“Really.” I arch a brow, challenging him to challenge me. He says nothing and I laugh, a harsh, bitter, angry sound.What the hell was I expecting?Disappointment pricks the backs of my eyes. “Goodbye, Liam.”
I shove past him and he catches my arm.
I swallow a gasp as he stops me in my tracks and jerks me close. His grip is tight, but careful, and the heat of his palm sears through my layers, finds my skin. I look up at him, my lips parted in surprise.
“We never played games,” Liam says, a current of real anger thrumming through the words. “Why the fuck are we playing now?”
“Games,” I repeat, a whisper, heart racing. Our proximity is a drug, shot right up my veins. My hip is against his thigh, and I’m not remembering that night anymore, where we were so young, when I was so inexperienced. I’m imagining himnow, how different it would be, how charged, how angry, how desperate, how fuckinggood. His body, mine—reacquainted after so many years apart. “You haven’t spoken a word to me in three years.”
His grip tightens. He pulls me closer, eyes flashing like steel in the starlight. I can feel his breath, hot against my lips.
“And you have?” His voice is barely a whisper, threadbare with anger or betrayal or something else I can’t name. “Did I miss your calls, Lexie? Your letters? Did I miss the days you visited?”
Hot, embarrassed tears fill my eyes, blurring his face until it’s unrecognizable. “I waited, Liam.”
He says nothing, just sets his jaw hard, mouth a tight line. A tendon in his neck leaps, and I realize then how angry he is. Maybe he has some right to be. Maybe part of this is my fault. But part of it is his too. And he’s not saying he waited for me.
Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he never cared.
Well, fuck him.
Tears slide down my cheeks, and I wait again, like I have waited so long. But Liam doesn’t make any confessions. He doesn’t apologize. He simply stares down at me, eyes cold and searching, nostrils flaring.
“The kids,” he finally mutters, barely a question.
That’s it? He saw Lea—he knows how old she is. He could do the math. He could ask what hereallywants to ask—are they mine?But he doesn’t.
Coward.
“They’re not yours,” I say, as coldly, as spitefully as I can. “So you can rest easy. No reason for you to stay.”For me. For them.That fantasy in my head withers, leaving me with nothing but this horrible, cold reality. Liam and I, circling like vipers, no trace left of the young love we once shared.
Love. If it could even be called that.
“No reason for me to stay,” Liam repeats. “Really?”
I lean toward him, lift my chin and level him with as steely a stare as I can manage. “Really.”
He shifts his shoulders so he’s facing me squarely, so our chests are touching, so our breath is tangled. My heart is slamming against my ribs.
“Say it again,” he says.
A dare.I narrow my eyes, and do something I shouldn’t, something I know I will regret. I close what little space is left between us, sliding my body completely against his, savoring the dangerous steel of him. My lips are inches from his. “There’s no reason for you to stay, Liam Dunne.”
His grip tightens, and he takes my other arm in his hand, forcing me backward, step by step. My back pushes against a tree and he pins me there with his body, his eyes razing me, daring me. “Not one reason,” he growls.
I know I don’t imagine the way his eyes slide to my lips.Oh, fuck. Do it, Liam. Do it.“Not,” I say softly, “one.”
Liam’s hand slides up my arm, grazes my breast. His fingers dance around my throat. I wonder if he can feel my pulse as he traces my jaw, lifting my chin in a quick, angry jerk. “Swear.”
“Cross my heart,” I say, breath hitching as he slides his knee between mine, spreads my thighs with his. “Hope to die.”
He leans toward me suddenly, lips catching mine. I gasp, hands flying to his chest, but I don’t push him away. I should. IknowI should—but I can’t.He hooks my bottom lip with his thumb and pulls my mouth open, sliding his tongue between my teeth. I moan, a desperate, hungry sound, and—quick as it started, it’s over.
Liam releases me, stepping back. His face has gone cold. “I won’t come back around here.”
“Don’t,” I say sharply, but my chest constricts, choking the word.
Liam smiles, a hateful, knife-like smile. “You know, you’re right. I don’t know the real you. Not anymore.”
