Page 9 of Captured Memories
The heat from his palm settled her, care she didn’t deserve. Not after she’d sliced into him with her nails like little more than a wild animal.
“Not you,” she managed, needing to banish the guilt in his eyes, needing him to understand her outburst wasn’t his fault. That it had never been his fault, even if she couldn’t force the words out. Understanding darkened his eyes all too fast as the conclusions hit him. His brows furrowed, his grip on her knee tightened, and a deep, deep rage sparked in those green eyes.
Shame pinked her cheeks already sticky with tears. Her eyes began to dry, but in the wake of the torrent of emotion buffeting through her, only an aching hollowness remained. Liv forced a shaky breath down in an attempt to calm herself. The outburst still resounded through his apartment in the rife silence that descended between them.
“Who did it?” he asked. Everyone asked the question when the truth came marching in whether she ever stated the words or not. After a time, most of her closest friends pieced together what had happened, even though the response always dried on trembling lips before she could ever force it out.
Like a name would give them some peace. Like the who mattered in the end. After all, the asshole who did this to her probably didn’t freeze up over stupid shit. He wasn’t waking up in a cold sweat and stuck in nightmares on an endless loop. He didn’t carry the invisible scars with him on a daily basis. Before him, she’d been whole, she’d been strong—and now she was broken, fighting every day to glue together the pieces.
“I’ve got to go,” she murmured, rising on shaky legs. “I-I can’t do this right now.”
Zane opened his mouth to protest but silenced once their eyes met. She must have looked like shit, because all of his efforts to fight ceased at once. Liv ran her hands down the front of her dress, smoothing out the wrinkles in the skirt over and over, like that would help in the slightest. The damage had been done, and Zane had seen all of her ugliness paraded out on Front Street. The dreams that surfaced upon meeting up with him again winked out of existence, stars darkening for good.
Without another word, Liv strode out of his apartment. He’d walked away the first time, and he’d been right to do so then. Some people were too damaged to fix.
In the daysfollowing her stupid-as-hell idea to meet up with Zane, Liv had achieved full zombie status.
She’d scheduled one photo shoot for today with a coffee shop up the street who was introducing a new line of products and needed some snaps for their website. The camera bag hung heavy along her shoulder as she walked back to her apartment, and the sunlight did little to penetrate the cold saturating her marrow. She’d worked on automatic back there, the click-click of her camera ringing hollow as she worked, as hollow as she’d become.
She locked her Subaru and heaved a sigh, wishing she could rewind to last week when her guards were still up and her defenses high. Before she’d made the stupid mistake of getting her hopes up. Her teal locks didn’t bring her the delight they normally did as she caught their glimmer in the sun, the way the shades shifted with each step. The entire world had turned to black and white, devoid of color and light, devoid of everything she loved to explore through her camera lens.
Liv hadn’t experienced a setback like this since those early days after the night it all went down, when she’d hidden inside her dimmed apartment in a world of gray shadows and refused to come out. Lex and her folks had been worried sick, but months had passed before she could bring herself to explain to them what happened—and even then, the words gummed in her mouth, coming out awkward and stumbling.
Some asshole camped out on the front stoop of her apartment building, stretching his long legs down a couple steps and placing him in the way of anyone who tried to go in and out of the building.
Liv’s jaw clenched. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with human beings at the moment.
Until she stepped closer.
Zane Parata sat on her stoop, hunched forward with his elbows digging grooves on his thighs and a faraway look in those gorgeous green eyes. She came to a halt in front of him, and his gaze lifted to meet hers.
“You’re not the only one capable of being stubborn, Livs.”