Chapter 7
I was a tough shield with a soft center, and I never felt that more keenly as I stared at the woman I loved.
Lyra, the Little Liar. Ellington sat next to her and filled her plate with sushi.
I couldn’t put my finger on what made him so unsettling.
Was it the forgettable shade of his hair or the length of his thin fingers?
The weak chin and a dimple that appeared when he smiled?
Something he was fond of doing. And laughing.
He was the only jovial one in a somber room.
Maybe it was the maddening way his shoulder rubbed against Lyra, and how he kept whispering in her ear.
“Good to get things out in the open. Secrets cause ulcers, you know.” Ellington waved his chopsticks in Beck’s direction.
The man had been more withdrawn than I after we found the grave empty, and I swore I could hear the cogs in his brain turning, trying to make sense of how he’d lost control of the situation.
“Beck’s under my control now,” Adelaide said. “Aren’t you, Chief?”
Beck hadn’t had access to his phone or been unsupervised for a moment. If he got a message out to The Unseen, then I deserved every punishment that came next. I suppose I still did. For letting a liar so close to Adelaide without having a clue. Lyra chewed her lower lip and took a sip of water.
Beck turned his head as if his neck were stiff. I shivered at the coldness in his dark, coal eyes.
“There is only one person who can control me.” Beck searched Lyra’s blank expression.
“Oh?” Ellington held a piece of sashimi up to Lyra’s mouth. The spark in his gaze was a taunt designed for Beck, but it pricked me too.
“How quickly you swapped allegiances,” I snapped.
Anger was easier to wield than hurt. I was sick of the murkiness of emotion, the betrayal and uncertainty. She’d lost weight in the days we’d been apart, and shadows clung to her like webs.
“Says the man who used my greatest fear against me. Besides, he’s got proof.” Lyra’s cheeks flushed.
Ray covered up a noise by shoving a piece of sushi in his mouth. His cheeks popped out like a chipmunk as he chewed. I rubbed at a pang in my chest, wondering why I felt guilty when she was the one who had lied.
“I regret hurting you, Little Liar.”
I whipped my head so fast my neck cracked, but Beck said nothing else, just stared.
Intensity flared, like the last flood of sunset over a horizon, before darkness wrenched hold.
Beck had cycled through mania without Lyra.
Rage, desperation, and fear. Now he was silent, watching and waiting for his chance to win her back.
Bitter laughter closed my throat. They deserved each other.
“You truly believe that, don’t you?” Lyra pressed her lips together.
Ellington waved his hands. “We could use your expertise.”
Beck downed his drink and hissed. “Why would I do anything for you?”
“I thought everything you did was for Lyra? Well, she works for me now.”
The tension in the room was so thick it broke my thoughts apart. Adelaide rolled her eyes, getting bored with the bullshit, but Lyra didn’t say a thing. She stared at her hands, as if they held all the answers. She dug her thumb into the superficial wounds.
“Are you suggesting someone like Lyra is capable of loyalty?”
“Jonah,” Ray scolded me, face pale.
That got her attention. She shot up from her seat, fists clenched at her sides.
I wasn’t talking about allegiance, but love.
I threaded my hurt into a weapon and used it to hit her heart.
The stark emotion on her face gratified a sick part of me.
It validated the lingering fear that I wasn’t sure if any of this was real.
“You think I didn’t care?” Lyra fumed. “That this was all a game to me?”
“You kept secrets,” Beck snapped, waving his hand in Ellington’s direction.
Ellington cleared his throat and laid his chopsticks to the side, but Lyra shushed him.
“So did you,” Lyra said. I couldn’t decipher the accusations in her voice. Beck’s eyebrows met, and he paused, as if he too wondered what she was trying to say.
“You lied to us about who you were,” Ray interjected.
My stomach clenched as Lyra took a breath. The urge to take her in my arms flared, and I had to fight the instinct to go to her. We were nothing now. That wasn’t my choice, but here, she used us for her mission.
That was the truth, wasn’t it?
“You got me,” Lyra sank back into her seat.
I shook my head before I realized what I was doing. This was the opposite of what I wanted. The careful words and stony expression. I craved rawness and reality. After days of stewing on my initial reaction, I wished I could take it back and had given her a chance to talk.
“Did you think she worked with me willingly? You are stupid, jealous idiots,” Ellington chortled.
Lyra hissed at him to shut up, but it only made his laughter louder. The sound slapped my cheeks.
“What’s he talking about?” Beck moved toward Lyra, but she shot up from her chair and pulled it between her like a shield.
The action and speed with which she moved to protect herself made my rage wilt.
Something wasn’t right.
She glued her lips closed as her fingers clenched the back of the chair. Ellington looked at her with a sour expression.
“I threatened to kill everyone close to her. Jenny, Beatrice, Adelaide. She kept her secrets to save the lives of everyone in this room, and the people you care about. And how did you repay her again?” Ellington flicked a morsel of meat into his open mouth.
