Chapter 81

Liam’s POV

A loud splash interrupted me mid-sentence. I didn’t think anything of it at first. After all, this was a pool party, and there were already swimmers in the pool. One of them might have just done a cannon ball.

Yet, as if on instinct, my eyes were drawn to the place Aria had been standing. She was gone, with Sophia in her place, looking smug as hell.

That sight was what finally had me turning to look into the pool. There, Aria was struggling beneath the surface of the water.

How did she get there? Did she jump?

No, I already knew what had happened, just from looking at Sophia’s face.

Sophia had pushed her.

And Aria was now still under the water.

It didn’t make sense. Aria was never the world’s strongest swimmer, but she could surely swim to the surface of the water in a pool.

Yet she seemed to be having trouble doing so now. Was it her long skirt weighing her down? Was it tangled around her legs, keeping her from kicking to bring herself to safety?

I didn’t have time to puzzle it out, and frankly, it didn’t matter a hell of a lot to me in the moment.

All I did know was that Aria had been shoved into the pool, and she was drowning.

No time to waste, I kicked off my shoes and dove into the water. Kicking, I pushed myself down deep, where I found Aria struggling at the bottom of the deep end of the pool. When I reached her, I grabbed her around the waist with both arms. Then, kicking as hard as I could, I brought us both up to the surface.

The moment we breached the surface of the water, Aria sucked in a heavy breath. It was too much, too quickly, so she started coughing.

She kicked on her own, but as I had suspected her wet skirt impeded her movement. Mostly, she was just dead weight as I dragged her through the water to the edge of the pool. There, a couple of my friends reached down to help her out of the water first. Once she was sitting on the edge of the pool, they helped me as well, yanking me up out of the water.

Immediately, I turned to Aria and gently rubbed her back. “Are you okay?” I asked, perhaps a stupid question. I quickly discarded it before she could even bother to tell me no. “Did you breathe in any water?”

She shook her head once. It was difficult to discern because she was trembling. She wrapped her arms around herself and lowered her head. Her face was pale.

“Liam, it was an accident,” Sophia said, suddenly beside me. “I was just walking over to her, and she tripped all on her own, right into the pool.”

“Don’t lie to me,” I snapped at her, shooting her a glare. “I wasn’t born yesterday. You hate Aria so you shoved her into the pool.”

Sophia’s face whitened. “It was a joke. I thought we’d all laugh.”

Still, she was lying to me. “You’re little ‘joke,’ nearly killed Aria, don’t you understand? She could have drowned. And for what? To satisfy your petty jealous?”

“But Liam…”

“I’m taking Aria inside.”

Aria didn’t object as I stood, then scooped her up against me. She must have still been in shock.

“She’ll be okay, Liam,” Sophia said, laughing slightly, though it was nervous. “You don’t have to leave the party. Please, Liam. I already feel bad enough…”

I turned to her, glaring, with Aria still in my arms. “I can’t always drop everything to keep from hurting your feelings, Sophia. You created this mess. Now you live with the consequences.”

As I turned, she tried once more, grabbing my arm. “Liam, it wasn’t a big deal…”

I ripped my arm away from her. “You aren’t a child anymore, Sophia. You are an adult. So act like it for once.”

With that, I stormed forward. Holding Aria closely to my chest, I walked inside our house and then upstairs to our bedroom. There, I gently sat her down slowly onto the side of the bed.

By now, some color had returned to her face, though she was still shivering.

“I’ll be right back,” I told her and hurried into the on-suite bathroom. I returned with two towels and two fluffy bathrobes. “Change,” I said, “and I’ll throw our clothes in the dryer.”

Taking off my shirt, I casted it to the side.

Her eyes went wide, looking at my bare chest.

“Turn around,” she said at once.

I didn’t really hear her at first, nor did I understand. “Huh?”

“I’m not undressing with you looking,” she explained. “Turn around, and I will too. Then say when you are in the robe.”

Not wanting to make her uncomfortable, I did as she asked, turning my back to her.

As I undressed, I heard the shuffle of wet clothes as she must have been undressing behind me.

Before too long, she said, “I’m ready, are you?”

“Yeah,” I said, wearing my bathrobe.

“Okay.”

I turned around to see her wearing the matching bathrobe. Her hair was wet clinging to her neck and shoulders. Her makeup had washed mostly away, though her eyeliner smeared heavy against the underside of her eyes more than the top. She’d be mad if she looked in the mirror, but she was no less beautiful to me.

I took her wet clothes from her and gathered my own. “Stay here,” I said. “I’ll take these to the dryer and come right back.”

She nodded, so I hurried before she could change her mind and venture out. I didn’t much care for the thought of other men, my friends or not, seeing her in only a bathrobe.

After a quick trip to the laundry room, staring the dryer, I hurried back upstairs.

Aria was sitting on the edge of the bed again. When I came through the door, though, she stood up.

Her face had even more color now, thank God. She was starting to look like her old self, albeit with the runny makeup and wet hair.

But she also looked unhappy, her lips curled into a deep frown.

Her frustration made sense to me. She should be angry, after Sophia, intentionally or not, nearly killed her.

“I’ll talk to Sophia again,” I said. “Her petty jealousies have gone on for far too long and I –”

“You shouldn’t have spoken to her like that,” Aria said.

I stopped short, confused again. “Huh?”

“Some of the things you said to her at the pool were too harsh.”

I was hearing the words, and they were words that I knew and understood. Yet I couldn’t for the life of me puzzle together why Aria, who had been so wronged in this instance, was being defensive of Sophia, who had so very nearly killed her.

“She could have killed you, Aria…”

“But she didn’t. She just wanted to humiliate me.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Whatever else she is, Sophia is the mother of your child. You shouldn’t speak to her like you did, especially not in front of so many people.”

I blinked once, twice.

What did she just say?

Did she just call Sophia… the mother of my child?