Playing With Fire (Glasgow Lads Book 3) (36 page)

“Maybe they are, but it’s their decision, and you’ll never convince them otherwise. You need to support Fergus
now
, because if you don’t, and one day their marriage hits a rough patch, he won’t be able to talk to you about it. He’ll think you’ll say, ‘I told you so.’”

The door opened, letting in a trio of regulars, including old Billy O’Brien. “Hang on,” Liam told Evan, then went to take the others’ orders. He was glad they all wanted their usual, as his head was spinning too hard over this development to remember anything more complicated than a few pints.

Evan Fucking Hollister.
He was the last person on earth Liam had expected to defend Fergus and John. Which meant Evan might have been the only person who could’ve shifted him.

When he was finished serving his regulars, Liam poured an extra dram of whisky and set it in front of Evan. “On the house.”

His teammate picked up the glass and eyed it suspiciously. “Is it poisoned?”

“Not this time.”

“Why are you buying me a drink?”

“To thank you for being right.”
And to stop feeling like the biggest dickhead in the room.
“I’ll apologize to Fergus, find some way to show him my support.” He already had an idea in mind, one he’d been too pigheaded to consider before.

Evan sent him a megawatt smile, the sort that would weaken the knees of lesser humans. “Glad I could do some good where Fergus is concerned.” He downed the whisky and returned to his pint. “Now, what’s the story with you and Robert?”

Liam took a step back. “Seriously? How do you know so much? Have you got spies? Are you in MI5?”

Evan furrowed his brow. “No, they sacked me a few months ago. Developed a sleep-talking disorder and couldn’t be trusted not to give away state secrets whilst unconscious.”

“Heh.” Liam lowered his voice so he couldn’t be heard over the Chieftains’ Christmas tune playing on the pub speakers. “Rab and I are complicated.”

“Because he’s bi?”

“That’s the least of the reasons.” Liam had told no one yet about Robert’s shiny job prospect or last-resort marriage proposal, and he wasn’t about to start with Evan. “It did bother me at first—a lot.”

“Because of…” Evan made a vague swirling gesture close to his body, which Liam took to mean this pub and therefore Tom Hannigan.

“Aye, partly. But also cos I’m an ignorant git who believed the stereotypes.”

“Because your own experience bore them out. You know, with…” Evan repeated the gesture. “Him.”

Liam now regretted having gone on double dates with Fergus and Evan when he was with Tom. “Robert’s not like him. Robert knows what he wants. That’s the whole problem.”

“I see.” Evan lifted his chin. “So you and he have divergent relationship objectives.”

Despite his misery, Liam wanted to laugh at Evan’s frosty description of the situation. “We want different things, aye. At least, I think we do. I guess I’m the fickle one now, as I cannae—” Liam cut himself off as the front door opened again. “Fuck,” he said under his breath.

Evan looked over his shoulder. “Well, talk of the devil.”

“Tommy!” Scarlett jumped down from her chair and ran to the door. “Welcome home, lad.”

“Scarlett!” Tom Hannigan—
Thomas Fucking Hannigan
—bent over to hug the barmaid. “You’ve not changed a bit in a year.”

“But you have.” She stepped back to admire Tom’s clothes. “Those fancy Londoners got their claws into your wardrobe.”

“Cost me a pretty penny, too.” Tom’s wife, Maggie, stepped forward, all high-heeled and shiny-toothed, every ash-blond hair in place despite the windy weather. “Good to see you again, Scarlett.”

Liam looked down the bar toward his regulars, hoping they’d need more drinks, but they were all climbing off their stools to greet their old friend.

Tom was everyone’s old friend.

Evan leaned over and whispered, “Shall I pretend I’m your lover to make him jealous?”

“He’d be more jealous
of
me than
over
me.”

“Ah. You’re probably right.”

Shaking his head at Evan’s vanity, Liam stepped back, half-hiding behind the cash register so he could observe the newlyweds as long as he could without being seen.

Billy O’Brien was ushering Tom and his wife to join them at the other end of the bar. “Buy youse two a drink?” Billy asked.

“Just a tonic water for me,” Maggie said.

“She’s pregnant,” Evan whispered to Liam. “She touched her abdomen when she turned down the alcohol.”

Liam had missed that, given that his eyes were fixed on Tom’s face, on the look of adoration as he took his wife’s pea-green coat from around her shoulders, then steadied her as she mounted the barstool.

