Chapter 62: Confession.
Dinner wound down somewhere around the second dessert they hadn’t ordered but the waiter brought anyway, compliments of the house, after Liam had quietly mentioned something to him on the way back from the restroom.
By the time they stood from the table, Sophia was laughing at something Liam had said about the dessert being "diplomatically free, which means I’m legally obligated to enjoy it twice as much."
"That’s not how diplomacy works."
"It’s exactly how diplomacy works. Free things require enthusiasm. It’s the unwritten rule."
"You made that up just now."
"I make a lot of things up. Most of them hold to be honest."
They walked out through the dining room with Sophia still laughing under her breath, one hand resting lightly at his arm, the night settling into the kind of easy rhythm that doesn’t need to be managed anymore because it’s already found its own pace.
[Ding!]
[Transaction Recorded]
[Target: Sophia Reyes (Mid-Tier MILF)]
[Investment: $640 (Five-course dinner + premium wine pairing + sustained emotional connection)]
[Base Value: $4,920]
[300% Beginner Bonus Applied]
[Rebate Received: $14,760]
Liam felt it land as they crossed the lobby — the quiet confirmation arriving in the corner of his vision, easy to ignore now in a way it hadn’t been a few days ago. He didn’t check the number. He already knew roughly where it would sit.
The valet brought the car around and Liam opened her door before the attendant could reach it.
He had thought about tonight differently on the drive over. There had been a version of this evening where dinner ended with both of them back at his apartment, the night extending past any reasonable hour. He’d entertained it. It wasn’t an unreasonable plan given how things had gone since the gym.
But somewhere between the gym and the second dessert, the plan had quietly revised itself.
He thought about Mateo. About the apartment with two bedrooms and a sixteen-year-old who needed someone home eventually, regardless of how good the night out had been. He thought about the car ride earlier — Sophia’s unusual silence, the way she’d gone still rather than sharp when he’d pushed even slightly. That wasn’t a woman ready to be rushed. That was a woman still adjusting to liking someone, which required a different kind of patience than the kind he’d extended to Rachel.
He closed her door and walked around to his side.
The drive back was nothing like the drive there.
Sophia talked the entire way — about the food, about the view, about a couple at the next table who’d clearly been on a first date and had visibly run out of things to say by the main course.
"Did you see them?" she said. "Complete silence. Just chewing and looking at their phones."
"I saw them. It was tragic. Our parents were right, it is the damn phone."
"We were never that quiet."
"We were quiet for about four minutes on the way there."
Sophia’s expression shifted slightly, the memory catching up with her. "That was different."
"Was it?"
She looked out the window for a second, then back at him. "I owe you an apology, actually. For earlier. I got weird in the car."
"You didn’t get weird, you’re always weird."
"I got weird, Liam. I went quiet and then I couldn’t even handle a penny-for-your-thoughts joke." She shook her head at herself. "It’s not like me."
"You don’t need to apologise for that."
"I want to anyway."
"Then I accept it," he said. "Generously with grace."
She laughed, and the last bit of residual tension in her shoulders finally let go.
He pulled up outside her building and put the car in park.
She didn’t reach for the door.
She sat there instead, hands in her lap, looking somewhere between him and the dashboard, and Liam recognised the shape of the moment immediately. This was the part of the night neither of them had explicitly planned for, sitting quietly in a parked car outside an apartment with a teenager somewhere inside it and an entire evening’s worth of unspoken momentum sitting between them.
He decided not to wait her out.
"I’m not going to pretend there isn’t chemistry between us," Liam said. "There clearly is. And I won’t lie to you — I’m incredibly attracted to you. Have been since the gym, if I’m being honest about the timeline."
Sophia turned to look at him fully.
"But it’s not just physical," he continued. "I like you. The actual you — the one who modelled fifteen outfits because she was having fun, not the one putting on a show. The one who laughed at my jokes about diplomatic dessert like it was the funniest thing she’d heard all week even though it wasn’t."
"It was a little funny but I’m glad you know you aren’t that funny."
"It was mediocre and you know it, not my best work."
She smiled but didn’t argue further.
"I like you enough," Liam said, "to wait until you’re actually ready to take that step. I’m not in a hurry."
Sophia sat with that for a moment, the directness of it settling somewhere she hadn’t expected it to land. She’d braced, somewhere in the back of her mind, for the opposite — for a man this confident to push, to angle, to find some smooth way of getting himself upstairs or her into his car for one more stop before home. Instead he’d just said the true thing plainly and left it there, undefended, asking nothing in return.
"That’s—" She stopped, recalibrating. "That’s a very blunt thing to say."
"I find it works better than the alternative."
"Most men aren’t that honest."
"Most men aren’t me, I’m Liam, the rich man in disguise! I have no use for such parlor tricks!" Liam gestured dramatically.
She laughed quietly, shaking her head, and when she looked at him again something had shifted behind her eyes — softer, more certain.
"It’s mutual. I do like you and it is also not just physical," she said.
Liam reached over slowly, his hand finding the side of her face, fingers settling against her jaw with no urgency behind the movement at all. She didn’t pull back. She leaned in, just slightly, meeting him halfway, and the kiss that followed was serene, their tongue dancing with one another, the kind of kiss that comes from two people who have already decided there’s no reason to rush anything else tonight but that make out session was nasty.