Karla’s funeral was a small and intimate affair on a Sunday afternoon. A short church service was followed by her burial, and aside from me, Liam, and his uncle, only a few others tagged along. Niko and his fiancée, Sofia, attended the church ceremony but didn’t end up coming to the cemetery.
Niko rolled his eyes as he explained that Sofia was afraid of being in cemeteries and they wouldn’t be making it. He apologized to Liam, pulling him into a brotherly hug and whispering something into his ear before Sofia tugged at his arm, cutting their embrace short. I could tell he wanted to be there for his friend, but Liam was so used to the exchange he didn’t guilt Niko for not making it.
Liam had closed himself off from everyone before I even got to him. The day it happened, Joe called me from his phone, claiming he had received a strange call from her the night before and decided to check in on her, but found that Liam was already there. I rushed to meet them at his house, but it was too late.
When I arrived, Liam’s eyes held a faraway look that had yet to go away, no matter what I did to pull him back. A whispered side conversation with Joe when he slipped off to the bathroom told me he wasn’t handling her death well.
I tried to keep my distance, sensing he would pull away if I clung too tightly. Despite my urges to wrap my arms around him and never let go, I settled for loosely holding his hand and standing beside him on one of the hardest days of his life. I felt like a fool chasing after him, especially when I didn’t even know where I stood with him anymore.
“Hey, baby,” a familiar feminine voice cooed from behind us after the burial service was finished. A few stragglers lingered to say their goodbyes before she was lowered into the ground next to her parents.
Liam’s shoulders tightened. I peeked around him to see who it was, wrinkling my nose in confusion at the sight of Kelsey walking toward us, her auburn hair blowing perfectly in the wind.
Her expression mirrored mine when she looked down at my hand still wrapped in Liam’s. “Luna? How do you know Liam?”
“Kelsey,” Liam spat out, interrupting our reunion. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I heard about Karla and a few of us wanted to stop by and pay our respects,” she explained innocently, swinging her hips as she closed the distance between us with the same pouty look on her lips Cara always used.
She gestured toward the group of women standing around Joe, offering him their sympathies in four-inch stilettos that dug deep into the earth. Once she reached us, she planted a kiss on Liam’s cheek, blatantly ignoring the obvious signs that we were together. Well, not together together, but there was something there. A possessive snarl sat in my throat, and I fought to push the jealousy down before I attacked her. It wasn’t the time to get into a catfight.
“She’s over there,” Liam snapped from beside me, his face twisted in irritation.
Kelsey didn’t take the hint, instead leaning her plastic body against his arm. She reached a hand up and brushed his unshaven cheek with her manicured fingers. I wanted to reach over and break each one individually while she screamed.
Ah, anger, my old friend, it hadn’t nearly been long enough since I’ve last seen you.
“Why didn’t you call me when it happened, baby? Were you with her?” she questioned, referring to me like I was a stranger instead of a friend she’d had since she was fourteen.
“How do you know her?” I heard myself ask him.
Before he even tried to explain, Kelsey interrupted, and I watched him roll his eyes at her pushy behavior.
“Liam and I have known each other forever. We dated a long time ago and we reconnected after I saw his mom. I can’t believe she’s really gone.” She jutted her lip out in another ugly pout.
Her eyes looked me up and down, and I felt the familiar burn of rage in my throat when she regarded me like I was the girl her boyfriend had been cheating with. Am I the girl her boyfriend has been cheating with? I wasn’t sure at this point.
“We never dated,” Liam corrected in a non-committal tone. It was all he offered.
Kelsey responded to my bewildered expression with a smug look, inching her body closer to Liam’s as if she were staking her claim. She might as well have lifted her leg and peed on him with how obvious she was being about it.
They talked back and forth, but their words weren’t registering in my brain through the shock of their closeness, which Liam still hadn’t corrected. It all looked too natural for her to have been lying. The names Monti and Frank were brought up, but I couldn’t get myself to focus enough to know what was said. Has he told her about them? How close are they, really?
Eventually, through the fog of my thoughts I heard Liam ask us, “How do you two know each other?”
I didn’t want the fury to overwhelm me like it had before. That would have just shown weakness in front of them, and I needed to remain strong if I was going to get through this without falling apart. Which was exactly what would happen the second I walked away from the warped reality and realized everything was a lie.
It was all too much on top of what he’d already piled on me, and I felt like a fool for trying to be the supporting friend while he held me at arm’s length. I’d always known I was out of Liam’s league, and it made more sense for him to end up with her over me, but the truth of it stung.
