Friend Zone Series Box Set Read online

  I kept my eyes squeezed shut. Just a few more minutes. Maybe it was the headache, maybe it’s because I didn’t want to see him feeling sorry for me, but mostly it was not wanting to stare at him like a psycho.

  “I wasn’t kidding when I said I was a jerk,” he said. “You wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for me. I can’t say I’m sorry enough, but I can help you. You can stay here with me.”

  At that, I cracked open an eye. He’d taken everything out and had begun putting things away. “You can’t be serious.”

  He leveled me with a look that clearly said how stupid he thought that statement was. “Of course I’m serious. If it makes you feel more comfortable, we can put a time limit on it. However long you think it would take you to save up money for first and last for a new apartment. If you can forgive me that is. Even if you can’t, you can stay here as long as you need to and I’ll keep my distance, I swear.”

  It was the way he held himself apart that broke me. This is Liam. I knew he meant what he said. If I wanted to use his generosity to stay here and not talk to him again he’d let me. Because that’s just who he was. I pushed off the wall and crossed to the kitchen where I wrapped my arms around him. “I forgive you. Please don’t blame yourself anymore.” I was aware of his bare skin beneath my cheek, the thump of his heart in my ear, but I tried to focus on him, on not fucking things up more than they already were. “I’m sorry for being pissed off. It was just too much.”

  His arms came around me and I felt his sigh of relief. “You don’t ever have to apologize to me, Char. It was my fuck up. Just tell me we’re okay.”

  “We’re okay.” I felt such relief in his arms that I knew I made the right decision. I could never stay mad at Liam for long anyway and I knew he’d never do anything like that intentionally. “I really don’t want to put you out any more than I already have, but I have nowhere else to go right now.”

  “You aren’t putting me out. I’m offering. Understand?” When I didn’t answer right away he tipped my chin up with a finger and prompted, “The correct answer is ‘yes, Liam’.”

  I tucked myself back against his skin. Just one more minute. “Are you so demanding and obnoxious with everyone or am I just lucky?”

  I felt him smile against my hair as he leaned down and pulled me closer. “I save it all up just for you. Besides, you’re not the only one in dire straits. My manager at the bar wasn’t too thrilled with me this weekend. I got fired.”

  “What?!” I screeched. “Liam, no. You can’t be serious.”

  “Don’t worry, shortstack. Jobs like those are a dime a dozen, but it’ll help me out to have you here for a bit while I look for another.”

  I pulled back to frown at him. “Well now I feel like a little shit for being upset yesterday. You have every right to be mad at me, too.”

  He shrugged and moved away to open the fridge for a beer. “Why don’t we just call it even? You can have the spare room, we can split everything else and maybe we’ll both get what we need. You get your overseas thing and I don’t have to spend any of my college fund for vet school.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry, I plan on putting you to work.” He threw himself on the couch and turned on the TV. “Cooking, cleaning. The usual.”

  Laughter bubbled out of me until he didn’t join in. “What? Wait, are you serious?”

  “Of course not. We’ll split the rent and bills. Don’t be a slob and we’ll be fine. It’s not like it’s forever, Charlie.”

  Too exhausted to think of an alternative, I plopped down on the couch beside him and propped my head on a pillow against his thigh as he flipped through shows on Netflix and sipped his beer. After selecting one, he began sifting his fingers through my hair until I purred in the back of my throat.

  “That feels good,” I said sleepily.

  “Just relax for a while. Everything will work out.”

  Maybe everything had worked out for the best. It wouldn’t be a good idea to act on my attraction to Liam now, not when we would have to spend the next few months together. If one of us caught hard feelings and things ended badly, I’d be forced to move again and I’d have to sacrifice the volunteer opportunity.

