A Love Song for Liars (Rivals #1) - Piper Lawson Page 0,17

to stop her before she reaches for my hand.

Unlike Jax, she doesn’t make it worse, just inspects the reddened knuckles before sighing. “So, when Kellan hurts me, it deserves punishment, but when you hurt me, it’s fine.”

Her words lift the hairs on my neck and our gazes lock. Adrenaline surges through me.

She wants to do this now.

Fucking good. I’ve been waiting for it for four months.

I step closer until her towel brushes my chest. “If this is about me not answering your messages after you moved to Dallas, I had a ton of shit going on.”

She lifts her chin, unwilling to be intimidated. “Is that when your dad started locking you out?”

Pain has my gut twisting. “Still don’t wanna talk about—“

“Fine.” Her eyes flash. “Then let’s talk about what happened when you came here and everyone at Oakwood fell in love with you.”

Everyone? I want to ask, but she’s already going on.

“I could handle the weird popularity thing. But at Carly’s party, the way we talked and laughed and…” She shakes her head, the expression on her face shifting from anger to longing in a way that has my abs tightening. “I started to think we could be us again, even if you had other friends. Even if we hadn’t talked in months.

“That’s why I made you Rice Krispies squares the next morning like we used to. I came here to talk, but you weren’t alone.”

My heart stops because I’m starting to see where this is going.

Annie goes on, though I wish she wouldn’t. “There was a UT lanyard on the hook by the door, a girl’s boots on the mat.”

“You were jealous?” My voice is hoarse with incredulity because of all the thoughts that’d occurred to me, that wasn’t one of them.

“No.” She shoves angrily at my chest, but I don’t budge. “But I overheard you tell her I was nothing. Nobody.”

Fuck.

“I’ve been called nobody before,” she goes on, her voice oddly hollow, “but I never expected it from you.”

That hollowness must be contagious because it takes up residence in my gut, spreading with every breath.

I knew something had upset her, but she blocked me the next day with her phone. The day after with her heart.

She’d decided our friendship was over, and I let her do it.

It was what I wanted, wasn’t it?

The first thing Jax told me when he offered me this opportunity was to stay away from his daughter.

Now, I want to take it all back.

I want to tell her she’s more something than every other Oakwood student.

I want to protect the heart she wears on her sleeve like a fashion accessory.

“What do you want from me?” There’s desperation in my words. Anything she asks me for right now, I’ll give to her.

Her next breath fills her lungs, my ears. “I want to forget you.”

Five words.

Each one tears a layer off my heart.

It’s her pain, but somehow I’m the one feeling scraped and bloody.

My phone buzzes on the bed, and my stomach drops before I read the text.

I squeeze my eyes shut as I tug on my hair hard enough my scalp hurts. “You gotta go.”

“What?”

A knock comes at the door, and Annie opens it.

Trisha’s surprised face appears, and every curse word I’ve heard and some I haven’t stream through my head at once.

Annie’s body stiffens, and I get why even before Trisha hangs her UT lanyard on the hook by the door.

But before I can speak, Annie’s out the door and across the patio, the hair that was in my fingers moments ago clinging to her back in wet waves.

“What the…? Did you spring a leak?” Trisha frowns at the puddle of water on the floor.

It’s going to be a fucked-up night.

I never used to dream, but since Annie Jamieson spent the night in my bed—since I tugged my favorite T-shirt over her red bathing suit and felt her curl into me as if I was the answer to her problems instead of the cause of them…

I can't stop dreaming of mermaids.

6

“You see the car out front last night?” I ask my dad over coffee Tuesday morning before school.

“Friend of Tyler’s.”

I cut him a look. “And you don’t mind?”

“I mind that he went and screwed his hand.”

Haley comes into the kitchen dressed in jeans, a tank top, and a tidy ponytail, Sophie on her hip.

I find a smile for my half sister until my dad asks, “You see much of Tyler lately?”

I swallow my coffee the wrong way.

It was easier to keep him at a