I skidded to a stop in front of his house and practically leapt out of the car, running to his front door and banging on it as hard as I could. I didn’t stop until it opened a few minutes later.
Sucking in a ragged breath, my eyes trailed over Liam’s mostly naked body. God, he really did look amazing. My fingers itched to reach out and touch him, to remind myself what it felt like to be in his arms.
But I had some explaining to do first.
“Hey,” I said, my words breathless and exhausted.
He rested his good arm against the doorframe, blocking my entrance as his foot held the door where he wanted it.
“It’s early. What are you doing here?”
There was no warmth in his tone, but I was about to fix all that. “It occurred to me that you were angry with me at the hospital. And I couldn’t figure out why, not when I was there to help you. But then I realized that was around the same time I went out drinking with Cheyenne and we got in a bar fight.”
I paused to see if he would say anything, but he just stared at me with blank eyes.
“I’m sure it got around town that Archer—you remember Archer from high school?”
“I know him,” he growled.
“Right…well, he took Cheyenne and me home that night after bailing us out of jail.”
He didn’t seem at all surprised by that, but then again, word traveled fast in a small town.
“Anyway, I thought maybe you heard something that made you think something happened with Archer. I don’t know what you heard?—”
“That was after I told you to leave the hospital,” he interrupted.
I thought back, and sure enough, he was right. “But then…” I shook my head, still not understanding any of it. “I thought for sure that’s what you were mad about. I mean, it doesn’t make sense. You’re not acting like yourself. You don’t hurt people intentionally. You’ve always looked out for me. And when you asked me over here?—”
“Liam?” a feminine voice called out from inside. “Can you take me home? I have to get home and clean up before I open the shop, and I’m pretty sure it would be too distracting if I smelled like you all day.”
My mouth went dry as Ellie May’s mussed hair appeared behind his broad shoulders. I didn’t get a great look at her, but it was enough to see her wearing one of his shirts.
Only his shirt.
As her head popped up, a look of shock crossed her face before she scurried out of view.
As for Liam, he didn’t look at all embarrassed. “Yeah, give me a minute to put some clothes on.”
She was here. In his house. In his bed. He hadn’t just been kissing her at the bar. He actually fucking slept with her.
And I was the fool who stayed up all night wondering what the hell I had done to make him mad.
In the end, it didn’t matter. He didn’t want to talk about it or fix it. He just wanted it to be over. And he did a bang-up job of ending whatever we had.
“Um…sorry. I didn’t realize you had company.”
“It’s fine. Didn’t get much sleep last night anyway,” he grunted.
My cheeks flamed at the implication, but when I opened my mouth to say something—anything, no words came out.
Tears pricked my eyes for the first time since this whole thing started. I was going to break down, but I couldn’t do that in front of him.
I stumbled back a step, desperate to get out of there, but as the world tilted around me, I found it impossible to get my feet to work properly.
Did he really care so little about me that he could just move on without a single word? And with just a random woman in town?
Why? Why her?
