Page 86 of He Loves Me Knot
God, I am so mad at Callum.
And myself.
Kissing him at the hot springs had felt so natural, so easy. Then Sergio had come along and Callum had completely shut down. Gone right back to putting up all those walls he’d had when they’d arrived.
She didn’t need this. Didn’t need to get involved with someone like Callum. But she was also fooling herself if she pretended not to have some level of emotional investment in him now. He was pushing her away, but she’d gotten too good of a peek at what was underneath all that armor.
And dammit, but I give a shit about him.
Her phone rang, and she looked down at the incoming call.Miranda.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she swiped to answer the call. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Oh, you sound terrible. Did I wake you?”
Liddy sniffled. “No . . . you just caught me having an awful moment.”
“Oh, sweetheart. What happened? Did the dead soul we know as Callum Scott strike again?”
Ugh.Liddy rolled her shoulders back, then went over to her bag and pulled out a bottle of pain meds. After the last few days, she needed some relief. The massage had helped a ton, but even her tailbone hurt from sitting so much.
“It’s nothing like that. Well, not exactly. He’s . . .differentfrom what I thought. I spent the past few days in a car with him and got to know him and, I don’t know, Mir?—”
“Oh my God. You’ve gone and developed feelings for him, haven’t you?”
“No. I mean . . . gah, I don’t know.” She sucked in a breath, then filled a glass of water at the sink. Swallowing her pills, she set the glass down and scanned her own reflection in the mirror.
He made me feel so beautiful. So wanted.
“Did something happen?”
Liddy chewed on her lower lip, then turned away from the mirror. “We kissed. And it was amazing. Not like a peck, but this really sexy, incredible kiss. And you can’t tell anyone. Promise me you won’t tell a soul.”
The silence on the other line was oddly disconcerting. “Callum kissed you?” Miranda said at last. “Were you drinking or something?”
“No, nothing like that. He’s been really, I don’t know.Different.Mir, he helped me scour the whole countryside for the guy I thought stole my sister’s dress. And we ended up at these hot springs and went waterfall rappelling and got a couple’s massage, and then it just happened while we were at the springs. And it was such a good kiss.” Liddy’s throat tightened. “But now that we’re back at the hotel where my family is, he’s acting like it was nothing. He still wants us to go on pretending we’re dating, but this is just getting too complicated emotionally.”
“That’s because Callum is a fucking arsehole, Liddy,” Miranda snapped, her vitriol surprising Liddy. “He’s using you when it’s convenient. Sure, he’ll shove his tongue down your throat, but then he’ll turn the whole thing around and make it like you’re the slut who was just asking for it.”
Uhh . . . what?
“I honestly didn’t mean that. He’s a lot nicer than any of us give him credit for?—”
“Did he tell you he almost had sex with me the day before you two flew to Costa Rica?”
The air in the room seemed to dissipate, her gut dropping. “What?”
“Yes, Liddy. I ran into him at a pub, and he was sloshed. We snogged for a while, thenhehad the audacity to treat me like I was a whore that had come on to him. Like he’s got a golden prick, and I just couldn’t stay away. He completely humiliated me.”
A sick feeling stirred in her stomach.
Callum and Miranda?
Miranda was still speaking, but Liddy’s ears had started ringing, and she blinked, numbly, as she sank wearily down to the tile floor.
So much for drawing a hard boundary at members of his staff.
This shouldn’t hurt. Callum had been clear. The kiss had been meaningless to him.