He’d thought it would slaughter him to see them together for the first time since Tom had left. Instead it just made him feel irrelevant. Not only was Liam not the tragic hero of this drama, he’d barely played a bit part.

Liam stepped forward into the bar light and said, “Maggie, doll, you look terrific.”

She broke into a wide grin. “Liam Carroll, how’s my wee lad?” She turned to Tom. “And you said we wouldn’t get to see him today.”

“I—well—I thought—” Tom stammered, then licked his lips nervously. “Aye, here he is!”

“Here I am.” Liam leaned across the bar to kiss Maggie’s cheek, then shook Tom’s hand, the palms of which were smoother than he’d remembered. Apparently his ex had traded his calluses for these fine clothes. “Tom, you remember Evan Hollister, from the Warriors?”

When Tom’s blue eyes locked with Evan’s, he frowned slightly, as if dismayed to discover he wasn’t the best-looking man in the pub. “Of course.” He moved to the other end of the bar, Liam following. “You’re the captain, right?”

“I was,” Evan said, “but not anymore.”

“Fergus is captain now,” Liam said, relishing the chance to twist the knife in Evan’s proverbial gut.

“Oh!” Tom turned to Liam. “On one of the Celtic forums I saw a story about Fergus getting engaged to a Rangers fan.” He looked at Evan. “Wait—it wasn’t you. Weren’t you Fergus’s boyfriend?”

“I was, but not anymore,” Evan was forced to repeat, much to Liam’s amusement—as amused as he could be at the moment, considering no one had told him it was Treacherous Bastard Night at Hannigan’s. Perhaps he should offer some drink specials, like Dragon’s Breath (cinnamon schnapps and whisky), or a Trojan Horse (Guinness and Coca-Cola), or an Adiós Motherfucker (blue curaçao mixed with every clear alcohol known to humankind).

“What’ll you have, mate?” Liam asked Tom.

“Belhaven. I miss it so.” He softened his voice. “Liam, could I have a word?”

“You can say whatever you want in front of Evan.” Liam shoved the pint glass against the tap and kept his eyes on the cascade of red ale. “He knows what you were to me.”

“Right, I remember.” Tom passed a hand through his brown curls, a shade darker than Robert’s but only half as soft and tuggable. “I’m sorry if this is awkward. You never used to work Sundays. I swear I’d not have come if I’d known you were here.”

Hadn’t Robert said the same thing about his date with Peter? Hannigan’s seemed the center of Liam’s War Zone of Angst, since everyone showed up here to pelt him with emotional hand grenades.

“Look, Tom.” Liam set the pint in front of his ex-boyfriend. “This is your da’s pub. It’s nearly Christmas. Of course you’ll be here. If I couldn’t handle seeing you, I’d have quit long ago.”

Without a word, Evan slid off the barstool and headed for the gents’. Liam appreciated his teammate offering privacy without leaving the pub entirely. Odd that of all people, Evan should be a source of moral support.

Tom leaned across the bar, speaking softer still. “You could’ve quit when I left, taken the money I offered to give you time to find another job.”

“And what if I couldn’t? I’d my family to think of.” Liam took Evan’s empty whisky glass and plunged it into the sink of soapy water. “Besides, I love this place. It’s like a second home to me. Or a third home, after the football pitch. Or a fourth home, if you include Ma’s flat.” He rinsed the glass. “Aye, it’s my fourth home. But still.”

“And how is your mother?”

“She got pregnant again, but that’s gone.”

Tom’s eyes widened. “Gone?”

“Miscarriage.”

“Oh.” He sounded relieved. Like many Irish Catholics Liam knew, Tom was forgiving of adultery and alcoholism—but the third
A
, abortion, was unthinkable. “I’m sorry to hear that. And you?”

“Not pregnant.” Liam glanced down the bar at Maggie, who was enthralling the old yins with a tale about her naughty nephew, a tantrum-throwing toddler named Ritchie, aka the Terror of Tollcross Road.

“I mean, are you happy?” Tom asked. “Are you…with someone?”

Liam couldn’t answer either question. “I’m working on both,” he said as he dried the whisky glass.

“I hope you
get
both.” Tom’s solemn eyes met his. “You deserve it.”

Liam looked away. Perhaps he’d been wrong again. Perhaps he was neither the tragic hero nor a bit player. Perhaps he was simply a man who’d been loved by another man, though not quite enough.

“So then,” Maggie said, “Ritchie screams out, in the middle of Mass, ‘I wish Jesus had never been born!’”

