My chest pinches at the sound of his voice.
“What the fuck did my boss tell you guys about VIP guests, Liam?”
“They go in and out through the front gate,” Liam says, wincing. “Sorry, Vlad.”
Vladimir lets go of my wrists.
I catch my breath, roll out my shoulders. With a glance to my right, I see Harry wink and then vanish into the crowd like a dramatic fairy godmother.
Liam’s jaw tightens. His eyes catch on mine, and he raises an arm. With two fingers, he gestures for me to come to him.
I walk the handful of steps back to the fence and start to pull myself over again. Liam’s arms come to my waist when I’m sitting atop the barrier. He hauls me over it and right against his firm body. The touch singes me. I’m a block of ice baking in the hot June night. His grip is tight, almost viselike around my back. I breathe in the smoke and sweat and incense of him as my forehead grazes his neon vest.
It isn’t a hug. More like an approximation of one. But Liam’s hand cups the back of my head, tilting it sideways.
“Paige,” he says into my ear, his voice softening the way it used to only for me, andthat’sthe version of it I want to write about so there’s no way I’ll ever forget it again. “Is this a coincidence?”
I shake my head against his body.
“Okay,” he says roughly. “Okay. What are you doing here?”
That’s when I pull back. His face searches mine, hungry with a confusion he’s desperately trying to satiate. He looks like so much more of a man now, with those filled-out shoulders, his stubble, the handful of smile lines by his tired but iridescent gold-brown eyes.
But he also looks like the person I knew. Confident and warm, steady and attentive.
Liam has always been a straightforward guy. He’ll appreciate the truth from me, no fluff.
“Liam Bishop,” I say. “I need you to break my heart.”
Chapter 5
March, Four Years Ago
I don’t run into Bookstore Liam again for just over a year and a half.
A couple weeks after I gave him Maisy’s phone number, I remembered to ask her if she ever heard from him. Maisy told me he called, that they’d gone on one date at the start of that school year, but the chemistry wasn’t there, and they hadn’t even kissed. (Also, that he was the first-string pitcher for the baseball team, which I had to admit made sense based on his physicality and overall hotness.)
“What specifically didn’t you like about him?” I’d asked Maisy a few days later while we were hunting through thrift racks.
“I can just tell he’s a womanizer,” Maisy had replied. Jokingly she added, “I only entertain boys who are obsessed with me.”
Of which she had plenty, and that was the end of that.
But two Marches later, after the first baseball game of the season, I spot Liam Bishop at a party Maisy dragged me to in the off-campus neighborhood where upperclassmen live.
If Maisy’s a sophomore, that makes Liam a junior now. In the last eighteen months, he’s grown taller and broader like a vibrant weed. He’s leaning against a beam of wooden patio railing holding a bottle of Stella in his hand, circled by friends or possibly fans.
I don’t plan on acknowledging him—what are the odds heremembers me?—but about thirty minutes later, Liam grabs me by the wrist as I’m passing him in the main hallway of the house.
“There’s my little white liar.”
The sound of his voice is like ocean waves. His words lull, inflect in odd places, then soften again, as if controlled by a power beyond him.
I’m in my cups at this point, which is why I say, “You’ve been reading up on me?”
Liam grins. “Lately? No. Two falls ago? Definitely.”
I can’t stop staring at the shape of his lips as he speaks, the way his whole mouth tilts to the left. There’s a mild frustration in his eyes, which is new. If something can evenbenew when you’ve only had two interactions.
