“I can’t. I can’t bring myself to read it. It feels so final.” Her lip quivers slightly.
“Liv, don’t.” I put my arm around her, and she doesn’t slap me away.Win.
“I’m not,” she sniffles. “I’m trying to be strong. To get through it. But it’s really hard. With everything going on, I feel like I’ve barely had a chance to grieve.”
“I get it.” I rest my head on hers.
“It sucks.”
“I know.” We sit leaning against each other, a melancholy silence occupying the room. “Maybe . . . I can read it to you?” I don’t know where the hell the suggestion comes from. It just popped in my head and then out of my mouth. “So you don’t have to do it alone.”
Liv doesn’t respond, and I think I may have just stepped way over the line.
“You’d do that?” she squeaks.
“Why wouldn’t I? Because you just told me you didn’t want anything to do with me?”
“I didn’t say that.” Her head snaps up, clipping my jaw, causing my teeth to clank.
“Ouch.” I grab my face.
“Sorry.” She reaches for me but doesn’t follow through and touch me. “And, yeah, kind of.”
“Rejection has never stopped me before.” I work my tingling jaw. “And it’s not going to stop me from caring about you. Even if it’s in the platonic sense.” I pretend to gag.
“We can be friends, Damon. We just can’t be more.” Liv shakes her head at me adorably, as if at her wit’s end.
She can think that, but I don’t buy it or accept it.
Liv hands over the envelope, and I take it willingly. We shift positions on the bed, her angling toward me with one leg resting on the mattress as I slide my finger under the sealed flap.
She breathes tensely.
“It’s okay,” I try to reassure her as I pinch the folded piece of paper between two fingers.
“I know.” She exhales with glassy eyes.
Just before I slide the note out, someone starts pounding on the door, and my heart jolts from the rapid fire of the banging. Poor Liv jumps sky high.
“Who the fuck could that be?” she asks with her hand over her heart.
I shrug. “Maybe Knuckles locked himself out?”
“Or he’s looking for you?” She punches her fist in her hand. “You did sneak out last night.”
I consider this. “Maybe you should open it?”
“Fine.” She shuffles her clothes around in the suitcase that is open on the floor. After pulling on a pair of yoga pants, she heads for the door. Looking through the peephole first, she pauses, then looks at me. “I think you should answer it.”
The pounding begins again, the door rattling on its hinges.
“Is it Knuckles?” I get up.
“Nope.” Liv backs away so I can look through the peephole. I do not like what I see. “Motherfucker.”
I grab the knob and open the door with a sigh. I don’t even get a syllable out before Slash’s fist is flying toward my face.
Crack!He may have just fractured my eye socket.
