Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 320 - 58

Chapter 320: Chapter 58

Walking out from behind the bar, Rayne nodded toward a nearby pair of small upholstered sofas facing each other across a cocktail table in the lounge area, and Liam followed her there.

She put his glass and a cocktail napkin in front of one of the sofas; then she walked around to the sofa on the opposite side and curled up on it, her legs tucked beneath her, her wineglass in hand.

Across from her, Liam reached for his glass, propped his ankle on the opposite knee, and took a swallow of his drink.

"What would you like to know about Ethan?" she asked as soon as he started to lower his glass down.

Liam already had his own conversational agenda firmly in mind, and he had no intention of letting her divert him from it; however, there was one thing he did want to ask her about Ethan before he started with his own questions.

"In the bedroom tonight, he was talking to me, and then he stopped and looked at me as if he couldn’t say a word, but he was trying to. Is that a normal thing he does?"

Rayne smiled and explained, "That’s how he is. You’d be surprised to see that tommorow he may lapse completely into baby talk and not say one word you understand. If he’s extremely upset or agitated, he’ll look at you in mute, heartbreaking misery. If that happens when he’s with you, tell me quietly, ’Use your words.’"

"Does that help?"

"It often does."

"If you think he’s having speech problem, I have a well skilled—"

"Your son’s verbal skills are remarkable," Rayne assured him. "So much so that, right now, they’re outpacing his brain’s ability to simultaneously process his thoughts and words. He’s also extremely smart for his age. In addition to inheriting all of your features," she finished with a smile, "he also inherited your gift for language."

In response, Liam stretched his left arm across the back of the sofa and casually inquired, "If he inherited a lot from me, then whose temper did he inherit?"

"Yours, of course," Rayne said without thinking.

"What a relief. That means i won’t be afraid to put a glass in his hand." He joked half-seriously.

His deliberate reference to their confrontation at the banquet two years ago doused Rayne’s smile.

"Please don’t go there," she warned. "That’s a very deep water, and—"

"Our history is all deep water. Because of Ethan, we can’t avoid going there, so let’s discuss it now, but try to tread water instead of trying to drown each other." He suggested.

"What exactly are you suggesting?"

"Honesty."

Rayne stared at him in wary silence.

"Shall I start?" Liam volunteered, and when she nodded slightly, he said, "All right. You’ve already given me the reason for not telling me you were pregnant: my behavior at the banquet. And I am sorry for that. It was inexcusable, and there will never be a repetition."

Rayne looked at him over the rim of her glass and decided to test the depth of his commitment to honesty. Very politely, she said, "I’d rather have an explanation than an apology."

"Fair enough," he replied. "If you had told me you got engaged to anyone but Max Everett, I would have pretended to be happy for you. But hearing about your engagement to Everett right before you stood in front of me with that smug smile on your face made it hard for me to hide my reaction and say what I said that night."

What was she expecting him to say to her when she walked up to him with a smug smile that revealed all of her intentions from the start? She had played with his feelings because her pompous boyfriend and brother believed he was the reason behind their business failing, when in truth, the fools were too dense to work with their brains to achieve anything.

They must have run to Rayne, and Rayne, being a good girlfriend and a good sister to an asshole like Jason, wanted revenge by playing with his feelings. After she’d done that, she walked up to him at that banquet looking all smug and wanting to rub everything in his face.

Remembering it now still made him feel like a complete fool and a total idiot. But for the sake of his son, he was willing to sit here and hear whatever lie she would come up with as an excuse for what she did in the past.

He reached for the napkin on the table, avoiding her gaze to make it easier for her to lie. "Did Max tell you I have a bad history with him because of Jason?"

"Yes," she admitted. "He told me how you are one of the reasons my family’s business failed and why Jason lost all the wealth."

Pleased with her reply, Liam transferred his gaze to hers and rewarded her honesty with a forthright explanation about that issue:

"I refuse to take the blame for your family’s downfall. That was all on your brother who was a greedy asshole. Years ago, Jason wanted to invest more and build a renowned restaurant that had a hotel and mall altogether just because he wanted to come out as a top businessman. He approached me to invest in his plan, but I refused, and he pressured me to suggest to him someone who would be interested in his project. I didn’t want to have anything to do with Jason, but he kept on calling and sending his assistant to me almost every day.

