Page 158 of Begin Again, Part 1

"I won't!"

His beautiful, gorgeous lips she craved so much were set in a hard, unyielding line as he snarled at her. "Why must you always challenge me, Eden?"

"I'm not challenging you," she retorted. "I just don't know what I did wrong and why you are so angry with me."

"I am not angry with you!" Liam said, running an impatient hand through his short hair. He'd trimmed it at some point in the past two weeks. The new length showed off all the arrogance and stubbornness etched on his face.

They glared at each other for half a minute, though it seemed longer. Both refused to back away from the argument or yield to the other until Clara cleared her throat, interrupting their standoff, "Mr Anderson."

Liam ignored his assistant and barked at Eden one last time. "You're going to send me to an early grave with your stubbornness!"

With that, he turned on his heel, and the small crowd of assistants cleared a path for him to pass through.

"Are you okay?" Clara rushed to her side.

"It would have been nice to give me a heads up about the venue for the round-robin." Eden collapsed on the couch and buried her face in her hands.

"I'm sorry," Clara said. "I just found out now when we bumped into Matthew and Julian at the entrance."

"Great," Eden sighed. "They're also here!"

José and two waitresses appeared with trays of complimentary drinks and snacks. Fuming beyond belief over her confrontation with Liam, Eden reached for her first kamikaze shot in two years. Within minutes, the vodka worked its magic, doing a fantastic job cooling her anger and numbing her frayed nerves. By the time she had her third drink, she was floating on air and not a care in the world, as she told Lucy exactly what she thought of her. Her rant, whose focus had now turned to Liam and his tyrannical ways, continued over her fourth and fifth drink. When she tried to order her sixth cocktail, Clara nicely asked her to calm down and behave herself, or they'd have to call a cab for her and send her home before the party had even started.

Eden passed out on the couch and fell into a dreamless nap at some point while they were all in the middle of planning Gibby's farewell party. She woke up almost an hour later to a slight headache, pounding music and drunken bodies strewn all over the booth. Clara and two other ladies were still somewhat sober, watching over the shit-faced troop of assistants.

"You okay?" she asked, her speech heavily slurred, but the tall, fancy cocktail glass of something pink and syrupy remained steady in her hand.

"I need the bathroom," Eden announced. Her own words sounded like a jumbled mess as she burped a cloud of alcohol fumes in the other woman's direction. "I'll be back."

She stepped over expensive shoes and bags and stumbled out of their booth, taking her phone with her. She doubled over the toilet bowl as soon as she shut her cubicle, and for five minutes straight, retched her guts out.

Eden refused to leave the bathroom even when her stomach was empty, because it was so much quieter and cooler in here. She wiped her mouth, flushed the toilet, and rested her pounding head on the cool, tiled wall.

Without thinking too much about the numerous reasons she shouldn't or the consequences of her impulsive action, she picked up her phone from the floor and called her baby's father.

He answered on the third ring. "Eden?"

"Why don't you like me?" she demanded as soon as she heard his voice, hiccuping into the phone. "Is there no chance at all that you can like me a little bit?"

Chapter

Fifty

NO TAKEBACKS

"Are you drunk?" Liam clutched the phone in his hand and shook his head in disbelief as he checked his watch.

Two hours.

That was how long it had been since he left Eden in the VIP booth, and in that short two hours, she'd managed to get shitfaced, even when he told her she shouldn't. Even after he begged her not to be reckless. Now more than ever, he was convinced her sole purpose on earth was to torture and torment him.

"Why don't you like me?" she asked again, her sobs drowning out her words. At that moment, with his heart aching at the sound of her tears, he forgot all his anger.

"Where are you? I'm coming there right now," he said in a much gentler tone.

"Please like me." Eden burped softly on her end. "I like you so much it hurts, so please like me."

Her pleas left him stunned for words. How she could think he didn't like her when everyone around them seemed to be experts on his heart was mind-blowing.

---