Chapter 103: You Hurt Me, Brother.
Darren spotted Liam’s car the second he turned onto the street, parked at an angle near the entrance that told him exactly how long Liam had been waiting. No point wondering how long. Liam waited as long as it took.
He didn’t think about the card. It hadn’t crossed his mind once since he’d left it on the counter that morning—not out of carelessness, just because it wasn’t the kind of thing that occupied real estate in his head unless something forced it there. Either way, it didn’t matter. He’d planned on telling Liam about it the second he saw him. No reason to hide it.
He parked, grabbed the grocery bags, and headed for the stairs. He made it about halfway up before Rachel appeared, stepping out from her floor at exactly the wrong moment, like she’d been listening for his car.
“Darren! Hey.” She smiled, the kind of smile that was aimed somewhere past him. “Is Liam around? I thought I saw his car.”
Darren shifted the bags in his arms. “Might be. Haven’t gone up yet.”
“Oh.” A pause, too casual to be casual. “Is he staying long? Or—”
“Not sure. Just got here, Rachel.”
“Right, right.” She laughed lightly, but her eyes kept drifting toward the stairwell behind him, like she expected Liam to materialize out of it. “Just curious. You know how it is.”
“Yeah.” Darren didn’t know how it was, but he wasn’t about to say that either.
The conversation limped along for another minute—nothing, really, just Rachel fishing without a hook and Darren declining to bite. He knew exactly what she was, knew what she’d done to a man twice her age during a divorce that hadn’t been kind to either of them. Whatever was going on with her and Liam, Darren wasn’t going to be the one feeding her information, not without knowing if Liam even wanted her to have it.
“Well,” Rachel said finally, “tell him I said hi.”
“Will do.”
She disappeared back into her apartment, and Darren let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. At least now he knew Liam hadn’t gone to see her first. He’d come straight here.
Which meant he’d been sitting in that apartment for a while.
Darren climbed the last flight, shifted the bags to one arm, and unlocked the door.
The moment the key turned, he braced himself—half expecting Liam to jump out with some ridiculous prank, the kind of nonsense that had defined most of their friendship since college. Instead, he stepped into the living room and found Liam sitting on the couch, arms crossed, expression flat and unreadable.
Like a disappointed father waiting up past curfew.
“…You good?” Darren asked, setting the bags down slowly.
“You tell me.”
Liam reached forward and dropped the card onto the coffee table between them.
Darren looked at it, then at Liam, then let out a long sigh before shaking his head and laughing. “Is that why you’re sitting there looking like you’re about to ground me?”
Liam tried to hold the expression. He really did. But it cracked almost instantly, and within seconds he was laughing too, the sternness collapsing under its own weight.
“I was trying to be serious,” Liam said.
“You were trying to be my dad.”
“I was trying to be a concerned friend.”
“Same difference, apparently.”
Liam shook his head, still chuckling. At the end of the day, there wasn’t much room for anger here. Darren was a grown man. Whatever decisions he made were his to make, and Liam trusted him too much to assume he’d walk into something stupid with his eyes closed.
“Alright,” Liam said, leaning back. “Tell me about your day before I saw this thing. Heard you had a spar.”
Darren’s face lit up. “Went against Toyes. Won.”
Liam raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t fought in what, over a year?”
“Give or take.”
“And you still took him?”
“Barely,” Darren admitted, grinning. “But a win’s a win.”
“That’s actually impressive.”
“I mean,” Darren said, shrugging like it was obvious, “it’s in the genes.”
Liam blinked. “Is that a race joke?”
“Yes,” Darren said without hesitation. “Yes, it is.”
They both broke into laughter, the kind that came easy after a day that had started tense and was ending nowhere near where it began.
Darren nodded toward the grocery bags. “You hungry? I got stuff.”
“I’d rather starve than eat anything that comes out of your kitchen.”
Darren flipped him off without missing a beat, still laughing. “Rude.”
“Accurate.”
“You’re buying dinner then.”
“Obviously.”
The conversation drifted easy from there, light in a way it hadn’t been minutes earlier. Eventually Darren circled back to the card, filling Liam in on the man eho gave him the card, the vague company, the website that gave up nothing.
“Yeah,” Liam said, turning the card over again. “It’s shady. No question.”
“I figured.”
“So what’s the plan?”
Darren shrugged. “Take a look, see what they actually want. Not signing anything blind.”
“Good. But if they do send you a contract—” Liam pointed at him. “You send me a copy first. Before you sign anything. I mean it.”
“Yes, boss,” Darren said, mock-saluting.
“I’m serious, Darren.”
“I know you are.” Darren gave him a thumbs up. “That’s good. That’s good, actually. Appreciate you looking out.”
Liam nodded, set the card down, and reached for the TV remote like the entire conversation had never carried any weight at all.
–
Vanessa stared at the same paragraph of the contract for the fourth time without absorbing a single word of it.
“Hey.” A voice broke through, and she blinked up to find Melissa from the adjacent office leaning into the doorway. “You okay? You’ve been staring at that page forever.”
“Hm? Yeah.” Vanessa straightened, forcing her expression into something neutral. “Just tired.”
Melissa studied her for a second too long. “You sure? You seem kind of out of it today.”
Vanessa shrugged, reaching for the easiest explanation available. “Maybe it’s that time of the month. Hormones being hormones.”
“Ah.” Melissa’s face shifted into immediate understanding, the universal solidarity of women who’d been there. She glanced around the office instinctively, lowering her voice. “Do you want to head home? I can cover if anyone asks.”
“No, no, I’m fine. Really.” Vanessa waved a hand. “Just a little spaced out. I’ll shake it off.”
Melissa hesitated, clearly wanting to press further, but something in Vanessa’s tone made her back off instead. “Okay. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Thanks.”
Melissa retreated, and Vanessa exhaled slowly once she was alone again, grateful the excuse had landed without further interrogation. The truth wasn’t something she was prepared to say out loud to anyone, least of all a coworker who’d turn it into office gossip by lunch.
He canceled on her.
Liam had canceled on her.
She’d replayed the phone call four times already, dissecting his tone for cracks, and every time she came up with nothing solid enough to hold onto. Parents in town. Sudden and unavoidable.
A perfectly reasonable excuse, delivered in a perfectly reasonable voice.
And yet.
This had never happened to her before. Not once. Men didn’t cancel on Vanessa—she was the one who set the terms, who decided when interest cooled, who walked away first when a thing had run its course. She’d built her entire adult life around that dynamic without ever consciously deciding to.
Now she was on the other side of it, and it sat wrong in her chest in a way she didn’t have a name for.
It wasn’t heartbreak. She refused to call it that. It was something smaller, meaner, more embarrassing—her ego, bruised in a place she hadn’t known was vulnerable until right now, sitting in her office, staring at a contract she couldn’t focus on, wondering why a canceled dinner was doing this much damage to a woman who never let anything get this far under her skin.