I wiped my face with the back of my hand, my mind racing. Part of me wanted to run after him, demand answers, and force him to admit he was lying.
But I didn’t move.
Because even if I was right—even if Liam was lying about being done with me—the fact remained that he’d chosen to say those words. He’d looked me in the eye and told me I was just a chase. A thrill. Something temporary.
And a bigger part of me refused to beg a man to be with me.
I was done wanting men who didn’t want me enough to fight for me and work it out. If Liam wanted to push me away, that was his choice. If he wanted to self-destruct forwhatever reason, that was his choice too. But I wasn’t going to chase someone who’d just told me I was forgettable. I wasn’t going to humiliate myself trying to convince a man to love me.
Even if I suspected that man already did.
I pulled myself off the floor, my legs shaky, and walked to my bedroom on autopilot. The bed was still unmade from this morning, the sheets still rumpled from the last time we’d been tangled up in them together. I couldn’t look at it.
Instead, my eyes landed on my desk. On the pen holder sitting in the corner, that used to be stuffed full of pens and highlighters but still held strips of paper from last spring.
My chest seized.
I crossed the room and pulled them out, one by one. Little slips of paper covered in my handwriting, each one an item from the list I’d made all those months ago. Liam had cut them up himself, turning my bucket list into something we could draw from randomly, making a game of it. Although, we’d only ever pulled one out of here. The rest had come more naturally.
But I’d still kept every single one.
Even after we’d checked them all off, I’d saved them.
Having to be quiet so I don’t get caught.
Skinny-dipping.
Kiss outside in the rain.
I spread them across my desk, staring at the evidence of everything we’d done together. Every experience and memory that had started as an arrangement and turned into something that felt so real and deep I knew I’d feel Liam inmy heart for the rest of my life—even if he wasn’t there in person.
The list is done, and so are we.
His words rang in my ears, and something inside me snapped.
I grabbed the metal trash can from under my desk and set it in the middle of the floor. Then I dug through the drawer until I found the lighter I kept for candles.
The first strip caught fire easily.
I watched my handwriting curl and blacken, the words disappearing into ash.
Oral sex (receiving).
Gone. I dropped it into the trash can and lit another.
Sexy striptease.
Gone.
Role-playing.
Gone.
One by one, I burned them all. Every fantasy I’d written down, every experience I’d checked off, every piece of the arrangement that had somehow become so much more. The flames licked at the paper, consuming everything, and the grief loosened in my chest with each one that turned to ash.
This was supposed to be about me. About proving to myself that I was capable of wanting openly, of being bold, of owning my desires. And I had done that. Ihad. But somewhere along the way, the list had stopped being mine.
It had becomeours.
