“Okay. Here’s me being serious.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “I had all night to think about this, and I’ve realized there are three ways we can expect this to pan out. First, I could make you fall so madly in love with me that it’ll feel like you’re on a life raft in the middle of the ocean and I’m the only man with a ship for a hundred miles.”
“Why does that feel like a threat?” I ask.
“Because it’s threatening,” Liam acknowledges. “To be in love.”
“What if we’re different now?” I ask.
His eyes glint. “I’m sort of counting on that.”
“And the heart breaking?” I prompt. “Do you promise to make a clean cut?”
I haven’t forgotten what he said yesterday about his inability to be a good partner. And whether Liam’s counting on it or not, we might betoodifferent now to make this last past the summer, if that’s even something he’d want to try.
His gaze turns sad, mournful. “I can’t go into this with the promise that I’m going to break your heart, Paige. Obviously, I’m all too aware that it could happen, that I could be the architect of it, but it’s still not something I can intentionally commit to.”
“But if we aren’tgoodfor each other,” I say. “If we come to the realization that we never would have been, even then. That we were right to call it off?”
“Is what you want to hear that the ending of us will be just as painful as last time?” Liam’s face sets like concrete.
“I want to hear that you’ll be honest,” I say tiredly. “I don’t want you to feel trapped, or like you need to lie to me to protect my feelings.”
His jaw rolls. “I swear to be honest if you do the same.”
“I swear,” I agree.
He moves the discussion along, but it isn’t lost on me that we didn’t really define what we’re swearing to be honest about.
“The second scenario is that you eventually realize you won’t ever love me the way you once thought you might have been able to. Maybe you get ninety percent there, and that’s as full as the tank gets. Which, I suppose, is a sort of heartbreak of its own.”
It’s a thoughtful assessment, however unlikely, since I can’t imagine my love for Liam ever capping out at ninety percent, but I nod and don’t refute him this time.
The air between us is crackling.
“Are you angry at me, too?” I ask.
“Are weangryat each other?” Liam returns. “Or is there a better word for it?”
“Aggrieved? Vexed? Irate?”
Liam blinks. “I’m certainly aggrieved that you forced me to cut myself out of your life. I’m vexed you still can’t saythank youfor what I did—”
“And you can’t say sorry.”
“And I’m irate about that song you wrote because it’s the least fair thing I’ve ever heard, and I also want to listen to it on repeat for the rest of my life.”
Liam stares at me hard, then rubs both hands over his face, eventually knotting them in his hair. “The third scenario,” he says, words aimed at the ground, “is that we realize wearegood for each other. That we werewrongto call it off. And rather than break your heart, I steal it instead.”
He looks at me and lowers his hands to his sides while the heart in question thrums. I’d be lying to myself claiming I never hoped he’d propose this alternative.
“Right now,” he says, voice low, “I think these three scenarios have equal chances of actualizing. There’s no front-runner. I’vemade my peace with the outcome being what it may, and if we’re going to do this, I want you to make peace with it too.”
Despite the loaded language and careful negotiations we’re navigating, it occurs to me that this is no different from the start of any relationship.
You fall in love, and your heart gets broken.
You don’t fall in love, and it hurts your heart in a different way.
Or you simply fall in love, full stop.
