Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Liam
I’m laughing. Actually laughing, not the careful, polite sounds I’ve been making for weeks, but real, helpless laughter that bubbles up from somewhere deep in my chest, a laugh I thought had died in prison.
Nicky is grinning at me across the small table in the coffee shop, his eyes bright with something I haven’t seen since we were teenagers, pure, uncomplicated joy.
He’s just told me a ridiculous story about his friend Carlo trying to impress a woman by cooking dinner and nearly burning down his entire kitchen, complete with dramatic reenactment using sugar packets as props.
“And then,” Nicky continues, barely able to get the words out through his own laughter, “he calls me at two in the morning, absolutely panicked, asking if I know how to get smoke stains off the ceiling because he had another woman coming over the next day.”
“What did you tell him?” I manage between giggles.
“Paint over it and pray.” He takes a sip of his cappuccino, still smiling. “Though I’m not sure prayer works for people in our line of work.”
The casual reference to his job should probably kill my mood, but it doesn’t. Nothing can, right now. For the first time in five years, I feel light. Almost normal. Like maybe the boy who used to laugh until his sides hurt isn’t completely gone after all.
“I can’t believe you convinced me to come here,” I say, gesturing around the busy coffee shop.
It’s packed with the morning rush, business people grabbing takeaway cups, students with laptops, mothers with pushchairs negotiating narrow spaces between tables.
People fortifying themselves for Christmas shopping.
A month ago, the crowd would have sent me into a panic attack. Now it just feels... alive. Human.
“Best coffee in the West End,” Nicky says proudly. “Had to share it with you eventually.”
“Even if your reputation suffers from being seen in a place that charges eleven pounds for a latte?”
“My reputation can handle a bit of middle-class coffee snobbery.” He reaches across the table and brushes his fingers against mine, such a small touch, but it sends warmth racing up my arm. “Besides, seeing you smile is worth any amount of mockery from the lads.”
The sincerity in his voice makes my chest tight with something that isn’t quite happiness but isn’t sadness either. It’s bigger than both, encompassing everything I thought I’d lost and everything I’m slowly learning to believe I might still have.
“I love you,” I say suddenly, the words slipping out before I can second-guess them.
His face transforms, that careful hope he’s been carrying for days blooming into something radiant. “I love you too.”
It’s been three days since the first time we said it with full meaning. Since then, it has been said with looks and small gestures. With the comfortable way we sit next to each other on the sofa.
Hearing the actual words again is profound. Reaffirming. Acknowledgment I didn’t dream up the first time.
It should be terrifying, this moment of perfect vulnerability in a crowded coffee shop. But instead, it feels like coming home. Like finding a piece of myself I didn’t realize was missing.
I’m reaching for my cup, still smiling, when my eyes drift across the room and land on a woman sitting alone at a corner table.
The world stops.
She shouldn’t be here. She belongs in the shitty neighborhood I grew up in. Not so many miles away, but an entire world away from fancy coffee shops in the West End.
She’s older than I remember, her dark hair now streaked with silver, lines around her eyes that weren’t there five years ago. But I’d recognize that face anywhere. The same sharp cheekbones as her daughter, the same green eyes that used to light up when Olivia brought friends home from school.
Mrs. Patterson. Olivia’s mother.
She’s staring at me with an expression I know I’ll see in my nightmares for the rest of my life. Recognition dawning slowly, then horror, then something darker. Disgust. Rage. The look of a mother confronted with the person who destroyed her world.
My blood turns to ice in my veins. The laughter dies in my throat, replaced by something sharp and metallic that tastes like panic and guilt and five years of buried shame.
She knows. Of course she knows. She was at every day of the trial, sitting in the front row with Olivia’s father, both of them watching as I was sentenced for their daughter’s death.
Watching as I was led away in handcuffs while they were left with nothing but memories of a funeral for a girl who should have had decades of life ahead of her.
And here I am, five years later, sitting in an expensive coffee shop, laughing like I don’t have blood on my hands. Holding hands with someone who loves me like I deserve affection instead of the endless punishment I should be serving.
Mrs. Patterson’s eyes fill with tears, but they’re not sad tears. They’re furious tears, the kind that come from seeing injustice walking free while your child rots in the ground.
