Twenty-Two ➳ l.p.

Chapter Twenty-One: Like Fate

“Liam, you broke it!” I cried, shoving my phone in his face. One large, splintering crack faded down the center. “You broke it!”

                  “I didn’t mean to!” He cried back, frowning. “But everything happens for a reason, Ali. It’s like fate.”

                  (And I didn’t mention to him how I got an even better phone after that, for half of the price.)

Chapter Twenty-One: Like Fate

                  There’s something about rain that’s comforting. Maybe it’s the constant pulse against the window, the reassurance of being there. Or maybe it was the way that it chilled you to the core, stripped bare until you were nothing but brittle bones and hot blood. Rain was comforting.

                  Liam was my rain.

                  I woke up to him still sleeping. He was pressed against my back and I could feel his heartbeat in tune with the rain and everything felt right. I still couldn’t believe that Liam was mine, but it was something that I’d have no problem getting used to, at all.

                  I’d just started to climb out of bed when I felt his arms around me, still reaching for me even in his half-asleep state. “Sleep,” he muttered, fingers tangling in the hem of my shirt, breath shallow, “where are you going?”

                  “Don’t know,” I mumbled back, because I didn’t. I was going to go downstairs, probably curl into the couch and glue my eyes to the telly with a mug of hot tea, but with Liam’s arms wrapped around me the way that they were, it was nearly impossible to think of anything other then the burning want of folding myself back into the bed, and also Liam’s arms.

                  “Then stay,” he sighed back, and then he was tugging on my shirt and I didn’t resist, falling back under the duvet and tucking it under my chin. Liam’s hands slipped underneath my shirt—he seemed to like to do that, have his hands span up the length of my back and around the sides, paint the skin with the pads of his fingers—and he turned me over so that I was facing him. He was pouting and he gave me a chaste his to the forehead. “You were going to leave me.”

                  “You were asleep,” I countered, but it was hard to think with him so close, with his nose brushing mine and sleepy smile nearly pressed against my own.

                  “Doesn’t matter. I’m not sleep now.”

                  I chuckled at him shaking my head and blinking at him. “Alright, fine, so we’re laying in bed and not sleeping. What’s your bright idea?”

                  “You could stop sassing me and kiss me,” he offered smugly, and somehow for the next five minutes, until Matt practically kicked open my door and winced, we did exactly that.

                  “Gross, gross, so completely and utterly gross,” he gagged, shaking his head, “I never want to see this sight again.”

                  I harrumphed at him sitting up in my bed this time and casting an eye to Liam. He was stretching out and yawning, leisurely pushing down the covers until they were sidling at his waist and he could kick his legs out. (Liam never found a shirt to put on, not that I’m complaining. I’m definitely not complaining.)

                  “We’re getting up,” Liam promised, and then he yawned again, batting his eyes and he didn’t look nearly as awake as he did when we were kissing moments ago. It felt nice to know that I had that effect on him, to make him jolt awake even in the midst of sleep.