Lie to Me Read online

  I nod.

  “Cool. I should find him and say hi. Want to help me?”

  He asks the question casually, like he couldn’t care less if I said no, but then he slings an arm around my shoulder as if that’s something I remotely indicated I wanted. Beside me, Liam tenses, his hands balling into fists.

  “No thanks,” I say, and edge a step away from Alec so he’s forced to remove the arm.

  “You want to stay here with Liam?” His tone is skeptical.

  “Yes.” I fold my arms. “I do.”

  He stares at me for a long moment, then says, “Whatever. I’ll go find Hunter. I’m sure he’ll love hearing who you’re hanging out with.”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  With no remaining options, Alec turns away and stalks off, presumably to find my brother. I sigh and turn back to Liam.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I tell him. “He’s not actually interested in me. He just likes to win things.”

  “I know,” says Liam. “Well, I guess I don’t know because he could very well be interested in you, Amelia. But I mean, I know he likes to win things, and I know he didn’t like that you’re standing here with me.”

  “He was being very rude.”

  Liam shrugs. “I did tell you we’re not friends.”

  There’s a tension in the air between us now, and I’m starting to feel sweaty from all the bodies crammed into this house and from the discomfort of conflict.

  “Are you hot?” I ask, which is a totally embarrassing thing to have said aloud, no matter how I meant it.

  “Actually, yeah. They’ve got a gazebo thing out back, want to go there?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He takes my hand as we weave through the crowd, and it makes me feel a different sort of heat. I spot a few people I know, including Alec’s sister, Lydia, who waves and raises her eyebrows suggestively at me. I bite my lip to hide a smile. I don’t know what’s happening here, and I don’t want to make it seem like something is if nothing comes of it.

  A group of adults has already overtaken the gazebo, so we just start wandering. I stop near a shed on the outskirts of the property and nudge my toe against a soccer ball that sits there.

  “I swear, every single one of you just lives and dies for soccer.”

  Liam shrugs. “I can’t speak for everyone, but I feel like … I kind of have to, if I want a prayer at getting into a good college and not having to pay exorbitant student loans to go there.”

  “Please. You are athletic, smart, and well-spoken. Colleges will be fighting over you.”

  “You think?” He looks pleased.

  “Yeah, I mean, you just used the word exorbitant casually in a sentence. I don’t know what more evidence you need.”

  “Well, I like to be precise.”

  “Oh, I know.” I look up at him, at his ocean-blue eyes and his chiseled face and his forever-tense shoulders, and suddenly I feel both bold and reckless. “I kind of … I want to know precisely what you think … about me.”

  “What I think about you.” He repeats my words slowly, like he’s digesting them, then smiles ever so slightly. “I think you’re … sarcastic, and a little mean sometimes. But you’re also not afraid to change your mind about things, even if it means disagreeing with people you care about. You’re … Well, only someone who’s a little bit odd would like insects as much as you do. You don’t give up on things easily. You’re very pretty. I … None of this is actually precise at all, because it’s impossible to describe a person you’re completely infatuated with, especially when you can’t get a read on how they feel about you.”

  My stomach is filled with the wings of a thousand whirring dragonflies. “You’re infatuated with me?”

  He looks exasperated. “Have I really not made that clear?”

  “I mean … I guess I didn’t figure it was an accident I kept running into you,” I say. “But I just— Why now? Why am I suddenly interesting?”

  “You’ve always been interesting. But it hasn’t always been my last year at this school, and you haven’t always almost died.”

  He starts to look uncomfortable. He’s telling me a whole lot about how he feels, and I’ve said absolutely nothing in return. If our roles were reversed, I would be feeling painfully vulnerable right now. So I take a deep breath and a step closer. I rise to my toes, and without letting myself think about what I’m doing, I press my lips to his.