  Not only that, but I’d risk my friendship with Liam. It might survive a failed relationship, but it’d certainly never be the same. I already worried it was fundamentally different because of one kiss. After almost losing him because of this crap with Andrew, I knew just how much it could hurt me and I knew first hand relationships weren’t worth the risk. My own mother taught me that well enough. What I had with Liam was so much stronger…so much more important.

  As he played with my hair and I drifted in and out to the sounds of Criminal Minds, it was almost impossible to ignore how much I enjoyed him touching me, but I’d have to get used to being this close to him…and doing nothing about it.

  If we were going to live together, anything more than just friends would have to be off limits.

  Chapter Eleven

  Liam

  There was something that looked suspiciously like breakfast waiting in a covered dish on the island.

  This was impossible for three reasons:

  1. I didn’t have anything resembling cookware in my house (and probably hadn’t since I’d moved in two years ago).

  2. I wasn’t sure anyone my age actually knew how to make food that didn’t require a microwave.

  3. The last time Charlie cooked something, we both wound up with food poisoning.

  It wasn’t until I spotted the takeout containers in the trash that I deemed the biscuits and gravy safe to eat and tossed them in the microwave to heat up as I got dressed. I didn’t have class until eleven, but I liked to get up a couple hours early to hit the gym for a quick workout beforehand. I wolfed down the biscuits and gravy and shot off a quick text to thank Charlie for the food. I felt a twinge of guilt that she not only stocked the cabinets and fridge the day before, but that she’d sprung for breakfast as well.

  I hadn’t been kidding when I asked her to move in. I’d been prepared to beg. Not only had I gotten fired from the bar, but bills were coming due and I’d been surviving on canned soup for longer than I’d cared to admit. This weekend at my parents was the first time I’d had anything home cooked since Christmas.

  I could have asked my parents for help, but there was no way in hell I wanted to hear my dad bitch about how much money I was wasting living in a different city going after a useless education when I should have been helping him. The guilt and shame of having the gall to go to school when they were struggling was already overwhelming.

  My phone rang as I jogged to my truck. I answered it, breathing heavily. “Hello?”

  “Willy, you forgot your good jacket at the house. You’re gonna have to turn around and come pick it up so you don’t catch a chill,” came Grandma Dorothy’s voice through the crackling line. She must be on the house phone. It had a lot of static on the connection. My parents didn’t want to get rid of it because Grandma Dorothy liked to call her friends when she was of a mind to.

  “Hey Grandma, it’s Liam.”

  “Liam?” she asked, her voice breaking in the middle of my name in a way that made me stop before I unlocked my truck and lean my head against the window. She’d always been the strongest person I’d ever known and to watch her deteriorate before my eyes was worse than if she’d been taken without warning like my grandfather had.

  I swallowed back the choked feeling in my throat and told myself to stop being such a fucking pussy. “Yeah, Grandma, it’s me. How are you doing?”

  There was a lengthy pause as she sorted through the labyrinth her mind had become, but I was patient. Even though I’d been in a hurry to get to the gym, everything had ground to a halt when she called. If I’d learned nothing else from being friends with Charlie, it was that each moment with your loved ones was precious, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I was gonna miss out on any of them.

  “I’m
doing fine, sugar. You should come by and see your grandma sometime. I sure do miss you.”

  I didn’t remind her that she’d seen me just a couple days ago, but it still stung like a son-of-a-bitch that she didn’t remember because I knew there’d come a day when she wouldn’t remember me at all.

  “I’ll try to come up this weekend when school lets out. I promise.”

  She made a humming sound that was as much a part of my childhood as the taste of her sugar cookies. I urged myself to hold it together as she said, “How’s school, honey? Are the other kids playing nice?”

  Laughter burst free, but I choked it. I rubbed at my eyes. “It’s going pretty well. Passing all my classes and the other kids are treating me just fine.”

  “Good. That’s good to hear. You’d tell me if someone was bullying you, right? I won’t have none of that nonsense with my grandson. You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said obediently. I was reminded of all the times she’d been forced to discipline me for one harebrained scheme or another I’d concocted while under her care. For such a small woman, she should could sure as hell be intimidating, even though I towered over her, both then and now.

