"It's complicated—"
"How. Long."
My throat felt like sandpaper. My jaw ached from clenching.
"Summer. Before freshman year."
Her whole body recoiled. Like I'd shoved her physically. She took a step back, hand coming up to her mouth.
"Thesummer?" Her voice went quiet. Deadly. "That was a year and a half ago, Liam."
"But it wasn't the whole time—it was only recently that we—"
"You wanted him." Her voice cut through my explanation like it was nothing. "Even when you were with me. Even when you said you loved me."
"I did love you—"
"Don't." Her hand came up. "Don't say that to me right now."
My chest was caving in. The actual physical sensation of my ribs pressing inward, my lungs refusing to fill. Every word out of my mouth was wrong. Every explanation made it worse.
"Was it happening?" she asked. "When we were together the first time? Were you thinking about him?"
"Emily—"
"Answer me!"
"Yes!" The word ripped out of me. Torn from somewhere I'd been keeping it locked. "Yes, okay? I thought about him. I tried not to but I couldn't stop."
She made a sound like I'd hit her. Arms wrapping around herself. Holding tight. Shaking—cold or crying or both.
I wanted to take it back. Shove it back down where it had lived for months—years—in the dark space behind my ribs where I kept everything I couldn't afford to feel.
Not him. It was never supposed to be him.
But the denial didn't work anymore. Not out here. Not with her mascara running and the truth hanging in the frozen air between us.
"And when we got back together?" Her voice was smaller now. Not wanting to know.
Before I could say a word—
"Stop. Stop talking. I don't want to hear anymore."
We stood there.
The cold biting at my face. My hands numb. Wind cutting through my jacket that I borrowed. The fabric was too thin. Made for heated cars and coatrooms, not standing in a parking lot while your life fell apart.
From inside, the music shifted—something slower, the party winding down.
Emily was shaking.
I wanted to reach for her. Fix this somehow. But there was nothing to fix. I'd broken this beyond repair and I knew it.
"Everything," she said finally. Voice hollow. "Everything between us was a lie."
"No—"
"Yes."
