see smile like that again. Rubbing a hand over the offending organ, Kieran pasted a smile of his own on his face.

"I guess so."

"And now I've gone and killed the mood somehow, haven't I?"

"No," he said sincerely, tapping at his temple with his pointer finger. "That's all up here."

"How long have you and Liz been dating again?"

Kieran narrowed his eyes a little. Her tone was simply curious, and there was nothing in her expression that wasn’t genuine. But then again, she was fricken sneaky.

"Uhhh, a few months."

"You don't know your anniversary?"

"
Anniversary?
Like, first kiss and all that? Why, did I miss something? Did she say something to you?"

"Heavens, no. I was just asking."

"Holy crap, Ma. Make a guy think he's in the dog house, why don't you?"

She looked amused, and Kieran internally let out a sigh of relief, because she didn't look like she was going to push it.

"Do you love her?"

He felt it, the way his face went blank, because his brain stalled, and his heart basically stopped beating. No function anywhere.

"Whaaaa? Why would you ask that?" Then everything started on hyper-speed. Brain was shooting straight-up panic messages to his extremities because they started tingling and shit, his heart started thrashing in his chest like it wanted to escape from behind his ribcage. Love? Who said anything about love? I mean, Liz was great. He definitely really liked her, wanted to see more of her. But love and marriage and babies? Nope, nobody said anything about that.

His mom just sat and watched him, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

"You're funny," he said, not really meaning it. Because that was
not funny
.

"And you're in denial. Honey, anytime a girl puts a smile like that on your face? You need to think long and hard about how to keep her around."

Nope. Definitely not enough coffee.

T
he room was
quiet and the bed was very empty when Liz rolled over. There was still an indentation in the pillow where Kieran slept. Drifting her fingers over the crumpled pillowcase, she pushed her nose down into the sheets and pulled in a lungful of his scent. It was mixed with hers and the fabric softener, and the combination was enough to make her pull back and wrinkle her nose in embarrassment, fully aware of all the things that had happened to make the sheets smell like that in the first place.

There was a part of her that felt the cold tinge of disappointment that Kieran wasn't in bed with her, but the rest of her felt relief. That she could process everything without those deep, brown eyes staring at her. Yes, it was good he was up already, because now she could safely sit and trap herself in her obsessive, over-analytical thoughts and go crazy.

With a groan, she rolled over and grabbed her phone. Not even eight yet. Oh, how she wished she could call Casey or Rachel, talk this through with them. But what would she say? They didn't even know Kieran wasn't really her boyfriend, and now she slept with him? Slept with him multiple times, in fact. It was so out of character for her, they probably wouldn't believe her.

"But they believed me about Kieran," she whispered, as if saying the words out loud, letting them bounce around the edges of the room would somehow help them penetrate her brain. They'd believed her about Kieran because Liz didn't lie. She wasn't someone who did something like this.

And it wasn't just her friends, it was Kieran's mother. His sick, dying mother. Who obviously didn't know her well enough to know whether she was a truthful person, but she believed Kieran. And it was giving her peace, if not hope to keep fighting such a horrible disease.

Sitting up in bed, Liz gripped the sheet around her and smoothed a hand down her mass of tangled hair. Tangled from Kieran's hands, from hours of winding around each other's bodies.

"Ohhhhhhhh, what did I do what did I do whatdidIdo?"

The ambiguity of that question was enough to make Liz certifiably insane. Because it could be about so many things over the past few months. Like the night she turned back and looked at him down the freezer aisle, she'd condemned herself to this giant crusade of lies and confusion and half-truths. Like the fact that he'd goaded her into her answering him in the checkout lane had signed her fate to this exact moment. Of kind of hating herself.

Jumping out of the bed and snatching her clothes from the floor, Liz looked up and caught sight of herself in the mirror above the dresser. Awful. She looked awful. Worse, she looked guilty. Because all she could think of, as she saw the mess of her hair, and the pale face with spots of color high on her cheekbones, the dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, and the bright red hickey beneath her collarbone was what would happen when people found out.

She was just pulling her shirt down over her head, when the door opened and Kieran walked in. The slow smile he sent her made her pause, and when she noticed him extending a steaming cup of coffee towards her, her heart did a slow somersault.

No freaking out in sight for him. Oh no, he was cool as a cucumber. Because none of this bothered him, apparently. Like she hadn't completely turned her whole life upside down because she'd said yes to him. When she didn't immediately take the mug from him, he pulled his arm back in, lowering his eyebrows as he looked her over.

The panic that bubbled through her body must have registered on her face, because the smile faded pretty quickly. Then he nodded, and dropped his gaze to the floor.

"No, Kieran, it's not what you're thinking," she rushed to console him.

"And what am I thinking?"

Sinking down until she was perched on the edge of the bed, Liz opened her mouth a few times before settling on a pathetic shrug of her shoulders. Pathetic. What an apt word for how she felt. And as much as she wanted to reach down and pull out some semblance of strength and backbone, she just couldn't muster enough of herself to do it. Which meant that the quiet in the room practically suffocated her.

He let out a slow breath, then set the unwanted coffee on the edge of the dresser. "Am I supposed to know what that means? You've gotta give me more than that, Liz."

Liz. Not angel. Most surprising of all the things she'd felt that morning was the sharp, blinding pinprick to her heart over not hearing that ridiculous nickname.

"Do you... do you regret last night?"

Her eyes fell shut when she heard the trepidation in his low, gravelly voice.

"Not precisely," she replied carefully, then looked up him regarding her. "I'll admit that my thoughts ran away from me when I woke up, but I think you know well enough by now that I'm not prone to typical female theatrics."