  “I’m glad you brought that Charlie over. I’ve been thinking about her. She seemed upset, though. Is everything okay?”

  I thought of Andrew and considered, not for the first time, what I’d like to do to his ass if I saw him again. “She and her boyfriend broke up, so she’s having a bit of a rough time.”

  Grandma hummed again. “That poor girl. I’m glad you brought her by, then. People need to be around family when they’re hurting, and I’ve always considered Charlie to be part of our family.”

  “She feels the same way,” I said.

  “Alright now, I think it’s about time I put on my stories. You call me tomorrow, okay, honey?” For as long as I can remember, Grandma Dorothy could be found watching her soap operas from morning to afternoon. It was good that some things hadn’t changed. Yet. “Here’s your mom, she’d like to talk to you.”

  “Okay, Grandma. I love you.” I used to feel awkward saying it. My whole family loved to say “I love you”. It didn’t matter the reason or occasion. There was always a chorus of them when we got together. I didn’t get it until the day I visited Grandma in the hospital for the first time and realized she might never hear me say it again. Ever since then, I’ve made it a point to say it every chance I got.

  “Love you, baby doll. I’ll talk at you later.”

  “Later,” I said with a laugh.

  “Liam?” Mom said as she fumbled with the phone.

  “Hey, Mom, what’s up?” It had to be important if she was calling the day after I saw her.

  “Sorry about that, honey. Your grandma hasn’t been feeling well lately and she’s been antsy all night wanting to talk to you.”

  “That’s alright, mom. You don’t have to apologize. I wish I could help out more, but I couldn’t miss anymore classes this semester.”

  “Don’t you think on that for a minute. We were glad to see you. I was going to talk to you about everything this weekend, but Charlie seemed upset and I didn’t want to intrude.”

  My stomach dropped. “What is it?”

  “Your father mentioned he told you about the plan to sell the land?”

  “Yeah, he did. I hated to hear that, mom. I wish there was something we could do.”

  “Well, there was a reason why.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Grandma Dorothy, honey. Her doctors tell us she’s in a rapid decline. She needs to be hospitalized soon, for her health and safety. We do our best, but she needs more care than we can provide at home. It’s one of the reasons we’re selling. It’s the only way we’d be able to afford for her care.”

  Guilt twisted at my heart. “Are they sure?”

  Mom sighed over the line. “They’re sure. I just wanted to let you know. Your dad was going to tell you, too, but it’s been really hard on him. He may seem hard, but he has a big heart.”

  “Thank you for letting me know. Keep me updated, okay?”

  “Of course. You call me if you need anything, won’t you?”

  I managed to say goodbye before I lost it.

  * * *

  “You look worse than I did yesterday,” Charlie said as soon as I stepped in the door.

  I grunted in answer and dropped my bag of school shit by the front door and toed off my shoes, leaving them by my bag. After a brutal morning at the gym where I tried to erase the conversation with Mom from my brain and an even longer afternoon of classes I was beat. None of the applications I’d submitted the night before had returned any results and I had another stack of overdue notices crammed in along with my textbooks and dirty gym socks.

  “Well, hello to you, too,” I said.

  “Everything okay?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, sure.”

  “I ordered pizza,” she said with false cheerfulness.

  At her hollow tone, I grimaced. I was being a dick. “Charlie…”

  “I got you the cheese and mushroom you like,” she interrupted.

  “You don’t have to take care of me, Charlie. Breakfast and now pizza. You don’t have to be weird about living here.”

  “I’m not being weird. I’m trying to be nice,” she said as she pulled out paper plates. The scent of cheese and tomato sauce filled the air, reminding me I’d stupidly skipping lunch after the gym. Well, skipped is a strong word. Didn’t have the money for would be more accurate.

