Chapter 59: Wow.
The apartment felt different when it was just him in it.
Quieter than Sophia’s — no console running in the background, no teenager occupying the sofa with studied indifference. Just the clean lines of his own space and the particular silence of a man with an hour to himself and somewhere to be at the end of it.
Liam stood in the bedroom and thought about Mateo.
Sixteen, edgy by default, built a wall at the door and had it dismantled by nine consecutive deaths in a video game. That was the thing about teenage boys — they were complicated until they weren’t. The armour looked serious from the outside but it was thin, and the things that got through it were never the things you’d plan for. Not charm, not money, not effort. Just a man sitting down next to them without an agenda and being genuinely, embarrassingly bad at something they loved.
He was already halfway there with Mateo.
He opened the wardrobe.
White shirt — the good one, the one with the slightly heavier fabric that sat differently from the rest. He left the first two buttons open at the collar without deliberation, the way people do things they’ve already decided. Charcoal trousers, fitted at the waist, clean break at the ankle. He went to the watch box on the dresser and lifted out the piece he saved for evenings that warranted it — a Cartier Santos, steel and gold, the kind of watch that announced itself to people who knew what they were looking at and said nothing at all to anyone else.
Both, in his experience, were useful in different situations.
He reached for the Creed again. Two sprays, same placement as the morning. He capped the bottle and stepped back to the mirror.
The hair went next. He took his time with it — pulling it back, away from his face, slicked smooth and intentional. It was a different look. More exposed somehow, the jaw more visible, the blue of his eyes sitting differently without the usual framing. He studied it for a moment.
He looked good and he knew it, and he was comfortable enough with that knowledge not to need to say it out loud.
"All ready," he thought, meeting his own reflection briefly.
He picked up his keys.
The drive back to her building took twelve minutes.
He could have messaged her instead. "How about you meet me there" — simple, six words, solved the problem of a twelve-minute round trip he had made less than ninety minutes ago. He was aware this was not the logistically efficient choice.
He also didn’t care.
The kind of man who drops a woman home and texts her to meet him outside when he comes back was a different kind of man, and Liam knew which one he was choosing to be tonight. Sophia wasn’t Rachel. The same approach didn’t apply. Rachel responded to warmth and care and the feeling of being looked after. Sophia had walls up — not hostile, just measured — and the way through them wasn’t just comfort. It was consistency. Showing up when he didn’t have to. Doing the thing that wasn’t required.
He pulled up outside and sent a single message.
"Outside."
Sixty seconds later the building door opened.
Liam got out of the car.
She came down the short path in a grey dress — fitted through the body, unique in the cut, the hemline landing well above the knee in a way that was entirely deliberate. A little cleavage, unhurried. The heels were modest enough to walk in and high enough to matter. She’d done something with her hair that he couldn’t specifically name but which had clearly taken time, and whatever she’d done with the rest of it had taken more.
She looked exceptional.
Liam stood by the passenger door and looked at her and didn’t immediately say anything, because some things deserved the beat of silence before the words arrived.
"Wow," he said.
Sophia reached him and tilted her head. "Just wow?"
"I’m still processing how your figure looks so good under that dress."
"You’ve seen me in your shirt an hour ago."
"This is different."
She looked down at the dress — the one from the bags, clearly, though she hadn’t tried it in the shop. She had picked it off the rack on instinct and it had paid off in a way that the shop’s lighting hadn’t fully previewed.
"Take a picture," she teased. "It’ll last longer."
Liam reached into his pocket, produced his phone, and took one.
He looked at the screen briefly, then back at her. "You’re right," he said simply.
Sophia blinked.
It landed differently than she expected it to — not as the joke she’d set up, which was what she’d prepared for, but as a genuine statement from a man who had looked at the photo and confirmed his own opinion without performance. She had handed him the line as a deflection and he had used it as a compliment, and the gap between those two things was wide enough that she needed a second to find her footing.
She recovered with a look. "You actually took a photo."
"You told me to and I do like taking pictures of beauty,"
"It was a joke, silly!" Sophia giggled.
"You look incredible in that dress." He opened the passenger door. "The photo stays."
Sophia stood at the open door and looked at him for a moment — this man in a white shirt with the top buttons open and a watch that caught the evening light and hair swept back from a face that really had no business being that symmetrical — and made a quiet internal note that she was going to need to be careful tonight otherwise he would find his way right into her pants with how smooth he was. Sophia wanted to hold out a bit if she could.
She got in.
Liam closed the door, walked around to his side, and started the engine.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Somewhere that deserves that dress," he said, and pulled out into the street.
And then it happened, Sophia found her heart beating unusually hard.