To Dance With Wolves ▪Liam Dunbar▪

✓ | 09. From the Heart

E

I glued my eyes to the spot where Scott had been standing just a few moments earlier and pushed myself to my feet, walking over to collect the books and papers he had dropped on the ground, doing everything in my power to avoid glancing Liam's way. I didn't have the nerves to turn to him, not when I felt so shaken and exposed. Not when I was in just enough pain for my head to be too clouded for me to think quite straight. 

There was no way I could've made myself look in his brilliant blue eyes and talk to him about everything that had just happened, or anything at all. Maybe he knew that, or maybe he didn't, but he made me do it anyway. He crouched down next to me and began to shuffle through the loose pages that I hadn't managed to snatch up yet. "These are really good," he said after a pause.

I let my eyes fall shut for moment while I steeled myself for the suddenly inevitable conversation, before reopening them and sinking into a more comfortable seated position. I had a feeling that maybe I wouldn't be leaving as soon as Scott had predicted. "Thanks."

"Where'd you learn to draw like this?"

I shrugged, not really in the mood to talk about about Ben with a practical stranger. "Why do you even care?"

It was Liam's turn to shrug as he stared at the papers in his hands like they might hold the answer to my very simple question. "I guess . . . because it's something about you, and since I want to know you, it's an easy place to start."

My heart felt like it almost stopped beating for a moment when the words left his mouth, and it took all of my self control not to gape at him like an idiot once he finished talking. When I finally managed to speak again, my voice was barely louder than a whisper. "Why do you want to know me?"

"I don't know. You're becoming friends with Mason, and he's already my best friend, so I'm guessing there's going to be a bit of overlap there, and knowing each other would definitely make it a lot less awkward. Oh, and because you're one of only six people in the world who knows that I'm secretly a werewolf."

Suddenly my throat felt immensely dry, and it seemed that no amount of nervous gulping could help. I could barely push out a scared, "Oh, yeah. Ok."

Liam frowned at my negative reaction to his answer and sighed before continuing. "I didn't mean that in a bad way . . . or maybe I did. I'm sorry, I don't really know. This is all so new and confusing and really, really weird, and I just don't know how to feel about it all." 

"Well that makes two of us," I said softly as I cast my eyes back down to the drawings of wolves in my hands.

Silence fell over the room for a minute while we both sat there, so caught up in our own thoughts that the awkward tension that had filled the air earlier began to dissipate without us even realizing it. When I finally snapped out of my own head and began to resume my menial task of rounding up all my work so I could leave, Liam seemed to remember he had been helping me before and jumped up to assist me once again. 

"You know you can leave, right? I can pick these up by myself." 

"Yeah, but I kinda feel like I should; you've had a rough enough night already." 

"And you were the one who dumped them all on the ground in the first place." I said, smiling lightly again for the first time that night since Mason had handed me my bracelet and started the entire chain reaction that had lead me to the very moment I was in.