How To Play the Player (COMPLETED)

Well, What Do We Do Now

I knew the moment Liam walked into English with his head bowed and turned in the direction of the clock that something was wrong.

Even with his newfound attitude change, Liam still stalked through the halls with his head high and his smirk. Straightening myself, my eyes followed him until he dropped into the seat beside me, still facing away. The giant ball of anxiety that had formed the moment I saw him walk through the door unfurled into a wave of nausea when I grabbed his arm and he jerked his head in my direction, startled.

His left eye was swollen shut and the black and blue marks spread across the bridge of his nose. The space between his nostrils and his top lip was splattered with dried blood, as if he'd headed to class rather than the bathroom once he'd gotten away. I had no doubt in my mind he'd been in a fight, it was the uneasiness of knowing who it was likely with that infuriated and scared me.

"Liam—" I started, but he held a hand up. This, too, was soaked in dried blood.

"Don't say a word."

I bowed my head and tried to redirect my attention back to the rough draft of my paper in front of me. I didn't realize I was clenching my pencil until it snapped and brought me back to reality. I looked from the paper to the broken number two pencil that sat in two halves beside it. My eyes brushed over Liam's bloody knuckle before I squeezed my eyes shut to stop myself from storming out of the classroom and hunting Jason down.

*

I didn't even bother to sit down when I entered the cafeteria. As I assumed, Liam was nowhere to be found and it definitely wasn't unnoticed. Andy and Bryan were talking, but both kept looking to Jay at the end of the table in the middle of a conversation with Shay and Nicola. It was Brianna who noticed me, a smile appearing just to drop milliseconds later when she saw my expression. Jay, catching Brianna look my way in his peripheral stood. He tried to kiss me but I dodged it and shook my head.

"What the hell are you being like that?" he snapped.

I bit back what I really wanted to say, and instead forced out, "What the hell did you do to Liam?"

"He wasn't getting the message verbally." He said it so nonchalantly one may have thought we were talking about a car. "So I thought I'd get it through his thick ass skull physically. Maybe this time it'll stick."

I took his jaw between my fingers and turned his face in both directions. "Why aren't you beat up?"

It's Andy, the most serious and angry I'd ever seen him, who answered me. "Because Liam didn't fight back."

"You just continued to hit him? Even when you realized he wasn't going to hit back? That's literally the definition of kicking a man when he's down!"

I'd never been one for attention, but as I stood before the jock, I hoped every single soul in the school heard about this by the end of the day.

Jay frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. "When you say it like that it makes me sound like an asshole."

I pressed my nails into my palm to keep from smacking him. "There's no making about it, Jason. What you did was an asshole move."

*

The fact that Liam didn't answer a single text or phone call the rest of the day was worrisome. It wasn't until a little after six that I got a very vague, dry text.

Tin Man: come outside

Throwing my legs over the side of my bed I hurried down the stairs, my lips pursing when I saw how hard the rain was coming down through the open blinds in the kitchen. It had been nothing but a light drizzle when I got home a few hours ago. I opened my front door, greeted with a very wet Liam Scott. Despite the fact he was wearing a jacket, his dark hair was matted to his forehead, stray droplets falling from the tips and rolling down his cheeks. When I peered around him, his truck was nowhere in sight.