Liam sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. He stands up, grabbing his jeans from the floor and pulling them on. He doesn’t say a word as he walks past me into my bedroom. I follow, shutting the door behind us.
The silence is heavy with everything that hasn’t been said since the town meeting. He’d shown up at my door early the next morning with a duffel bag and asked if he could crash. I’d said yes, of course. What else was I supposed to do?
He sits on the edge of my bed, the same bed I was just writhing in pain on. He looks small. Defeated. I stay standing, my arms still crossed.
“What the hell are you doing, Liam?” I ask, my voice low and dangerous. “Sleeping with Jessica? Are you serious?”
He flinches, looking up at me. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“Really? Because it looks a lot like you’re trying to fuck your way out of your feelings for Millie.”
He scoffs, shaking his head. “It’s not like I fucked her, okay? We just… we went to Bar 2.0. Got some shots. It got late, we took a cab here. She was tired. I let her crash.” He runs a hand through his hair again, a nervous tic. “That’s all it was.”
I grimace. I want to believe him, I do, but the timing is shit. It’s a distraction. A pathetic, transparent attempt to anesthetize himself. I keep those thoughts to myself, though. He’s not ready to hear them. Instead, I change the subject, hitting him where it really hurts.
“Millie came by the fire station yesterday.”
Liam’s entire body goes rigid. He looks away, his jaw working. “Yeah? So?”
“So, she was looking for you. She was worried. She’s not sure how you’re doing with the new sheriff in town so she wanted to check in on you. You just upped and disappeared on both of us.” I haven’t been talking to him either, not really. We’vebeen existing in the same space, orbiting each other in a tense, miserable silence.
But I’ve seen Millie. I’ve seen the hurt in her eyes.
“I’ve been busy,” he mumbles to the floor.
“Bullshit. You’ve been hiding. You’re ignoring her calls, you’re avoiding the café. What the hell is wrong with you?”
He finally looks at me, his eyes flashing with anger. “What’s wrong with me? Did you forget she fucked someone? I told her I was in love, and the first thing she does is fuck someone else. She just… she just moves on like it’s nothing. Like we’re nothing.”
The frustration inside me boils over. “We? There is no ‘we,’ Liam! Not for you and her, not the way you want there to be. And for the record, she’s not moving on like it’s nothing. You have no idea what she’s feeling because you won’t even talk to her!” I take a step closer, my voice dropping. “You and I, we’re her friends. We have been for years. This isn’t the first time she’s slept with someone else, so why are you being such a selfish asshole about it now?”
His face twists. “It’s different this time.”
“How?”
“Because I was right there, Maddox!” he shouts, shooting to his feet. “I was living with her. I was right there, and she still went looking for someone else.”
The words hang in the air between us, sharp and ugly. I feel a pang of sympathy, but it’s quickly swallowed by my own anger. “She didn’t mean to hurt you. And you have to live with this, Liam. It’s what anyone who is claiming to be her friend would do.”
Liam lets out a bitter, broken laugh. It’s a horrible sound. “You wouldn’t know,” he sneers, his voice dripping with a venom that’s meant to wound. “You have no fucking idea what it’s like. You don’t have to deal with the knowledge that the love of your life does not love you back.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. The air rushes from my lungs. The pain in my ribs flares up, a dull echo of the fresh agony tearing through my chest. I stare at him, at the raw, self-pitying pain on his face, and I want to laugh.
Or scream.
He thinks he has the market cornered on this?
He thinks his unrequited love is some kind of special tragedy?
He has no fucking idea.
He has no fucking idea how wrong he is. He doesn’t know that every time I look at Millie, I feel the same gut-wrenching ache he does. He doesn’t know that the reason I keep my distance, the reason I’ll never make a move, isn’t because I don’t feel it but because I feel it too much. Because I thought she deserved someone better, someone likehim.
And now he’s just another person who has hurt her. I’m standing here, my body a wreck from a fire I can barely talk about, my heart in pieces over a woman I’ll never have, and he’s telling me I don’t understand.
I just stand there, my face a mask of indifference, but inside, I’m screaming. He has no fucking idea. None.
Liam’s shoulders slump, the anger draining out of him as quickly as it appeared, leaving behind a hollowed-out shell. He sinks back onto the edge of my bed, his head in his hands.
