Chapter Sixteen
The bitter cold of winter slowly died down, and eventually, it gave way to spring. The weeks went on. The snow melted. Slowly but surely, the world started to look a little greener again.
And, in all that time, Liam and I did not speak.
Neither did Grandma and I.
On the morning that followed the New Year’s party, when I finally went down the stairs, I found The Prologue to be absolutely spotless.
I wasn’t sure who had done it, but whoever it was had cleaned the shop so well that it felt as if a party had never even taken place.
As if it had all been just one terrible dream.
Then, I opened up shop as I always did, and I went about my day.
Grandma did not call me. I did not call her. And life continued that way.
Liam did not come into The Prologue. I refused to even walk in the direction of his shop. We did not speak. We did not see each other. I made no effort to change those facts.
As time went on, I found that my feelings only grew stronger. The first, which always seemed to linger at the forefront of my mind, was sheer humiliation. Not just from the speech that Grandma gave. She had always been that way. I could move on from that.
What felt harder to move on from was the fact that I finally knew how Liam saw me. He viewed me in the same way that everyone else did.
I couldn’t bear to face him. Not after finally knowing the truth—that he knew how pathetic and unlovable I was. That he took such pity on me to the point that he took it upon himself to beg my own grandmother to love me.
Beyond the crippling humiliation, I felt furious.
Deep down, I knew that Liam had done what he had as an act of kindness, but it didn’t feel that way.
It felt like a slap in the face. He had no right to step in and try to persuade Grandma to care for me.
As if he were my savior. As if the only way that anyone would ever be able to truly see me was if Liam asked them to.
As time went on, it began to feel like things were permanently stuck the way that they were. I convinced myself that it would be better that way.
With springtime came the rapidly approaching end to the first year our shops were open. That meant that at some point, if our competition even still held up, Liam and I would have to compete one more time.
One more competition. Someone would win. The other would leave. And then, that would be that. A true end to Liam and me.
It would be better that way. So why did the thought make my heart ache?
Just as I had predicted, one cool morning in early March, Liam came into The Prologue. It was his first time inside the shop since New Year’s.
When my eyes found his, we both stood there, frozen in place, staring at each other. It felt like it had been an eternity since I last saw that face.
Eventually, he made his way toward me. “My lease is up in two months,” were the words he used to break our multi-month silence.
“Mine too.” I could not take my eyes off him.
“I wanted to see if—”
“Yeah.” I didn’t let him finish. I knew exactly what he was there for. “We’re still on. What’s the competition?”
Something akin to hope glittered in his deep brown eyes as he looked down at me. “One last big event. Whoever gets more customers in their shop is the winner.”
“That’s it?”
Liam nodded.
“Sounds easy.” I stuck out my hand. “You’re on, Ashford.”
Liam’s entire face fell. He must have grown used to me calling him Liam, but that was something I called him when we were friends. Something that I was certain I would never get to call him again. Not after all that had happened.
It would be better that way.
“Get ready to lose,” he said as he shook my hand. All the usual joy in his voice was gone.
“In your dreams,” I said, Liam’s hand still gripping mine.
“You’re right,” he said. His lips twitched upward into the slightest hint of that familiar smug grin. “In my dreams.”
* * *
The weeks that led up to mine and Liam’s final competition dragged on slowly. Springtime swept through Briarvale. Flowers began to bloom, and the entire world got its color back. But mine did not.
If I had to use one singular word to describe my life during that time, it would be dull. I knew that Liam had more than a small part to play in that. I missed him, whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not.
It was better to stay away. To let the competition play out and let sleeping dogs lie, as Mom would say. It was better that way, even if it hurt.
I decided that the best way to distract myself was to lean on the one person in my life who had always been consistent. The one person I could always count on: Mom.
I started to go back over to my parents’ home every Friday evening again and have dinner with them—something I hadn’t done for months under the guise of being far too busy with the shop.
In truth, I had been avoiding my father.
When I started coming over again, Dad was the same as he had ever been.
He would spend most of the evening propped in front of the television watching sports.
