Life After Life

•C h a p t e r T w e l v e•

My jaw slackened at his question, "Um... how did you know about him?" From what I remembered, I'd never mentioned Hunter to Liam.

"I'm an observant person. He must be your boyfriend," he pried, leaning in from across the table. His curious eyes watched mine, a small smirk spreading over his lips.

I frowned. I didn't know how I was once so happy to call Hunter my boyfriend, now I was just disappointed. Hunter was not a good person.

"My ex-boyfriend, actually," I corrected Liam. A flash of emotion danced across his eyes from my words. "And before you say anything, he was the dick, not me." I eyed him as he broke out into a light laugh.

"If it makes you feel any better, he sounds like one," Liam shrugged as he focused his attention back onto his laptop screen.

"You don't even know him," I rolled my eyes. It was clear Liam was just trying to help me to feel less crappy about the whole thing. There was also no way I'd listen to him about anything. I was better off myself.

I had pushed Hunter mostly to the back of my thoughts. The best way I could get back at him was to do what I wanted to do and to try my best.

"Don't you remember? That day at parking lot, I heard you two talking," he raised an eyebrow at me. His words jogged my memory and I vaguely remembered such a thing.

I remained silent as I pulled up our case study to read over again, but even though my eyes wandered over the words, my brain was not absorbing any of it.

Speaking of the devil, my phone buzzed. I picked it up, surprised to see a text message from Hunter. We hadn't spoken since that night when I broke up with him. The message consisted of Hunter apologizing and asking for a second chance.

I rolled my eyes, flipping my phone upside down on the table. There was no way I would forgive him, not after I'd realized how incredibly horrible he had been to me.

"You good?" Liam asked, brows furrowed and his eyes trained on me.

I nodded, "Yeah. Why do you care anyway?"

"As if. I need your head in the game for this assignment," he scoffed, diverting his gaze back to his laptop.

Right, of course he didn't actually care. He just needed me to focus, which I was doing the opposite of at the moment.

"Oh shit," I cursed as my laptop suddenly shut off. A black screen stared back at me, with my own distressed reflection on it. I tapped on the space bar repeatedly but got no reaction.

"What's wrong?" Liam called out from across the table when he noticed my panicked state.

"My laptop just shut off for no reason," I explained briefly.

"Do you need help?" he asked immediately, getting up from his seat. Concern was written in his eyes.

"No, I'm fine. I don't need your help," I snapped, frustrated. "I can handle this myself."

"Oh," Liam sat back down on his seat. I glanced up to see an undecipherable expression on Liam's face, which I ignored.

If I couldn't even figure out what was wrong with my laptop, there was no way I could be depend on myself in the future. I only wanted to depend on myself — not my dad or my family like it had been before.

I fished around in my backpack until my hands clasped around a wire — my laptop charger. My laptop was nearly fully charged so I knew it hadn't run out of battery, but a lot of times from experience, plugging it in helped.

I shoved the plug into the nearest wall, and connected it to my laptop. Like I'd expected, the screen began to load again. Within seconds, I was able to retrieve the document. I silently thanked auto-save for rescuing my ass.