March 26, 2019

This chapter makes me want, even more than I already did, to get to sit in on table reads when the actors find out things about their characters – particularly relationship reveals like we had last season. Also, sorry in advance that this one is shorter; the previous one was pretty long, and the next one is in the works but is already longer than this. Soooo, bear with me, haha.

Liam pulled up outside the club a few minutes after Fallon and Kirby did, and hopped out of his car to go inside and look for them. The women were already talking to Monica and Jeff – the latter of which looked almost gleeful.

"There you are!" Fallon said, turning her head and spotting him as he walked over. She pulled up a chair next to hers so he could sit down and join the conversation.

Jeff waited until Liam sat, then gave him a mildly disapproving look before turning to Fallon. Liam couldn't really blame him, considering the whole wedding thing. But they all knew he'd helped save Fallon and Jeff from a truly shocking turn of events. "So you're saying," Jeff began, "that if we do this, it will ruin both Ada and Culhane?"

"Well," Fallon replied judiciously, "that depends."

"Hold on," Liam held a hand up to interrupt them. "You want to tell everyone what they've done?"

Fallon turned her head slowly to look at him, ignoring the curious looks coming from Kirby and Monica. "It's fine," she told him, her whole body tense and her tone almost warning.

"No, it's not." Her eyes narrowed but he continued anyway. "If we do that, you'll be ruined as well."

Fallon cleared her throat. "Not as much as your uncle."

"Somebody better start explaining," Monica said, clearly irritated to have been left out of the loop for so long. "What did you do, Fallon?"

"Nothing! I- I had to, um-"

Liam leaned forward, anger clouding his features. "My uncle tried to blackmail her into sleeping with him. She obviously didn't want to do that," he confirmed upon seeing their shock and horror – even from Jeff. "So she had someone go in to... Well, take her place, I guess? But regardless of why they were there, he had a heart attack... And he didn't make it."

"But this was after he'd told his wife that I was the one who made a pass at him," Fallon sighed, trying to pretend that she hadn't turned a little red at the recap.

"So," Liam finished, explaining to the others, "if we tell people everything, not only will they not necessarily believe us, but then my family will come after Fallon again, and even if they don't, the company's reputation will be up in smoke, which is exactly what we're trying to avoid."

Monica crossed one leg over the other, looking between the two of them with a blatantly calculating look. "What can we give away without them going after her?"

"They've got everything, Mon. On all of us," Jeff explained, shaking his head.

Fallon waved a hand. "I'm fine, really. They'll attack me first, and I can handle it."

"Fallon," Liam said, tone warning.

Finally feeling a little bit more caught up, Kirby tried to make a point that she doubted Fallon had fully come to terms with. "I find it a little hard to believe that, if they say that something happened with his uncle, and then his wife says you started it... I mean, listen, I wish it weren't true, but the odds are they'll side with her, not you."

Fallon lifted her chin, defiant almost just for the sake of her pride. "I don't care what strangers think of me," she claimed, ignoring everyone's looks of pure disbelief, "and moreover, I can handle it. I can fix it. And we can prove that everything Ada did is far more important than what they thought I'd done."

Liam reached out to her upper arm, shaking his head as she looked over at him. "You told me he left you a key, right? So the apartment building knew he was expecting you. And whoever was there in your place, Ada either paid her off or sent them herself, because otherwise she wouldn't have known all the details enough to blackmail both you and her."

Angry, though not with Liam, Fallon lifted both hands in an unusually large and upset shrug. "How long am I going to be trapped by her, then, Liam?! Forever?"

Monica started talking, but Fallon only half heard the words because in response to her outburst, Liam had taken her hand to try and calm her down.

"If somebody is going to take this woman down," Monica was saying, "it sounds like it either has to be a stranger, who is not at all associated with you, or it has to be someone on the inside."

Jeff frowned. "Culhane."

Fallon's discomfort only deepened as she realized just how completely bizarre her life had become. Granted, it wasn't a new realization. On the contrary, it was more like a recurring nightmare that became progressively worse as time went on. Her eyes lifted to Liam, only mildly surprised to find him looking back. How utterly strange that the one man she could say had broken her heart was the one she'd married, yet he was also the one she had somehow managed to take it slow with. Apart from that one time, of course. If she could've gone back and done the whole Divorce Party night differently, Fallon felt sure she would've taken the opportunity and not looked back even once.

Liam didn't smile like she expected, but he gave her an encouraging nod, squeezing her hand a little tighter. And that was better, somehow, than that smile she loved so much. It spoke to his confidence in her, or at least an assurance of some kind that he wouldn't just leave her to deal with this alone. But a quiet voice in the back of her mind reminded her that they both knew she didn't deserve it. Not from him.

That thought made her drop her gaze to the floor, but it somehow earned her another gentle squeeze from Liam. "Maybe you should just focus on your family until we can figure out what to do about this. Otherwise you'll just drive yourself crazy with it."

"That's not exactly how Fallon Carrington operates," Monica pointed out, serious despite the slight smile on her lips.

"This time," Kirby spoke up, "it may have to be."

Kirby decided to hang back a little as their conversation wrapped up, taking a cue from the way Liam worked to draw Fallon aside. So as she struck up conversation with Jeff, Liam waited for Fallon to turn towards him.

"I'm serious, Fal," he began. "You need to drop this for a little while. Just focus on work. On helping your family."

She scoffed, looking away, but didn't explain. Voicing aloud the fact that she doubted her family wanted her help, either, felt like she was just fishing for the same comments she received the night before. Maybe Liam thought those things were true, but every time an opportunity came up for him to be proven right, he was proven wrong instead.

His hands slid into his trouser pockets as he watched her, then shook his head. "Fine. You can keep torturing yourself over this if you want to. I clearly can't stop you from doing anything you've got yourself set on. But if you decide to try and pull something on her, you've got to let me or Kirby know. I'm serious, here. I'm not going to let this go – I'm not going to let her get away with anything. Not anymore. But I think you need to take a step back."

"And what about the next time Ada walks into my house, bringing some fake Adam into our lives and winning my father's trust?"

"Then you tell me. And we come up with a plan. It's not complicated, you know. Patience doesn't seem to be one of your stronger abilities, but I promise you can pull it off if you try."

Yet again, she found her stomach turning over with the pain of something he'd said to her. Not because he was intending to be more hurtful than teasing – or she didn't think so, anyway – but because what he said was true. He knew her exceptionally well for someone she'd tried to keep at an arm's length or even further.

"Fine," she said cooly, holding back her temper for his sake. "I'll see you at work, then, maybe."

And with that, she turned to walk over to Kirby, grabbing her arm much in the way Kirby had taken Fallon's after the party, and dragged the redhead towards the front door. Liam stared after them, and as Fallon pulled it open and gestured for Kirby to go first, he managed to catch sight of the moment when her face fell, revealing just how confused and lost she felt.