Page 14 of Holiday Home 4

Yes, you do,Liam thought, heart pounding excitedly in his chest.

“The outfits themselves,” he said, shrugging as if it were obvious. “That’s what we were talking about, wasn’t it? How you’ve been there, done that, worn this. And since this was the first picture you’ve sent me, I figured you’d throw me oneyouthought was average. If I gave it a five, you’d know you could get a five for almost anything.”

Victoria’s smile remained. She sipped more wine. “Perhaps.”

“Oh, it’s a certainty,” he said, smiling back at her. Was her heart going anywhere nearly as quickly as his? It was impossible to tell. She was so unflappably composed.

“Perhaps,” Victoria repeated, adding some emphasis. “And I won’t be sending you another picture just yet, so who knows if your theory is correct.”

“It’ll be proven right soon enough,” he said, confident.

A momentary lull in the conversation followed, and they both filled the silence by drinking more wine. Liam was starting to get used to the taste, maybe even like it. Or perhaps he wasjust in such a good mood that he wouldn’t have minded sewer water.

“So, what should we do next?” Liam eventually asked after an appropriate amount of silence had gone by.

“What shouldwedo next?”

He nodded. “Like I said, I’ve got nowhere else to be. Want to watch a movie together? I know you’re into them. You and Tess get together every week to watch something.”

Victoria stayed silent for a few seconds. Her discerning eyes seemed to bore into him, though he had no such talent when it came to reading her body language. He could only try and look relaxed—which he wasn’t—and confident—which he sort of was—about her ensuing answer.

“You remember that?” she asked, which felt to Liam like a pivot. Or a time waster, so she could keep trying to piece together his intentions.

“How couldn’t I? I’d just made the long drive home, and then I met you—the woman who hated me immediately.”

“I didn’thateyou. Istrongly dislikedwhat Tess and Avril hoped to use you for.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know about any of that then, so I just thought you really,reallyhated me. I spent the rest of the night wondering what I’d done.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. You ended up doing something very right.”

By “something right,” she was, strangely, referring to his choice to join Anna in deceiving Tess and Avril about the nature of their relationship. In doing so, when everything came out following an unpleasant encounter with one of the worst people Liam had ever met, Victoria’s opinion of him greatly improved.

“I just did what I thought was right at the time,” he admitted.

Another short stint of silence followed. Victoria’s eyes drifted by him, heading toward her living room. He’d only seen it in passing, never spent any time in it. They always came here, though “always” was a bit of a stretch. This was only the third time he’d visited her home. However, thiswasthe longest he’d stayed over at her house. And he was pushing to stay a little longer. A lot longer.

“Alright, we can watch a movie or two,” Victoria said, collecting her wine glass and the bottle. “But I’m selecting them, so you might regret having ‘nowhere else to be.’”

Picking up his glass, following Victoria as she led him toward a leather couch shaped like an L, he knew there’d be no room for regret anywhere within his body.

Chapter Five

Valentine’s Day…+3

Valentine’s Day fell on a Wednesday this year. The furthest possible day between Liam’s weekend visits back home. So, while everyone else on campus with a girlfriend went out to dinner, found somewhere cozy to whisper into the other’s ear, or rushed off to the nearest place to fuck, Liam had to settle for long-distance conversations.

Not that he reallyminded… too much. He FaceTimedthreewomen that night, and he received pictures fromfour!Even Victoria sent him something on Valentine’s Day—another picture of herself—the third in total. No caption or message wished him a happy Valentine’s Day beneath it, but Liam knew the woman wasn’t anywhere near oblivious enough to have forgotten what day it was. Excitement. There it was again, proliferating through him like bubbles rising to the surface of a boiling pot.

He spoke with Anna first, just after his final class of the day. Hanging out in his dorm room as chilly rain misted outside, he spent almost an hour talking to her. She wandered outdoorswhile talking to him, probably near her apartment. Intentionallyawayfrom a specific set of prying ears, he suspected.

In doing so, that put her in public, which naturally kept the suggestiveness of their call limited. Still, even with that restriction in place, he managed to leave Anna blushing more than a handful of times. She only tried to shush him once or twice, and their call ended with her whispering about how excited she was to see him on the coming weekend. That was the plan. They hadn’t celebrated early. Instead, they’d celebrate on the 17thand 18th.

“Goodbye, beautiful,” he said, grinning from ear to ear as she blushed one final time before ending the call.

About an hour later, while he was in the process of an incredibly sordid phone call with Tess, an image appeared at the top of his screen. Opening it while he and Tess made promises for the coming weekend, he found the first topless image of Anna that she’d ever sent him. His eyes nearly bulged out of his head upon opening it.

Finally, this beingafterwhen Victoria had sent him her picture—he’d given it four points, pretty much solely because she was on her knees in the sand, skin wet, hair clinging to her neck and shoulders—he and Avril echoed the kind of call he’d shared with Tess. One that went on for hours, departing Valentine’s Day and heading into the wane hours of the next morning.

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