"I got fed up and finally decided to introduce him to one of my company’s co-partners. Since then, I heard nothing from your brother until a night when he barged into my office while I was working late and accused me of being the reason he lost everything. Believe me or not, I had nothing to do with your family’s downfall."

If Rayne were to choose between Jason and Liam on who was telling the truth, she’d pick Liam over her brother.

"But that doesn’t change the fact that you lied to me, nor does it change the fact that you played me like a fool. Did you know what your actions almost caused me? You destroyed my feelings and made me hate my unborn child," Rayne said, trying to sound offhanded.

Shock and disbelief destroyed every other emotion in Liam’s body. Outwardly relaxed and inwardly tense, he studied her, assessing her face and her tone, trying to figure out what she meant by he’d played her like a fool when she was the one who’d played him like an idiot.

"...?"

"To be fair to you," Rayne continued, unaware of the turmoil she was causing in Liam as he tried to understand what she meant, "you were very clear that first night at the villa. You made it obvious you didn’t want to share anything with me except a bed—not even small details like how many languages you speak. You told me straight out that you didn’t want complications and that if I slept with you, it wouldn’t lead to anything.

"But I was foolish to believe you when you said you felt the connection I felt. You took me to bed and convinced me of it. I thought I loved you, and I think you knew that, but yet you played me like a fool..."

Rayne paused, waiting for his reaction, but he just nodded, silently accepting her words and encouraging her to continue. So she did.

"I couldn’t find a way to forgive you for that—or the baby I was carrying—until I went to your sister’s house and looked through your photo albums right from when you were born," she said, looking at him without anger,

"Though I knew you felt nothing for me and only used me for whatever reasons you had, I felt my resentment towards you disappear. Actually," she added with a slight smile, "after looking through your albums and knowing what you’ve been through in life, I was willing to forgive you for everything you did."

Desperate for her to continue so he could get his point straight, Liam drew a steadying breath and said quietly, "You have a very forgiving nature, Rayne."

Rayne’s hand shook at the soft caress she imagined in his voice when he said her name, and she stared hard at him, but his handsome face was composed, attentive, and nothing more.

"Actually," she said briskly, in case he’d noticed her momentary loss of concentration when he said her name, "it was a picture of you, taken at the shoreline of Pineville that made me forgive you and decide to have Ethan. That picture changed everything."

"How did it change everything?"

"It was a photograph with the date and time stamped on it. It was the time we agreed to meet, and you were waiting for me. Until I saw it, I never imagined that you went to the Pineville shoreline at all that day."

Liam’s expression didn’t change, but he had just registered everything in her logic and understood something he’d overlooked, but to confirm it, he remained calm and waited for her to say everything on her mind.

Across from him, she finished the wine in her glass and stayed quiet as if she had no intention of continuing to speak.

Liam lifted his brows inquiringly. "Do you mind telling me what happened that day after you went back to Max?"

Rayne swallowed the lump in her throat at the mention of that day, but then decided to talk about it as they’d agreed on nothing but honesty. He deserved to know how a two-day mistake with him had ruined her life back then until she’d had Ethan.

Though she wouldn’t change that day for anything else now that she had a son like Ethan, she wasn’t naive anymore to believe that Liam had loved her two years ago. Thus, she talked about the day like it meant nothing to her, like she wasn’t affected by the fact that his little lie about not telling her that he stayed in Zen had been the reason for all this misunderstanding.

She began to tell him what happened that day without looking him in the eye, and Liam interrupted with a quietly spoken instruction. "Look at me."

Rayne automatically obeyed because she assumed he wanted her looking at him while he told her something important. Instead, he nodded and said, "Go on."

She hesitated for a moment and continued speaking, she told him everything, from how Max had convinced her that Liam was using her to get back at him, to the point where she called him at the hotel only to realize he’d checked out.

Drawing a shaky breath, Rayne said, "I cried my heart out in Max’s car. I cried until I was so exhausted I fell asleep."

Instead of sounding remorseful or argumentative, Liam sounded vaguely puzzled.

"You thought you were in love with me, and yet, only a few days later, you walked up to me at a banquet wearing Everett’s engagement ring, looking very smug, and offered me your cheek to kiss? And then you expect me to believe everything that happened between us on the island wasn’t a play?"