Chapter 133: Blast From The Past!?
Liam pulled into the hotel lot with Mateo still half-asleep in the back and Darren looking like he was running on fumes, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up with all three of them in different ways.
They made their way up to the suite, and the second the door opened, Darren beelined straight for the bed without a word, dropping face-first onto the mattress like his body had simply given out.
Darren knew he was past his limit, he wasn’t a teenager anymore with endless amount of energy so this was to be expected.
“…Liam.”
“Yeah?” Liam responded casually.
Darren went still for a second, then sniffed once, twice, his whole body freezing mid-collapse. He sat bolt upright, scrambling backward off the bed like it had personally wronged him.
“What the hell—” He looked down at himself, then back at the sheets, horror creeping across his face. “Is this— did you two—”
“Yeah.” Liam responded casually once again.
“LIAM!” Darren barked right away, the urgency in his voice made this a bigger deal than it was.
“What?” Liam asked once again with a raised brow.
“You didn’t ask them to change the sheets?!” Darren stood a few feet back now, staring at the bed like it might be contagious.
This was one of the few things that should be expected from such a hotel, it should have happened without them even being told unless Liam specifically told them not to.
Liam shrugged, dropping his jacket over a chair. “I like it. Reminds me of a good night.”
“That is disgusting!” Darren wasn’t having it, and in a sense, he was absolutely right.
“It’s sentimental, don’t be a dick.” Liam fired back casually.
“It’s disgusting sentimentality.” Darren yanked his shirt over his head and hurled it at Liam, who caught it against his chest with a laugh. “You’re gross, man. Actually gross.”
“Noted, and you are not?”
“You better change those fucking sheets!” Darren warned him.
Darren shook his head, already retreating toward the bathroom, muttering something about needing to disinfect himself before he could even think about sleeping in that room again. The door shut behind him, and a moment later the shower kicked on.
Meanwhile, Mateo had wandered into the adjoining sitting area, flopping onto the couch in front of the massive TV mounted on the wall, remote already in hand, scrolling through channels with far more energy than either of the two adults currently had left in them. Whatever exhaustion had hit him in the car had apparently evaporated the second he clocked a television bigger than anything he had at home.
Liam watched him for a moment from the doorway, a small, quiet satisfaction settling in his chest.
This wasn’t the life he’d been living a few months ago. Not even close. Back then, a night like this — full stomach, a kid laughing on the couch, Darren cracking jokes from the bathroom, an entire day spent just existing without a single deadline hanging over his head — wouldn’t have been possible. He’d have been buried under case files at that hour, phone buzzing with something from the firm, Sara occupying whatever fraction of attention was left once the work was done.
He thought about that version of himself, and it felt distant now in a way that surprised him. Not gone, exactly — the ambition hadn’t disappeared, the drive to build something bigger than what he’d lost was still very much intact. But it no longer consumed every waking hour the way it used to.
And there was something else, quieter, that struck him standing there.
If he’d still been that version of himself — the one perpetually underwater in work, running on caffeine and momentum — he wouldn’t have caught it. Darren’s decline. The stuff he’d been sitting on, the vulnerability at the coffee shop, the slow unraveling that had been happening under the surface for longer than either of them wanted to admit. He’d have been too buried to notice, too occupied managing Sara and case files and whatever fire needed putting out that week.
He would have missed it entirely.
The thought settled heavy for a second before he shook it off, grateful, in a way he hadn’t fully processed until just now, that things had unraveled the way they had. It had cost him plenty. But it had also handed him this — actual space to see the people around him clearly, to show up when it mattered instead of reading about it secondhand after the fact.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out absently, expecting Sophia, or maybe Darren texting some complaint from the bathroom about the water pressure.
Instead, a name he hadn’t seen in a while sat at the top of the screen.
[Sara.]
He had deleted her phone number but there was no way he didn’t recognize the number.
Liam stared at it for a long moment, thumb hovering over the notification, something unreadable settling behind his expression.
He hadn’t heard from her since everything fell apart. Not a word, not a check-in, nothing — just silence, the same silence that had followed the termination, the humiliation, all of it.
And now, out of nowhere, a message.
From the bathroom, the shower shut off, and a minute later Darren emerged in a towel, looking marginally more human than he had ten minutes ago. He caught the look on Liam’s face immediately.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Liam didn’t answer right away, still staring at the screen.
“Liam.”
“It’s nothing,” Liam said finally, locking the phone and setting it face-down on the counter. “Just an old contact.”
Darren studied him for a second longer, clearly not buying it, but let it go, grabbing a fresh shirt from his bag instead. “Whatever, man. You coming to eat again, or did today’s six-hundred-dollar meal ruin your appetite for the rest of the week?”
“Give me a minute.”
Darren shrugged and wandered off toward Mateo and the TV, leaving Liam alone with the phone still sitting face-down on the counter, the message from Sara unread and waiting.