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I gave her a small smile. “Years, huh?” I stretched my legs out on the ottoman. “Why’s that?”
She paled and set the mug down on the table behind the couch. “Circumstances,” she finally responded.
“Do these circumstances have anything to do with why you wake up screaming every night?”
She paled even further to a ghostly white and lowered her head, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. “I’d wondered if you heard me.”
“Every night.” I took a sip of my own hot chocolate. “I figured you’d tell me in your own time, but…” I shrugged. “I’ve been an asshole, so why would you tell me anything?” I laughed self-deprecatingly. “I’m sorry for that, truly, but I don’t know any way else to be. Not anymore.”
“What was her name?” she asked softly, her eyes almost caring.
“Whose name?” My brows furrowed in puzzlement.
“The girl who broke your heart. What’s her name?” she said each word slowly and carefully, like she was placing a highly-combustible bomb in my lap. I guess, in a way, she sort of was.
“How’d you know?” I forced the words past my lips. I wanted to be angry with her for even asking, but something about the quiet of the night and the small intimate bubble that seemed to surround us kept me from exploding.
“I didn’t.” She shrugged her slender shoulders and took a sip of hot chocolate. “I guessed based on your behavior. Sometimes you look at me with such distrust, and hey, I get it, you could distrust me simply for the fact that I’m a stranger, but it’s more than that,” she defended. “I know it is.” She squared her shoulders with a resolve and lifted one brow like she was daring me to argue with her.
“You’re right,” I confessed, and damn it felt good to give voice to the words.
“What was her name?” she asked again, trying to coax the truth out of me.
I narrowed my eyes on her. “Why does that matter so much?”
“It doesn’t.” She set her mug aside and wrapped the blanket back around her shoulders since it had fallen down.
“I thought maybe you’d feel better to talk about it.”
“I haven’t talked about it since it happened, why would I start now?” I countered, resisting the sudden urge to reach out and glide my fingers over her soft cheek and down to her chin where I could bring her lips to mine.
“Because the truth heals everything.” Something glimmered in her eyes. Something that looked a lot like fear.
“What’s your truth, Ari?” I adjusted my seat on the couch so that I could look at her more fully. “Why do you wake up screaming every night?”
“I’ll tell if you tell,” she whispered, ducking her head so I couldn’t see her eyes.
“You lie.” I reached out and grasped her hand against my better judgment, forcing her to look at me.
“You’re right.” Her tongue flicked out to moisten her lips, and her eyes flicked to my own mouth. “But only because I know you’re like me. You’ll never tell the secrets you keep.” Her voice was soft, almost husky sounding, and the air seemed to sizzle between us. That was the longest we’d ever spoken, and without fighting. I blamed it on the seeming safety of the early hour. Like no one and nothing could reach us. It felt as if we existed in our own realm. One all our own.
“We’re made of the same stuff, you and me.”
“And what’s that?” Her voice was soft, and she leaned unconsciously closer to me.
“Secrets and lies, woven together by fear and hate.”
“Is that all?” she asked breathlessly, her knee bumping mine as she adjusted her position on the couch.
“There’s hope there too, somehow still burning even when it should’ve long since been extinguished.” I stretched my arm over the back of the couch, and the gesture seemed to draw her even closer to me. So close that I could count a few tiny freckles sprinkled across her nose.
“Liam,” she breathed my name, and something in me snapped.
That something being my self-control.
I grabbed her face with both of my hands. Her mouth parted with a gasp, and I swore I saw a brief flash of fear in her eyes like she was unsure of what I was about to do.
I crashed my lips against hers.