Then, while we ate, he would occasionally chime in on the small talk here and there, but something always lingered in the air.
Something I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but it felt vaguely similar to disinterest.
What I really looked forward to, though, was when the dinner was over.
Dad would retire to his bedroom, and then it would be just Mom and me. We would spend the night hovering over whatever dessert she had picked up from Sweets by Val that week, picking at it with forks as we talked about our week. I cherished those moments.
Another thing that served as a distraction from the entire Liam situation was that Lily had started tagging along on my walks down to KC Donuts each week. At first, I assumed that it was because she wanted to choose her own donuts, but I quickly discovered that line of reasoning was entirely wrong.
Her reason was far more simple. Over the months of her and I working together, Lily and I had become friends.
All it took was just a week or two of trips to KC Donuts before she had fully won the affection of Clara as well.
My final means of distracting myself from the dullness that was life without Liam came in the form of getting out of the shop more.
I began to actually go to the grocery store rather than having my groceries delivered.
I made it part of my routine to take a stroll through the park most evenings after closing up shop, and I started spending my weekends drifting through thrift stores, searching for little things to decorate my apartment with.
In the pockets of free time I had, I let myself paint. I covered my walls with canvases and even hung some up inside The Prologue. It’d be a lie to say that I didn’t feel the slightest bit insecure, but I tried to let go, at least a little, when it came to my idea of perfection.
I tried to live freely for the very first time.
* * *
It was a few weeks before mine and Liam’s final competition when I saw him again.
I had learned to let myself live. To loosen the reins and let go a little. I had convinced myself that the time apart from Liam had done me good. That I had gotten over whatever ridiculous feelings of attraction I had felt. That I could go into our final competition with a clear head.
That I could let him go forever.
I was content with my life. I had things to look forward to—things outside of working. I had friends. I found bliss in the mundane, and I felt content letting myself be me and existing in my own skin.
Then, there he was again.
It was a Tuesday night, and I had just locked up The Prologue for the day. I had only made it three steps out the door when I heard his voice.
“May I join you?”
I nearly jumped out of my own skin. I hadn’t expected him to be there. In truth, I hadn’t expected to see him at all until the competition concluded.
“How long have you been waiting there?” I asked.
“Not long.”
I shrugged as I stepped past him. “It’s a public park. I can’t stop you.”
Liam quickly fell into step beside me. The tension between us felt so thick, I thought I might suffocate in it.
“How did you know I would be going on a walk?” I asked, my tone accusatory.
“It’s hard not to notice. You go on a walk nearly every night at sunset.”
“So you’ve been watching me?”
“I’ve always been watching you, Jess.”
I scoffed. “Creep.”
“Maybe,” Liam said, the slightest hint of amusement in his voice.
Silence overtook us once more as we approached Rosewood Park. That was, until Liam broke it. “You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.
“I haven’t,” I lied.
“No?”
“No.”
“Okay then,” he said, following it with a breathy sort of sound. “Well, I wanted to talk to you.”
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He had a sort of determined look in his eyes that I had only seen a few times before. “What about?”
His steps slowed a little as we walked past the same bench where we had eaten ice cream during the summer. That felt like a lifetime ago.
“Do you still want me to leave you alone?” Our conversation on the stairwell on New Year’s Eve played through my mind like a movie.
I didn’t want that. Not at all. As my eyes met his, golden as the setting sun hit it just so, I knew that all the progress I tricked myself into believing I had made was a lie.
I wasn’t over him or the silly feelings. I didn’t want him to leave. I didn’t want to live a life without him.
But I had to. I couldn’t see a single scenario in which Liam and I could ever work out as something more. We didn’t even work out as friends.
“I do.”
Liam positioned himself so that he was standing in front of me, his gaze boring into mine. “You know that I’ve known you all your life, right? I can tell when you’re lying to me.”
“I’m not, Liam. It’d be easier if—”
“Easier?” The word came out of him like a laugh. “When have you ever done things the easy way? When? Why is it that when something finally happens between us, then you choose to start giving up?”
