Her heart froze in her chest when he stood abruptly.
“I’ll be right back. Do you want some cold water?”
Natalie just shook her head, feeling as stupid as if he’d just asked her a complicated scientific question.
When he came back carrying a bottle of water, she was standing next to his bed, hurriedly fastening her shorts. He stopped at the door.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Leave it to her to make a supremely confident man like Liam Kavanaugh look bewildered so many times in one night. Yet…he was the one who had pulled away from her. He was the one who had walked out of the room.
“Nothing,” she said, glad to hear her voice sounded even enough. “Just getting dressed.” She’d never felt so awkward in her entire life, and Lord knew she’d had her share of uncomfortable moments.
“Well…maybe we’d better…” She waved lamely at the door. If the earth couldn’t oblige her by cracking open and swallowing her whole at that moment, the best she could do was exit Liam’s bedroom as soon as possible.
“What…you want to leave?”
She barely suppressed a groan that would have told everything she was experiencing at that moment: embarrassment, hurt, confusion, regret.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to want, Liam. Or think. You just walked out of the room,” she added with more heat than she intended when he just gaped at her.
He winced and set the bottle of water on the bedside table. He came toward her, took her in his arms. Natalie remained stiff in his embrace, her mind churning out anxious thoughts at record high speeds.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Natalie,” he spoke roughly near her ear. “I was just…trying to get ahold of myself. I needed a second. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t want to be with you. I meant what I said earlier. I want you to stay here. With me.”
“You were put off. You were disgusted by what I told you,” she said in a pressured rush at the same time that tears leaked beneath her clamped eyelids.
“No. No.” He pulled her over to the edge of the bed and urged her to sit next to him. His palm cupped her jaw, tilting her face up to him. “I was just trying my damndest to compute what you told me, while still wanting you so bad it was cutting at me at the same time.”
She stared at him in amazement, tears still running sluggishly beneath her glasses and onto her cheeks.
“I can’t believe you went through all that. It’s not fair. I feel like beating the crap out of something…out of someone,” he bit out, his jaw tight.
“Liam,” she whispered, “I’m okay. I’m all right. I was just trying to explain to you. I’m not really used to talking about it. I’ve never had to talk about it before.”
He looked troubled.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered, not understanding the source of his unrest, but sensing the depth of it.
He didn’t respond for a taut moment.
“I’d like to kill my dad at the moment, if he wasn’t already dead.”
She inhaled sharply at the impact of his stark words. For a blinding second, she considered what it would be like to say something similar about her mother to another person. The thought horrified her. This thing she’d started with Liam had the potential to hurt so many people…. She placed her fingertips briefly on her eyelids and felt the burn.
“Don’t say that, Liam.”
“Why? It’s the truth. He’s the one who did it. He’s the one who took away your childhood. My own father.” He gave her a wild glance. “It’s like…I knew that before, but I didn’t know it. That sounds stupid, but it’s true,” he mumbled under his breath.
“No. It doesn’t sound stupid. I understand,” she assured him. She looped her arms around his waist in a comforting gesture. “Derry made a mistake. It affected a lot of lives. If I could have explained to you why I’m a virgin in a way that didn’t involve the crash, I would have. But for me, that’s where it all started. Who knows? Maybe I would have been this socially backward if the accident never occurred. I was certainly shy enough—”
“You don’t believe that,” Liam said with quiet bitterness.
“No. I don’t,” she admitted. She inhaled slowly. What a mess this was. “I guess this is one of the primary reasons why it’s a bad idea for us to get involved.”
“Hmm?” he asked distractedly.
“There’s too much between us. The closer you get to me, the more you might come to resent your father’s memory. I don’t want that for you.”