Chapter 20
TWENTY
KAT
The plastic bag’s handles dig into my palm as I round the corner. Buying food at the corner shop is always pricey, but at least the walk home isn’t too bad. Especially when Liam’s not here to let me be a princess who doesn’t need to lift a thing.
I check my phone with my other hand. No messages.
No calls. Ellie and I spent the day together shopping as she waxed lyrical about her date with Freddie and how he knows exactly what he’s doing in the bedroom.
Swallowing my concerns, I awed, ahhed, and said "good for you" in all the right places. It’s nice to see her excited, but I can’t help but think this pen-wielding blondie is going to break her heart. Or hold her back.
The turn into the alley is up ahead, and it still sends shivers through me when I approach it alone in the dark.
I can’t forget about being dragged through it by Sam.
Notes stuck to my door. Blood. If we can somehow wangle my parents’ place, maybe it would be good for us.
Not a fresh start, exactly, but something like it.
Maybe I’ll paint my parents' room hot pink and put a roller rink in the ballroom. Not that I roller skate, but to annoy them if they ever come to visit.
I’m giggling as I round the corner.
Stopping fast, my bag falls to the ground, food spilling out around my feet. There’s a body in the alley. A rough sleeper? No. There’s blood.
‘Liam?’ I say, seeing a winding ivy vine on the bloodstained forearm. ‘Oh my god, Liam!’
My knees hit the ground as I reach to feel his throat. There’s a pulse, thready and weak, but there.
‘Can you hear me?’
There’s no response. Looking him over, I’m appalled. One eye is swollen shut, and there’s blood everywhere. I can’t figure out where it’s from. Gently feeling around his scalp, I hear a small moan fall from his lips. There’s a huge lump near the back, and my fingers come back sticky and red.
Did someone find out what we’ve done?
Do they know us?
Calling the hospital seems like the worst idea, because they’ll get police involved. I can’t fix this, though.
My phone slips from my hand on the first attempt to triple press the nine, but I take a deep breath and get through to the operator.
‘Emergency. Which service do you require?’ says the voice on the other end.
‘Ambulance.’
‘Stay on the line, please. I'm putting you through.’
My hand shakes as I fold it over Liam’s.
‘Hello, ambulance service. Is the patient breathing?’
‘Yes,’ I say, swallowing down the panic that rises. ‘But he’s unconscious. There’s a lot of blood.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know. I found him like this. Please, I’m halfway down St Martin's Street, across from Mackies Vape Shop. Please hurry.’
‘What number are you calling on?’
I reel off my phone number, squeezing Liam’s fingers. There’s no response.
‘Can you see any injuries? We’ve got someone on the way to you now.’
She listens while I tell her about the head wound and the swollen eye, but that I can’t figure out if there’s anything else.
Within minutes, the alley fills with blue lights and sirens, paramedics gently removing me from his side while they assess him.
Before I know it, someone’s packed Liam and me into the back of the ambulance, with my bag of shopping perched on my lap. The driver had sweetly swept the slightly bashed produce back in.
Seeing Liam strapped to the stretcher as the paramedic checks him is like being in a nightmare. The mask over his swollen face. The bright lights showing me just how much blood he’s soaked in.
When we arrive, Accident and Emergency swallows him up while I’m shown to a row of plastic seats. I text Ellie and Sandra, letting them know what’s happening before sitting there with my plastic bag clutched to my chest.
Ellie arrives first in a flurry of concern, with Freddie trailing behind her.
‘Oh my god, is he okay?’ she says, eyes rimmed red.
‘I don’t know.’ I choke down a sob, wanting to collapse into Ellie’s arms, but still feeling vulnerable around her reporter.
‘He has to be. He’s basically indestructible.’ Ellie notices me glaring over her shoulder at Freddie and sighs. ‘Sorry, I’d had a drink after shopping and couldn’t drive. Freddie offered…’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. A lie.
‘Don’t worry, here strictly on a non-work basis.’ Freddie smiles at me, which doesn’t make me feel any better.
Sandra and Colin spill in shortly after, worried but also caught off guard by an impromptu hospital corridor meet-the-parents. I watch their awkward introductions like they are on a distant TV. Aware, but not involved. The bag crinkles as I squeeze it tighter.
When Sandra sits beside me and pulls me into a hug, the tears fall. Silently. And without further note, there’s no holding them back. Freddie fetches a tissue from his stupid little satchel.
‘He’ll be okay, honey,’ she soothes. ‘He’s a strong boy. Reckless, but strong. I thought he’d grown out of this…’
My brow furrows at that. Grown out of what?
Sandra’s stomach rumbles, and I fish a pack of hobnobs from the bag. They’re slightly battered, but no one seems to mind when I pass them around.
We sit there nibbling like a pack of sad squirrels, waiting for news.
Two days' worth of hard plastic seats, horrible prepacked sandwiches, surprisingly good coffee, and many shed tears, and I feel hollowed out. Like someone has unhitched my skull, reached in and scooped out my insides.
So many voices say, "We’ll see how he is when he wakes up, or it’s hard to tell, but his vitals are good."
They don’t say that they won’t know if he’s okay cognitively until he wakes, but I know that's what they mean. I slip my hand into his and trace a thumb over the intermingling of scars and dark ivy there, wondering if my Liam is even still in there.
It’s hard to sit on the edge of anger and fear.
