Page 56 of The Summer I Destroyed You

“I’m still working,” I argue.

“You can get your shit or I can sit right here until you’re done, but it’s not safe for you to be walking to your car alone this late.”

I release a heavy exhale. “For fuck’s sake, Liam. You’re already acting like I’m your girlfriend.”

“I was also going to wait for you back when I was calling you a whore,” he replies. Our eyes meet. “You know you loved it, so don’t complain about that too.”

I fight a smile as I turn to grab my laptop. “It was okay.”

“That’s high praise from Emerson Hughes,” he replies, elbowing me.

We walk out together, and he locks the door before we go to the driver’s side of my car. “I’m not going to kiss you,” he announces. “That way, you won’t accuse me of trying to be your boyfriend.”

“Good,” I reply.

He bites down on a grin. “We both know you want me to, though.”

I roll my eyes as I climb into the car, but I feel a little incomplete as I drive away.

I guess, perhaps, I wanted him to.

29

EMMY

I’m awake early the next morning. I feel bruised in the best possible way—there’s an ache between my legs, my lips are swollen to the touch—and I’m also steeped in regret.

Regret that it’s already done and can’t be repeated, regret that I did it and now things will be awkward as fuck until I leave. For my remaining time in Elliott Springs, there’s going to be this weird tension, and anytime I demand something of Liam, he’ll have that look on his face—the one that says, “I’ve seen your vagina.”

And I also still have to make it clear we won’t be doing it again…more unnecessary awkwardness.

I take Snowflake into the yard when I get up, throwing her a stick in the damp grass. I picture him walking around the corner—clean-shaven, fresh from the shower, T-shirt clinging in all the right places. I can almost smell his soap. I can almost feel his pec beneath my palm as I place my hand on his chest and tell him it’s done.

But he doesn’t arrive and once there are guys working in the yard, he’s not among them. Later, I get to the store and he’s not there either.

“Liam had to go down to Santa Cruz to give an estimate,” Mac says. “He’ll be by later.” There’s something gentle in his smile that worries me, as if he knows about last night and thinks Liam’s letting me down easy when it’s actually going to be the reverse.

This is all so much more aggravating than it needs to be.

I have a long teleconference with the company bringing in the spin studio, and then meet a designer in person to show her the space. When I return, Liam is there, looking over plans with JP. I wait for him to shoot me some lingering glance, smile at me in a new kind of way, but he doesn’t even look up from his drawings.

I go back to the office, itchy and discontent, as if I’ve had too much caffeine but have no place to burn the energy. I mean, this is excellent news, the fact that he’s not making this into a big deal. We can return to our professional relationship with no messiness whatsoever. I slide into my chair, tuck my purse in a drawer and lean back, remembering last night. How firm his lips were and how every single inch of him was hard. How he’d barely touched me before I was ready to explode.

I’ve nearly convinced myself we could afford to do it twice—I mean, things are already so awkward, it would be hard to make them worse—when Liam walks in, filling the entire frame of the door with well over six feet of lean muscle. Mentally, I’m ten steps ahead. I’ll tell him to lock the door and that this time I want him on top. I’ll tell him I’m on the pill if he doesn’t have any condoms. Maybe I have condoms? I slide my purse toward me to check.

He sets a hard hat on my desk. “We’re working in the room above you,” he says. “If you’re gonna sit in here today, wear that.”

And then he walks right back out the door. As if last night didn’t matter to him at all. And of all the ways I imagined today could have gone, this was not among them.

For the rest of the afternoon, I can hear him upstairs, yukking it up with JP and Mac—not a care in the world. And by the time I get to Chloe’s studio, I’m pissed that this day has gone exactly the way I’d hoped it would.

Chloe’s eyes widen. “Uh-oh. What happened?”

“What makes you think something happened?” I ask, scowling as I unroll my mat.

“You can either tell me now or I can lead you through the most physically painful yoga class of all time, and you’ll tell me at the end. You’re a chatterbox once you’re exhausted.”

Ugh. She’s probably right. “I slept with Liam last night.”

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