As thoughts of betrayal swam around in my head, Kelsey spoke up again, answering his question for me. “Luna and I went to high school together,” she explained, playing down our friendship.
We were close friends in high school, and even met up occasionally after college before my attack. Once she took her current job as a stripper, we drifted apart.
She turned toward me again, tilting her head with the same tone she would use if she were speaking to a child who’d lost their mother in the grocery store. “Cara told me all about your falling out. It’s so sad that you two aren’t friends anymore. She’s really gone downhill since then. It was just a matter of time, though, don’t you think? With her mom leaving her the way she did in high school and her dad always working. Such a shame.”
I narrowed my eyes at her as my fingers burned from the desire to violently claw hers out. Once again, the aggressive beast within startled me, and I didn’t recognize the angry person I’d become. It didn’t matter that Cara and I were fighting, she had no right talking about her the way she was—especially to me. Mentally shoving the angry words I had wanted to say back down my throat, my voice came out as an unfamiliar, high-pitched, cheery sound.
“I don’t think this is the appropriate place to get into that, Kelsey.” I turned my body toward Liam and his eyes lazily slid over to me, uncaring of the uncomfortable position we were in. “I’m going to ask Joe when he wants to head over to the restaurant for lunch.”
Liam’s bland expression remained when he nodded, his feet rooted in place. Apparently, he was going to continue talking to Kelsey.
I turned my back to them, taking a deep, labored breath and making my way toward his uncle. During my walk, I rationalized that he wouldn’t do anything with her while they were out in the open, regardless of where our relationship stood. Sure, we were on rocky ground, but he wouldn’t hurt me like that. Although, did I really know him? I hadn’t even known he knew Kelsey until she was throwing it in my face.
I pulled Joe away from the group of women attempting to seduce him and we spoke off to the side, my back turned toward Liam and Kelsey the whole time. I was too afraid to turn around and find them talking openly after he’d spent the past few weeks closed off from me.
“Yeah, we should head out now. If you want to tell Liam—” Joe started but stopped immediately when he glanced back in the direction I had left minutes before.
Slowly following Joe’s gaze, my lungs deflated as the sight of Kelsey’s face against his came into view. She had her body wrapped around him against a tree, dry humping it out in the open for everyone to see.
“What the fuck?” Joe vocalized my thoughts beside me. “Liam! We’re heading out,” he called, pulling their attention over to him.
When he broke the kiss, Liam’s eyes met mine from across the cemetery and stared blankly. His body was present, but he wasn’t really there. He didn’t even care that I had just watched him grope another woman—my childhood friend—at his own mother’s funeral. It was like he was shoving my face in the fact we were over and destroying any chance we had at working past this.
Joe shifted awkwardly beside me while Liam held me under his spell. When I regained strength, I broke our eye contact and turned my back to him one last time. I wouldn’t be able to control my actions if I looked at that stranger anymore.
“I have to go,” I mumbled to Joe distractedly, pushing past him to rush across the green grass and through countless headstones to my Jeep.
I made it the entire eight minutes it took for me to drive to my apartment, park my Jeep, and unlock the front door. As soon as I stepped in, I let go. Like a dark, black cloud that was eagerly waiting to take over, rage came sweeping in and just as it did before with my family. I was once again pulled under by the intensity of my emotions. Each one swam by in my head, but now I was able to clearly identify them before they passed.
Vexation.
Frustration.
Betrayal.
Deceit.
All this time Liam had been stringing me along, making me think I was the one he loved while he went behind my back with other women. Sure, we’d been separated for a few weeks, but Kelsey admitted she hasn’t even talked to him in that time. I wondered how many others there were, willingly offering him what I couldn’t. I allowed him to fool me into thinking he was the exception to all other men, that he was patiently waiting for me to be ready to take things to the next step, when all along he was playing house with me as he took it from everyone else. It took weeks for him to confide in me about his work with Monti, and that was only because I forced it out of him. Yet, Kelsey mentioned their names as if it were easy conversation between them. Had he really trusted her more than me?
The angry, scorned woman in my head made me irrational, jumping to conclusions and convincing me they were the truth. Deep down, the logical part of my brain knew I was being crazy, that I should give him a chance to explain before writing him off for good. He did just lose his mother and we aren’t together. The black cloud swept those thoughts up, though, replacing them with more reasons to be mad.
I don’t know how much time passed with the storm blowing around in my head before I marched into my bedroom and began throwing things around. I replayed the scene that had happened between him and Kelsey before my eyes, allowing it to fuel my frustration.
Without another thought, I grabbed my keys, strapped my purse around my body, and stomped out of the apartment. The scorned woman had one more stop to make before she allowed the rational one to come back.