Twenty-Two ➳ l.p.

Chapter Nine: Kiss Me

“Kiss me!” I demanded childishly, clutching onto the small doll in my hand. “I’m the mummy and you’re the daddy and that’s what mummies and daddies do! So kiss me, Liam!”

                  Liam frowned at me, shaking his head and crossing his arms. “I don’t want to play House anymore, this is gross.”

                  “Fine,” I shouted as he walked away. “Fine! But I bet you one day I’ll make you want to kiss me and I won’t want to kiss you back. So ha!”

                  “I doubt it, Alice. I really do.”

Chapter Nine: Kiss Me

                  And now Liam wouldn’t talk to me at all. I don’t know exactly what he’s mad at—having to wear Matt’s clothes, I guess—but he wouldn’t even open his mouth to me, relying more on grunts and nods than anything else.

                  “Can we do something today?” Lou mumbled, glancing at Liam under his lids as if Liam really had authority over them (and in his defense he kind of did).

                  Liam rolled at his eyes at his bandmate, casting his eyes back to his phone without a word.

                  So now he was mad at everyone, then, which didn’t even make sense, considering that they hadn’t done a thing.

                  “There’s not actually much to do around here,” Abbie inputted awkwardly, filling up the silence that Liam had given. “Ali and I, we normally just hang with friends or something.”

                  Liam clenched his jaw at that, giving me a stoic glance before standing. “Let’s go home.” He was addressing the guys, sure, but his steely stare was still pointed at me.

                  And now I was really wondering what it was that I did, because Liam had always been an open book.

                  You could always tell exactly what was going on in Liam’s head—when he was nervous, he bit his lip a lot; when stressed he’d scratch the back of neck and tangle his hands in his hair and he’d take these really deep breaths (and I kind of loved it when Liam was stressed, because it was hot.)

                  So yeah, you could always tell what Liam was thinking, and you could always see right through the curve of his lips and the crinkle of his eyes, but now I couldn’t tell a thing.

                  The Liam I knew—bright and colors and red and orange—was gone. He was a blank canvas now, a new painting with grays and blues and blacks, and I hated it.

                  And I couldn’t understand what was going through his mind at all.

                  And he was still looking at me, and his brown eyes were almost black with the fury behind his lids, and you could see the thick muscles in his arms flex and stretch when he let out these deep breaths and his shoulder kind of sagged, and really, I had no idea what was running through his mind.

                  And I didn’t mean to stare back, to memorize the curve of his lashes and the thud of his heartbeat, but it was impossible to look away from the intensity of his gaze.

                  There was something in his eyes that I couldn’t decipher, and I hated it.

                  And I wanted him to do something—punch a wall so that I knew he was angry, or even cry so that I knew that he was sad.