I don’t know what happened to him. I’m scared to go home not only because I want to be here when Liam wakes, but also because whoever dumped him knows we live there.
If he went behind my back and fought, there’s a relief in knowing that it’s not related to our murders.
But if he fought, he lied to me, and that set fiery rage boiling in my chest. If it’s something to do with the murders, his being dumped at home is a warning.
When they discover he’s not dead, they might well come back.
I’m thankful that Sandra picked up Reggie and took him to hers for a few days. Other than a quick stop here and there to grab clothes and shower, I’ve camped out right here next to Liam, knowing my kitty is safe.
Folding over, I lay my head on my hands, still folded around his.
It takes time to see past the recurring bubbling anger, but I work on seeing the good.
Not just the sex, which is obviously a huge plus point, but the soft moments too.
The way he brings me coffee in bed so my feet don’t have to get cold.
The tenderness he showed Reggie even when the cat treated him like a spare part.
The way he treats me like I’m so precious no matter what we’re doing.
He let me into his past and trusts me to be his future.
Our silly moments when some stupid joke makes us laugh until we cry.
There hasn’t been enough of that in the past few weeks.
What if he wakes up with that part of him lost? If I have to mourn a man who’s physically there, but I can’t reach his soul. The very idea eviscerates me.
I need him.
His hand twitches in mine, not for the first time—reflexes, apparently—but I still glance up at him anyway.
Among the stitches, bruises, and swelling, one eye is open.
‘Oh my god, Liam,’ I breathe, hardly daring to hope.
‘Kat, baby.’ His voice is broken and hoarse, barely a whisper. It’s the most beautiful sound I’ve heard since the first words he said to me.
‘I’m here.’ I press the call button, needing someone to come look at him and confirm this isn’t a dream. That he’s actually back.
The doctor is swift and to the point. Flashing lights in his open eye and asking questions.
Liam answers the medical ones but stays tight-lipped about what happened.
He’s got a significant concussion and two cracked ribs, multiple stitched wounds and bruises.
The doctor tells him he suspects Liam was hit by a car or beaten twenty shades of hell.
The lack of broken limbs leads him to think Liam’s pissed someone off real bad and that they should call in the police.
‘No police,’ Liam grunts.
‘Then you better stop doing whatever you’re doing to piss people off before you end up in the ground.’ The doctor says.
Or a well.
When the doctor leaves, I slide my chair closer to the head of the bed, ready to give him the third degree.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks, clearly seeing that I look like I’ve slept in a plastic chair for days.
‘I think you’re the one we’re worried about here. What the fuck happened?’
‘Is my phone here?’ Liam asks, which catches me off guard.
‘What?’
‘My phone.’
‘Yes. It’s in my bag.’ He hadn’t had it with him; he’d left it at home and plugged it into the scrolling software we use to mimic human use, just in case anyone ever tries to use our phones to prove we’re pinging near a crime scene.
‘Check my bank,’ he says, wincing as he tries to adjust his head position.
The anger creeps hot into my cheeks. ‘Why?’
‘Just check it.’
I use his passcode to log in to his banking app; there’s not a chance in hell it’s going to recognise his face at the moment.
The first transaction hits like a slap. ￡440000 from what looks like a betting shop.
The room tilts.
‘You fucking promised me.’ Is all I can force out between my teeth.
‘Baby…’
‘Don’t you baby me. You looked me in the eyes and promised you wouldn’t do it.’ My pulse thumps hard enough to make my head hurt. I move my chair back and toss his phone on the bed.
‘I did it for us. I wanted to be able to provide for you—’
‘Don’t you make this about me. You could have fucking died, Liam. I could be putting you in the ground after everything we’ve been through. Everything we’ve done. And you’re acting like some bullshit macho man who needs to provide? We’re in this together. Or so I thought.’
Anger has me on my feet, the chair tipping back and crashing to the floor.
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Fair?’ My laugh is maniacal. ‘What’s fair about me finding you beaten to a pulp in an alley, not knowing if you’d survive?
Me having to sit through two days of people telling me not to expect a miracle, but to hope for the best. I sat here not knowing if our plan had been discovered or if you betrayed me, flitting between worry and rage. That’s not fair, Liam.’
He doesn’t have an answer for that, his gaze dropping to the thin hospital blanket.
‘I don’t even know who you are anymore. I’ve been trying to keep us from falling apart, and the whole time you’re out here taking a fucking crowbar to our relationship.
’ His face contorts as if struck. ‘The man I fell in love with would never have betrayed me. Wouldn’t have lied to my face.
You need to figure this out, Liam, because it’s hurting us both to stick to this plan and see it through. ’
‘Kat—’
A nurse appears at the door, looking concerned at my yelling.
‘I need to go,’ I say, struggling to fight back tears.
‘Kat, please?’ Liam tries to sit and grunts in pain, looking like it hurts enough to move that he might throw up.
‘I can’t be here right now.’
It kills me to leave him there, but I desperately need air.
Knowing he’s okay gives me the reassurance I need to allow myself to be truly furious with him.
To let the hurt and betrayal sweep over me.
By the time I’m outside, the tears are two matching waterfalls dripping from my face and soaking my jumper.
Thankfully, no one thinks it strange to see someone falling apart outside a hospital.
I hold myself together as best I can until I get home, throwing myself on our bed and sobbing until I have no tears left. On the edge of a desperately needed sleep, I harden my resolve.
I’ve been letting emotions hold me back for too long.
It’s time to end this.