Dani reaches up and brushes a tear off her cheek.
“I loved him,” I meekly say in Jack’s defense. And I did.
“We know you did, babe. No one here thinks differently,” Maddi speaks first and the others nod in agreement.
I take a huge breath. Then another. Then I speak again. “That night, with Liam, I felt the earth move.”
Stella snorts when Dani gags and just like that, the heavy mood is lifted.
“Go on,” Maddi encourages.
“The way he touched me. The way that felt. The way he felt. All of him. His strong body covering mine made me feel delicate . . . fragile. And the way he talked to me, my God the way his words alone worked me up should be illegal.”
“Okay, so Lee is good in bed, can we please move on!?” Dani snaps.
“Figured he would be,” Stella laughs and sticks her tongue out when Dani huffs.
“So then what happened?”
I look over at Maddi and smile. “Paintball happened.”
She gives me a look, not following. Stella gives a ‘huh’ and Dani oddly smiles all wonky.
“Did you say, paintball?” Stella questions.
I smile, mine feeling just as wonky as Dani’s is.
“Well, I guess the bar night happened first. He showed up and laid it out that he was done with me avoiding him—which I had done since that night—and thus began the annoying persistence.”
My smile, which had started out smallish on the wonky scale, was full out cheek hurting now.
“The next day he had told me he would be around my house at noon. I, of course, made it my mission to be gone. He tracked me down at Target an hour before noon and, well . . . then paintball.”
Maddi tilts her head. “Paintball?”
“It was the most fun I had had in years, Maddi. It’s like Liam knew just what I needed. The rush, that feeling of adrenaline tipping over until you’re so full of it that you might explode, it was incredible.”
“All right, so paintball,” Stella stammers. “So weird.”
“Then what happened?” Dani says a little too excited.
My cheek-burning smile slips. Then Dani’s follows.
“Then I proceeded to flip out after he brought me home. Well, after Nate had brought Molly home.”
Dani’s shoulders drop. “I know, I told you I was sorry about that, but you try fighting off a man over a foot taller than you when he locks you in your son’s bedroom and yells through the door that he’s taking the cutest girl in the world on a date. I swear, he kidnapped her right from my house.” She crosses her arms over her chest and leans back in a huff.
She had explained to me earlier in the week that her ‘time out’ had been more like Nate imposed jail time while he stole my kid. I can’t be mad about it. I know Molly is safe with him and he took her carseat out of Dani’s car so that she would be safe in his truck.
I give her a smile, “It’s okay, really. Molly loves Nate and honestly it was the best thing that could have happened.”
“Now explain that!” Stella gasps.
With my eyes never leaving Dani’s so that she knows I mean what I’m saying, I continue. “Seeing Molly, so innocent and happy while playing around with Liam and Nate, I realized that by keeping myself closed off from everyone, that I was keeping her locked away from those relationships too. I was, in a sense, keeping her in that limbo I was in. Long story short, she brought it all to light while two grown men acted like my house was a wrestling mat. It was time for me to move on. So, yeah . . . I broke down and Liam found me losing my mind on my bathroom floor. He wouldn’t give up either. I may have come to the self-realization that I was teaching my daughter to fear life, but he hammered the nail home when he helped me see she was breaking free no matter how hard I held her back. I was just too far in my head to see it.”
They don’t speak but I can tell the room had lost all traces of earlier hopefulness. It dawns on me, in that moment, that they haven’t just wanted me to hook up with Liam, they really want me with him. They’ve been rooting for us long before they let on to it.
“It’s okay,” I tell them. “I’m okay.”
“Sorry, babe, but all that doesn’t really give me the reassurance that you’re okay. We worry about you,” Dani states.
“I really am, Dani. It hurt, God it hurt, but it needed to happen. Things got a little heated between us, and not in the good kind of heated. I said some things I didn’t mean and he once again was all Liam. Fully honest and didn’t hold back. He gave me the words I needed to help me take the final step.”
Dani’s brows curl in, her beautiful face turning from worried to confused. “Final step to what?”
I hear Liam’s parting words filter through my mind and with a smile I tell them, “Grab the rope.”
AFTER THE HEAVINESS OF OUR conversation earlier, the girls all agree that we need to lighten things up. Mainly, Dani decides that we need to have some time to just relax and laugh.