“I want that, too…but…”

“But what?”

“Just because you want something doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.”

His hands fell from her body and he took a step back. The ground beneath his feet was unsteady, his world tilting on its axis. Here he was thinking that a life without her wasn’t a possibility…where she was still trying to figure out if a life with him was a possibility.

How had he missed that one?

“Liam.” She reached out for him, but he took another step away.

Her touch would surely break him. The hurt in her eyes was unmistakable, but the pain radiating through his body was more than he could overcome.

“What are you saying?” He somehow managed to get the words out.

“I just need more time to figure this all out. I still need to catch up. I thought that was what we were doing. Catching up.”

A bitter laugh escaped his mouth as he shook his head. “I don’t even know what the fuck catching up means anymore. I don’t need time to figure anything out. You’re what I want. What I’ve wanted from the start. And you’re right, you don’t always get everything you want in life. Especially when you aren’t fighting for it.”

“You don’t think I’m fighting for this? For us?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Because when it gets hard, you don’t close in on yourself and shut the other person out. You don’t try to figure it out on your own. You fight together. You tell each other the truth. You don’t lie.”

“I shouldn’t have lied to you, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not the first time, Harper.”

“That’s not fair.”

“None of this is fair. When it gets hard you run. That’s why you were up here in the first place. You didn’t want to be in Mirabelle the weekend that would’ve been your wedding. So you ran. You ran when you realized you were in love with me. You ran from the truth when you suspected you were pregnant. You’re running now. And I don’t know how long I can keep chasing you before it kills me.”

She stared at him for a second, her shaky breaths filling the air. “So what are you saying?”

“I can fight for you for the rest of my life, but this is never going to work if you don’t let me in.”

“Where do we go from here?” She wiped at her face again; the constant stream of tears running down her cheeks hadn’t let up for even a moment.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t, either,” she sniffed before a sob broke free from her mouth. Her head bowed as she folded in on herself and lost it.

He couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t just stand there and watch her break down. He crossed the few steps between them, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her in close. She pressed her face to his neck as she started to shake uncontrollably, each sob ripping through her one after the other.

His entire world was in his hands, and the only thing he could think about was he might lose it all.

Chapter Twenty-Three It Was Always You

Harper’s flight back to Mirabelle was that afternoon, and her leaving really couldn’t have come at a worse time.

It would be a week and a half before she was going to see Liam again, and that fact had her stomach all tied up in knots. Yeah, she’d asked for more time, but time apart didn’t feel like the answer.

But what was she supposed to do? She needed to get back home to her job…to her life. She’d already pushed the limits with so much time off. All she needed was to lose her job on top of everything else.

And while she was returning to Mirabelle, Liam would be spending a few more days in Nashville shooting the music video for “Forever.” They were starting it that morning, and the plan had been for Harper to go with him and spend a couple of hours watching and hanging out before taking a car to the airport.

But the painful uncertainty between them was too much. There was a space that neither of them knew how to cross, and it was way more than she could handle. Add to that the fact that they were filming at the Second Hand Guitar? Yeah, there was no way in hell she’d make it out of that and not have a breakdown.

Who was she kidding? She lost it anyway when she said good-bye to him that morning. He was a mess, too, and she had no doubt he would’ve canceled that day’s shoot if he could’ve. But he’d be rocking a boat that was already close to tipping.

He and his manager had fought pretty hard with the record label on what they were shooting. The label had wanted to tell the love story of the song with one couple in various stages of their relationship, Liam as the lead with some woman as his co-star.

He told them it wasn’t going to happen. So instead they went with three different couples falling in love at the same show where Liam was performing. They’d already rented the space, hired the six actors, and got the extras to fill in the crowd at the bar.

Liam was going to have to get up on that stage and act his freaking heart out while singing the song he’d written about her. She knew it was going to kill him. She knew it and she couldn’t fix it.

It made her hurt even more.

He’d kissed her before he walked out the door, his mouth moving over hers slowly as he held her close.

“No matter what I love you,” he whispered.

“I know. I love you, too,” she said as she pressed her face to his neck and inhaled.

But the unspoken words between them lingered in the air…sometimes love wasn’t always enough.

It was Celeste who picked Harper up at the cabin that afternoon. The ride to the airport was not a chatty one. Unlike Delilah, her aunt wasn’t pushy. It sometimes shocked Harper that they were related because they couldn’t be less alike.

They said good-bye at the curb, Celeste giving Harper an extra-long hug before she headed inside. Because conversation or not, her aunt knew exactly what was going on.

The line at the baggage check was about ten deep, so Harper pulled her suitcase behind her and got in at the end. Her eyes wandered to the TV set up by the group of chairs off to the side and everything in her froze as she saw Liam’s face on the screen.

Liam James Steps Out on Kiki Jean Carlow with Another Woman

A second later another picture popped up, this one of Harper and Liam outside Bourbon and Brine on Friday. His face was unmistakable, and Harper’s long black hair and curves proved that she wasn’t Kiki. Apparently those girls outside the restaurant weren’t the only ones snapping shots.

“Another one bites the dust. Liam James isn’t the good guy we all thought he was. This picture was taken just this weekend at a local Nashville restaurant.” The volume was off, so the words of the E! news anchor were scrolling across the bottom of the screen in subtitles. “And that is most definitely not Kiki Jean Carlow kissing Liam James.”

The screen switched to a clip of the “Beyond the Limits” music video. Even though it had been released the week before, Harper still hadn’t watched it. Avoidance being the best policy and all, because obviously that was working out so well for her.

“It appeared that Liam and Kiki were hot and heavy for a moment there, but appearances can be deceiving,” the anchor continued, switching to another photo of Harper from outside the concert on Saturday, this one with Kiki just a few feet away.

“But as the other woman in question looks to be more than a few months pregnant, it leaves people to wonder when the two ladies overlapped. And as you can see here, their first meeting isn’t a pleasant one. Kiki left Nashville on Sunday morning, heartbroken over the betrayal.” The last photo was a picture of Kiki at the airport, big sunglasses on her face as she avoided looking at the cameras.

“And now for the video. What do you guys think of these racy scenes between the former couple?”

The video for “Beyond the Limits” started to roll. The camera zoomed in on an old shack in the middle of the swamp, a hammock tied up between two trees. Isaac and a redhead with bright green eyes were wrapped up in each other’s arms kissing as his hand moved up her thigh and under the skirt of her dress.