"There's a mistake," I said quickly, in denial. I ignored the way my stomach performed backflips when I met his dark eyes. "We're not partners."

Liam stared at me with an amused expression, "Oh, please. You're working with me, which means you're guaranteed a good mark. It couldn't get any better."

Liam took the cake for the most arrogant thing I'd ever heard anyone say. Sam had run off to look for his partner, leaving Liam and I alone.

I rolled my eyes, before a brilliant idea popped into mind. "Okay then, I'll just sit back and relax." 

His eyes widened and his mouth opened, then shut, "T-that's not what I meant."

I chuckled at his reaction to which he rolled his eyes, "I'm only kidding, who do you think I am?"

"I won't answer that," he shrugged, his eyes glistening with humour. I gave him a flat expression which he ignored. "Let's get to business. We can meet up tomorrow to work on it. It's a quick assignment and it won't take too long."

My nose crinkled, "Why are we going with your schedule? I don't wanna go with it."

"Do you have a better idea?" he challenged, an eyebrow raised. "The sooner we get it done, the better. Midterms are coming up."

"I don't need you to boss me around," I scoffed, crossing my arms over my chest. The last thing I needed was another person to control my life — I had Hunter for that at one point, and I still have my mom. I had also lived through it two hundred years ago.

Liam rolled his eyes, though a smile played on his lips. He took a couple strides towards me, closing the gap between us. I sucked in a deep breath, feeling my cheeks warm.

He stared down at me, his smile from before was now a cocky one, "So you don't have another idea. I'll see you tomorrow at four o'clock, sharp."

I gritted my teeth as I watched his back disappear around the corner when he left the class. I didn't need to be closer to Liam than I already was and I had every reason to hate him. Every part of me wanted to avoid him but it seemed like all the forces on this earth were trying to thrust us together.

____________________________

Avery bursted out in an obnoxious laugh when she heard of Liam and I being paired together for our assignment. Against my better judgement, I had told her about it.

"Wow, talk about a coincidence," she continued to laugh despite the unimpressed expression I stared at her with. We were walking down the hall and I was making my way to the school library where Liam had said he wanted to meet.

I was reluctant to have him boss me around, but it was true, I didn't have a better idea other than the one he proposed.

"Yeah... what a coincidence," I sighed.

Avery glanced over at me, "Lighten up, maybe Liam's not that bad."

Not that bad. I personally knew exactly how horrible he was. I knew that he would put his reputation and authorities' favour above others.

"Yeah, maybe not," I replied, my voice void of any emotion. With that, Avery and I parted ways — I headed into the library while she went off to her class.

My stomach bubbled from the thought of seeing Liam alone, but I pushed those thoughts away. He was the one who had ruined my life two centuries ago, I needed to remember that.

I spotted Liam right as I entered the library. It was an elegant library, one that seemed to come out of Beauty and the Beast. There were rows and rows of shelves as tall as the ceiling, filled with books.

Liam leaned against a book shelf, as he scrolled through his phone. He glanced up at me, a smile immediately spreading over his lips when I approached him.

"You came," he sounded surprised.

"You didn't give me a choice," I pointed out as we walked deeper into the library. It was quiet — which made sense. No one actually used the school library. It was just that there was a silent agreement between Liam and I that we would not go to each other's houses.

"There's always a choice, Ophelia," he glanced over at me, an eyebrow raised. We approached a cluster of tables and chairs.

Yes, and you made the wrong one two centuries ago. I thought to myself as I took a seat at the table. Liam sat directly across from me. I took out my laptop from my bag to pull up an empty document for the assignment. We had to come up with a defence method or angle for the case we were assigned.

"Okay, so I know we have our differences," Liam started and I gave him a sharp look.

Our differences. I thought was more than just our differences.

"But, if we work together we can get a great mark in this assignment. It's worth fifteen percent of our grade," he finished as I typed my name into the document, followed by Liam's.

"I agree," I answered, glancing back up at his satisfied smile. In a way, I could use this to my advantage. Liam was known for getting amazing marks in our class, and well, I wasn't stupid either. We could get an A+ for this assignment if we tried.

"Honestly this case study is so irritating," I said, breaking the silence between us. "A guy gets high, kills his mom and his brother. I mean that's pretty hard to defend. We could say he was impaired from the drugs, I guess."

