Instinct

28. Someday

It wasn’t without difficulty that Liam made it out of the hotel and onto the street without being ambushed by reporters or fans. In the wake of the day’s press conference, people were clamouring out front, much to the annoyance of the hotel staff and other guests. So, Liam had been forced to rely on the knowledge that he’d squirrelled away from his days on the streets, utilizing fire escapes and dank alleyways to avoid being spotted and targeted for endless questions that he wasn’t ready to answer.

Pulling the hood up on his jacket, Liam wandered further away from the hotel. The sound of people arguing and talking over each other in droves faded with each step. He ducked his head and let the shadow from his hood obscure his face further, hands jammed in his pockets as he walked.

The ash grey of early evening lengthened the city’s silhouettes. Alleyways grew darker. Liam could finally breathe again. This pretty life of his came with a hefty price tag, and sometimes he just wanted to be without it.

Sure, life on the streets had threatened to wear him into the ground some days, but never like this. Never in a way that he felt he couldn’t come back from. Because this time, his mistakes weren’t just his to make. Liam’s choices affected everyone else. He wasn’t just some homeless kid in a mid-sized town in Massachusetts anymore. The anonymity was gone, and sometimes he yearned to get it back.

That was why Stephanie had to understand why he walked away. He needed time to figure it all out: what he was feeling, why, toward whom and what he was going to do about it. Liam refused to make a mistake with something as big as this, as important as Stephanie.

Because it wasn’t just about her, though she was the focal point of all of it. If she knew him at all, she should know it was more about the situation than it was about her, what she had done, or what she hadn’t done. It was about what had been done to her, and so many others.

He just needed to get his head around it.

Liam slipped headphones into his ears, playing music on low to distract from his own muddled contemplations. Just for a little while.

Minutes turned into half an hour turned into an hour. But Liam’s legs didn’t tire and his mind didn’t stop churning, so he walked on. He walked, eyes held resolutely to the pavement, until a park loomed into view. It seemed quiet enough.

 A couple of joggers sporadically travelled down the pathways. A group of kids yelled and ran after each other in the progressively growing darkness. There was a couple seated on a bench on the edge of the grass on the opposite end. One person sitting alone nearer to Liam.

Underneath the smell of steam, smoke and garbage rose the familiar, unfortunately faint scent of trimmed grass, earth and dew-laden trees. Liam inhaled, trying to catch as much if it as possible.

He missed Breckenridge. That grief never faded, but only flared up in times where he realized he hadn’t run through a forest or splashed through a stream in years. He hadn’t had a chance to bound through fresh mounds of snow with Stephanie, as he had when they were kids.

So consumed as he was in his own musings, he didn’t recognize the person sitting alone on the bench until he was just past them.

Out of the corner of his eye, it was chance that a shock of soft, auburn hair caught his attention. He turned his head minutely, coming to a halt in his stride as he raised his head and looked at her.

“Lea?”

She looked up, light hazel eyes catching in the weak light of dusk. Her pupils were dilated enough that only the outer rims of colour were visible, but it was unmistakeably her. She didn’t rise to meet him, or reply, she just started laughing incredulously.