Chapter 325: Tasha’s Big Statement

He came back around the partition and found them where he figured they would be at, Kira standing near the enclosures with her clipboard, Tasha on a low bench against the wall with the white kitten back in her hands, her thumb moving slowly through the fur between its ears.

Kira looked past him at the storage area.

Then she looked at him.

"You actually did it," she said. She looked past him again like she needed to confirm it a second time. "And you don’t even look tired. How are you not tired right now? That was half a delivery back there."

"I told you it was easy," Liam said.

"It was not easy," Kira said. "I have been looking at that pile for three days trying to convince myself it was not as bad as it looked. It was exactly as bad as it looked." She looked at him with the specific expression of someone revising a position they had held firmly. "Okay. I forgive you. Fully. Completely."

"Kiraa." Tasha’s head came up from the kitten. The word arriving with the specific shock of someone who had not expected the sentence and needed the person to hear that they had not expected it.

"What," Kira said.

"Just like that?"

"He did everything today," Kira said, gesturing toward the back of the store. "Everything. That alone is basically winning my forgiveness. If not my heart at this point honestly."

Liam smiled.

"I hate you," Tasha said.

"No you love me," Kira said, and she was already moving, already reaching for the kitten in Tasha’s hands, lifting it out of them with the practiced ease of someone who knew exactly how to hold a small animal. "I’m going to leave you two to talk. Sort it out." She looked at Tasha directly. "Forgive him."

"Why would I listen to you," Tasha said. "Betrayer."

"Because it’s an order," Kira said pleasantly, already walking away toward the back of the store with the kitten settled against her chest. She glanced back at Liam without breaking her stride. "Liam. Thanks for the help today."

"Anytime," he said.

She disappeared around the partition.

Liam turned to Tasha.

She was sitting on the bench with her hands in her lap now, the kitten gone, looking at the middle distance with the expression of someone who had been abandoned by their ally and was processing the betrayal in real time.

"I did pretty well there," Liam said.

Tasha scoffed. Stood up. "Let’s just leave," she said.

---

It was later than either of them had registered while they were inside. The street outside Tim’s Pet Store had the specific quality of early evening, the light lower and warmer, the foot traffic thinned from what it had been when Liam arrived, the day having made its decisions and begun the process of becoming night.

They walked.

No particular direction at first, just the pavement and the evening and the specific ease of two people who had enough history between them that walking together without a destination did not require explanation.

They found the park the way you found parks in this part of the city, by following the line of trees that announced it from a block away. The entrance was open and they went in and the noise of the street dropped immediately behind them the way it always dropped when you crossed into green space, the city still audible but at a remove, like someone had turned a dial.

There were very few people. A man on a bench near the entrance looking at his phone. A woman further along the path moving at the pace of someone who was walking for the walking rather than to get anywhere. The path ahead of them mostly empty in the low evening light.

They walked along it.

"You okay?" Liam said.

Tasha looked at the path ahead. "Am I okay," she said. It was not quite a question. More like she was examining the words to see if they fit. "Yeah. I’m okay." She paused. "Are you?"

He looked at her sideways. "Why do you ask?"

She kept her eyes on the path. "Because of the last time we talked," she said. "In the coffee shop. The way you reacted and just left like that." She paused again. "I keep thinking I said something that triggered it and I wanted to say something but you were already gone."

He scratched the back of his head. "That wasn’t your fault. That wasn’t you."

"You could have fooled me," she said. "You didn’t check your phone. You didn’t say anything. You just left." She said it without heat, just clearly, the way she said things when she had been sitting with them for a while. "I was shocked you even called me after."

"I know," he said. "I’m sorry. I wanted to explain but something came up that I had to deal with right then."

She looked at him. "Something came up," she said.

"Something came up," he said.

She looked back at the path. The woman ahead of them had turned off toward a bench and the path in front of them was empty now, just the trees on either side and the evening light coming through the leaves.

"Who was that woman," Tasha said.

He looked at her.

"The one looking for you," she said. "Calling you master. What did she do to me, Liam. Because whatever it was I felt it. It was real and I felt it go and I want to know what it was."

He thought about how to say what he was going to say.

"It’s a long story," he said. "But I met her when I went out of the country with Kelvin. On that trip."

Tasha looked at him. "And why was she looking for you and calling you master."

He smiled.

It was a small smile and it was not for the room, just for him, just the specific helplessness of someone who did not have a version of this explanation that was going to land well.

Tasha watched his face do what it did and her expression shifted.

The specific shift of someone who has seen a look before and has decoded it and has arrived at an understanding they would have preferred not to arrive at.

"Don’t tell me," she said.

"Okay," he said.

She looked at the path.

They walked for a moment in the quiet of the park, the evening settling further around them, the light through the trees going from gold to something softer.

"I just didn’t like what she did to me," Tasha said. Her voice had changed register, quieter now, the direct quality of before giving way to something more internal. "Whatever it was she took. I didn’t like not having it."

Liam looked at her profile, at the line of her jaw and the way she was looking at the path ahead with more attention than the path required.

"I thought you were glad," he said carefully. "When you didn’t feel that way anymore. In the coffee shop you seemed—"

"I know what I seemed like," she said. "That’s not." She stopped walking for a half second and then kept going. "Not exactly. I liked." She stopped again. Not her feet this time, just the sentence, stopping in the middle of it. She looked at the trees to the left of the path. "Don’t worry about it," she said.

He looked at her.

"Okay," he said.

She nodded once.

"It’s getting late," he said. "Let’s head back."

He started moving.

He had taken two steps when he felt it.

Arms coming around him from behind, wrapping across his back, her face pressing between his shoulder blades, the specific weight of someone who had decided to do something before they changed their mind about doing it.

He went still.

The park was quiet around them. The trees. The low light. The distant sound of the city at a remove.

"Liam," she said.

Just his name. Into his jacket. Quietly, like it was something she had been holding and had finally set down.

He did not move.

He just stood there and let her hold on.

She stayed where she was for a moment, her face still pressed between his shoulder blades, her arms still around him.

Then she spoke.

"Even after what she did to me," she said, her voice quiet and directed into his jacket rather than at him. "The whole thing with not wanting you. Not feeling it anymore." A pause. "I still knew."

He stayed still.

"I knew I loved you," she said.

The park held its quiet around the two of them. The trees. The low light sitting in the leaves. The city somewhere beyond all of it doing what it always did, entirely unaware.

Liam looked at the path ahead of him for a moment.

Then he reached down and found her hands where they were crossed over his chest and he removed them slowly, carefully, turning as he did until he was facing her.

She was looking up at him with the expression she had when she had stopped managing anything and was just standing there being exactly what she was, her black hair loose around her shoulders, her blue eyes carrying that specific quality they had in low light, clear and present and entirely unguarded.

He put his hand on the side of her face.

She let him.

He kissed her.

She kissed him back immediately, her hands finding the front of his jacket, her whole body leaning into it the way it leaned into things when she had decided on them, and the park stayed quiet around them and the evening light kept doing what it was doing through the trees and neither of them was in any particular hurry about any of it.