41. First Thing Tomorrow
Liam sat in the low-beamed corner of another rented room at the Mermaid Inn, trying to hold himself together.
The bottle of cheap whisky stood half-empty on the dresser before him. He felt both better and worse at the same time. Drifting, buzzing, distant. His phone lay face down on the table. It had been buzzing on and off for hours. Standards. Mayhew. Gemmell. Wilcot. Sally.
Now it was silent. The rain ticked softly against the leaded windows and the whole ancient building seemed to lean like a ship in bad weather.
He lifted the bottle and drank.
Heat opened in his chest and for a moment he felt almost human. Not better. Not fixed. Just blurred enough that the edges of the day softened.
The Mustang came back anyway.
Sally's hand on the wheel. The engine screaming and the tires thumping over the marsh. His voice telling her no. The shotgun blast, the boat then the impact. He flinched and drank again.
She'd made that happen.
Before Dark Peak, it had never happened before. Before Sally Rogers had come, with her American certainty and her strange scars and her impossible gravity, pulling him into orbit around her.
Except, no. That was too easy. He drank again and savored the hot, stinging taste all the way down his throat.
Sally had not done this to him. She had not put the first bottle in his hand. She had not made him sit here with his whisky, hidden barely three doors away from her room. She might have walked right past already and never even knew, because he'd gotten good at hiding.
Like a coward.
He drank again, slower this time, and hated the relief of it.
On Dark Peak, she'd almost died. He remembered the peat under his nails, the awful frigid weight of her, the gray of her skin, the silences where her breath should have been.
He had thought, absurdly, that if he could just save her then everything would make sense.
His disgrace. His failures. His useless, privileged life.
Then today, in the back of the Mustang, he had understood the truth. Saving her had not changed either of them. It had only given him a new way to be afraid.
Afraid she would die. Afraid she would not. Afraid she would look at him and see the weak place inside him. Afraid she already had.
And then there was the anger, too. How it had felt to be ignored in that final moment before the crash. How Sally had decided for them all. How it had felt, to be relegated from the role of partner to something far worse.
Barely even a passenger. More like cargo. The same way Wilcot treated him, barely a person, just something in the way. Everything blurred and he took another hard swig, but it never really chased the feeling away.
Now he owed a full statement, but what could he say? Every word would damn her. Maybe damning Sally would save her from herself. Maybe it would save him.
But would it? Maybe she'd hate him. Maybe he'd ruin it all. He just didn't know. He couldn't be sure. Every choice looked like cowardice, and all he could do to relieve that pain was drink.
He picked up his phone and stood, the room spiraling, then went to the narrow window.
Outside, the rain had become a vaporous mist. Mermaid Street glistened under the lamps, all cobbles and old windows and crooked roofs, a town preserved by accident and stubbornness.
Liam stood and gazed out, drunk and ashamed.
Then he raised his phone and found Mayhew's number. The screen blurred in and out of focus as he tapped out a simple message.
'Sorry I left, I felt sick. I'll give my statement first thing tomorrow.'
He hit send, then let the phone drop to the floor and toppled back onto the bed. Cold white sheets. A clean, plump pillow. All the misery he could swallow.