HDU #2: Dirt (6 page)

“You wanted calm
and peaceful.
 
North Carolina’s the
most calm and peaceful place I know of.”

“But you grew up
in…” Amanda trailed off, trying to remember Liam’s home state.
 
She vaguely knew of it, though it may
have been from reading about him a year ago rather than hearing it from his own
lips.
 
How well I know my own boyfriend
, she mused.

Liam’s hand ran
along Amanda’s bare leg.
 
She was
still wearing her pajama shorts, which covered less of her thighs than his zipped
hoodie did.
 
“I grew up in
Vermont.
 
The first fifteen years,
at least,” he answered, prompting Amanda to pull back from her view of the
window and give him a look.

“Did I know that
about you?”

He shrugged,
taking a swig of his beer.
 
“Maybe
not.
 
We might not have ever talked
about that.”

Amanda let her
arms fall from around his neck as she squinted down the cabin of the cream colored
jet.
 
“I feel like I should know
where you grew up,” she laughed incredulously.
 
“And how you grew up.
 
I don’t even know where you went to college.”

It was his turn
to laugh.
 
“I didn’t even finish
high school.”

“
What?
” Amanda felt her eyebrows shoot
up.
 
Before even meeting him, she’d
always felt that Liam walked around with such an intellectual air.
 
Of course, back when she hated his
guts, she’d called it his “cocky asshole vibe.”
 
“That’s… a surprise.
 
Really?”

Liam
nodded.
 
“Even though I promised
Connor I’d go to USC with him.
 
Pretty sure he always knew that was a lie though.
 
I didn’t have his grades.
 
Or attendance.”

“Now, see, I
didn’t even know that you went to high school with Connor,” Amanda said with a
frown.
 
It made sense though.
 
Liam held Connor in the same high
regard that he did his brother, which said more than something.
 
“You’ve known him for forever, then.”

“Thirteen
years.
 
We met in middle
school.
 
He kept me out of
trouble.”
 
Liam tilted his head and
squinted.
 
“Well.
 
He tried.”

“So you were a
bad kid,” Amanda giggled, imagining Liam in his teen years.
 
She plucked the beer from his hand and
took a swig.
 
“I can’t say I’m
surprised.”

His mouth curved
up as he watched her drink.
 
“I
wasn’t that bad.
 
I just cut a lot
of class.
 
And football practice.”

“How often did
you do that?”

“As often as
possible.”

Amanda draped
her arms around his neck again, smiling when he unconsciously dipped his head
to lightly kiss her forearm.
 
“To
do what?”

“Snowboard.”

“Ah.”
 
Amanda nodded.
 
She could practically see the slopes
gleaming in Liam’s eyes as he grinned.
 
“I imagine you charmed the hell out of your teachers and that’s how you
managed to pass your classes despite being a little delinquent?”

“Bingo.”

“Of course.
 
And what did your parents think of
that?” Amanda asked, her sentence trailing off toward its end.
 
Wait.
 
Should
I have asked that?
She tried racking her brain for any memories of Liam
mentioning his parents — to her or even interviewers in the past —
but she couldn’t remember any and she had recently come to assume that if
people seldom spoke of their parents, it was because of a reason either tragic
or unfortunate.
 
It was certainly
the lesson she’d learned from Ian.

“My parents? You
mean Logan.”

“I wasn’t aware
that Logan gave birth to you.”

“He might as
well have.
 
He was the one who
cleaned the house and cooked for me.
 
And yelled at me to do my homework.”
 
He laughed to himself.
 
“
And
convinced my coach to
kick me out of the starting lineup for all the practice I skipped.
 
Said I shouldn’t get to play till I
stopped snowboarding all the time and started acting like a part of the team.”

“Wow.
 
How old was he then?”

“Seventeen.”

Amanda raised
her eyebrows.
 
“Hard-ass.
 
I like it.”

“Yeah, but he
still had these brotherly compulsions so he’d contradict himself and buy me new
lenses for my goggles if he had extra cash.
 
Or he’d take both our boards to get tuned and waxed.”

“Aw.
 
You were totally rotten and he still
wanted to make sure you were happy.”

Liam
nodded.
 
“He used to take my
hand-me-down even though he was the older one, so I could have all the new
clothes.
 
He was such a weird
kid.”
 
He shook his head.
 
Amanda smiled, spotting the sentimental
look in his eye that he tried to mask with laughter.
 
“He couldn’t ever buy anything and keep it for himself.”

Amanda raised
her eyebrows, truly impressed.
 
“He
sounds like a good man.”

“Yeah.
 
He’s been a good man since he was a
kid.”

Amanda smiled as
she studied the faint one on Liam’s lips.
 
“So, do I at least get to meet Logan’s wife and kids?” She frowned when
her question immediately prompted a slight but noticeable grimace from Liam.

“No, uh… Heidi’s
in Vermont right now with the kids.
 
They’ve been there since Logan left.
 
She has a rough time when he’s gone so she goes to live with
her sister.”

“Oh.”
 
Amanda tried not to look too confused
considering the distress she detected in Liam’s expression.
 
But she couldn’t help wondering how that
worked, especially for a family with young children.
 
Clearing her throat, she tried to change the subject.
 
“Would I have been the first girl to
meet the family in years?” she asked teasingly.

Liam slipped his
palms under her thighs, pulling her into a straddling position onto his lap.
 
“You’d’ve been the first girl to meet
the family ever.”

Amanda
frowned.
 
“What?”

“I can’t bring
just anyone to meet Heidi or Logan,” Liam smiled.
 
“That’s my equivalent of meeting the parents.”

