Smart Girl by Rachel Hollis Page B

look.
    “We are,” Malin tells him.
    “So Landon lives with Max. Landon dates Brody, Max’s brother. Then Max dates Taylor, Landon’s friend. Now our little sister and Taylor’s little sister are becoming roommates. Have I got that right?”
    The girls nod and grin.
    Liam lifts a finger from his beer bottle and uses it to point at everyone in the room. “This whole group is getting a little incestuous, if you ask me.” His eyes find mine for a single second before he continues. “I’m just going to tell you right now, Tosh, I am in no way interested in being your life partner, no matter how much you look like Jesus in human form.”
    Everyone laughs, but I have to force the sound from my lips. At the mention of his name, Malin realizes she hasn’t met Tosh yet and greets him with the same hug she greets everyone else with. She must get that from her mom. When it’s my turn I go through the motions of filling my plate up, but the implication in Liam’s look makes me uncomfortable. He played it off as humor, but I feel like the declaration was for me.
    “What don’t you have on that taco?”
    I’ve been moving so slowly down the buffet line that Liam and I are the only ones left in the kitchen. I look down at my plate along with him. The tortilla is barely visible around the heap of toppings. I’ve never met a taco ingredient I didn’t like.
    “Was that little announcement for me?” I ask the pile on my plate.
    His sigh brings my gaze up to his stormy blue eyes.
    “You’re not very good at this, you know. You’re not supposed to ask me things like that. It just confirms why I need to make that comment in the first place.”
    I look away from him.
    “Was it a warning?”
    “Just a statement of fact. I can see what you’re hoping for every time you look at me. I worry that everyone else can see it too.”
    I shrug helplessly.
    “So what if they do?”
    His sigh is louder this time. I can actually see him trying to think of something to put me off. “I’m dating someone.”
    I’m mostly sure my flinch isn’t as pronounced as it feels. It’s like when Kate Daniels finally lets herself love the Beast Lord, Curran, and she makes him dinner, but he never shows up, even though he promised he would. She’s devastated, because she doesn’t know that he was actually being attacked by shape-shifters, but when she sees him again, she pretends to be totally unfazed.
    Yeah, just like that.
    I force myself to face him and to sound as indifferent as possible.
    “You’re always dating someone, usually multiple women at once. This isn’t news.”
    His eyes narrow. “Don’t pretend to be indifferent to my lifestyle, Miko. I know you’re not the kind of woman who dates casually.”
    I’m fairly certain it will always come back to this with him. He’s selling any relationship short by not even giving it a chance. More than that, he’s selling himself short. How does he know he wouldn’t like a relationship if he’s never actually had one? And even if I hate that he’s using it to create another barrier between us, he’s right about the way I feel. I hate his lifestyle. Over the last year I’ve seen him with too many women to count. It wouldn’t be as terrible if I thought he was looking for forever. But what he has in mind is fleeting, the absolute opposite of what I believe in.
    I believe in love and monogamy. I believe in the way Brody plays with Landon’s fingers when he thinks no one is watching or the way Taylor can’t seem to stop kissing that same spot behind Max’s ear. I believe in a lifetime of love like that of my parents, who I still find slow-dancing in the kitchen to Nat King Cole when I visit home. I believe in all of that, and I want it from Liam so badly that it makes me feel frantic. But I also believe he’s convinced himself not to want any of those things. For whatever reason, he’s blindly averse to the idea of a committed relationship, and I don’t stand a chance with him if