Chapter 188: The Low Tier MILF. [FIXED!][13/10!]

Liam sat in his car outside Sophia’s street with the engine running, thumb hovering over his contacts.

The day had gone almost exactly the way he’d wanted. Vanessa was on board. The firm had its first real hire. Sophia and Mateo had three very large men watching their house, and for the first time in two days, Sophia had laughed.

But there was one name he’d been quietly avoiding.

[Rachel.]

He stared at it for a long moment.

Rachel wasn’t perfect. Liam knew that. Even Darren, who rarely had strong opinions about the people Liam spent time with, had been noticeably cautious around her. There was something guarded about her, a history she didn’t talk about, and Liam had seen enough to know she was carrying more than she let on.

But he wasn’t planning to marry her. And she needed him right now more than he needed her. Her divorce was still dragging on, Marcus was still circling, and the case she’d brought to Liam had been sitting untouched while he dealt with everyone else.

She probably thought he’d forgotten which was why she reached out.

And there was another side to her that Liam couldn’t deny. Rachel was nurturing in a way that seemed to come naturally to her. She fussed over people.

She noticed when you were tired before you said it. She’d hand you a plate of food and watch to make sure you finished it. If someone had told him she had a kid somewhere, he wouldn’t have been surprised at all. Some women just carried that softness with them.

And tonight, honestly, Liam wanted some of that.

He almost called her. Then he stopped.

"No. Surprise her."

He’d grown fond of that lately: showing up when people didn’t expect him and watching their faces change. It was becoming a habit.

Before pulling out, he sent Sophia a quick text.

[Liam: You good?]

The reply came within a minute.

[Sophia: I’m fine. Honestly, I feel safer than I have in days. Tobias waved at me through the window like a giant golden retriever.]

Liam laughed out loud in the empty car.

[Liam: That’s what I like to hear. Call me if anything changes.]

[Sophia: I will. Thank you, Liam.]

He put the phone down, feeling lighter, and pulled away from the curb.

-

The grocery store was busier than he’d expected for a weekday evening. Carts clattered down the aisles, a toddler was having a meltdown near the cereal, and somewhere an employee kept calling over the intercom for "a cleanup in aisle six" with increasing desperation.

Liam grabbed a basket and moved through the store with purpose. Fresh vegetables. A couple of good steaks. Pasta, garlic, a block of real parmesan instead of the powdered stuff. A bottle of red wine. Things he knew Rachel liked to cook with, and things he planned to let her cook for him, because tonight he wanted nothing more than to sit at her kitchen table and be taken care of before he hit the gym hard tomorrow morning.

On the way to the checkout, he passed the floral section and paused.

An older woman in a store apron was arranging bouquets in buckets. She glanced up at him and smiled knowingly.

"For someone special?"

"Something like that," Liam said.

"Then don’t get the roses. Everybody gets the roses." She plucked a bundle of soft peach and cream ranunculus from a bucket and held it out.

"These. They look like you put thought into it."

Liam took them, turning them over in his hand. "You’re good at this."

"Thirty years, honey. I can tell what kind of trouble a man’s in just by how long he stands in front of the flowers."

"And what kind am I in?"

She looked him up and down and chuckled. "The kind you’ll talk your way out of."

He laughed and added the flowers to his basket.

The checkout lines were long. Liam joined the shortest one and ended up behind a young couple arguing quietly about whether they really needed three kinds of chips.

"It’s a party, Jen."

"It’s four people, Kelvin."

Liam smirked to himself and let his eyes drift across the lines.

That was when he noticed the man.

He was two lanes over, already at the register, paying for a single bag of items. He was tall and wiry, in a dark jacket. Silver hoops glinted in both ears, and tattoos curled up the side of his neck and across the backs of his hands. But it was his hair that caught Liam’s attention. It was buzzed short, but shaved in precise sections so the pattern looked almost like tight braids running back across his skull. It was unusual and clearly done with care.