  There’s a brief moment when I think maybe this is a mistake, maybe he doesn’t want me to kiss him at all, but then his arms are around me and he’s kissing me back. I tangle my fingers in his hair, breathless and hungry and—for once—completely unconfused about what I want. He presses me back, gently, into the side of the shed and kisses me even harder, almost desperately. His hands are at my hips, holding me tight against him. It’s a weird feeling to kiss this incredibly attractive person and know that, for whatever reason, he liked me first. He has liked me for a while. That thought burns hot inside of me.

  I break the kiss when I start to get dizzy, but I press my face into the hollow of his throat, my good arm around his neck. We’re quiet for a few moments, his hands trailing up and down my back. Then I say, hoarsely, “I, um, like you, too, if that was not made clear.”

  He laughs, and I feel the rumble of it against my cheek. I pull away from him, only a little, and ask, “So what happens now?”

  “What should happen is that I ask you on a date. But that depends, I guess.”

  “On … ?”

  He swallows hard. “If you’re willing to tell … people.”

  “By ‘people,’ I assume you mean my brother.” My stomach flutters now with a different kind of nerves. I understand what he’s asking. Am I willing to date him, publicly, even knowing that Hunter will be strongly opposed? I hesitate for a moment at the thought of it, but weirdly when I think about telling everyone, it’s not my brother who makes me pause but Grace. Which is dumb. She doesn’t like me the way Liam likes me, and she’s my friend—she’ll be happy for me. “I think— I don’t think I care what he has to say about this.”

  Liam smiles and kisses me again, holding my face in both hands. “In that case, what are you doing Saturday night?”

  Skylar insists that she help me prepare for my date on Saturday. I’ve been so excited about this since Halloween on Thursday, but I haven’t wanted to admit it to anyone because it all seems … too easy. It isn’t that I’ve never had a boyfriend before, or that no one’s been interested, but Liam is so handsome, so put together, so quietly confident. He just seems very much out of my league.

  As soon as Sky gets me into clothes she picked from her own closet—mine weren’t good enough for such an important event, apparently—Hunter materializes, which complicates the getting-ready process.

  “You can’t wear that shirt,” he says.

  “That only makes me want to wear it more.” I close my eyes so Sky can sweep something across the lids. “Subtle, remember,” I tell her.

  “I remember. Hold still. And Hunter, of course you hate her shirt. That’s kind of your job.”

  He groans. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

  “Open your eyes now,” Sky instructs me, and then turns to Hunter. “Quiet. Or you’ll have to leave the room.”

  “I do like you when you’re bossy.” Hunter grins.

  “Um, ew.” I flinch when Sky starts tugging at my hair. “No flirting in my presence, thanks. Or I’ll make you go back to pretending like you’re not dating.”

  “Don’t make her hair look too good, Sky,” Hunter says, kicking at me. “We don’t want him to know she put effort into this date.”

  “We don’t?” I ask.

  “Hunter, you really have to stop helping,” says Sky. “Why don’t you go downstairs and tell us when you see Liam pull in.”

  He wrinkles his nose but kisses her on the cheek and leaves.

  “He doesn’t want you to have a bad time,” Sky says, inspecting me. “Maybe I
’ll even be able to convince him to like Liam more. He always listens to me when—”

  “I do not want to hear the end of that sentence!”

  “Sorry.” She smiles. “Well, you look gorgeous. Promise you’ll tell me everything when you get back?”

  “I promise.”

  “He’s here!” Hunter bellows up the stairs.

  My stomach turns into a wasp’s nest, and I bolt down the stairs. Mom and Hunter are both standing in the doorway; I can hear them talking to Liam, but I can’t see him. Dad’s gone since he was home most of the week, and it’s too bad because he’s so much less of a vulture than these two. I hop down the rest of the stairs and push through Mom and Hunter. Liam smiles at me, and I feel warm all over.

  “I’ll be home before eleven,” I say when Mom opens her mouth.

  “I was just going to say have fun,” she tells me.

  I smile at her. “Thanks. Bye.”

  I take Liam’s hand and pull him away before they can talk to him more. I’m not worried about Mom, but Hunter is a different story.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask when we’re in Liam’s car.

  “You’ll see.”

