The Castle of Gold [Bk 2]

ch.15 Another Knight

I pulled my hand back.

“N-no” I stuttered. “You can’t” I shook my head even faster now.

“What do you mean ‘I can’t?’” he asked as frustration built inside him.

“You just can’t” I repeated.

“Well I do!” he raised his voice and stood up quickly.  

I moved back.

He took my wrist.

“Angie, I’m not going to hurt you” he told me as we both recalled what had happened last year.

I watched his eyes carefully and there was an unmistakable honesty, but also an unwavering resoluteness. He wasn’t going to stand around like the good decent boy that he used to be; he was going to work to get what he wanted.

“I was drunk that night- more drunk than I’d ever been in my entire life” he shook his head at the awful memory.

Then he calmed down. “And I can’t change how I feel” he shook his head slowly.

“You have to, Liam” I repeated more quietly.

“I tried!” he yelled.

Then he took a deep breath and tried to relax.

And I remembered that those were the words Harry had said just before he kissed me for the first time. What if I had fought back and refused him? What if Liam had used that line before Harry and Harry was in Liam’s shoes now?

Why should Liam have to be hurt because I had already heard the line “I tried” and “I’m in love with you”- before?

I shook my head quickly, clearing all the doubts that so easily slipped into my mind. I love Harry. And I will love him forever, but guilt had a way with me and she reminded me that Liam has been there for me for even longer than Harry.  

“What about Becky?” I spoke up after a daunting silence.

Liam shook his head slowly.

“Becky’s great, but we have nothing in common. Nothing except you” he told me steadily.

“But I love Harry” I spoke up. “I’ve always loved Harry” I repeated as if that might make it clearer to him that he should erase everything he felt about me.

“No you don’t” he shook his head.

I was about to protest, but he continued to explain himself.

“You love what he represents. You like that bad boy style. Every girl does, but you’ll get over it and realize how much we have in common, Angie" he explained plainly. "We have so much in common” he repeated quietly and I knew he had a point there, too. We were both quiet and reserved and well-meaning...

But what Harry represented? He represented the horrors of the labels and misjudgments that Westwood and Eastland have created. He represented pain and struggle and beauty so raw and so human that it made me cry sometimes. He had armor made of leather and it kept him safe, it kept him alive despite where the world preferred he’d be.

“Neither of us should have been at that party that night” Liam spoke up more carefully.

I looked up at him and immediately blocked the images of that night more easily now that Louis and the real criminals were in jail and since it’s been a year since then.

“What if we hadn’t been at that party, Angela? What if I had asked you on a date that night and we had gone out?” he asked almost rhetorically.

I avoided his eyes because he had a point. What if we had gone out that night and I had never had the horrible encounter with Louis and his gang, but Harry wouldn't have saved me and made me love him and his restrained, but tempting demeanor...

But I didn’t care how many reasons he had for me: I was with my knight and I will always be with my knight.

“Would you be kissing me instead of him?” he asked and he looked down at my lips briefly.

Then I looked up into Liam’s eyes and saw charisma and determination and pain and suffering that was so raw that it almost made me want to cry.

I blinked again and again to try to clear my thoughts. But it didn’t change anything that I saw.

I saw Liam, but I also saw a knight.

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