“But… what about
Angelica? She was your fiancée.”

“Logan was
deployed the year we got engaged.
 
Not that he and Heidi were ever fans of her, just from hearing stories.”

Amanda blinked
with surprise.
 
There was so much
information for her to process.
 
Already, she’d gotten her wish of learning something new about Liam and
about five times over.
 
Grew up in Vermont, snowboard enthusiast,
didn’t graduate high school, raised by his brother who never liked or met
Angelica Moss
.
 
Amanda blinked,
suddenly realizing truly how much there was left to learn about him.
 
“So… what were these stories about
Angelica?” she dared to ask, realizing that she held the title of next
longest-running relationship with Liam Brody after the one he had shared with
his ex-fiancée.
 
It was kind of a
daunting title to hold considering how disastrously they had ended.

Liam smirked at
her.
 
“The kind that we don’t need
to waste your birthday getting into.”

~

With a
triumphant little curl of the lip, Amanda peered down at her phone.
 
She had deleted every last email in her
inbox.
 
With all the proof of her
lies erased from existence, she could simply cry Photoshop if her hacker were
to try and publish any of her old messages.
 
Right?

Right
, Amanda nodded to herself as she
gazed out the window at beautiful North Carolina.
 
Her weekend was forecasted to be perfect and she wasn’t
about to let anything ruin that.
 
If trouble was brewing ahead, she’d rather think about it on Monday.

“Bellevue
Heights.
 
Population eleven
thousand eight hundred fifty-three.”
 
Amanda smiled as their Jeep passed the red and gold sign.
 
“See, why isn’t Merit this charming?”
she mumbled to herself as she gazed out at the quaint storefronts with hanging
wooden signs and striped awnings.
 
Instantly, the place gave off a sense of warmth and familiarity.

Turning to look
at Liam, Amanda smiled.
 
It was a
treat in and of itself to watch him drive.
 
Resting her elbow on the passenger side window, she studied
him through her Ray Bans.
 
He
leaned back in the driver’s seat with his exceptionally gorgeous forearm draped
over the steering wheel, his posture relaxed and his eyebrows slightly knit as
the sunlight bounced off of his white T-shirt and aviators.
 
Just watching him grip the underside of
the wheel and make a turn was fascinating.
 
He had seemed to her like such a city boy.
 
Amanda wasn’t used to seeing him before
a backdrop of green trees and wood gated farmland.
 
But all it took was a few minutes of ogling to vividly
imagine him driving a red pickup truck and chopping wood for a fire.
 
Or something like that.
 
Amanda bit her lips back, muffling her
private little laugh.

“What?” Liam
smiled, stirring from his dreamy state.
 
He looked at her for as long as he could before returning his eyes to
the road.

“Nothing.
 
Just… taking it all in.
 
That was such a short flight but it
feels like we’re a whole world away from New York.”

“Good thing?”

“Great
thing.”
 
Amanda let go of a
sigh.
 
“I need to load up on calm
before this week starts.”

Monday was the
beginning of a whirlwind schedule again.
 
Right before the double date at Lilac was her big interview with
Fleur.
 
Since Wendy was lobbying
hard with the magazine to give her the cover, Amanda had agreed to somewhat of
a makeover to up her chances.
 
It
seemed like the right thing to do considering how hard Wendy was fighting for
her publicity, but the thought of handing all control of her appearance to the
Fleur stylists was just a tiny bit daunting.

Then, of course,
the following day was her first day of work for ZINC.
 
And while she’d read the scripts and beat sheets and scores
of other things that Tom Vogel had emailed her, Amanda could still confidently
say that she had no idea what the hell she was doing.
 
Despite a summer of press events and reading up on everything
Leadoff
, she couldn’t figure out what
her purpose on the writing staff could possibly be.
 
Tom had yet to tell her or assign her any responsibilities,
nor had he contacted her much over the summer.
 
Amanda could only assume that since she was already behind,
her job with the
Leadoff
staff would
be no easy task.

So quite
desperately, she needed the weekend in Bellevue Heights.

Liam looked at
her, seeming to read her mind.
 
“You’re going to be fine, you know.
 
There’s nothing to worry about.”

Amanda chewed
her lip.
 
“I know,” she somewhat
lied.
 
The weird emails, the
hacker.
 
They were technically
things for her to worry about.
 
But
she didn’t want to.
 
Not now, at
least.
 
She was finally with Liam
after what felt like ages of waiting and she wasn’t about to let anything ruin
their time.
 
Besides, deleting her
entire history of emails had to be a surefire way of protecting their
secret.
 
It wasn’t as if her hacker
had contacted her again since she’d cleared out her inbox.
 
That had to mean that he or she was
done, bored or tired of the little prank.

“Alright.
 
Here we are.
 
Verbena Road.”

Amanda blinked
up as Liam turned the Jeep into a massive, sprawling cul-de-sac lined with what
looked like mini forests in front of each house.
 
Despite the spaciousness of the street, there were only four
homes, one of which caught Amanda’s eye immediately.
 
It was perched at the very end of the road and looked as if
it had been plucked from a painting.
 
Behind its wooden gating were perfect rows of leafy trees, split
perfectly down the middle by a brick-lined walkway.
 
At the end of the walkway was a perfectly symmetrical Greek Revival
house with grand white columns to line the porch.
 
It sat in the middle of a massive pasture of grass so dewy
and green that it appeared to be glowing or wearing a halo of sorts.
 
The place felt like a total
dreamland.
 
All it seemed to be
missing were Clydesdale horses galloping around with their manes blowing in the
wind.