Sure Bet (Out of Left Field #1)

5. Liam

Chapter 5

Liam

B rooke Elwood listens to porn.

Even three hours later, I couldn’t shake my fascination with this new information as I struggled to sleep.

Three. Hours.

Three hours thinking about Brooke and porn in the same stream of consciousness. Three hours fighting my body’s confronting reaction to this unexpected pairing.

Embarrassingly hard and endeavoring to pretend I didn’t notice the miserable ache in my cock, I lay in bed and willed myself to fall asleep.

Stop thinking about the small gasp from her plump lips when she registered your existence. Stop thinking about those hazel eyes and how the light caught the green in them. Just fucking fall asleep.

To have described her face as startled would be like saying a hurricane is a gentle breeze. I swear her eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.

For a moment, I thought we might laugh at the absurdity of the situation. But come to find out, she hadn’t changed.

Brooke was as uptight and stuck-up as ever, talking down to me and acting like my very existence was beneath her. I tried to joke to ease her obvious discomfort, but then she called me terrible and reminded me that I was incapable of being an adult because I ruined everything.

Brooke had always been out of reach—too smart, too clever, too good, too demanding, too… Brooke.

She still wanted me to know it.

So, I ate her yogurt. Childish? Perhaps. Satisfying? Abso-fucking-lutely. The way she jumped to that familiar judgmental self-righteousness just because I laughed when something utterly hilarious happened? Oh yeah, worth it to behold her flaring nostrils and tightened fists as she watched me shovel down that nasty shit.

Brooke’s death glare caused a rush of satisfaction to surge through me. It wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but it was something , and it was good enough for the guy she treated as nothing.

So why had I retreated to my bedroom and stared at the wall separating us in the hours since? Why couldn’t I stop wondering what she was doing in her room after she stormed off and left me alone in the kitchen?

And goddamnit, why couldn’t I stop questioning why she refused to acknowledge what happened ten years ago? Since the night of our fifteenth birthday party, she’d not once commented on that closet or what happened afterward, not even declaring me an asshole—again. She just acted like it had never happened.

Why did I need her to? What did it matter? I should be grateful she wasn’t harping on it, dredging up the past.

I closed my eyes, inhaling through my nose as the memories flooded in. The ones I pressed Brooke to remember, even though sometimes I wished I could forget.

She was going to say it. I fucking knew she was going to say it in that closet. She was finally going to admit she wanted me after years of stupid games. Taunts or sneers had been the only exception to ignoring each other.

‘Say what you want, Brooke. I think I’d like to give it to you.’ A taunt of my own at that party.

But she didn’t say it, and she’d said shit about it since, never once bringing it up again between us. She ignored it, ignored me.

Her rejection hit hard—not because she said no to me, but because of how much I wanted her to say yes.

She acted like my dragging her in there was a punishment. I’d intended it to be an opportunity for both of us to give in under the cover of a game in the obscurity of the dark. Like maybe with an excuse, we might lower our swords.

I had purposefully spun Brooke, and what a fucking mistake. Maybe she hadn’t faked her dislike of me. Maybe our protective taunting wasn’t armor to a mutual crush.

Maybe she had meant it.

I forced open my eyes. Even under the blanket of a clear night sky, my bedroom wasn’t as dark as the closet ten years ago, but my mood was. I rolled onto my back, done with drifting into memories and done with false hope.

And I was done staring at that wall. It existed in some capacity between us. It always would.

On most days growing up, I ignored Brooke and the scorn she wielded like a weapon. I ignored the interest that bloomed in my gut when I caught those hazel eyes on me because she failed to avert her gaze fast enough.

But sometimes, I wanted her to know how it felt when words were used like a blade intended to cut. So I pushed, and pushed, and pushed the blade deeper.

I was unsure which of us it actually hurt.