Him
1170 Words
Chapter 5: Him.
The room turned to static. The receptionist’s fingers hovered mid-air over her keyboard, her eyes darting between Liam and Amara like she’d accidentally walked into the middle of a movie scene she wasn’t emotionally prepared for.
The tension snapped taut like a violin string, and the air around them felt like thin paper.
Liam Blackwood’s footsteps echoed like war drums as he stalked toward her, the glass doors slowly closing behind him, sealing the chaos of the city out and locking the two of them in their own private battleground. His suit was flawless, of course it was, a sharp contrast to the man clothed in them, but the vein in his temple pulsed under skin that looked thinner these days. His gaze raked over her, lingering on the Blackwood keycard peeking from her blazer pocket.
“You’re joking right,” he said finally, voice sharp as broken glass, “Tell me this is some twisted publicity stunt or a sick joke”.
Amara didn’t blink, “You’re not important enough to build a stunt around or better still joke about”.
Zoey gave a low whistle and took a measured step back, as if the sheer force of the looming explosion might catch her in the crossfire,
"I’ll just… stand over here, near the fire extinguisher".
Liam’s gaze cut to her, “You leave.”
Amara raised a hand before Zoey could move. “She stays.”
He arched his brows, “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“No, but I decide who walks out of rooms with me in them.”
Liam tightened his fists, already boiling with fury, “You shouldn’t be here.”
And yet, here I am", she spread her hands, the picture of innocence, "Funny how life works, isn’t it?"
"You look surprised, what did you think, I’d crawl into a hole after what you did? That I’d quietly go away like all your other discarded toys?”
Liam moved closer, too close even. The space between them crackled with the ghosts of a thousand memories, his mouth on her collarbone, and her nails down his back, the way they’d fought just as hard as they’d f****d.
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy the ride.”
“Oh, I did.” She leaned in slightly, just enough to make him hold his breath. “But I wasn’t the one who got addicted.”
“You think you’ve grown teeth now?” he asked quietly.
She tilted her head, the corners of her mouth lifting, “Darling, I’ve always had teeth...you just didn’t expect me to bite back.”
Silence between them stretched thin. Then Liam’s voice dropped to a low murmur, “You’re playing a game you don’t understand.”
“Then explain the rules,” she shot back. “Better yet, admit you’re scared I’ll beat you at it.”
He gave a laugh with no humor in it. “You think my father accepted you here on merit? You think this isn’t a trap?”
“Oh, I know it’s a trap,” she said smoothly, “That’s why I stepped in with my eyes open, because I’m not scared of being used anymore, Liam. I just make sure I’m the last one left standing when the dust settles.”
His face darkened, “You’re in over your head.”
“I’ve been drowning for years, sweetheart,” she whispered, “Now I’m the f*****g ocean.”
He then moved in slow and deliberate stepping even closer, close enough that his cologne wrapped around her like a noose, “This is going to get messy.”
Her lips barely parted, “It always was.”
The air between them crystallized, frozen in the way only two people who've memorized each other's breaths could achieve. Time fractured and for one suspended moment, they weren't in a corporate lobby but back in that Santorini villa where he'd first kissed her against sunset-warmed stone, in his penthouse where she'd thrown the vase that still sat reconstructed on his shelf like some twisted trophy, in that hotel suite where everything shattered.
His betrayal and her silence. The war that waged through tabloid headlines and carefully leaked photos.
The reception desk dug into Amara's lower back, a silent reminder of the present, the AC hummed like a sleeping beast. An elevator chimed three floors above, the mundane soundtrack to their atomic standoff.
Zoey had dipped, smart girl. She knew when to bounce before s**t went nuclear.
Liam's hand jerked at his side, she recognized that familiar tic he got when fighting the urge to touch her. Amara tracked the movement with clinical detachment, even as her traitorous body remembered the weight of those hands mapping her skin. His fingers flexed, the platinum pinky ring she'd bought him glinting under faint lighting.
Reach for me, she thought with venomous amusement, Just try it.
His voice softened to a low, broken thread. “You should have come back to me, I'll get you anything you need, just get back to you place, promotion, money, jewelry, whatever it is.”
Her smile was lethal, “But right now I’m being promoted and getting everything I want, it must really sting to be irrelevant”.
His eyes flashed. “What are you really here for?”
She let that question linger, watched it settle over his shoulders like weight. Then she said quietly, to remind you of what happens when you underestimate a woman with nothing left to lose.”
An emotion flashed in his eyes, anger? Want? Who the hell knew.
He stepped closer again, still too close. She could smell his cologne, that stupid expensive one sheused to buy him. His breath hit her cheek when he spoke.
“Keep pushing me,” he warned, his voice low, “and I’ll forget how to play nice.”
She rolled her eyes. “Since when do you play nice?”
His hand lifted to grab her? To shake her? She didn’t care.
Then his fingers almost brushed her jaw, now that was a big mistake.
Her heel crushed his foot. He cursed, stumbling back as she wiped her face like he’d left dirt on it.
“Rules are for people who still give a f**k,” she snapped. “Guess who’s fresh out?”
He was about to give a response to her, and then...
“Liam.”
The sound was soft and firm, a presence just entering the room.
He turned, sharp and restrained, like a man yanked back from the edge of a cliff. The mask slipped back over his face so quickly, Amara almost missed it.
She didn’t turn, she just smiled faintly, brushing the invisible dust off her blazer, and said, low enough only he could hear:
“Saved by the bell, again.”
Then she turned to leave, and froze in her tracks, because s
tanding in the doorway wasn’t Richard.
It was him...
- Writer
