The streetlights were dim but made the high points of his face glow with a yellowish tint. His prominent cheekbones and sharp jawline were a couple of reasons I found him so intimidating and why so many women fell at his feet—usually on their knees.
My heart rate kicked up as I held his stare. His eyelashes masked his eyes in a dark shadow, but I could still see him, gawking silently.
There was no one waiting behind us to go, but not obeying the basic rules of the road filled me with unease. That, and the almost suffocating tension building inside the cab. My mind kept racing with things to say to break the silence, to ask him what the hell his problem was. But the longer we sat there, the tighter my lips became.
“I don’t hate you, Avery,” Liam finally said.
Oxygen returned to my lungs.
His right hand, inked with the lettersL-O-C-Kacross four fingers, tightened around the steering wheel. “I don’t particularly like you, but …” He paused. “I guess there’s a part of me that would care if you got hurt, okay?”
My brow rose, like it had a mind of its own. “The part where your face would get rearranged if you pissed off my brother?”
“No,” he answered dryly, fixing his attention back on the road.
“Then, what is it?” I pressed.
Air dragged from his throat. “Avery…”
“Liam…” I tilted my head, mimicking his tone.
Liam’s other hand, stamped with the remaining four letters of his last name, tousled his hair in frustration. “I don’t know!”
I swallowed, daring myself to leave it at that.
“Didn’t know you were such asofty,” I teased, my lips betraying me with the snide comment.
He shook his head. “You know, I don’t remember you having such a smart mouth before.”
“Oh, it’s always been there. I’m just not afraid to say what’s on my mind anymore.”
“Another quality you got from your mother, I presume?”
Out of self-preservation, I clenched my mouth shut, so I wouldn’t scream.
Without another retort from me, Liam turned the volume up on the radio with an egotistical lift of his chin.
I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying to combat the new goose bumps dancing across my skin.
Liam noticed and loosened his grip on the steering wheel. “The heat stopped working a few weeks ago. I’ve been meaning to fix it, but it hasn’t bothered me all that much.” He began shrugging his jacket off. “Here.”
“No, thanks.”
He quirked his brow and tossed the leather back over his shoulders. “Always so stubborn.”
Twenty-eight more minutes. Twenty-eight minutes until I could get out of his truck and away from him.
“Can you stop acting like you know anything about me?” I blamed the cold for shaking my mouth loose again.
“Excuse me?” He turned the music down a few notches. The lights from passing cars steadily lit up his face in bright waves, giving me glimpses of his nose and the curve of his lips.
“You haven’t seen me in seven years. I’m not the same girl I was back then. I’ve changed,” I said.
He glanced at my face and my body, as if he was looking at the physical changes, and then quickly back at the road.
“You haven’t though, have you? You’re still the same guy who gave a scared sixteen-year-old tequila shots until she puked in front of the entire student body and recorded the whole thing.”
“It’s not like I poured it down your throat.”
