Page 67

I wrangled my breaths as I watched him give a quick and frustrated shake of his head. “Liv,” he said my name like it was a curse word, a plea.
“What?” I snapped, officially losing it. I was defeated.Resentful.Still frustrated with him—and with myself. I pushed my way out of his lap, landing hard in the passenger seat.
“I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment of thought, defeated, too. His shoulders sagged, and his energy visibly deflated.
“You don’t want this,” I threw out—a statement and not a question. Bringing to light what we both had to have been thinking. Though I was sure it came off as not wanting to push things too far again, instead ofthisas in us—Neil and I, as a thing.
“Shit…no.” He shook his head. He seemed as frustrated as I was, but as tangled up as my thoughts currently were, I still couldn’t help but be momentarily amused by his use of the wordshit.He was so genuine in the way he said it, that familiar frown line forming between his brows. But my amusement was there and gone in a flash.
I curled my hand into a fist at my side, mentally pushing back the rushing swell of…everything.
“I don’t know what to say,” he continued with a sigh. “What you want me to say. I mean, you know this isn’t an issue because I don’t… because I don’twantto, right?”
“Not helping, Neil.” I sagged against my seat, biting back a handful of arguments before settling on, “And that isn’t an answer.”
He sighed again, running his hand down and back up his face and through his hair, turning to lean back against his door to give me his full attention. The kaleidoscope of browns in his eyes had gone dark and intense, making it harder to breathe.
“This is an issue because I know once I do,” he started, “I won’t be able to stop.” His hand was on his chest now, pushing back against something unknown. I thought I might’ve been feeling that something, too. “I know that once I do,” he continued, “the way I feel about you won’t just be about how much I like you. It’ll shift everything intomore, Liv, and I can’t. I can’t offer you that.”
I was ashamed to admit it, but I was stunned stupid. To say his words shocked me would’ve been a massive understatement. It was a truckload of shit dumped on my lap, and it was more than I could handle at the moment. I was spiraling; I’d alreadybeenspiraling.
“I have my mission, and college, and my parents…” He trailed off, or maybe it was my mind that had trailed off in an attempt at self-preservation.
Because I realized, right then, in that mortifying fucking space of time, that what Neil was basically saying… was that he liked me, but not enough to carry it anywhere. That heliked me, but he didn’t want to like me more than he already did. That even though my feelings had grown, despite my efforts to smother and suffocate them into the ground, his obviously hadn’t if he could say something like that to me. To admit that—after I’d been sitting in his lap, grinding against his hard-on with his tongue deep in my mouth.
It was a slap to the face like I’d never in my life felt before.
I immediately dropped all pretenses, all the bullshit and self-preservation instincts, and put him on the spot, asking him point-blank, “If you can’t do more, then what the hell is this?” I gestured between us, fully intending to start a fight. I was ready to go to war for myself, irrational or not. “For all intents and purposes, you are essentially my fucking boyfriend, Neil. You get that, right?”
He scoffed.Actually. Fucking. Scoffed.And it pissed me off more than I could mentally comprehend. I didn’t care if his scoff was accompanied by his smile or his obvious intent to lighten the situation. Because the next words out of his mouth? They threw a match directly into the flame of my burning anger. “We don’t do the boyfriend-girlfriend thing, Liv. Remember?”
I laughed out loud. A short, sardonic, mocking laugh. “Screw you, Neil.”
His mouth fell open, his features scrunched together in confusion. His eyes were alight with worry. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
And… ha.Ha!
Good, bad, virtuous or not, all boys, apparently, were stupid.
“No,” I spat. “I don’t think I do.”
He groaned—growled, grunted; I was too pissed off to be sure—both hands digging through his hair this time. “I know what you’re doing, Liv,” he said, a forced calm to his tone. I wanted to strangle him and straddle him all at the same time. “You’re trying to push me away; you’ve been doing it all week.” His demeanor softened. “Is that really what you want? You want me to walk away? Because you’re doing a hell of a job trying to make sure that happens.”
My thoughts flipped upside down, and my emotions followed suit. The anger that filled my chest fell heavily in my stomach, shifting into something else entirely. Into something I didn’t recognize. Something dark and tainted and twisted up in too many feelings.
It felt a lot like something that was tied directly to my—no. Just. No.
“Maybe I do,” I said quietly, the whisper barely making its way across his truck. It was a half-assed attempt at meaning what I was saying. I straightened my back and cleared my throat. “Maybe I’m over this, too,” I said, louder this time. “You can’t give me what I want, and I sure as hell don’t fit into your pretty little plans. Your perfect life of church, and virtue, and saving yourself for marriage. It’s ajoke,Neil.”
His eyes were so intense then that I was forced to look away. I already hated myself for saying that.
“Sometimes I feel like you’re the only one who truly sees me, Olivia. Beyond everything else.” He sighed. “And then other times, like right now…” He ran his hand through his hair in my periphery, his voice rough and tangled up in his own feelings. His hair was a mess at this point. “I feel like you’re blinded by your perception of me. Like you don’t see me at all.” He fell quiet. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said he was pissed, but I could see what was written in the pained lines of his features—he was more disheartened than anything.
I didn’t want to admit it, but I was too.
The truth was, we were both avoiding the inevitable. I knew that fromgo, but I’d ignored it anyway. We couldn’t be more than this right here, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough anymore.
Still, I wanted to take it all back, tell him I was sorry, kiss and make up, but I knew we’d only circle right back around to this moment again eventually. A merry-go-round of misery, and I was going to get the hell off before I made myself sick.