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“Maybe you’re just misremembering how things happened.”
But I quickly realized that was the wrong thing to say as her face reddened, and she looked beyond pissed.
“No, I’m not,” she uttered, standing up from her place. “You did everything in your power to make sure I felt small. Every single day, you had something awful to fling at me, and you suddenly don’t remember? You ruined everything for me until the day you left.”
Something about that made my heart clench, and my skin burned. To know she was glad I was gone, and she likely didn’t miss me at all.
Suddenly, the wine tasted sour, and I didn’t want any of it. It made me wonder how everything went wrong so fast.
Chapter 9 - Cora
“Is that how you really felt?”
Liam’s arrogance reminded me all over again why I should’ve ignored him entirely. Why I was better off pretending like he didn’t exist.
“Yes,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest. “It was the first time in my childhood I could breathe.”
“Well, I’m sorry I was such a nuisance to you,” Liam returned, sounding wounded by my perception rather than what he had done. He stood, looking agitated. “But you had me all wrong. I was a kid.”
“So was I!” I shouted back, brimming with anger as everything I had stashed away came back to the surface. “You think that absolves you from everything? Being a kid is a good enough excuse to make me hate myself?”
“That was never what I wanted!”
“But it was what you did anyway,” I seethed, taking a step toward him.
We both leaned in, teetering with anger.
It was almost like our time together at the Roadbar had never happened. Like we weren’t having drinks or dancing with one another, moments away from jumping each other’s bones.
I had been wearing rose-tinted glasses around him, assuming he had done some introspective work and had realized how awful he had been. But that wasn’t the case at all.
“I thought you changed,” I began, feeling stupid for even thinking things would be different. “But I was wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” Liam demanded, looking frustrated with me. “You’re the one living in the past! I don’t know why you think I was out to get you, but this wasn’t the evening I had in mind.”
Scoffing, I shook my head. “I can’t believe you. You can never do anything wrong.”
“And what, you’re the perfect one?”
The condescension in his tone made my skin crawl with frustration. I let out a half-restrained sound of exasperation, wondering if I was going crazy. “You’re such a nightmare!”
“And so are you.”
By then, we were close enough for me to feel the wrathful energy emanating from him, along with the warmth I had been appreciating most of the night.
While he towered over me, his face was right there, lips inches away.
In that split second, my stomach flip-flopped, and that anger cracked down the center to make the wall I put between us crumble.
Liam’s eyes searched mine as he scowled at me, only for his expression to soften.
His palm brushing against my cheek startled me, and his lips were on mine.
The force of the chaste kiss made me recoil somewhat, caught off-guard by the suddenness of it.
But as his mouth melded against mine, dripping with desperation and longing, I felt my resolve crumbling.
As much as I hated him at that moment, the rush of desire that flooded my system floored me, and I didn’t want to pull away.
