I'm Not Charlotte Lucas(47)

Why was it always missing when I needed it?

Liam looked startled. “Seriously, are you going to explain this theory to me?”

“I’m trying to find my phone,” I said, digging under the mountain of blankets again.

Liam reached down and picked something up off the floor, handing it to me. Oh, right. It’d flown out of my hands when he showed up. I opened the home screen and found my text thread with Liam, scrolling all the way to the very, very beginning.

Wow, we’d sent a lot of messages. Like, a lot. I kept scrolling, reading bits of conversation here and there, a smile tugging at my lips as I passed the text where Liam had called me a hustler.

Finally, I found them. The initial texts Liam sent me that he meant to send to someone else.

Liam: Can we move our date to tomorrow? I was dragged away from the office, and I’m going to have to work late to make up for it.

That clearly said date. He most definitely had a girlfriend. I passed him the phone and watched his eyes dart back and forth, glowing from the light of the screen. When had it gotten so dark in here? Aside from the TV, which continued to play my never-ending miniseries, there were no lights in the room or outside the windows. The late-evening twilight had shifted into night, becoming pitch black, since Liam got here.

When he glanced up at me, amusement danced in his glowing eyes, and I felt the early threads of misgiving deep in my gut. Had I really been wrong?

“The text clearly says date,” I said, my shoulders straightening in defense.

“Yeah,” he agreed, handing my phone back. “But I was just being facetious. Those texts were for Vera. We’d planned to go to dinner, and I kept joking that I was taking my best girl out. So, it was a date.”

“A date with your grandma,” I clarified.

“Yes.”

“So you don’t have a secret girlfriend.”

“I do not.”

“But . . . there was a hot-pink sweatshirt at your house when I picked up my phone. And sparkly sandals.”

He rolled his eyes. “Spike’s friends are always leaving stuff around. I leave it all by the door so he’ll take it to school with him, and he never does. That stuff is still there.”

“I saw the woman leaving your house that night. She was definitely dressed for a date.”

“Because we’d been on a date. Remember Ruby, my friend from work? She set me up with her friend, but it was only one date, and it didn’t lead anywhere.”

“You kissed her,” I pressed.

His blue eyes wrinkled as if he had to search his memory. “On the cheek.”

Like he’d kissed me on the cheek. I had slunk down in my seat so I wouldn’t have to witness it, hadn’t I? Poor thing. Front Porch Barbie had probably been just as disappointed as I had.

My mind was slowly wrapping around the things he said, how easily he explained away my quick assumptions. I’d been so certain that he wasn’t available, and he’d definitely helped me assume that. I held his gaze. “When we were planning the double date and I implied that your girlfriend wouldn’t like it, you went along with it.”

He shrugged. “I had been dating some women. Naomi and I broke up six months ago, and I asked a few women out. I’m used to being kind of secretive about my love life. I don’t want Vera to know about any of those dates—she always gets her hopes up that I’ve found the one.”

“What?” This was huge. It changed everything. Liam didn’t have a girlfriend. He just dated. He was single. He was so, so single.

“I just thought Spike had told you about some of those dates or something. I couldn’t figure out how else you would have known. I definitely didn’t realize you were going to turn around and get a boyfriend, or I would have been clearer from the beginning. But I guess you didn’t want to date me or—”

“Of course I wanted to date you,” I blurted. And then everything in the room seemed to freeze. Liam sat just a cushion’s length away, his arm strewn over the back of the couch and his hand so close to my face I could see his knuckles moving in my peripheral vision.

“That’s news to me,” he murmured, his fingers drumming softly on the back of the sofa.

“Well, I don’t mean date you, date you. Like, not in a weird stalker way. Just that I went on that date with you to the charity ball, and I wouldn’t have minded . . .”

Liam’s smile grew wider the longer I rambled, so I promptly closed my mouth.

The television had frozen on the image of Mrs. Bennet catching her tears in a handkerchief while credits rolled, and I watched the screen, careful not to look at Liam—regardless of how badly I wanted to.

“Is it over then?”

I looked then. “The movie? No. There are four more installments.”

Liam’s eyebrows rose. His arm still strung lazily across the back of the couch, his fingers resting perilously close to my shoulder. Should I lean closer to him? The quiet house sat as still as I did, as though it was also holding its breath.

“So your college major. Was it something to do with art?”

A wry smile found its way onto my lips. “Bingo. We’ve got a winner.”

“There’s nothing embarrassing about getting an art degree,” he said kindly. His fingers played with the edging of the couch, dancing in my peripheral vision and being utterly distracting. I wanted to reach up and calm them, to allow them to wrap around my fingers. I’d told him I wanted to date him, and he hadn’t jumped back out my window. That had to mean something.