I looked away, unable to hear yet another person tell me how I was supposed to be with Liam. Wishing it wouldn’t make Liam and me happy.
“I met him at the bar that night, and I pretended to come onto him. After that, I let him take the lead. I played my part, but Bailey, I hated every second of it. And when you came in…Bailey, I could feel the panic coming off him in waves. He was in hell over what he had to do to you. As soon as you left, he got blind drunk and I had no choice but to drive him home.”
“This doesn’t prove anything,” I said, ready to leave. There was nothing here that proved he hadn’t slept with her.
“I knew you would have questions one day,” she said quickly as I started to leave. “If it was me in your position, I wouldn’t believe him either. I took a video.”
Turning on her, I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you just telling me about this now? You’ve had months to bring this to me.”
“Would you have listened? I’m not sure you would have even spoken to me. I wanted to give you time to cool down. I know you don’t even want to talk to me, but I hoped by now you would at least hear me out. Just look at the video,” she said, shoving her tablet toward me.
I was tempted to run away, to not give her the time of day, but I had come in here for a reason. If I didn’t watch the video now, I would always wonder what was on it.
Snatching it out of her hands, I hit play. She’d set up the camera on his table, and was dragging Liam by the armpits across the living room floor.
“Bailey, I know you’re going to have questions one day,”she huffed as she tugged on him.“Your man weighs a ton, and if he wasn’t so drunk right now, I would leave him to deal with this on his own.”
Grunting, she dropped him to the ground and turned to thecamera. She was covered in something that looked like vomit.“As you can see, he puked all over me right before he passed out. I want you to know that he hated every second of what he did, but he did it for you. Now, I have to get him cleaned up, but I hope when you see this, it proves just how horrible he feels about what he did to you.”
I stared at the frozen screen, wishing there was more. Yes, it showed that he was drunk and that he had passed out, but what about the rest of the night? What about the morning after?
“This proves nothing,” I said, handing the tablet back to her.
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. He could have slept with you later. All this proves is that he was passed out for three minutes.”
“Bailey, he was so drunk, he couldn’t have gotten it up for anyone. I doubt he even knew his own name!”
“But it doesn’t show the rest of the night! All that tells me is that he had too much to drink. Why would you think that would convince me?”
She stared at me, completely stunned by my lack of empathy over the situation. “Bailey, the man is crazy for you. He’s absolutely out of his mind in love with you.”
“That doesn’t mean I can forget what he’s done! Did you really think showing me that would just…make everything vanish from my mind? Would you be able to forgive me if our situations were reversed?”
Sighing, she dropped her gaze. “No, I guess not.”
“Look, I appreciate that you wanted to help him, and I believe that you thought you were doing what was right. But Liam’s a grown man. He told me he knew it would break my trust, but he did it anyway. I can’t just move on from that.”
“Maybe not. But you’ll never be happy if you don’t find a way to forgive him.”
I didn’t want to stick around and hear another word out of her mouth. Storming toward the front door, I flung it open and ran right into Liam. The grin on his lips quickly slipped away when he saw how upset I was.
“What happened?”
43
LIAM
Scoffing,she stepped away from me. She was always doing that, putting as much distance between us as possible. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take before I finally broke.
“Did you really think that would work?”
“Did I think what would work?” I asked.
“Having your lover show me footage of you passed out?”
I searched for Ellie May through the shop window, but didn’t see her anywhere. She had promised that night would stay between the two of us, that she wouldn’t share anything that happened. And now she was doing the one thing I asked her not to do. She was interfering.
