Chapter 24
989 Words
*Elena's POV*
"Liam!"
I was already moving down the stairs, one of my hand on the railing, my heart was somewhere in my throat because the look on Alexander's face when he shoved Liam was not the look of a man who was done. It was the look of a man who was just getting started.
And Liam was calm, infuriating, immovable Liam was standing there like he had absolutely no intention of stepping back, which meant this was about to become something I could not let happen in a hospital corridor with my baby bump and my whole complicated life on full display.
I got three steps from them.
And then the security personnel appeared from everywhere at once ... six of them, maybe more, moving fast and professional, sliding between Liam and Alexander like a wall that had been there all along just waiting for its cue.
"Gentlemen." One of them put a firm hand on each man's chest. "We're going to need everyone to step back."
Alexander stepped back. His jaw was tight, and his eyes still locked on Liam, but he stepped back.
Liam straightened his shirt. Rolled his shoulders once and looked at me.
I looked at him.
Are you okay? I mouthed.
He gave me a look that said he found my concern charming but entirely unnecessary.
I found that look extremely irritating and also extremely reassuring and I was not going to examine those two feelings existing simultaneously right now.
"Right." Andrea materialized at my elbow, clapping her hands together once like a woman calling a board meeting to order. She looked at the security personnel, looked at Alexander, looked at the small crowd of patients and visitors who had gathered to watch with tremendous interest, and then looked at me.
"This has been wonderful. Truly. A real highlight." She turned to Liam. "Can we please, please just go upstairs? Before something else happens? Before someone ends up actually arrested or on the news or both?"
"Nobody is going on the news," Liam said.
"Liam. Darling. I watched you and a billionaire almost come to blows over a woman in a hospital waiting room." She looked at him pointedly. "We are absolutely going on the news."
Despite everything.... despite my racing heart and my shaking hands and the image of Eliza's face that I could not scrub from the back of my eyes, I almost laughed.
Almost.
"Let's just go," I said.
The corridor on the upper floor was quieter a d more serene.
The kind of quiet that belongs to rooms where people are fighting battles that don't make any noise.
Andrea walked ahead. Liam walked beside me, close enough that his arm brushed mine every few steps, and he didn't move away and neither did I.
"You good?" he said quietly.
"I'm fine."
"Elena."
"I said I'm fine, Liam."
He looked at me sideways. "Your hands are shaking."
I looked down. They were. Just slightly. I pressed them flat against my sides.
"Seeing her was..." I stopped. Started again. "I wasn't expecting her to be here."
He didn't say anything. He just reached over casually, unhurriedly and his hand found mine and he held it. Steady and warm and completely solid.
I didn't pull away.
We stopped outside a door near the end of the corridor. Andrea put her hand on the handle, turned to look at both of us with an expression that said she had strong opinions about the hand-holding but had selected this precise moment to keep them to herself, and pushed it open.
The room was bright and smelled of antiseptic and something faintly floral from the arrangement on the windowsill. A nurse stood at the bedside with a tray, and in the bed, propped against pillows and looking considerably smaller than I imagined he would was....
Liam's father.
He was thinner than his appearance a week ago. The illness had taken something from him ... the breadth of his shoulders, the heaviness of his presence — but his eyes, when they lifted from the food tray, were sharp and dark and completely alert.
They moved across Andrea. Moved across Liam. And then they found me.
And something happened in them that I didn't expect.
They warmed.
He raised one hand — slowly, with some effort and waved the nurse gently to the side. The nurse stepped back. The tray was lowered.
And then he stretched his arm out toward me.
"Elena," he said. His voice was rough around the edges but the name came out soft. Like he had been holding it carefully. "My beautiful child. Come here."
The room went very still.
I stood there and I could not move. Not because I didn't want to but because nothing in my body was cooperating with any instruction my brain was trying to send.
This man had rejected me.
I remembered it with perfect clarity — the first time Liam had brought me to meet him, the way this man's eyes had moved over me with a cold, measuring assessment and found me lacking. He had not smiled. He had not stretched out his hand. He had said nothing that could be called a welcome and everything that could be called a dismissal.
And now he was looking at me like I was something he had been waiting for.
Like I was someone he was relieved to see.
His hand was still extended. Open. Patient. Like he had all the time in the world and was prepared to wait until I was ready.
I looked at Liam.
Liam's face was unreadable. But his eyes, his eyes were watching me with something quiet and careful in them.
I looked back at the man in the bed.
Slowly, I lifted my hand and pointed at myself.
"Me?" I asked disbelievingly.
His face broke into a smile. Full and tired and completely genuine.
"Yes," he said softly. "You."
- Writer
