Page 33 of The Focal Point

At his words, a burst of laughter escaped. I clapped my hand to my mouth, but it was too late to pull it back. Liam was watching me, unsure of what that sound meant.

“Liam, seriously?” I had to swallow more laughter. “Everyone has their thing, even the manliest guy out there.”

I stepped closer and put a hand on his wrist. “Besides, you have a genuine reason for feeling the way you do, not that you need any excuse. But it makes perfect sense you would have an issue with anything hospital related.”

Liam watched me for so long I thought I had said something wrong. Then he shook his head again and smiled, his eyes brightening.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” he asked.

Warmth spread through me at the question, and I scrubbed at my face with the back of my hand to hide my blush. “Well, it’s the truth. You wouldn’t believe some of the issues the guys who think they’re so manly try to hide. Russ was a hot mess when you got down to it.”

Something about Liam’s expression sharpened and softened all at the same time. “He was your ex-fiancé, right? I didn’t realize you guys worked together.”

I swallowed, realizing I’d fallen into the hole I hadn’t realized I had dug for myself. And this time, I didn’t have any work to excuse myself with—I was Liam’s ride home.

“We were,” I replied slowly. “We met in design school.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you talk about your ex-fiancé since you mentioned him. What exactly did he do that was so horrible?”

Liam watched me, maybe hoping I would continue, maybe letting me decide whether to continue or not.

Where was that nurse with the discharge papers?

“He was, well, he was the top of our class, kind of the star. Charismatic, super talented, the center of every party. It was hard not to fall in love with him.” I swallowed again and looked down at my nails, noting distantly that I desperately needed a manicure as my mind searched for something else to think about besides my greatest humiliation. “I couldn’t believe it when he started paying attention to me, and it was even more unbelievable that he wanted to date me.”

Liam took a breath, and I looked up to see him about to say something. But then he shook his head and stopped. I took this as a sign to go on.

“I was just happy to be in his orbit, to be around the kind of amazing energy and, I guess, coolness he and his friends effortlessly embodied.”

My words dropped off, and I wondered what to say next. It was a story, many years of stories—embarrassingly so. Where did I even start? Where did I begin sketching a picture of how stupid, gullible, and naïve I had been?

Ultimately, I settled for the shortest route, leaving out everything I couldn’t bring myself to tell the man before me.

“In the end, all that charisma turned out to be complete narcissism in its most manipulative, nasty form. It turned out it was all a lie—our relationship, because he was cheating on me, his belief in me, and the friendships I had made with his friends. And then he took credit for my design at the firm where we had been hired, something I had worked my butt off to create, something I was proud of. It was the first project I had worked on alone, and I knew it would start my career. But I walked in one day to see Russ presenting it to the client and our boss, and when I confronted him, he blamed me, saying it wasn’t quite good enough, so he had improved on it and presented it to the client.”

The longer my story had gone, the wider Liam’s eyes had become. But on a sharp inhale, his eyes narrowed, and his jaw clenched. It was the first time I had seen anger cross his features.

“What an asshole,” he spat out.

“Yeah, well—” My gaze fell to the floor because I couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore. “I broke it off with him that day. All the lying was too much, but that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part as, he found ways to blame me for all of it, and I believed him. For way too long. It finally took that betrayal with the project to get me to see what was going on.”

The words closed my throat, and I felt prickles at the back of my eye again. I had to take a deep breath to calm the emotion rising in my chest.

Silence took up the space between us again, the ER sounds reasserting themselves. I didn’t know why I had opened up to Liam that way—the only ones I’d ever told that story to was Kristen and my closest cousin. Even my parents didn’t know the entire story.

But with Liam, I felt comfortable in a way I don’t think I ever had with any other man. Certainly not Russ and the faux-friends I had made through him. Now that I had told him, though, I feared he would look at me differently. Because my shame about the entire thing had never centered on Russ—it was all on how stupid I had been to fall for it all and for so long.

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

The words, said softly, caught me off guard. And when I raised my head, Liam was watching me. But it wasn’t with disgust. Instead, he looked, if anything, understanding.

“People suck.”

The statement caught me off guard, and after a moment’s startled pause, I laughed.

Liam’s steps were slow but steady as I walked him to his front door. The nurse had come soon after my revelation, and we hadn’t had any more time to talk about anything. She had given Liam pain pills, and he had drowsed most of the ride home.

“Are you sure you don’t need me to come in? Or call someone?” I asked, anxious for him to be alone.