Page 72 of Unleashed By Eden

“You tell me.”

I laugh, but it comes out dry. “Nothing happened.”

“You’ve barely spoken to him since.”

I slide the plate into the cupboard. “Maybe I got sick of his face.”

“You adored his face.”

“I was twelve.”

“You adored it at seventeen too,” he says quietly.

I turn then, fast enough that he actually blinks. “Can you not?”

His expression shifts immediately. “Okay,” he says raising both hands. “But something changed.”

I look at him and wonder how much he knows exactly. He was there that night. He came back to Jeanine’s to see me while Carter went to see his mom. He knew Carter was asleep, sprawled out on the couch after getting into a fight with Maeve’s boyfriend. And he’d seen me acting all weird the next morning. Then quieter and smaller, until eventually I was angry all the time.

He isn’t stupid.

“Did you two hook up?” he presses again.

My skin goes hot all over.

“No.” It’s technically true, depending on how much of a coward I feel like being.

The truth is way uglier, though. It wasn’t a hook-up, it was me crossing a line I can’t uncross, then getting exactly the reaction I deserved. Carter’s face when he woke up. His voice when he told me never to touch him again. Then nothing—no reply or chance to apologize. I can’t scrape any of it back.

His jaw tightens. “Because if he did something—”

“He didn’t.”

“Vi.”

“He didn’t.” My voice sharpens enough to cut. “Drop it.”

He studies me and knows I’m lying. Maybe not about the shape of it, but about the specifics. About there being nothing worth hiding.

I lean back against the counter and fold my arms again.

“I texted him,” I hear myself say.

Liam’s face stays very still.

“A few times,” I add. “And he didn’t answer.”

That’s as much truth as he gets.

He doesn’t need to know that I texted what the fuck is wrong with you? Or how I stared at my phone like a loser waiting for the little dots to appear. Every day Carter didn’t respond turned my insides into a callus.

Liam’s mouth flattens. “Right.”

“I don’t know what his problem is,” I say, going for careless and landing somewhere near bitter. “And I don’t care.”

Another lie. God, I’m on a roll.

His eyes flick over my face, reading every crack I’m trying to plaster over. “You care enough to be this angry.”