"No. I wouldn't say that you are." He waited patiently, and when she didn't continue immediately, he moved to sit down next to her. She scooted over to give him more room, which made him exhale loudly again.

"I started thinking about everyone who thinks we're really together, who thinks this is a serious relationship. And how they'll feel when they find out how long we've been lying to them. And it was pretty much a domino effect from there."

"Why would they
have
to find out? Last night felt pretty relationshippy to me."

"That's not a word," she said absently.

"No shit. But you know what I mean. I
feel
like we're in a relationship. Don't you? I actually care about you, Liz. Despite what you may think of me, I don't just go around sleeping with random people. "

I actually care about you, Liz.
The words echoed through her head, a sweet sort of relief since he'd never come close to verbalizing that to her before, but it still felt like he didn't
get it
.

"And I never said that you did, but at some point, you really don't think we'll need to come clean? You'd just let everyone go on thinking something that's a blatant lie?"

He shifted on the bed to face her, and she mirrored him. His face was guarded, his mouth flattened into a line. "So the details of how we met got blurred in translation, it's not like we're committing murder."

Liz tapped a hand against her chest. "I don't feel okay about lying to the people I love. I told my friends, my
sisters
for all intents and purposes, that you were my boyfriend. That was a lie. You
really
aren't bothered by doing the same to your family? To your mother?"

He spread his arms to the side, looking horribly helpless and confused. "My mom is happier. So I'm sorry, but no, I am not bothered by this."

Standing up from the bed, Liz shook her head at him. "I don't believe that."

"You don't
have
to believe it. It's the truth."

"So consequences mean nothing to you? You can just do whatever you want and not worry about how the chips fall in your wake?" She could practically hear his teeth grinding, his jaw was so tight. And his eyes weren’t guarded anymore. Oh no, they were blazing hot. But he said nothing, didn't contradict her, didn't try to appease her. And why would he? They were nothing to each other. It ignited something inside her, something she didn't dare label or try to smother. Words crawled up her throat before she even attempted to filter them. "Are you really so self-centered, Kieran? That you wouldn't give one seconds thought about how other people could be affected by this?"

Whatever flame had been lit behind his eyes was doused instantly. Like someone had dumped ice cold water over those mahogany irises.

"Self-centered?" he repeated in a hushed tone. "You know? Maybe I am. But I still think that's better than being a coward."

Liz gasped, like he'd punched through her stomach. Her eyes instantly watered and she hated herself for it. Almost hated
him
for putting her worst fear into words. And as much as she wanted to be that woman who could snap back in her own defense, could leave him with some scathing comeback, she wasn't. So she just turned and left the room, not willing to let him see her tears.

As soon as she cleared the room, she all but fled down the stairs, praying that nobody was downstairs. But when she crossed into the kitchen, both Carol and Maggie were sitting at the dining room table. They looked up in surprise. When they saw her face, they shared a look, and Carol excused herself with a sympathetic smile aimed at Liz. All of her limbs weighed about eight hundred times more than they had before she'd come into the room, her legs feeling like someone had strapped anvils to them.

When she sank into one of the chairs, Liz took a few seconds to try to rein in her breathing.

"You know," Maggie started slowly, her voice more serious than Liz had ever heard it, "Kieran doesn't really want to hear about my bad days. And I don't blame him. I don't particularly want to verbalize it to him, to look my only child in the eye and tell him that every bone in my body feels like it's about to snap. That I don't dare clear my throat even once, because my lungs scream at me just by breathing."

Liz pulled in a shaky breath, feeling a healthy dose of reality at just how minuscule her problems were compared to Maggie's. But the tears didn't dissipate from her eyes, they built up for a whole different reason. This time she felt a giant brick of emotion stick in her throat for what Maggie must feel, facing her own mortality.

And Liz purposefully deceived her. The loathing built up so thick through her body that it was a miracle that her blood kept pumping.

So she reached across the table, gripping Maggie's hand with her own. Maggie's skin was paper thin, dark blue veins mapping across the back of her bony hand, and her fingers were frigid. As much as she ached in this moment, Liz couldn't help but feel like she wanted to fly to Arizona simply so she could hug her own mother.

"I'm not telling you this so you can feel sorry for me, honey. I don't want anyone's pity."

"I don't pity you, Maggie. Not at all. I just wish there was something more I could do."

Maggie leaned forward, her sky blue eyes digging at Liz, not letting her look away. "You're
doing
it. Just by being here. The only thing that scares me about dying is leaving my boy behind. We're all each other has had for a lot of years," she stopped, eyes glistening, her voice wavering, "and I couldn't stand the idea that he'd feel alone when I die. Whether that's in a month or a year or a day. But you? You're an answer to a mother's prayer, Liz. I have no idea whether you'll marry my son or not, but I do know that you make him happy. And I know you have a beautiful heart, and that you'll help him."

Tears dripped out of Liz's eyes before she even knew they fell, and she sniffed. Wiping them away with the hand that wasn't holding Maggie's, Liz couldn't even attempt to form words that were deserving of this moment. But she couldn't, she
wouldn't
, lie to this amazing strong woman who was entrusted Liz with the heart of her son. A heart that wasn't rightfully hers. Stiffening her spine in a way that had deserted her since she'd woken, she straightened in her chair.

"Maggie," Liz started with a whisper, her voice as shaky as her hands and her heart and her conscience. "Maggie, there's something I have to tell you. And I'm so incredibly sorry that I have to do this, but you deserve to know the truth. All of it."