She starts to stand, and I can see her mouth opening, probably to say something that will destroy what’s left of my sanity. To remind everyone in this coffee shop exactly what I am, what I’ve done.
She thinks I was driving, just like everyone does.
But the details don’t matter. The fact my hands weren’t on the wheel changes nothing.
I knew Sam was drunk. Knew he was driving too fast. Knew he was upset.
Knew it was dark and raining and he didn’t take care of his car.
And I did nothing. Nothing except let Olivia die.
I’m on my feet before I realize I’ve moved, the chair scraping loudly against the floor.
“Liam?” Nicky’s voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater. “What’s wrong?”
But I can’t answer him. Can’t explain. Can’t do anything but run.
I push through the crowded coffee shop, ignoring the annoyed sounds of people I bump into, focused only on getting away. Away from Mrs. Patterson’s horrified stare, away from the judgment and the guilt and the weight of a ghost I can never escape.
The December air hits my face like a slap as I burst through the door onto the street. London rushes around me, traffic and pedestrians and the relentless noise of a city that doesn’t care about one broken person falling apart on its pavements.
I don’t know where I’m going. Don’t have a plan beyond the desperate need to be anywhere else. My feet carry me through side streets and past shops I don’t see, following some instinct that promises relief if I can just get far enough away.
But you can’t run from guilt. You can’t escape the weight of a life cut short, especially when you’re the one who cut it.
I find myself on a bridge I don’t know the name of, without remembering how I got there.
The Thames stretches out below, gray and choppy in the winter light.
People stream past me in both directions, tourists taking photos, commuters hurrying to work, joggers with their headphones and determined expressions.
None of them see me. None of them know what I’ve done.
The railings are cold against my palms as I grip them, staring down at the water far below. It looks peaceful from here. Quiet. Like it might wash away five years of nightmares and guilt and the crushing weight of existing in a world where Olivia Patterson doesn’t.
“She was eighteen,” I whisper to the wind. “She was going to be a teacher. She wanted to work with kids who struggled in school, help them find their confidence.”
The words are torn away by the December gusts, but saying them feels important. Like maybe if I acknowledge her properly, admit what was lost, the weight in my chest might ease just a fraction.
But it doesn’t. If anything, it gets heavier.
Eighteen. The same age I was when I made that split-second decision to climb into the driver’s seat. The same age when I thought I was being noble, protecting Sam and Amy and their unborn child by taking responsibility for something that some people would say wasn’t even my fault.
Except it was my fault, wasn’t it? I wasn’t the one driving, but I knew damn well that Sam was drunk. And then in the car, after that phone call, he was upset and distracted.
If only I had told him to pull over. If I’d insisted we call a taxi when we left the pub. If I’d taken Sam’s keys. If I’d been braver, smarter, less eager to seem cool.
If, if, if. Five years of ifs that led to a beautiful girl dying because I wasn’t strong enough to make the right choice when it mattered.
It is a secret twisted and embedded in my soul. So deep I’ll never be able to cut it free. Not even to tell Nicky.
Me and Sam are the only ones who know I wasn’t driving. We are the only ones who will ever know the facts of that night. But it doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant who’s hands were on the wheel. I’m still responsible. Olivia’s blood is still on my hands.
“Liam.”
Nicky’s voice comes from behind me, careful and controlled in a way that makes my stomach clench. I don’t turn around. Can’t bear to see whatever expression he’s wearing. Pity, probably, or that careful concern that means he’s calculating how close I am to completely losing it.
“Don’t,” I say quietly. “Just... don’t.”
“Okay.” His voice comes closer, but not too close. Close enough to be heard over the traffic, far enough that I don’t feel trapped. “Can you tell me what happened back there?”
I laugh, but it comes out broken and bitter. “Olivia’s mother was in the coffee shop. She saw me laughing. Saw me happy.” My fingers tighten on the railing until my knuckles go white. “How fucking dare I be happy when her daughter is dead because of me?”
“Liam…”
“No.” The word comes out sharper than I intended. “Don’t you dare try to make this better. Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault or that I deserve happiness or any other fucking lies.”
The silence stretches between us, broken only by the sound of traffic and the Thames moving sluggishly below.