The cashier said something to him. The man didn’t answer. He just tapped his card, took his receipt, and picked up his bag.

Then he turned his head and looked directly at Liam.

His eyes were completely empty. There was no curiosity in them, no irritation, nothing at all. It was like looking at the windows of an abandoned house.

Liam’s gaze dropped instantly to the candy rack in front of him, his heart giving an unexpected kick.

When he risked another glance a second later, the man was already walking toward the exit, unhurried, bag in hand.

"Next," the cashier called.

Liam blinked and stepped forward.

"You okay?" the cashier asked, a young guy with a name tag that said Devon. "You look like you saw a ghost."

"Did you see that guy two lanes over? Braided buzz cut?"

Devon glanced over and shrugged. "Nah, man. Lotta people in here tonight."

"Right." Liam exhaled and started unloading his basket. "Goddamn. Talk about aura."

"Nice flowers," Devon said, scanning them. "Date night?"

"Something like that."

"Good luck, bro."

Liam paid, grabbed his bags, and walked out into the parking lot.

He looked around without quite meaning to. Rows of cars, a shopping cart drifting slowly in the wind, a woman loading groceries into her trunk. No sign of the man with the empty eyes.

Of course not. He was probably long gone.

Liam loaded the bags into the back seat, set the flowers carefully on top, and climbed in. For a moment he sat there, hands on the wheel, watching the lot in his mirrors.

Nothing.

He shook it off, started the engine, and pulled out toward Rachel’s place.

-

Rachel lay on top of the covers in the dark, still in last night’s clothes, staring at the ceiling fan as it turned slowly overhead.

An empty bottle of red wine stood on the nightstand beside her, a ring of dried purple at the bottom. She didn’t remember finishing it. She just remembered pouring the last glass and deciding she didn’t care anymore.

She was exhausted. Not sleepy, but drained all the way down, like something had been pulling at her for weeks and had finally gotten through.

"If Liam can’t fix this, I’m done".

The thought kept coming back no matter how many times she pushed it away.

The building was everything she had. It was her income, her independence, and the one thing in her life she’d built that Marcus hadn’t handed to her. Now his lawyers were trying to take it, piece by piece, argument by argument, in that calm, polite way Marcus did everything. He never yelled. He never needed to. He just kept applying pressure until whatever he wanted gave way.

And she had given them the leverage herself.

She closed her eyes.

It had started innocently. Late-night messages with someone who actually asked how her day was, who noticed when she was quiet. Back then, Marcus came home and talked to her like a business associate, and those messages had felt like air. She’d told herself it wasn’t really cheating. Nothing ever happened. They’d never even met.

But Marcus found out anyway. And Marcus never forgot anything. Every message became a weapon. Every word she’d typed in a lonely moment became evidence that she was the unfaithful wife, the unstable one, the one who didn’t deserve to walk away with anything.

And then, like an idiot, she’d finally gone to meet the man.

She laughed bitterly into the dark. All that guilt, all those months of feeling torn apart, for someone who turned out to be nothing like the person she’d built in her head. She’d drunk too much, turned down his invitation, slept alone in a cheap motel, and come home looking like a disaster, straight into Darren in the hallway.

Darren, who was Liam’s best friend.

Her stomach turned.

Liam hadn’t answered her call. He hadn’t texted. Days had passed with nothing at all. She’d replayed every possibility, and the same one kept rising to the top: Darren told him. Liam thought the worst. Liam was done with her.

She couldn’t even blame him.

Rachel pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

Liam was the only one who’d looked at her case and hadn’t flinched. The only lawyer who had treated her like she was worth fighting for. Without him, she’d walk into that courtroom alone against Marcus and his army of attorneys, and she knew exactly how that would end.

She rolled onto her side and looked at her phone on the bed beside her.

No messages.

She picked it up, opened his contact, and stared at his name until the screen dimmed in her hand.

Then she set it down again, curled her knees toward her chest, and listened to the fan turn above her in the dark.