Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 135792 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135792 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
[I’ll be going to the party, so don’t wait up. I’ll probably be back late. Don’t worry if I don’t answer, my shitty phone is dying.]
Shane cleared his throat after Liv didn’t answer him for a long time. “Everything all right?”
It took several seconds for Liv to calm the fire burning in the pit of his stomach, because he knew he wasn’t being reasonable. Knox and he weren’t joined at the hip, and while it pissed him off that his—whoever they were to each other in this weird limbo—didn’t want to talk about something that couldn’t be ignored, maybe Knox just needed time to think. If that was the case, chasing him down would be the worst thing he could do.
A cornered Knox lashed out. Like that time when Liv had confronted him over the strange case of strawberry marshmallows. Liv had found them in the cupboard under the TV, and Knox had said his girlfriend must have left them there. Only that the next time Liv had found them, there was no girlfriend to speak of. So… maybe Liv made fun of Knox liking a baby pink treat and hiding that fact from him. Which, in hindsight, was a shitty thing to tease him about. But the whole ordeal ended up with a broken TV, melted pink marshmallows all over Liv’s bed, and a narrowly avoided fire in their trailer.
So he took a big gulp from his bottle and shrugged.
“Knox is going to that biker party.”
“Oh…” Shane hummed as if he had something more to say. “I guess he is the Meat King then,” he added cryptically, only adding fuel to Liv’s fire.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Liv snapped, already so on edge the phone creaked in his hand when he squeezed it.
Shane spread his arms. “I’m just saying that Dex told me Knox asked him if Cyborg was single.”
What was that gnawing, inescapable sensation that started deep in Liv’s stomach and soon spread up his gullet, all the way to the throat? It felt like nausea, only no stomach issue had ever made him want to grab a baseball bat and smash everything around him to pieces. As red filled his vision, all he wanted was to rip into the pretty upholstery of Ros’s car, crush the windows, and then jump straight into a fire for a bit of cooldown.
What the hell did that mean? Was Knox gay and just didn’t find Liv attractive enough? It definitely wasn’t about Liv’s dick, because he knew his worth in that department. Was it the diastema? Were his lips too wide? His nose too big for pretty boy Knox?
He had all the right to pick and choose, looking like that, but after everything they’d been through together, he should be a gentleman about it and say it to Liv’s face instead of going after another guy behind his back.
“Oh.”
Or was this some fucked up revenge for Amanda?
Impossible, after the last few days. And in Amanda’s own words, Knox didn’t seem that much into her, so why would he care? He’d seemed at peace in Liv’s embrace in the morning, eating porridge from his hand, and had even given Liv a fucking kiss. In front of everyone.
Shane clicked his tongue. “From what you said so far, I gather you guys aren’t open?”
“We haven’t really discussed it,” Liv forced out and had another swig from the bottle, but the beer wasn’t enough. He needed something stronger, or he’d go on a rampage.
This bothered him so much more than when Knox got his first girlfriend, Susannah, and ditched their basketball practice for a month. Or when he’d won concert tickets and took Tammy instead of Liv. Or when he’d started suggesting Amanda could be The One so frequently Liv decided to do a wooing intervention to prove to Knox she was not worth his time.
Those things had annoyed him, but it kinda made sense that Knox would spend time with a girlfriend. This? This was a full-on competition, and he was losing it to some dick Knox met today?
Shane raised his eyebrows. “And you’re just gonna let that slide?”
It was like a red cloth wiggled in front of a bull. He finished the beer and didn’t toss the bottle to the ground only because he didn’t want to make an enemy out of this new… maybe-friend by breaking glass in his yard.
“Fuck no,” he said and chose Knox’s number, but just as he sucked in air to give the sneaky bastard a piece of his mind, a robotic voice told him the phone he was trying to reach wasn’t available.
Fuck. Had Knox’s phone died?
This time he did raise his arm, still holding the bottle, and restrained the urge to smash it in the last possible moment.
“You need to take me there,” he told Shane.