I sucked in a breath. “Liam, all we do is argue. We’ve been arguing all our lives—we’re arguing right now.”
“No, we’re having a conversation. Which would feel a little less like arguing if you gave up the act and decided to be honest for once.
” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, I know I screwed up. I shouldn’t have asked your grandma to do all that, but I told you I’m sorry.
I’m sorry, and I’ll keep saying it to you until you believe me—”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you.”
“Then what is it?”
Liam’s eyes tracked the action of me chewing on my lower lip.
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but maybe it was time I finally did. “I just… I don’t think that you and I could ever work. Not even as friends.”
“Why not?” Liam asked, his voice softer than before.
“I don’t think that I will ever feel like an equal to you, Liam.”
“What can I do to—”
Those words were just like Liam. The charmingly arrogant Liam, who thought that he could fix anything—even me.
“There’s nothing you can do. It’s not your fault. It never was. It’s simply the way that things are.”
Liam was quiet. Painfully so.
I continued, “It’s my fault, really. I just—I feel like I have spent my whole life trying to prove my worth. Believing that if maybe I could be perfect—if I could rid myself of all my flaws, maybe then…” I felt pathetic, my voice wavered, and my eyes stung with tears.
“Then there was you. You were always there,” I said.
“Hardly even trying, but somehow always better than me, even when I tried my best. Competing with you became my way of trying to prove that I was worth something. I thought that if I could somehow be better than you or, at the very least, if I could become your equal, that maybe it would mean that I had done it. That I could be good enough. That I had gotten rid of all the flaws that made me so unlovable. Only, I could never even get close. Even when I gave it all that I had.”
My gaze finally drifted up to Liam. His eyes were glossed over, and he was staring at me with the most unreadable expression I had ever seen.
I dropped my gaze once more. “You and I would never work because I don’t think that I will ever be able to get over how great you are and how inadequate that makes me feel.” I was really only talking about friendship, but my words came out charged with far too much emotion.
A warm hand cupped my cheek, lifting my face up slightly so I was looking at Liam again.
“I wish you had told me this a decade ago. Or that I was a little less stupid. Maybe then I would have figured it out on my own. I know that I told you this before, but I haven’t ever looked down on you, Jess. Not even once.”
The corners of his lips twitched upward slightly. “The truth is that I… I’ve always cared for you. A lot.”
My eyes widened. I had never imagined that I would hear Liam Ashford confess to such a thing.
“I… I didn’t really know what to do about that, though. So I kind of pushed it, and you, away.” His eyes seemed to dance around the park, looking anywhere but at me. “And then… Then I realized that the only way I could get you to look at me anymore was when I got under your skin.”
Liam looked at me with a sheepish, child-like expression.
“I guess I didn’t want to let you go,” he confessed.
My mind clung to each and every word like they were the most important words I would ever hear.
“I knew I needed to, though. So when college came around, I did. Except I couldn’t.
Years passed. Your mom told mine that you were opening a bookstore.
It was like I lost all self-control and—”
Like the final puzzle piece snapping into place, everything clicked in my mind.
“You planned everything.” It wasn’t a question. It was a fact. Liam had planned it all.
“Down to blasting the music on that first day so you would come over to my shop. And planning our grand openings for the same day. Then bugging you and coaxing you into this stupid competition just so I could get you to look at me.”
It felt like Liam was confessing to something far bigger than what his words alluded to.
I didn’t have it in me to ask. Not yet.
“I want—” the words felt like pouring out glue. Sticky and slow and bound to create a mess. I wanted to tell Liam everything. I wanted him to know the way my heart ached for him. I wanted to kiss him until both our lips were numb. And then, I wanted to kiss him again and again.
But he was Liam Ashford. The most effortlessly perfect man that I had ever known. I was Jessa Alden, flawed and imperfect beyond belief.
He deserved more than me, an anchor weighing him down, clinging to him for dear life. And I couldn’t bear the idea of risking my heart. Not yet.
So I did the only thing that I knew how to do.
I ran.