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Unaware of the position she put us both in, Sienna thanked us again as she left the office behind, commenting about how we were both so helpful.
When it was only the two of us again, completely derailed from our argument, we looked at each other from across the room. That surprise and awkwardness fell away, and all that remained was anger.
Liam’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Stay out of my business.”
I wanted to fling something, anything back at him, but I couldn’t think of the right words capable of expressing exactly how I felt.
He turned and left, storming out just as he had entered.
While the angry cloud surrounding him went too, there was no distracting myself from how worked up I was after the fact.
Despite not wanting anything to do with me, Liam thought he had enough of a grip on me to tell me what I could and couldn’t do. He wanted me to be smaller once again and too afraid to do anything about it.
But if I had a real story on my hands, I would be left with an important choice, and I wasn’t prepared to let him feel like he was in control.
I wasn’t that little girl anymore, and I was prepared to get back at him for being an ass.
***
As the day went on, I wasn’t exactly in the greatest mood, but I was in a better place than I had been.
The early winter air nipped my skin as I walked down the street carrying my laptop bag in one hand and my cell phone pressed to my ear in the other.
“You’re kidding,” Sara said from the other side, voice feeling like an anchor for me through the chaos.
“I wish I was,” I murmured, forcing my annoyance down as I thought about that afternoon again. “I’m going to be stuck with Liam until the event is over.”
Sara gasped, clearly scandalized by it. “If Sienna were a witch, I’d say she planned it, but I’ll defend her on this one.”
“As far as I know, she was unaware. I just wonder how she decided on these volunteer partners.”
“Maybe she was onto something without knowing it,” she cooed, using the tone that always suggested another meaning entirely. “What if something else becomes of this forced partnership?”
The thought made my skin crawl, especially after our shouting match in my office. While I wouldn’t have minded the idea before, Liam’s evident disinterest in me wasn’t exactly making me feel soft towards him.
“No way,” I said with a grimace. “I hate him, and he probably hates me now because I started looking into his past. But his reaction gave it away that I was onto something. I could tell.”
I heard Sara sigh through the phone.
“Are you sure all that digging is worth it? What if he isn’t shady, and you’re just letting your past sour your perception of him?”
It wasn’t exactly the encouragement I had hoped for, especially after Sara had put the idea in my head in the first place.
While she wasn’t entirely wrong, I didn’t want to see it that way. Perspective mattered, and I wanted to allow everyone to see what I did.
“I’m just helping everyone who lives here so they can make their own informed decisions about supporting Liam,” I concluded, not seeing anything terrible about that. “If I find anything incriminating, of course.”
It wasn’t exactly on par with the other stories we were working on for the paper, but I knew it was bound to be ground-breaking whenever I could get that information from his former boss.
Even if it seemed like a bit of a reach compared to the usual local news, I wanted to have faith in my work and my instincts. I just hoped it would pay off.
She sighed again. “I guess you could see it that way. I just hope you’re not getting yourself in trouble.”
An odd sensation on my right side made me pause as I walked along the treeline bordering the woods surrounding town. It sent a shiver down my spine as if there were eyes on me.
“Is everything all right?”
Slowly turning my head, I looked into the trees that were growing darker with every passing minute. Dusk obscured my sight as it covered everything in a strange, eerie hue.