  “Didn’t we already have a conversation about being nice?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Let’s not go there.”

  “Sorry. It’s just…it hasn’t been a very good day.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. That was the understatement of the year.

  Charlie loaded up the plate with a gargantuan sized pizza from Momo’s, a local legend for pizza slices bigger than your head. “Well, I’m here and I have ears if you want to tell me what’s got you looking like you’re going to incinerate innocent civilians with your eyesight.”

  I tore into the pizza still standing and said, “I’m never letting you watch X-men again.”

  She took a bite of her own, licked the sauce off her lip. I cursed myself for the thin athletic shorts I was wearing and casually slid onto a stool at the island so she couldn’t see the outline of my dick through them.

  “Seriously, though. What’s wrong?”

  “Mom called me today.”

  Charlie set the pizza on a paper plate. “What is it?”

  She’d gone completely white. “Shit, Char. This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Is it your parents? Grandma Dorothy?”

  The knot in my stomach hadn’t dulled with an hour in the gym. It intensified under Charlie’s agonized expression. I swallowed a bite of pizza, but it was a struggle. “Grandma isn’t doing so hot. They have to put her in a home. It’s why they’re selling.”

  “God, Liam, I’m so sorry.

  I stood, suddenly unable to sit here with her soft brown eyes looking up at me. It made me want to hold her, comfort her. Those things were alright before, but hell if I understood why they made me so damn irritable now. I couldn’t deal with any of it. I didn’t want to. “I’m gonna grab us a six pack to go with this pizza.”

  She took a step back, dropped her hands When she spoke, her voice was tentative and I immediately felt like a dick. “That sounds great. We can have another movie night and veg out, okay?”

  “I’ll be right back,” I told her.

  The short run to the convenience store down the road allowed me to put a lid on my bullshit. She had enough on her plate without dealing with me. I’d find another job and she’d go off to wherever and things would get back to normal. They had to. By the time I got back to the duplex, I had that lid screwed on so tight I practically vibrated with it. Sitting next to her on the couch was like torture.

  “Thanks for the pizza,” I told her after the movie, getting to my
feet almost before the credits rolled. “Even if you’re still fucking weird for not liking mushrooms.”

  She pulled a face as she picked up our empty bottles and rinsed them. “They’re so gross. I still don’t see how you eat them.”

  I licked my lips. “Mmm-mmm, good,” I said.

  She laughed and slapped at my shoulder. “Do you mind if I take the first shower? It’s been kind of a long day.”

  “No, go right ahead. I’ve got some studying to do anyway.”

  With a nod and a small smile, she turned around, then paused and turned back. “I’m here if you need me, Liam.”

  I lifted a shoulder. “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious. You were there for me. I want to be there for you, too,” she said.

  “You don’t owe me anything, Charlie.”

  “Of course I do,” she said, then disappeared into the bathroom.

  I heard the shower turn on a minute later, and I took my books into my room, turning on the light beside my bed before throwing myself onto the mattress. Five minutes turned into ten, and I realized I couldn’t remember a word of what I’d read. I shrugged my shoulders, figuring it was because I wasn’t used to having someone else in the house. After nearly four years of living by myself, I’d kind of gotten used to it, even though I’d spent most of my life crammed in a house with my sisters.

  The truth was, I’d never had a woman stay the night at my place before.

  Charlie would hang out, but sleepovers had never been our thing.

  Now I realized why.

  I slammed the book closed, tossed it on the floor, and relaxed back onto my pillows. I couldn’t seem to focus, couldn’t get rid of the tension in my shoulders. It was probably because of my parents and bills.

  As my thoughts drifted, I found them going to the shower, to Charlie. For a second, it occurred to me that she was naked in the house with me. I stumbled to my feet and stubbed my toe on the book. I muttered curses and kicked the book across the room. Limping, I turned in a circle and considered going back to the gym for another workout, then rejected the idea.