"Yes but Meth is illegal," Liam added, muffling his laughter. "Technically he wasn't even impaired when he killed them."

"Yeah, but a high from Meth can last about sixteen hours. This guy killed his family two hours after he left his friend's house high," I rebutted. I wanted to give myself a pat on the back for that comment.

Liam stared at me for a few moments, perplexed, "How do you know how long a high lasts?"

I blinked at him, "I just do."

"Oookay," he cleared his throat. "That's one way to look at it. We can check out some other angles too. You can type up what we have so far in the doc later so we can keep track of it."

My eyebrow shot up, "No, you do it."

"I'll type up the next ideas we have," he offered. "It's a compensation."

I pondered for a moment before nodding, "Okay, and it's fine I'll take care of it. Just work that brain of yours to come up with other solutions to this case."

"Don't worry, my brain's a well oiled machine," he smirked, his eyes scanning over his laptop again, probably reading over our case the professor assigned again.

"Doesn't seem like it," I said, staring at him blankly.

He glanced up from his laptop, meeting my eyes for a second before he shook his head, a light smile playing on his lips. I tore my eyes away from him, feeling a smile creep up on my own face from the sight of his contagious one.

A silence settled over us, as I did everything I could to avoid his eye contact. I really should not be feeling like this at all, not after what happened. It seemed so ridiculous that these butterflies still hadn't left after two centuries. I refused to believe that was the case.

"Your hair was blonde," Liam's piped up, interrupting my thoughts. His voice was soft, different from how he usually spoke. "I like it the way it is now though."

When I finally looked up, I realized that his dark eyes were on me. He scrutinized me with them, but I didn't feel uncomfortable in any way. His eyes matched the ocean of stars I'd once seen so long ago.

"Also, you were a lot quieter. Unfortunately, that's not a quality you have now," he chortled. His eyes glistened under the dim lighting of the library.

"Please, I'm the full package now," I snickered, to which he scoffed.

"Maybe... if you're like a package of rotten ham or something," he laughed, tossing his eraser into the ear and catching it smoothly in his hand. I rolled my eyes. It was a ridiculous comment but it did hurt a bit, not that I'd ever tell him that.

I focused my attention back onto the document when I felt something small smack onto my nose. So small that it felt like a little tap. I ignored it, my fingers continuing to fly over the keyboard as I typed up our one idea. Something similar made contact with my forehead, this time harder.

"What the—" I looked up from my laptop, only to see Liam's hand in the air. His eyes widened when he realized he had been caught red-handed. "What the hell are you throwing?"

"Nothing, must have been your imagination," he shrugged, lowering his arm.

"I call bullshit," I said as a matter-of-fact.

"It was nothing," Liam insisted, suppressing his laughter.

"You're a horrible liar. You used to laugh when you lied, I still remember," I stood up from my chair, taking a few strides towards him.

His hands were still balled in fists on top of the table. I grabbed his hand, forcing them open with as much strength as I could muster.

Reluctantly, Liam opened his palms, revealing eraser bits in one hand, and his eraser with chunks taken off of it in the other.

"You psychopath, who does that to an eraser?" I was truly baffled. All my life, my erasers had been rip free, and clean until the end.

"If yours doesn't look like that, you're the psycho," Liam commented. He glanced up, his eyes meeting mine. His stare knocked the breath out of my lungs and I diverted my gaze lower. It was only then when I realized that I had been holding Liam's hand the whole time.

I released his hands immediately, taking a step back. Blood rushed to my cheeks as I returned to my seat.

I typed up the rest of our thought process into the document. Later, we'd have to put it into an essay. At least we didn't need citations.

I swallowed hard when I met Liam's gaze again. The way he stared at me was the exact same way he had two hundred years ago. Even after so long, nothing about him seemed to have really changed.

What I had loved about him was still so evident and I wished it wasn't. I just needed to remember what he'd done, then I wouldn't feel this way.

I already dreaded what Liam was about to say from the sight of the sly smile that spread over his lips a moment later. "So, how's Hunter?"

★★★

𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑢𝑦𝑠 𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑤𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑖𝑎𝑚!! 𝑃𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒, 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑖𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒!

~ 𝑆𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠𝐼𝑛𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑆𝑎𝑙𝑡