Page 59 of Unfinished

“I’m not okay.” He did not sound normal at all and I hated that I wasn’t there to give him some sort of peace in all of this.

“I’m sorry about your dad.”

“He’ll be okay.”

We were silent for a while and I heard monitors and noises in the background, he must have been at the hospital.

“I wanted to check in on you, cause I know everything with your dad has to be hard,” I said after a sigh.

“Still not the hardest thing I’m going through at this moment.”

“Liam,” I started, but paused because I didn’t want to fight.

“I called every single contact we have, I told them about her. I even made a couple of phone calls for you.”

“What?”

“I contacted some people to make sure they understood they never listen to my mom when it comes to you.” This caused me to sit up. I didn’t want him putting me on anyone’s radar or doing any favors for me.

“Liam,” I started.

“I will not let her do any more harm to you. Saturday there will be an article released about her. All sorts of dirt has been dug up about her doing things like this among friends and family. She’ll be a social pariah and no one will ever listen to her again. You are my everything, Hannah. I couldn’t let her do anything to you.”

“She won’t be the last.”

“Maybe not, but I’d destroy anyone who tries to harm you,” Liam said.

“And Melissa?”

“I can’t control other people, but I can always be honest with you. I’ll do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen, but if it does, I’ll tell you. I mean it, Hannah, I’ll do anything to make this work between us, destroy anyone. Fuck … I can’t let this go, I won’t let you go.”

I stayed quiet. There was still one major reason for us to not be together, and that was my schedule. While the sale of the Jeep and the diner income I saved made my life easier, it didn’t stop the fact that I was going to be extremely busy.

“Hannah, we can make this work,” Liam breathed.

“I won’t have the time to devote to anything and we will both suffer,” I argued.

“Fine, then wait for me and I’ll wait for you.”

“What do you mean, wait?”

“I’m not going to date anyone else, I’ve found the only person I want to be with. If you need the next four years to focus on your school, then I’ll give that to you. I’ll wait for you. Wait for me, don’t date anyone else,” Liam explained.

“How does that even work?”

“Look, it’s a way to take the pressure off because we aren’t technically together, so you don’t need to feel bad about us not being able to see each other. It frees us from all relationship expectations. We take the time to do what we need to do and when it’s over, we can be together." He was sounding more desperate. Liam wanted to give me time and while I was being difficult, I only wanted to protect us both from the inevitable heartbreak when Liam couldn't stand to be apart from me anymore and gave up entirely.

“What if you meet someone? Or I meet someone?”

“That’s not going to happen because there is no one for me but you and no one for you but me.”

“That’s awfully confident for a relationship that only lasted two months, Liam.”

“This isn’t over.”

“That right there, Liam. You want to take all the pressure off and remove the label, but essentially keep the expectation that we are still together. You can’t think that four years aren't going to change us and we’ll fall into a relationship like nothing changed. Hell, we never even got out of the honeymoon phase of our relationship before it all went to hell.”

“Goddamn it, Hannah. Fine. I’ll transfer everything to FIT right now, I’ll make every call I need to make and I’ll finish my schooling there.” He was getting aggravated and I couldn’t blame him. My stubbornness was the cause of that aggravation, but I wasn’t ready to risk everything for him like that.

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