41. He Talked About Secrets
He Talked About Secrets
Toby
The second level of Cat’s house was a maze of rooms. I stuck my head through the doorways dotted along the hallway.
Empty.
Empty.
The room at the end was dark. Someone had shut the blinds. I reached over to flip on the light, but a voice stopped me.
“Don’t.”
A silhouette lurked in the corner, swallowed in shadow.
I stepped inside, inching close enough to make out Liam’s face in the gloom.
He lounged in an overstuffed patchwork chair, eyes closed, and raised a glass to his lips.
The smell was strong. I glanced at the bottle on the tiny wooden table beside him. Whiskey? Yuck.
Liam didn’t just take a sip. He skulled the whole glass in one go. Grimacing, he reached for the bottle to pour another. I folded my arms over my chest. He couldn’t be serious. Was he getting sloshed?
“Sweetheart, were you worried about me?” He smirked, but it seemed forced. “I’m touched.”
“What are you doing in here?”
“Brooding.”
My face scrunched up. What the hell? “Is that a thing?”
“Obviously. I’m doing it.” He raised his glass. “Care to join me?”
“There are kids here,” I snapped.
“I’m painfully aware.”
“You’ve got guests downstairs. Your sister is there, and you’re up here—” I waved an annoyed hand. I had no clue what he was doing. Getting drunk? Being dramatic? Whatever. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I wish I knew.” His smirk peeked over the rim of the glass before he took a sip. “You don’t like me, do you?”
Talk about stating the obvious. “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.
You change personalities faster than Noah changes diapers.
And then there’s the fact that you’re more than a little obsessed with my wife despite the fact you abandoned her.
” I stared him dead in the eye. A challenge. “And I don’t like it.”
“Obsessed? No.”
“Clippings?”
Liam shifted in the chair. “Perhaps I’m a little too invested in Gwen. But not in the way you think.”
“And how do you suppose I think?”
“With your penis, no doubt.” He sipped his drink as if he wasn’t bothered in the slightest. “No offense. Most men do. Like your daddy.”
I ruffled a restless hand through my hair and blew out a slow breath. I ignored the thrum of blood roaring in my ears and shoved down the anger burning a hole through my chest. Liam was taunting me on purpose. Deflecting. Dodging . I’d hit a nerve.
“I know what you’re doing.” My voice came out low and measured, even though my fist clenched by my side. “Cut the crap and tell me the truth. You left Gwen behind without a damn word, and I’m supposed to believe you’re keeping a sentimental scrapbook of her achievements?”
“I’m…” Liam’s fingers drummed the arm of the chair. “Proud of her.”
“You damn well should be. One of the cool parts of being her husband is seeing her kick ass, you know? I’m more than happy to sing about Gwen from the rooftops, but if you’re proud of her, if you care about her even a little, how can you sit there and justify disappearing for half her life?”
Liam ignored me. His glass hovered in the air, not quite touching his lips as he stared at nothing. “Is Gwen happy?” He eventually asked. “With you?”
Was she? Probably not. I’d stepped up and given her more reasons to want me in her life, but there was still a long list of reasons she was probably going to end up hating me—an envelope full of them, even.
“I want to make her happy,” I said. “I’d do anything for Gwen.”
“As would I.” He sighed. “I owe a debt to my sister. More than one, actually. And for as long as I’m stuck on this godforsaken Earth, I’ll repay every last one. Do you understand?”
“No?”
He scoffed a laugh. “You’re not half as stupid as everyone thinks you are, Dr. Sullivan. I’ve watched you. You trade in favors. You know how to talk to people. You understand more than you pretend not to.”
“Righto.” I felt plenty bloody stupid when he ran rings around me with his verbal gymnastics. “So, you’re telling me you have Gwen’s back, yeah?”
“I always have.”
“Always? Like when? When you walked out and left her with that abuser?”
Liam’s cold eyes slid to me. “Gwen’s talked to you about our mother?”
Not really. The secrets of her childhood were locked up tight, only spilling out in short bursts of weakness. “She’s said enough.”
He grunted into his glass. “Has she just?” A pale brow lifted.
“Share stories with you about how she pushed her stool up to the bench to make food from whatever scraps she could scrounge from the cupboard, did she? What about how our mother spent her days comatose from too much booze and too many pills? Or did she leave those bits out?” He shook his head. “That’s no life for a little girl.”
A sharp ache pinched in my chest. Had it truly been like that? “And what about for the boy who lived there?” That life couldn’t have been easy for him, either.
Liam’s grin carried an unsettling edge. “Oh, we don’t talk about him.” He pressed his index finger to his lips and whispered , “Shh.”
A surge of dread popped my eyes wide open. I wrestled to keep the emotion out of my voice. He couldn’t derail me. “Should we talk about you interfering with Gwen’s old boss, then?”
Liam only smiled. No denial.
“So, that’s all you’ve done for her? Some debt repayment,” I scoffed.
“Where were you when it mattered, huh? Gwen lived on the bones of her ass for years. She got that horrible job at the fish and chip shop, earning minimum wage just so she and her mother could eat! I didn’t see you around helping her when she was growing up…
University… Even finishing high school!”
He sipped his drink. “And who do you think paid for the fancy high school where the rich little darlings go? Certainly not Gwen earning minimum wage at the fish and chip shop, hmm?”
I frowned. “No, that’s not…” I shook my head. It wasn’t possible. He was messing with me. “Gwen got a scholarship.”
“A scholarship? To a school festering with Sullivans?” Liam laughed.
“The elitist sycophants running that nepotism factory only cared about money. Gwen’s clever.
She would’ve wasted her intelligence in the hellhole public school we were stuck in, but she’s proud.
Principled . She never would’ve accepted charity.
The scholarship was an unfortunate ruse, but it was the only way to lift her out of that hell.
” He muttered into his drink, “But perhaps into another.”
“You’re lying.”
“I can’t claim all the credit. It’s fortunate for me Elias has a skilled hand for forgery.
Letters from fancy schools were barely a challenge for him.
His penmanship truly is lovely.” The coldness in Liam’s eyes warmed only a little.
“It’s a pity he limits his talents to more scrupulous forms of business these days. ”
My jaw was on the floor. “You’re full of shit.”
Liam’s lips pressed into a line, his gaze cutting back to me. “Nobody asks questions as long as the money keeps flowing, Dr. Sullivan. The outrageous school fees were paid on time, every time. From my pocket. Every last dollar.”
“That’s not possible. You’re rich now, sure, but back then… You would’ve been barely eighteen. You came from the same life as Gwen. There’s no way. No way. Where the hell could you get that kind of money?”
A slow smile spread across Liam’s face, his white teeth baring in a sharp, sinister line. “The same place your daddy did.”
My blood froze in my veins. The walls closed in on me, and the suffocating press of the darkness made it impossible to breathe. “Who are you?” This wasn’t right. He wasn’t right.
Liam swirled the liquid in his glass and muttered, “Le Diable.” He tipped his head back and swallowed the drink in one gulp. “Storytime is over now, sweetheart. Leave me be.”
He didn’t need to tell me twice.
I edged out of the room.
Even though my heart hammered so fast I thought my chest would explode, I was eerily calm. A thousand questions swirled. No answers appeared. The one thing I knew—the one thing that stopped the worry—was that I believed him.
Liam was on Gwen’s side. He could be trusted. I was sure of that, but I wasn’t sure what that meant…
Yet.