Chapter 24

24

I stared at the text for a few moments, blinking rapidly as if I was seeing something wrong. But the name remained the same, bright and bold, staring back at me.

I hesitated to reply, not knowing what to say. I had so much to say weeks prior but now, my mind had come to a complete blank, knowing no words could ever make up for how I ended things. Knowing my apology would mean nothing while I was with Reece. Knowing that I was beating him down behind his back while faking smiles to his face. It was the cruelest joke to be played after the evening I had with Reece, like the universe was laughing down at me and warning me at the same time that I was dancing too close to the fire.

But curiosity had already taken me this far, and he could already see I had seen the message, so I texted back before heading up to my room.

Yeah. I'm free.

I could hear Nate through the crack in his door as I walked past, the flickering light from his computer leaking through the gap. I shut the door behind me, cascading my room into complete darkness before I fumbled my way into bed. I turned the night lamp on that sat on top of the bedside table as I tucked my legs under the covers and leaned up against the headboard. I waited about five minutes before my phone rang with an incoming Facetime from Liam. I took a deep breath and answered.

I smiled when it connected and his face appeared. "Hey."

He smiled softly in return and replied, "Hey, Dakota."

It was quiet for a moment as I chewed my lip, both of us not knowing what to say.

"What's got you all dressed up?" he enquired, taking note of the top half of the dress in view that I hadn't been bothered to change out of yet.

"Oh. I just had dinner with my Mum."

"How did that go?"

I shrugged. "It was okay, I guess."

Worse than okay, but I didn't want to elaborate.

"I'm sure it wasn't that bad," he assured me like he was trying to downplay my feelings and knew everything about my relationship with my mum. Just as he always had when we were together.

But I didn't want to blow things out of proportion before we could talk about whatever he had called me about. "Yeah, no. It was fine. Anyway, enough about that, are you okay?"

He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I'm good. I just," he trailed off, looking away from the camera as he gathered his thoughts and my nerves bubbled low in my stomach.

"Do you remember when we took that road trip to Springbrook National Park and I slipped on that rock and cut my leg?"

I forced a chuckle at the memory. "Yeah, I had to carry you back to the visitation centre for them to patch you up while you squeezed my hand."

"Hey," he laughed out. "It was a deep cut. I was allowed to be a baby about it."

"Okay. I'll give you that," I conceded. If it had been me, I would have been sobbing. It looked so painful. I couldn't even help him tie it with his shirt like he wanted me to because I'm sure I would have thrown up. He had to do it himself before I lent my shoulder while we limped about a kilometre back to the visitation centre.

"But, it was probably one of the best days I had in a while when you settled our picnic at the campgrounds. You made what could have been the most embarrassing days into a good one."

I looked away, not able to look at the way he watched me with longing and sincerity. We did have many good days like that, but I remembered that day as disappointing.

Liam was more of a homebody. He wanted quiet moments in bed all day, watching movies and ordering in. I liked to have some days like that, but not every day.

I had practically begged Liam to come with me to hike and picnic by the waterfall. And then, when he cut his leg, he whined that it was the reason he didn't want to go, that it was dangerous and way too hot to be climbing just to have a picnic. That there were a million places to picnic closer to home. All while clinging to me as we limped back down the trail.

I wanted to go places and see things, but when I tried to convince Liam to come with me, he always declined.

So we spent our weekends cuddled together on the couch, while I started to mentally distance myself.

It was after we slept together, and we laid there naked next to each other that he blurted that he loved me. My chest sunk with the words and my heart beat so loud in the silence that grew between those words. I'd sat up and tossed on my shirt and pants, feeling more exposed than I wished at that moment. I wanted to run because I was scared of what those words meant. Because it felt more like lead landing on my chest than an expansion of air in my lungs, lifting me high in the rose-coloured world that I was meant to be in.

We'd argued then, before I ended it by breaking his heart as he stood on the other side of the room in only his underwear and high-tailing it out of his house, panic tightening my chest with every step.

"Liam," I whispered in a painful breath.

He sighed. "I just want to know what happened to that. It was so good between us, Dakota. What went wrong?"

Tears stung my eyes as I chewed my lip. "It was good. But I was scared and I had a lot of things happening that you didn't know about. We just never really fit together, but I didn't want to hurt you, especially not like how I did and I'm so sorry for that."

Liam shook his head as it hung between his shoulders and I wished I could wrap my arms around him. I didn't want to be the person to tear someone down, but here I was, making a mess of things and what made it worse was that I was still hiding things behind his back.

Liam looked up at the camera again, his eyes shining with unshed tears. "I'm sorry I couldn't be who you wanted me to be."

I shook my head quickly as a tear escaped. "Please, don't be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. You were perfect. We're just complete opposites."

He nodded and looked away as he sniffed. "We can still be friends though, right?"

I swallowed. "If that's what you want, I'm happy with that."

He chuckled. "Well, I'm sure I'll see you around at baseball games sometime while Nate is here."

I smiled. "Yeah, you will."

We didn't talk much after that and hung up shortly after.

If that talk had happened a few weeks ago when I showed up to their game after Airlie Beach, I'm sure I would have felt lighter that we had cleared the air. But I just felt more weight pressing down on my heart with guilt for the secrets I held in the dark.