Page 78 of The Summer I Destroyed You

“I’m sorry,” I breathe. “I shouldn’t have come.”

I step backward and he stops me with his hand wrapped around my arm before he pulls me inside and shuts the door. It’s darker in here, and I can only tell it’s him by feel as he tugs me into him. “Are you okay?” he asks.

I nod, letting my hand slide down his chest and into the waistband of his boxers. I love how quickly he responds to me. Even if he doesn’t want me here, one part of his anatomy does.

He stills my hand. “What are you doing?”

“I thought that was fairly obvious.”

“You don’t have to do that. I mean, it’s okay for you to come here without that.”

“I want to.” I need him to drive every thought out of my head and put me somewhere where it’s impossible to think of anything at all, even if it only lasts a moment. “Please.”

He pulls me back to his bedroom. He’s gentle as he removes the sweatshirt, the tank, the shorts, studying my face in the dim moonlight.

He scoops me up and sets me on the bed, pushing my knees out as he settles between them. I’ve come twice before he finishes himself, shuddering quietly above me.

He rolls to my side and pulls me onto his chest while he catches his breath. I don’t try to leave when it’s done, though part of me thinks I should.

“What happened?” he asks after a long moment.

“I just had a bad dream and wanted to get out of the house,” I reply.

“What was your dream about?”

I flop onto my back. “Nothing.”

His hand squeezes my hip. “You woke me up at two in the morning. The least you could do is tell me the truth.”

Here we go again. Liam and his tedious need for honesty and earnestness all the time. I’m half-inclined to lie, to tell him my greatest nightmare is that Elliott Springs stays as lame as it currently is.

“It was about the last time I saw my dad in Santa Barbara. I just remembered a bunch of things I’d forgotten.”

“Like what?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you pry a lot?”

He laughs, pressing his lips to my neck. “Em,” he says against my ear, “when the guy you’ve been flirting with for months and sleeping with for weeks asks you about your bad dream, it’s not prying.”

“Fine. I just remembered how sad he was when he left. And how I felt like I’d finally ruined things with him too, like he saw the things my mother did and decided to go. Obviously, he’d already planned to leave. I’ve just had it in my head for so long that I was a disappointment to both of them. It was a surprise to remember I once didn’t think so.”

“Princess, you were ten,” Liam says. “There was nothing you could have said to anyone that would make them hate you. Or leave. Whatever was going on with your dad and whatever is still going on with your mom…I don’t think it has anything to do with you.”

I force a smile. “I’m not so sure. I was asking him about the stock market. No one wants to discuss the stock market with a ten-year-old.”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing a ten-year-old Emmy talk about the stock market for hours on end,” he says, running a hand over my hip.

“I’m a little uncomfortable with the fact that you’re talking about me as a ten-year-old while you initiate sex.”

He laughs and removes his hand. “I wasn’t initiating sex, asshole. I was trying to comfort you. Do you think maybe he was trying to take you with him and changed his mind?”

I lift my shoulder. “He didn’t pack any of my stuff. He didn’t take my passport. Given how thoroughly he appeared to have planned, I don’t think he’d have just forgotten that.”

“You know he did the right thing by leaving you, yeah?” Liam asks. “What kind of life would you have had on the run like that? You had advantages here that he could never have provided.”

I sigh. “I guess.”

I have little reason to think that he made it out alive. I have little reason to think I’d have had a nice childhood on the run in South America. But I still wish he’d tried.

---