AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But Liam looked perplexed by the question. “Lying? I’m trying to warn you about these criminals, and you think I’m lying to you?”
When he put it that way, I felt more ridiculous for even saying it. But it still wasn’t enough to get me out of it.
Huffing, he shook his head as if to stay focused on what was at hand. “Listen, if you don’t cut all communication with them, something awful will happen to you. Something much worse than just being attacked in the woods.”
Whether it was his tone or how he seemed to want control over me, I bristled. “I can protect myself. I don’t need you telling me what I can and can’t do.”
“Can you protect yourself?” He demanded, incredulous anger reflecting back at me. “And how did that work out for you last time?”
Taking a step back, his words lashed out at me, and I couldn’t hide the hurt on my face. I couldn’t ignore how it stung, especially after how angry I had been with myself about it.
“That’s not fair,” I mumbled. “I was ambushed. I had no idea it would happen.”
“If you keep ignoring my warnings, you will still be blindsided when they lash out again. That’s how they operate. They won’t consider your feelings.”
His anger only fuelled my own, and my blood started to boil. He seemed to assume that I couldn’t handle anything on my own, as if he was the only one capable of protecting me.
That thought only riled me up more.
“I didn’t want to publish anything about you anyway! I was already talking myself out of it.”
“You didn’t soon enough,” he returned, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “I can’t believe you would even do this! That you would go this far with it.”
“It’s not like you helped your case at all. You were so closed off about everything. If you had just been honest, then I wouldn’t need to ask around for information on you,” I reasoned, not knowing how I was supposed to steer us away from this conversation.
“It wasn’t any of your business to know! Nobody else needed to know either, not when I was trying my hardest to make a new life for myself.”
“You thought you could just run away from your problems?” I asked, recalling how easily he left town when he was younger. “No matter how hard you try to hide it, the truth will come out eventually. And if you don’t want it leaked that badly, you clearly have something to hide.”
“You know all about that,” he scoffed, looking at me in a way he never had before. It made my face flush.
“At least I can admit I got myself in trouble.”
“All because you can’t figure out how to stay out of other people’s business! This never would’ve happened if you had just listened to me. If you had been content enough with your life to stop yourself from getting in the middle of mine,” Liam ranted, anger showing in every part of his face. “But you just couldn’t get enough. You claim to want to help people, but all you’ve done is make this harder for me.”
Put off from him, I felt myself retreating. Like all of the work we had done to reconcile had been for nothing, everything in me wanted to resist him again. To pretend like I hadn’t opened myself up to him.
“I want to hear you say it,” Liam began, not taking his eyes away from me for a moment. “Admit that you just wanted to smear my name so that I’d have nothing left.”
Everything in me didn’t want to give him what he wanted. Instead, I stood there with my arms crossed, trying to steel myself against his shouting.
“Now’s the time to get it off your chest,” he insisted, blood boiling.
But I refused still. That stubbornness cloaked me; instead, I had something else I needed to say.
“You want to know why I was pissed at you?” I asked, not giving him time to respond before I steamrolled into the past. “I wanted you to finally hurt for how you treated me. You had no right to spend your time bullying me and making me feel insignificant. Regardless of how much time I spent working on myself after the fact, you knocked all that progress down the moment you came back. Just when I thought you had changed—when I thought there could be something between us—you used me for my body. You reduced me to nothing but an object you could play with and discard the moment it didn’t suit you anymore. You’ve always been callous, but I guess I was hoping that part of you had been left behind in the city.”
Liam blinked back at me, forced to catch up with the new subject. “That is exactly the problem! While I’m sorry for how I treated you, and I don’t know how many more times I’ll have to say it, but you have let yourself be blinded by the need to get back at me. So much so that you’re willing to endanger us both. Whether you know it or not, you will end up paying for it in the end.”
The scathing sincerity in his tone struck me, and I didn’t know how to interpret the latter statement.
He seemed to think so little of me, and that hurt the most.
If it was true that those men sent the assailant after me, then I had no doubt they were capable of some awful things, but without the whole truth, I didn’t know to what extent.
With a sigh, Liam looked like he wanted to reign his anger in despite how strong it had been.
“I’m disappointed that you would let something so personal cloud your judgment and that you’d abuse your position as a journalist like that. What happened to your integrity?”
