Page 11 of Thin Ice

And I'm telling you, I don't know yet. Can you give me a day to figure out what I'm walking into here before I start planning escapes?

The three dots appeared. Stopped. Appeared again. Stopped.

Liam

Yeah. Sorry. Take your time.

I read the text and knew exactly what had happened. The shutting-down thing. The sound of Liam pulling back.

I'd heard it in his voice on the bridge. I'd felt it on the phone when he went monosyllabic. And now I was reading it, and I couldn't fix it from this house, and reaching through the phone to shake him and say it's not about you, it's never about you wouldn't work because the fear he carried wasn't about logic.

Alex

Hey. I'm not pulling away. I'm just in the middle of something here and I can't plan yet. That's all it is.

Liam

I know. It's fine.

Fine. The word that never meant fine.

Alex

We'll figure it out.

Liam

Okay.

Alex

Okay?

Liam

I'm good… really. Night, Alex.

Alex

Goodnight.

I set the phone on the sill and stood at the glass.

Part of me was frustrated. Not at Liam, but the gap between what he needed from me and what I could give him from inside this house. He wanted a day, a plan, a when. I wanted to give him one. I just didn't have one yet, and the pushing made it feel like the not-having was me being a bad boyfriend.

And then the pulling away. I knew what lived underneath it. I'd heard the entire story on the bridge. I knew why Liam went quiet when he was scared. I just wished he didn't get scared of me.

Because I was about to walk into a room this week and blow up my entire life, and the one thing I needed to know was that he'd be there on the other side of it.

He'd be there. I knew that. Liam would be there. He always was.

I got into a bed that had never felt like mine, wearing stolen Riverside property, and lay there a long time before I slept.

Chapter 3: Liam

Monday morning I was back in coveralls by seven, and I'd be lying if I said a part of me hadn't missed them.

Brackett Lake Marina in December was a graveyard with a coffeemaker. The fuel pumps wore garbage bags. The snack shack had been boarded up since Labor Day. A hundred-odd boats sat up on stands in the back lot in long white rows, shrink-wrapped for winter, and when the wind moved through them they creaked all together.