A Love Song for Liars (Rivals #1) - Piper Lawson Page 0,9

catch my toe on the rock edging the garden and trip.

I stick my hands out to brace my fall, wincing as I land in the rose bushes, their thorns scratching at my skin, but I push myself up and trip through the garden toward the patio.

“Annie, what the fuck?”

I glance back, but Kellan's lurching toward me. A muttered curse says one of the rose bushes bit him, too.

I round the back of the house, the pool coming into view. Laughter floods my ears. Cans litter the patio. I watch in horror as someone empties a bottle of liquor into the pool.

These people aren’t my friends, and there's nothing I can do to change that.

My stomach plummets, the ground tilting at a reckless angle beneath my feet.

I shove past bodies to the pool house and hit the code for the keypad. After two tries, the door opens, and I fall in.

The door closes behind me and a low, rough voice splits the darkness. “Party’s by the pool. Get out.”

I don’t move. The next second, I’m shoved up against the wall by something hard and warm.

Not something. Someone.

A hard chest crushes my breasts, and male hips dig into my stomach. I’m so thrown it takes me a moment to catch up.

But it’s his scent, cedar and sunshine, that keeps me from freaking out the way I did with Kellan.

“Annie?” Disbelief cracks the anger in his voice, his lips inches from mine in the dark.

“I know,” I whisper. “You didn’t recognize me without the garbage bag.”

Tyler steps back, and I sway.

He lunges for me, wrapping an arm around my waist.

Even though I want to shove him, I’d fall in a heap without his support. So, my fingers close over his hand, and as he helps me across the floor, I imagine away the heat of his body.

Six uncertain steps later, I'm deposited on something soft.

His bed.

The glow of light—the nightstand lamp switched on—has me wincing until my eyes adjust.

Tyler’s staring down at me, a shirtless, scowling god. His toned chest floods my field of vision.

I swallow. The buzz from the alcohol has my gaze sliding down the muscles of his stomach, lingering on the indentations left by the shadows, the faint trail of hair that disappears into the top of his unbuttoned jeans.

“What did you take?” His voice is commanding, forcing my eyes up to his.

“Nothing. I had one—two drinks?” Tyler lifts a dark brow under the thick fall of hair. “Two and three-quarters drinks,” I decide.

He doesn’t smell like cologne and liquor. Tyler smells clean and warm, like a forest.

“And you’re here because…”

I think I prefer my trees quiet.

I slide onto my side, closing my eyes and sinking into the relief the new position brings. “Kellan wanted to wrestle in the roses. I didn’t.”

A string of impressive curses drifts through my head, almost as if I’d uttered them, but the voice isn’t mine.

Then he’s gone. I feel him vanish from the side of the bed only to reappear a moment later.

“Did he hurt you?” Tyler’s voice is so low it’s barely audible.

I shake my head, and the room spins. I force my eyes open to see him braced over me, close enough his knees brush the bed, holding a glass.

“It's water,” he says flatly. “You’re dehydrated.”

“You don’t have to sound like you care.”

The growl would have made me jump if I wasn’t so buzzed.

I’m not trying to be a brat. He doesn’t need to pretend when we’re alone. It’s not like with Dad and Haley, when civility is a must.

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit of a brat, but I’m protesting Kellan, the fuzziness in my head, my own stupidity in thinking I could win these people over…

Plus the shirtless Hottie McTraitor in my pool house.

The one who sinks onto the bed next to my head, making the mattress dip with his weight. My fingers brush his thigh.

“Annie. Drink the damn water.” There’s a note of worry in his impatience. “You can hate me again after.”

I sit up and drink, studying him over the rim of the cup as he studies me.

We’re closer than we’ve been in months, except for maybe the other day at my car when he moved down my body.

But now he’s searching my face—not for emotions, but for marks, for trauma, for signs of something that shouldn’t be there.

“You won’t find anything,” I murmur when I finish the water. His dark gaze comes back to mine. “Anything worth finding is underneath.”

But he takes my chin gently in his