Scarlett shrieked with laughter at the other end of the bar, then waved her hand at Liam. “Lad, you’ve gotta hear this one. A perfect Christmas tale for a cynic like yourself.”

“Just a second.” Liam turned back to Tom. “Thanks for saying that. And congrats on becoming a da.”

Tom’s chiseled jaw dropped in surprise. “How did you—we’ve not even told family yet. We were saving the news for Christmas morning.”

Liam glanced past him at Evan, who was now standing at the far wall, reading one of the framed articles of Celtic glory. “I have my sources.”

= = =

Later that night during his break, Liam brought out his phone for one final session of
Tom’s Tower
. He watched as Tom began to burrow beneath the prison wall, but instead of filling the escape tunnel with vipers or poisonous gas, Liam just set the phone on his boss’s desk and took his hands away.

As Tom progressed, a red light blinked in the corner of the game display.
Prisoner escaping! Take immediate action!
flashed at the bottom of the screen. When the warning buzz sounded, Liam muted the phone’s speaker.

At last Tom crawled out of the Tower of London into the sunshine.

“Be free, wee man.” Liam watched his ex-lover dance a jig upon the banks of the River Thames. Then he sat back in his chair with a sigh, feeling pretty good about how he’d handled seeing Tom tonight. For his next act of supreme maturity, he would uninstall this game. It was time to move on with—

On-screen, a giant shark jumped out of the Thames and bit the cartoon Tom Hannigan in half.

“What the—” Liam stared at the phone as the lower half of Tom’s avatar bled out beneath the words
Game Over
. “Fucking hell.”

Liam had lost before, but never intentionally, and not at such a late stage. He’d never guessed Robert had inserted this ending, one that would ensure that once Liam reached a certain level, he could never truly lose.

He folded his arms on the table and rested his head upon them, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

No one loved him like Robert did. Not now, not ever. For a moment, it felt as if nothing mattered but that simple truth.

But Liam knew that was delusion. In this world, love wasn’t enough—not in the face of one country’s austerity and another country’s impenetrability. No passion or devotion between two lads could change the fact that people like Liam couldn’t find a better life by staying
or
leaving.

A glance at the clock told him it was time to return to work. Liam stood, feeling somehow more pessimistic yet more resolved than ever. He had no clue which path before him would lead back to Robert.

But thanks to Evan, he knew where to turn next.

T
HIS
IS
MADNESS
.

Liam goggled at the crowd that had gathered well before sunrise near the entrance to Glasgow’s City Chambers building. Clutching a cardboard Starbucks tray, he walked beside the raucous queue of same-sex couples, whose numbers seemed equaled by reporters and news-camera operators.

“What’s it like to be part of this historic day?” asked a TV correspondent Liam vaguely recognized, speaking to a lesbian couple who looked about sixty years old.

Without waiting to hear their answer, Liam moved on through the big gay circus, around the corner of the massive Victorian-era building. He’d texted John yesterday to find out the time and place he and Fergus were filing their intention to marry, but the two of them had decided to keep his arrival a secret.

“Liam!” Fergus stepped out of the queue with a wide grin. “You made it!”

“Of course I did,” Liam said. “You invited me.” He winked at John before hugging him with his free arm.

“That was weeks ago,” Fergus said, “I thought you’d forgotten. Or frankly, that you weren’t interested.”

“An unlikely person made me see the error of my ways.” Liam held out the Starbucks tray. “Thought you could use some caffeine. And maybe some apologies.”

“No need.” Fergus examined the cups, then took the one that read,
Soy Latte
. “For the apologies, that is. We’re happy for the caffeine.”

“How long have you been in this queue?” Liam asked as he handed John his double mocha.

“Only an hour,” John said. “That’s why we’re so far back. Those old chaps up by the door camped out all night. They wanted to be the first married.”

“I thought gay marriage—same-sex marriage,” Liam amended, “doesn’t start until Hogmanay.”

“
Weddings
don’t start until then,” Fergus said. “Couples who’ve already got civil partnerships can have them turned into proper marriages starting today.” He took a sip of his latte, then quickly swallowed and asked, “Sorry, Liam. How’s your ma?”

“The bleeding’s stopped, but the crying’s just begun.” Liam took the remaining cup with his massive black tea, then tucked the cardboard container under his arm, knowing Fergus would frown upon his not recycling it. “This was her first miscarriage in seven pregnancies.”