Addiction

--24--Let Her Heal--

Liam's POV

When Liv called me in the middle of the night the way she did on New Year's Eve, I didn't hesitate for a split second to drive down to Waterford to get her. She wasn't the type to just run away from her parents because she got into a little spat, I knew right away that something was very wrong just by the tone of her voice. Even when I found her in the middle of the street the night she got jumped, she wasn't that upset, angry, or sad.

Her family meant the world to her and so did Nikki, they were all she had when it all came down to it and for them to be angry with her or disappointed with her would absolutely crush her inside and out.

I knew that her parents would not have approved of the nature of the beginning of our relationship, I wasn't exactly proud of the way I went about trying to win her over in the first place, but that was another subject. That's why I never would have even hinted at anything of that nature around her parents or even Nikki if she would've told me so.

I felt like it was my fault too, deep down inside, and I hated that I felt it was partially my fault that she had so much heartache. I never would have told her that though, she would've went on and on about how it wasn't my fault, but her own. So I was there for her, I told her she could stay with me for as long as she needed and I was there for her when she did want to talk about it.

I woke up early the morning after we got home to the doorbell ringing, which was a complete surprise considering I had no clue we actually had a working doorbell.

I definitely was in for a surprise when I opened the door.

"Mrs. Richards, what are you doing here?" I asked as I answered the door in my boxer shorts and an old Bauer t-shirt.

"I need to talk to Olivia," she said, refusing to look me in the eye.

"With all due respect Mrs. Richards, I don't think that's a good idea right now," I said.

"I want to talk to my daughter Liam," she said, getting angrier.

"She's hurt," he said, "She's angry and she's said and she's hurt, she needs her time. She'll call you when she's ready and that's not now."
She didn't say a word to that, she just stared at me with this weird look that was somewhere between hurt and angry, the same look that Olivia had in her eyes when I picked her up at the gas station.

"I love your daughter Mrs Richards," I said after a minute of silence, "I love her a lot and I care about her more than I care about myself to be completely honest with you. But above that, I respect your daughter and what she needs and right now she needs her space, you're just going to make her angrier if you don't respect that. She'll call you when she's ready to talk to you and maybe she'll go and visit you when she's ready, I don't know, but what I do know is that I'll help her do whatever it is she wants to do when exactly it is she's ready."

"You don't get to say that," she said, shaking her head back and forth, "You don't get to tell me what's right for my daughter because, quite frankly, I don't think you are right for my daughter."

"You need to go," I sighed, taking a deep breath.

"Do you know what's going to happen when you leave her like you left the last girl?" she asked coldly, "She's going to be a mess because you played with her emotions like this, you made her believe that you really love her. Because she's never been so head over heels for a boy, she's never been so involved with a boy before. And she and her mess are going to run back to me because I truly do care about her and love her and I know deep down inside that you know that too, somewhere deep inside of you."