Page 28 of The Marriage Playbook

He looked over at Cara. “Have you ever found anything like that?” he asked her. “Anything that made you feel like you were exactly where you were supposed to be?”

She couldn’t even imagine it. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve been…confident about things before. But what you’re describing sounds different.”

“It is,” he murmured. “If you had felt it, you would know it. And if you lost it…well, you’d do anything to get it back, Cara.” He sighed. “That’s the heart of it. I flipped out on Sandusky because he was threatening the stability of what I had, not because I thought he was too cocky. I sensed he was going to be a problem. He kept talking about me being put out to pasture, and I guess a part of me wondered whether he had a point. I just had to shut him up. It hurt too much to keep hearing it.”

Cara couldn’t speak.

Finally, she understood. Finally, she was seeing the real Liam. Not the charmer from the restaurant last night, not the man who scoffed and sneered at her ideas. Not the angry man who had broken glasses and been thrown out of the club.

This was him. Passionate. Determined. And afraid of losing the thing that meant the most to him.

“Don’t worry,” she told him. “We’re going to get your spot back if it’s the last thing I do.”

They left the high school and drove a few blocks east.

“That’s my house,” Liam said, pointing to a small blue one with peeling siding and crooked windows. “That’s the house where I grew up.”

“Does your family still live there?” She peered out at it. It seemed as though it might have once been a very nice house, but it was so run down now that she couldn’t picture living there herself. Sadness filled her at the thought of Liam’s family in that house.

“No,” he said. “I moved Mom out as soon as I had the money for it. She’s in Palm Springs now, and loving life.” He grinned “She’s got a house with six bedrooms. Mom always says she has nothing to do with that many rooms, and I’d better start giving her grandkids soon.”

“You don’t have any brothers or sisters, right?” She thought she remembered that from his file.

“No, it’s just me and Mom,” he said.

“Your father?”

“Not in the picture.” His voice had tightened again.

“Oh,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. I didn’t… None of the press about you mentions that.”

“I don’t talk about it.” He rested his hands on the steering wheel. “He was an alcoholic. He was…rough with me and my mom.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry, Liam.” Cara’s stomach turned over. “I shouldn’t have asked. I had no idea.”

“No, it’s all right,” he sighed. “I guess you have to know if we’re going to pull off our little show, right?”

“I wouldn’t bring something like that into it,” she said. “I’d never do that. This doesn’t go in front of the press.”

He nodded. “But I wouldn’t want you coming up with some fake story about how you met my parents and loved them,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to have to try to play along with that on the fly. I don’t think I would be able to do it even if I wanted to.”

Cara nodded. After a moment’s hesitation, she put a hand on his arm.

He didn’t flinch away from her as he had at the restaurant. Maybe he had schooled himself to expect this from her now.

“I understand,” she said. “It won’t happen. There are plenty of other stories we can tell about our romance. We don’t need to bring your parents into it at all.”

He deflated slightly, obviously relieved. “Thank you.”

“Of course. This isn’t a problem, Liam.”

“My coach, all my teammates…” he hesitated. “They think I act the way I do because I think I’m untouchable. But I’ve never thought that. I’ve never believed that life can’t pull me down. It’s just that if you keep your guard up, if you start things before things can be started by someone else…that’s how you come out on top.”

“That’s how it was for you growing up,” she surmised, her heart going out to him.

“I was safest when I didn’t follow the rules,” he explained. “The rules weren’t to help me. They were to make my dad happy. He wanted me around to be his punching bag. But my life was always better when I ran off and did my own thing instead of bending to what he wanted. And in my professional life…I know there are some crazy stories about me in that folder of yours, Cara, but what you need to understand is that it’s not because I think the rules don’t apply to me. It’s because I fear being boxed in by them. If I just sat there and let the coach do whatever he wanted, maybe he would replace me with some punk kid who thinks he knows everything.” He sighed. “I know I shouldn’t have let Sandusky wind me up, but fighting back when things aren’t going my way…that’s what works.”

“I understand.”