  He keeps his secret the entire forty-five-minute car ride. When we finally stop, we’re at the Insectarium they just built a few towns away from mine. Mom brought me when it first opened, but I haven’t been since.

  “How did you know I’d want to come here?” I ask, admiring the building. It’s dusky out now, so it’s not easy to see, but the exterior is painted in bright colors with butterflies and grasshoppers and dragonflies.

  “Well, I had a suspicion. And Hunter might not like me, but he still told me you’d enjoy it, when I asked him.”

  Our first date has only just begun, and already it’s the best one of my entire life.

  The Insectarium’s a big place, with two floors and several different rooms. We’re practically alone; it’s late enough that most people have already left. Liam seems wary of the insects, which is pretty adorable. He flat out refuses to go into the room with the spiders—he promises to wait outside the door while I look around.

  I’d like to say that I exhibit totally normal, chill first-date behavior, but I do not. The fact that an Insectarium was built so close to where I live when nothing ever gets built near where I live is beyond my wildest hopes, and with this being only my second trip, the place still feels entirely magical.

  After about an hour of telling Liam more than he probably ever wanted to know about bugs, I pause by a colorful mural.

  “What do you like to do? I mean, besides soccer?”

  “Well.” He takes hold of my good hand. “Soccer is kind of my main thing, I guess. I like watching pro games and learning from what they do. I don’t want to bank on soccer as a career, though. I’m not that good at it. I want to be an architect, I think. Because I like houses. I like looking at them, walking through them … I think I’d be good at designing them. I know that’s weird.”

  “It’s not weird. What colleges are you applying to?”

  “A bunch of them, but if I get in, my first choice would be Dartmouth.”

  “Ambitious.” My pulse races. “And not that far away.”

  “No.” He brushes a stray bit of hair that’s gotten caught in my glasses back from my face. “Not far away at all.”

  “I don’t want to make you look at insects all night,” I say, quelling the stupid happy feeling about him not wanting to go far away, “but I’m not ready to go home.”

  “What about ice cream?”

  “Ice cream sounds awesome.”

  But he doesn’t move. “Is it all right to kiss someone in an Insectarium?”

  “I’ve never tried it.” I pull him closer by a belt loop on his pants. “But what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.” He presses me gently against the mural and kisses me. He’s very good at kissing. I wrap my good arm around his neck and completely lose myself in the sensation of the kiss.

  A throat clears; an older man with a fuzzy beard glares at us from the doorway of the room. Liam steps away from me—very slowly. He takes my hand and leads me past the man, not even looking the slightest bit embarrassed. I, on the other hand, am mortified, although I’d do it again in an instant for another taste of that delicious shivery feeling I get from his touch.

  We split a four-scoop brownie sundae from the Yummy Cow, a disturbingly named ice cream shop painted pumpkin orange with violet splotches that I think are meant to be cow spots. The sign out front glows neon green. It’s supposed to be cow-shaped, but it actually looks like some sort of moose-alien hybrid.

  They may be an epic failure in pretty much all areas of advertising, and their ice cream is only okay, but they’re the only ones still open in November.

  We eat in Liam’s car at the park and ride just up the road. It’s an unseasonably warm night, and way too many people were sitting at the tables outside the shop. Plus, as much as I like insects, I’m not a fan of them dive-bombing my face in the dark of night. Inside the car, I can appreciate the evening’s beauty, the last smudges of purple fading to charcoal. Trees swaying like they’re at a soft rock concert. Traffic whirring behind us, soothing white noise.

  “So,” I say, putting my feet up on the dashboard, “what is it that made you decide you wanted to date me?”

  “Well, I kind of told you, didn’t I? I’ve always noticed you. But you’re also Hunter’s sister, so I left it at noticing. Then I heard about you almost dying …” He twists his spoon hard in the ice cream, meeting my eyes. “You’re lucky to be alive. You should have … well, you know. I wanted to talk to you when you came back to school, and when I finally ran into you twice in one day … it felt like fate. Or something.”

