Brother?That made my skin crawl.
I rubbed the back of my head and looked around the bathroom. “Go find your friends. I’ll take care of everything in here.”
“And just like that, your wall is up again, huh?” She let out a heavy sigh, her breath warming my chest, before shaking her head and giving up.
I won that round, but it didn’t feel like a victory.
“Avery?”
She paused in the doorway and looked over her shoulder.
“I already told you, I don’t hate you,” I said, feeling the immediate urge to remind her of that.
“Yeah, I’m beginning to think you like me a little more than you’re willing to admit to yourself though,” she replied. “Good night, Liam.”
15
Avery
The days following the party were filled with lectures, one trip to the grocery store, a surprisingly pleasant breakfast with my mother, and endless study sessions.
Zayn suddenly found the air around me a lot easier to breathe. I had given him two tickets to the band’s next show as a kind of peace offering before he left the party Friday night, but instead of it being an inch in the direction of becoming friendly again, he took it as a milestone. Monday morning, he invited Nina and me to sit in our old seats during class. He even brought us coffee from Lemon’s, which Nina could barely choke down, and my favorite blueberry muffins. Guilt found its way onto my shoulders when I declined his offer of driving to the show on Friday. I’d never intended for us to become strangers, and I certainly didn’t want it to stay that way, but I didn’t want to give him false hope of us getting back together. He deserved so much better than me.
My curiosity spiked every time I saw Liam at the house. He was more than tolerant of me—offering to share his late-night snacks when I was studying and smiling at me when no one was looking. I couldn’t help but replay what had happened in the bathroom every morning I got ready in the very place he’d touched me. The memory of what his hands had felt like on my legs and my hips began to escape me, but I knew he hadn’t placed them there by accident. I wanted to know why, but what I wanted even more was for him to touch me again, so I could burn the memory of it into my brain and never forget what Liam Lockwood’s fingers had felt like.
Things he did started to appear more sensual to me as the days went on. Little things. Like the way he licked his lower lip every time he took a swig from his beer. Or the way he sat at the kitchen table with his legs spread and his arm hung over the back of it, like a slouchy king, waiting for someone to come and fill the vacancy in his lap. But my recent favorite had become watching him come up for air in the pool during his afternoon laps. The way he arched his head back and raked his fingers through his dark hair was what I imagined he looked like right before an orgasm.
I wasn’t blind. Liam was a tall glass of water—that I wished I could pour all over my body—with a bad-boy attitude and touched by the music gods. But I wasn’t dumb enough to think that this was more than just attraction. We had nothing in common. He was simply my roommate for the time being—and a distracting one at that.
When it came time to take out Liam’s stitches, I asked Nina to do it for me on a night she was over, studying. Even though he was making me question everything between us, I didn’t have the time to figure him out. And I really didn’t want to remove his stitches even if that meant getting to be close to him again.
When I got home from my afternoon lecture on Friday, Danny and Milton were sitting on the front porch. I recognized the melody Danny was playing on his guitar. It was the same one Liam had sung my dad’s poem to.
Danny stared at the table as he stroked his guitar in frustration while Milton tapped his pen to a steady rhythm, stopping to write down ideas as they thought of them. From the looks of the thick black lines scribbled across the notebook in front of them, finding new lyrics wasn’t going well.
“How’s it going, guys?”
Danny closed his eyes for a half-second and ignored me.
“Hey, Avery.” Milton offered a small smile. I could tell from the crinkle in his forehead that he was frustrated too. “You got any hidden songwriting abilities? We could use the help.” He laughed, but Danny quickly shot him a look.
“I’ve never written a song in my life, so I can’t help you there, but I have a good ear. I can listen to what you’ve got so far and maybe—”
“You know what would be helpful?” Danny peered up at me. “Go yell up to Lexie and Liam to be ready to leave in thirty.”
Milton scolded him, but Danny shrugged him off and continued playing.
I turned on my heels and bit my lip until it hurt. As I reached the stairs and was about to shout their names, I had an idea and started climbing them instead.
Loud death metal music poured from Lexie’s room as I passed by.
I knocked on Liam’s door once. Twice. And then I called his name but got no answer. Then, the bathroom door swung open as I went to leave.
A wave of steam followed Liam as he sauntered down the hall, his grin growing wider with every step he closed in on me. “Are you lost, Little Fox?”
I tried to take in every inch of him as fast as I could, but there wasn’t enough time. Despite the twisted knot tied near one of his delicious V marks on his lower abdomen, the dark gray towel hanging low on his hips looked like it was doing just that. Hanging on there for dear life. And my God, I wished it’d drop.
“Av?”
