The President's Daughter (Liam Payne) Book 6

Chapter 43

Liam’s POV

“I got my diploma. Its official now!” she says with a grin when I come back on the bus.

“That’s great,” I say with a half forced smile as she goes back to texting someone.  I was growing worried for her. It was easy to look at this little tour life around us and pretend it was the real world. But this would end and living in New York would be work. All she was thinking about was the social life and not about the responsibility she’d have to take to live there. She’d gotten back in touch with her friends in the few days since she’d graduated. I didn’t like them. They were a bad influence on her. I’d never even met the New York ones but already I was beginning to see her revert back to her old self. There was more sneers, more clubbing. Less of the girl showing interest in our everyday lives. I was nervous that when we finally did get back to New York in a week, she’d switch back completely.

“So where are we going tonight?” she asks, closing her phone and finally looking at me.

“I was hoping we could just stay in,” I confess as I climb into the bunk.

“But I just got my diploma,” she pouts. “I wanted to celebrate.”

“We could celebrate here… just the two of us,” I offer, leaning down to kiss her and slipping her phone from her grasp.

“Hey give that back,” she complains, reaching for it when I slip it into my pocket.

“They can wait,” I tell her, pressing my lips to hers. She pulls back and I catch a glimpse of a frown on her face as she twists around to grab her phone from my back pocket. I let out a sigh, rolling off her as she sits back up and resumes texting.

“I’m going out tonight,” she announces, sliding off the bunk. “Stay here if you like. I’ll see you when I get back.”

As she’s leaving, she brushes past Lauren who appears in the doorway.

“Where’s she going?” she asks in surprise at the brush off, walking into the bus.

“Wherever she wants. God knows she always does,” I grumble earning a look of sympathy from her.

“Well I guess that answers my question then,” she says leaning against the wall. “We were going to see if you two wanted to watch a movie with us.

“Yea, that’s not going to happen,” I scoff with a roll of my eyes.

“Is everything alright?” Lauren asks, moving away from the door to sit down on the edge of the bed.

“I dunno… she just… ugh,” I sigh.

“Come on, tell Auntie Lauren your problems,” she jokes. “We’ve been to therapy, maybe we can help.” I can’t help but crack a grin at that logic.

“She’s just. She’s turning back into the person we met at the beginning of tour. I thought she’d changed when she…” I trail off letting Lauren fill in the blanks. “But she hasn’t. And it’s not even that she’s selfish, because that would imply she at least realized there was something someone else wanted. It’s like she doesn’t even realize that other people might want something else. She just expects everyone to bow down to her wishes.”

“People don’t change unless they want to Liam,” Lauren answers. “And if you went into this relationship expecting to be able to change her, that’s not fair to her.”

“Yea…” I say with a sigh. She was right, I knew it. I just didn’t want to admit that some part of me had been hoping she’d change.