Page 103 of Somebody's Watching Me
“I can take Izzy.”
He nipped at her flesh, sucking it between his teeth.
“William!”
With an evil chuckle, he spun her around to admire his work. “Looks good.”
Jamison shoved him aside to march over to one of the gaming tables and assess the angry red slash growing directly above her collarbone. “Everyone will see this!”
He shrugged with zero remorse. “And?”
Swiping her hair to the side, she combed the long lengths with her fingers, attempting to hide the mark. “Why would you do that?” And then it came to her. “Michael.”
She would have sworn he flinched, his dark gaze burning into hers. “So what?”
That stupid phone call. If she ever saw Michael Sinclair again, she was going to do a hell of a lot more than head butt the man. Liam had continued to listen to that damn conversation on repeat, allowing it to eat away at him. “I just find it barbaric.”
“You’ve never had a problem before. Why now?”
“Because you’re letting him into your brain,” she said. “This isn’t some case where you’re getting to know the people involved and trying to make them human to help yourself empathize. This is us. Your own family. Emotional involvement is already there.”
He turned away to examine something beeping on the laptop. “There is no us, and you’re not my family, Jamison. You made that realityhappen. The me and you of the past, and those perfect years, are gone. They meant nothing to you, and now they mean nothing to me.”
She would not crumble. Number one, the dress wouldn’t allow for it, and number two, the small shred of dignity she still held remained strong enough to keep her standing.
But if not for those two things, she would be in a heap on the floor over what he’d just said. Crying. Begging. Blabbering all the painful things she couldn’t bear for him to hear yet.
“There will always be an us.” Her voice wobbled as she spoke, and then more of those damn tears burned along the rim of her eyes. God, these things were really starting to piss her off. “If you want to lie to yourself, go ahead, but saying that we no longer exist makes you look like an idiot, and you’re not an idiot. You’re a brilliant man who is hurt. I hurt you. I accept that. I fucking hurt myself in the process.”
He stiffened as she spoke, leaning down to type on the keyboard of the laptop as if too preoccupied to give her his full attention.
“But you will always love me like I will always love you.” If she were going to drive this emotional train wreck, then he better be prepared to come along for the ride. “When I’m taking my last breath, no matter where life has led me, or how many years it will have been, the memory of your face will be the last thing I see. Your smile. Your laugh.You.The memories ofyouare my most precious possessions. They keep me sane, and I refuse to give them up. I refuse to give up on us. I did it once. I’m not doing it again.”
His head tilted up to the ceiling, shaking back and forth as he straightened. “Stop talking.”
“No!” she shouted. “I am not going down without a fight.”
“Do you need me to say I love you? Easy. I love you.” He turned to face her, his steady calm in place. “And that shit you just said about seeing my face when you take your final breath? Same. Every single part of your heart and soul belongs to me, and like you, I refuse to give them up.”
“But then why the whole—“
Liam held a hand in the air, and her mouth snapped shut. “It doesn’t matter that I love you. The blind trust that came with that love is gone, and I can’t rush back into this, Jamison. I want to. I want to forget these last six months. But for my sanity, I can’t.”
That was fair. They had nothing but time. Forever, if destiny was on her side.
A tear slipped down her cheek, sneaking past her defenses. She cursed, trying to stop it before any damage was done to her makeup.
Liam snatched a napkin from the coffee station they had set up and brought it over. “No more crying,” he ordered gruffly as she patted her face. “That wingtip eyeliner looks like it took a long time to apply.”
“It did, you bastard.” She gave a little laugh. “And you haven’t even told me how pretty I look.”
“I don’t like the dress.”
Tossing the napkin, she swatted his chest. “Liar.”
“If you need to run, it isn’t going to let you get very far, very fast.”
“If I need to run, you can carry me.”
