Page 55 of Ward Willing
“We should get home,” he says instead, taking a step away.
“Liam.”
As he faces me again, his expression is closed off. “What happened tonight can and will never happen again. I’m sorry I let it go that far. Again,” he explains, his stoic manner faltering for half a second before he turns and continues walking without letting me respond.
Hurt and rejection lance through me in quick succession, and I blink back tears as I follow him to his car.
He doesn’t give me the option of driving. He opens the driver’s side and climbs in quickly. Before I can reach my door, he’s already leaning across the seats and opening the passenger door.
I don’t say thank you.
I don’t speak. Don’t look at him. Instead, I choose to stare out of the window the entire drive home.
Because tonight, I realized that this goeswaybeyond being attracted to Liam.
Instead of admiring the gorgeous pool from afar, I’ve jumped right into the fucking deep end.
And I amso, sofucked, because he’ll never admit that he wants me.
The only thing I’m going to get out of this is a broken heart.
CHAPTEREIGHT
THE ANNIVERSARY
Liam
The weather turns cooler over the next two weeks, and it takes every ounce of spare energy to keep all thoughts of Zoe locked up in the back of my mind. I suspect she’s avoiding me, which is fine because every interaction with her lately feels tenuous and delicate. The less we’re around each other, the better—especially after the night of the gig.
I waffle from one end of the spectrum to the other with regards to that. When I’m twisting and turning in my sheets at night, I can’t help but remember how soft her thighs were. Howwarmshe was, how well she responded to me—like every one of my touches pulled some deep, untouched string inside of her. And when I stroked myself in the shower each night, the only things I could think about were her scent, the tiny, little noises she made when she came, and the way her hips circled skillfully on top of my thigh.
It was enough to get me hard whenever I allowed myself to think about it.
However, on the other end of the spectrum, Ihatedmyself for letting it ever get that far again. I’d worked so hard to push past what happened in Catalina. And because of what happened to me, because of my injuries, she’d taken it upon herself to do more things for me, which only worsened whatever I was feeling.
With midterms coming up and Zoe taking double the required credits, I’d hardly seen her outside of class, but there had been plenty of clues.
Random plates of breakfast left for me in the morning with my coffee, or the leftovers sitting in the fridge with a note to eat it before it went bad. She didn’t usually cook because I was home more often, but she’d started trying.
For me.
There was the time she’d folded all of the laundry, and I’d walked into my bedroom to see my bed covered in neat stacks, and sitting right next to the clothes was a stack of receipts for food.
Almost like it was her way of apologizing.
I’d never asked her to do chores around the house, and though she never asked me to do anything for her, over the last year and a half, I’d enjoyed doing it.
Having Zoewantto take care of me causes a messy torrent of emotions to buzz through me.
On the one hand, it’s not her job, but I can’t deny that for the first time in my life, I have someone onmyteam—even though I’m supposed to be taking care of her, but that’s beside the point.
It feels… good.
The new routine is so distracting that I don’t realize it’s early October until I’m sitting in class and going over the midterm scheduled for Friday.
“The first part will be multiple choice, which will go over the poets we’ve discussed, facts about them, and the themes in their poetry. This section is short and only worth ten percent of the overall grade. If you’ve been paying attention during class, this will be a breeze,” I start, narrowing my eyes as I see Zoe enter the class—twelve minutes late.
I track her movements, watching as she takes a seat in one of the back rows–and my mind becomes a jumbled mess of words.