  “I’ve never completely understood what happened between you and Hunter. I know you have your middle school rivalry and whatever, but I feel like really you should be best friends.”

  “Soccer’s the only thing your brother and I have in common.”

  He gets out of the car to dump the ice cream container in a trash can. I wonder if I’ve touched a nerve. It doesn’t really seem like an explanation.

  When he gets back in, he reaches across the space between our seats and takes my hand. “I don’t completely know what happened, either. No offense, but he’s always been kind of cocky.”

  “Be nice!” I interrupt. “Cocky, maybe, but he’s a really good brother.”

  “I’m sorry. A little … overconfident.”

  I laugh. “Okay, just keep going.”

  “It got old when he kept pointing out how many goals he scored compared to how many I did when we were finally on the same team as freshmen. I’d been looking forward to it, honestly, seeing my biggest rival become my teammate, and I was disappointed when he didn’t let the rivalry go. Anyway, I got sick of it, and one day during practice, I kicked a ball at his face. He wasn’t even hurt, but he was pretty mad. And I think that was the end of any hope for us to become friends.”

  I imagine little ninth-grade Liam kicking a soccer ball at Hunter’s face. I can’t decide if I think it was a jerkish thing to do or not, but since it was three years ago, maybe I shouldn’t mull it over too much.

  “I know it’s immature,” he adds.

  “You were young,” I say, as though we aren’t still both young. It doesn’t seem like enough of an incident to have kept them enemies for so long. I know for a fact that Hunter has forgiven worse transgressions from other teammates. But there’s always been something that kept Liam apart from the rest of his team, and sitting here looking at his handsome face, listening to him speak with measured grace, I have a hard time understanding it.

  I stare at our intertwined fingers.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asks.

  I shrug. I don’t want to say that I’m wondering why he doesn’t get along with the rest of the team the way my brother does, but because I’m an idiot, I blurt out, “I don’t kno
w, just thinking about how apart you seem from the rest of your team, even when you’re with them.”

  His eyes narrow and then smooth. “Is that a bad thing?”

  “No,” I say hurriedly. “I mean, I don’t know. Depends how you feel about it, I guess.”

  “I’m not a loner weirdo, you know.” His tone has cooled, and I feel like a jerk.

  “I know. That’s not what I meant, and I’m sorry.”

  He sighs, staring out the front windshield instead of at me. “You’ve heard what people say about my dad. If you think it’ll spare me to lie and say you haven’t, it won’t.”

  I look at his profile; his face is emotionless, but his jaw is set with tension. “Yeah, I’ve heard.”

  He tears his gaze from the windshield, and his ice-blue eyes meet mine. “A lot of it’s lies, of course, but I never … I think a lot of times people think I’m either to be pitied or else I’m just like him. They don’t want to get to know me and figure out what I’m actually like.”

  “Well.” I cautiously squeeze his hand. The car’s got a dark energy now, like each word he spoke about his father spit poison into the air. My cast makes holding hands awkward, but when he looks down at my half-encased fingers clutching his, something relaxes in his expression. “It’s their loss, Liam. If they don’t want to get to know you as a person.”

  “Yeah?” He raises an eyebrow. “You know you were there, right? You didn’t want to get to know me, either.”

  “Okay, but not because of you. I mean, I only had to talk to you like twice before I figured out Hunter was being insane.”

  He laughs. “I appreciate that. And I’m sorry, we were having a nice date and I made it uncomfortable.”

  “No.” I shake my head and then regret it when the world spins for a second. “I’m the one who made it weird. You’ve been perfect.”

  As soon as I say it, I want to pull the words back down my throat because calling someone perfect on a first date is so incredibly dorky.

  It seems to have been the right thing, though. A brilliant smile lights his face. He lets go of my cast-encased hand, traces the underside of my arm with his fingers, delicately, like my skin will crumble to dust if he presses too hard. Then he pulls my good hand to his face and kisses my wrist. I close my eyes, sighing shakily. He kisses farther up my forearm, his lips brushing my skin like eyelashes. The thrill of it sets my nerves on edge.