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At the last leg of the carpet, a very little boy at the front asked about the cane. Even though Liam had given this answer at least thirty times since that first crew had asked, he stopped in front of the boy and shifted his weight to the good leg so he could pinch the pants leg and lift it, showing the expanse of white tape poking up above his sock. “I fell down when I was running.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Oh, it hurts, but I wanted to come and have fun here tonight with everyone. Plus, they gave me a cane to use and it’s got a sword in it.” He pulled the handle up to give the boy a peek of the blade. “I couldn’t pass up a chance to use a sword cane.”
And he actually had been using the cane, and not just as a cool prop. Why he’d ever been upset to begin with still didn’t compute with her.
There was some gasping over the awesome sword cane, the boy lifting his own pants leg to show Liam his bandaged knee.
As much as she wanted to usher him right off into the theater and make him sit, make him take the weight off it, there was no way she’d interrupt wound comparisons and “I fell too” stories.
By the time she thought her face would split from smiling, the little guy’s mother opened her bag and after some digging produced and unwrapped a colorful bandage.
She watched as Liam lifted his cuff and the little boy crawled beneath the velvet rope to pull Liam’s sock down and place the bandage right over the bump of his taped ankle, a cartoon character bandage in an expanse of white tape.
Her heart squeezed as she watched. He might complain about how crowds drained him, but he loved it too. He was so sweet to the boy she had to look away briefly to banish sappy tears.
He fought to be at all these events, and it wasn’t just because he wanted his career to continue being wildly successful—although, of course, that had to factor in. It was something more.
He posed for pictures with the boy this time, and their matching bandages, then made it the last few steps into the theater.
“Let’s find where we’re sitting. I need to sit.”
“Of course you do. It still took forty-five minutes to make it into the building.”
“And that was fast, Grace. I’ve spent two hours out there before.” He leaned on the cane heavily and gestured for an usher. Soon they were being led to a small balcony to sit down. “Will we have people here with us?”
He nodded and then proceeded to name names—all of which she’d heard before, and none of whom she’d met.
Before they got there, she leaned forward in her seat to look at his leg. The tape looked tight but not tight enough to cut off circulation. She pulled the sock up for him, and set it all to rights. “Will there be any empty seats?”
He did a quick seat count and then shook his head. “Probably not.”
“Can we get a footstool brought up?”
“Oh, that we might be able to do,” he said, and then looked at her long enough to demand her attention. “You’re always concerned about my leg and pain level.”
“Of course I am.”
“Because you know how it is to have an injury?”
There was an edge to his voice, prompting her to make eye contact again in the low light of the theater.
“I’d like to think that I’d still care without that painful time in my past.”
“How did you get hurt?” He didn’t sound angry, as he had in the hotel, but there was more emotion in his voice than she’d expect from someone who’d stayed away so effectively. And who hadn’t felt the same way about her as she’d felt about him.
Even if she’d avoided asking about Liam, she’d always thought he’d probably still kept up with her through Nick. Nick was a talker, and he had spent a lot of time in the hospital with her while she’d recovered. “Nick really didn’t tell you about my accident? I thought you two told one another everything.”
“No. He never did. Which is pretty weird...”
Yes. Weird. Unless Nick knew about them. “I had a motorcycle accident when I was nineteen.”
“I never heard about you having a motorcycle either.”
“I didn’t. My boyfriend at the time... It was his motorcycle. After that, I had a lot of rehab. But it pretty much scratched professional swimmer off my career list. So I’m doing the next best thing.”
He made some sound of affirmation, but it didn’t sound settled.
Liam leaving had made her reckless, always seeking out the bad boy. That particular bad boy had made her go to the other extreme. Which made this premiere business so out of character for her that it could’ve been a joke. If someone had said to her last week that she’d be glittering from head to toe at a New York City premiere she’d have definitely thought it was some kind of joke where her dullness was the punch line. Because her life had been dull, probably. Other people would find the clientele exciting, and sometimes she did, but it was hard to be impressed by celebrities when she’d known Liam as long as she had. He was a real person, and that made them all too real and flawed as well.
Maybe they were all wounded too. Maybe it took that kind of hurt to get someone from talented to artist.
“I’m going to go find the usher,” she said, mostly because she didn’t know what else to say. “See if we can get that footstool.”
Before her musings moved onto lamentations of what she couldn’t have.
* * *
“The movie was good,” Grace said, shifting in the back seat of the limo, not sure of where or even how to sit now that their charade of a date was over. “You were good. Not that I expected anything different. But all those period costumes, I loved it. It felt like a real story. Not just all the flash-bang stuff that goes on in your action movies.”
For the entire evening she’d been pretty much plastered to Liam’s side, and now, sitting with space around her, she felt cold. And lonely. Making useless small talk also felt awkward.
“Grace Watson, are you saying you don’t like my action movies?” Unlike earlier, Liam had taken a spot up by the door, his legs stretched out in front of him.
“Still playful, that’s good. I guess your ankle isn’t hurting as much as last night?”
“You did not answer the question but you’re correct, it’s not hurting as badly as last night.”
She crossed her arms and lifted her brows, giving him her best told-you-so expression.
Liam crossed his arms in response. “You want me to say it?”
“I do. It’s a personal failing, I know, but yes. Yes, I want you to say it.” She knew she looked smug, that was the whole point of the told-you-so expression.
“You were right. I should have listened to you all along, but then I would never have gotten to have the prettiest date tonight.”
She snorted. The first couple of times he’d said it she’d been too dazed to really process the words.
“You know, the more you say it, the less I believe it.” They passed a building she hadn’t seen on the way to the theater and she stopped to get a good look at the direction in which they were traveling. “This isn’t the way to the hotel. Are we going to the airport or something?”
“No, we’re going to dinner.”
“You want me to be right some more? You need that thing up and iced—it’s been hours.”
“I need to eat too if I’m going