Liam squeezed my hand.
“For the record, I never outright lied to you.”
Taking a breath, I touched his cheek.
“You just didn’t really tell me the truth?”
He shook his head and I could see the instant pain in his eyes. I wanted to know everything. Really, I did. How could I demand it from him right now, though, when he was clearly in pain?
“I’m scared, Bella. I told you from the start I wasn’t the same person a year ago that I am now. You… you came into my life and had no idea who I used to be. Do you know how badly I wanted someone like you? Someone who didn’t know all the bad things about who I was? Who could just see the person I am now? The person I want to be.”
Liam closed his eyes for a second. I was worried he would doze off, but instead he opened them and tears were falling down his cheeks.
“I wasn’t prepared for all these feelings. For how deeply I could connect with someone. By the time I felt strong enough to even think about talking about Sarah, I was so in love with you that I was afraid you would just walk away. That you would see the side of me that I never want you to know. The ugly side. I don’t want to lose you, Bella.”
My heart ached for him. Moving closer, I touched his cheek and gently brushed my lips against his. I couldn’t lose him either. No matter what the world threw at us, I knew I belonged with Liam.
“Liam. I’m scared too. I love you. So much. I know it took a while to get our spark, but it never changed the fact that I was already crazy about you. It’s a scary love, you know. Because to me… it’s so real. We are still young and in high school, but I don’t care. You are the love of my life. So, don’t think for one minute that something that happened in your past is going to make me walk away. All that matters to me is the person you are now.”
He reached out to me, caressing my cheek, his gaze holding mine.
“You promise.? No matter what I say, you will still want me? Want us? I know people say that when they are in love, they can’t live without someone. Our love, though, it is real. Scary real for people our age. You’ve given me a strength I didn’t even know I could have. It isn’t that I can’t live without you. I just will never want to. No matter what, Isabella, I will always fight for you. Just promise that my past won’t ruin this.”
I could feel his heart pounding. All I wanted was to curl up in his arms and forget the whole morning had happened. Go back to last night, when he was the perfect boy and there was no ugly side to him. Loving him, though, meant wanting all of him. The good, the bad, and everything in between.
“Liam, I promise nothing will change how I feel about you. You’re my everything. I am giving you everything I am. All of me. I’m not perfect. I don’t expect you to be perfect. All I want is for you to be completely honest. I want to know what happened to make you the man I love, but I promise, I’m not dwelling on the past. I want the future, and you’re going to be in mine no matter what.”
Liam took a deep breath and held out his arms. I settled against him, my head on his chest. He held on to me so tight as he spoke that I could hear his heart racing, his deep intake of breath.
“Sarah was my younger sister. She… was not like the rest of my family. She was a freshman last year. I barely spoke to her. Sarah was nerdy and odd and wore clothes from the Salvation Army, even though we could afford anything. None of us understood her, but it was mainly because none of us ever really tried.”
I could feel he was embarrassed by this. His body was so tense. Already I could tell something terrible had happened. Something he felt guilty about. But I let him speak. He needed to let go of this.
“She killed herself. Almost a year ago.”
Unable to fathom this fact, I sat up and looked at him. Tears were falling down his face. I wiped them away, not realizing my own were welling. This is why his heart had been broken.
“We didn’t even find her for a few days, that’s how unattached my family is from each other. There was a note. She said she had been bullied at school so much she couldn’t go back. That she felt alone and unloved and it would be better for her to just leave this world behind.”
Liam started sobbing now, and I wrapped my arms around him.
“I’m so sorry, Liam.”
He clung to me, probably still worried I would run away.
“I didn’t even pay enough attention to her to know she was hurting. That people at the school were tormenting her to such a degree. I should have been there for her. I should have loved her. She was my sister and I completely failed her because I was too wrapped up in my own selfish life.”
The weight of his guilt seemed impossible for him to have carried this around last year. Liam was much stronger than he thought he was. He stayed silent for a minute, just holding me. I buried my face against his neck. How foolish I was for clinging to Marco for so long. My broken heart was nothing compared to what Liam had suffered.
“I found her diary not long after that. I started reading it. Reading about the places she took solace in. To get away from the bullies that seemed to be everywhere in her life.”
I raised my head again.
“The Thai place, and the atrium…”
“Yes. She wrote about the Chens in her book. How she wished one day she could have someone to love as much as they loved each other. How kind they always were to her. I went to see them. When I told them about Sarah, they both cried. I cried. It was the first time I did. My family was so cold. They were so embarrassed that she killed herself that they didn’t even have a funeral.”
The pain he must have felt doing all of this on his own. We were both crying now.