A winnowing screech in my ear blocked out Adelaide’s shocked reaction. Lyra’s shoulders drooped, the only sign she’d heard his confession. She wasn’t in the room with us any longer. She studied the floor.
My tongue wrapped itself in knots. Thoughts slammed against my forehead. I recognized the look on Lyra’s face. I’d worn it once, after I admitted to my mom that my stepdad tried to touch me. She hadn’t believed me, given me no chance to explain before she waved away my complaints.
Lyra had been protecting Beatrice?
Ray gripped my arm and let out a hissing noise.
I met Jenny, enough to know she was Ray’s actual family and a weakness he was right to keep hidden.
“Y-you—” Ray slammed his hands on the table.
A wave of nausea so thick crashed over me and threatened to take my soul with it. I’d destroyed Lyra for lying, when she’d been protecting me all along. The frayed edges of my hurt unraveled further. I thought I had the full story, but I was wrong.
Ellington continued, taking a sip of wine. “I drugged Jenny, tied her up, and said I’d slit her throat if Lyra didn’t work with me. Your girlfriend has been doing everything I asked to protect you. Very loyal. Oh, whoops, sorry, your ex.”
Ray choked, and I thumped my fist on his back, letting my flat palm linger as he heaved. Lyra picked at her nails, and her shoulders rose around her ears. I wondered how I could have miscalculated.
Ray shook his head, as if he were trying to toss off the revelation.
“That’s not what happened.”
He thumped his fist on the table so hard that the dishes clattered. Lyra met his gaze, and whatever he saw there made him blanch. His cheeks pinched, and he blew out the most desperate puff I’d ever heard.
“It’s not,” he said.
“Protecting us…” Beck trailed off with a soft laugh. He stared at the ceiling and dug his fingers into his hair, and tugged. A manic edge seeped into his gaze.
Still, Lyra stared. Like a strong, silent sentinel, and the churning, acidic hatred I held toward her turned to ice. Had she been trying to protect us this whole time from this man? The jovial enemy who admitted fault with glee?
“Let these idiots talk, Ellington. You and I can discuss things further.” Adelaide rose from Jesse’s lap and walked around the table to grip Lyra in her arms.
She whispered something in Lyra’s ear and squeezed her shoulder.
I recognized the sentiment, even if I couldn’t hear the words.
A friend’s support, one who never wavered in her belief, because she trusted and adored Lyra.
My stomach dropped to the floor. What had I done when I discovered she had lied?
I’d used her body and hurt her in the most callous way possible.
“I’m so eager to pick your brain. How do you manage all these men, and are you looking for a fourth?” Ellington scrambled after Adelaide.
“She’s taken,” Jesse snapped as he closed the door.
Only four remained. Each of us shattered like glass. Ray reached out and poured himself a glass of wine, slamming it back with a gasp. The light Pinot Noir was dusky red and bright with a tang of cherry.
“That day after the funeral… Jenny felt disoriented…” Ray trailed off, giving space for Lyra to fill in the blanks.
She blinked again, and my skin prickled at the easy way she hid herself from us. But why would she do anything else? We all condemned her, Beck worst of all. You couldn’t unmark skin or souls. The wounds would remain, no matter what I said.
Beck reached out, and she flinched, the movement bringing her back into her body.
“How?” The solitary word came like a broken shard from my throat, leaving the taste of iron the wake.
“Ellington disguised himself as Thompson. He kidnapped Connall’s sister, so I knew he wasn’t lying about the lengths he would go to. He put cameras in Beatrice’s apartment. I couldn’t risk telling you anything.”
My stomach careened from a great height. I’d tried to save a baby bird when I was twelve. I brought it inside and tried to feed it a worm I dug from the backyard. Overnight, I kept it beside me. But when I woke up, it was dead. I remembered the loss like the lack of warmth in Lyra’s gaze.
Fragile things didn’t last, no matter how hard you loved them.
What was between the four of us had been crystal glass, beautiful and easy to shatter.
“Lyra.” Beck reached for her wrist, and this time, he snagged it before she pulled out of reach. “I’m sorry.”
Emotion flitted across her face. I knew them because I felt the same ones taking up space in my gut. She tugged at her wrist, letting out a frustrated growl as Beck refused to let her go.
“You lied to us,” I blurted. She still wronged us.
Maybe I was trying to shift the agonizing weight of my mistakes. I wasn’t a hot-headed man, and usually when faced with surprises, I could be calm and calculating. But it turned out that when my heart was on the line, I lost it.
Lyra’s chest rose and fell as she slumped against her chair. “You’re right. I lied. I deserved everything you did to me. Are you satisfied?”
“What?” I shook my head.
I didn’t say that just to coax an apology out of her. I wanted the stone in my stomach to disintegrate.
“Volpe mia, was everything a lie?” Ray whispered.
I shivered at the memory of his tongue against mine, and his hard bulge pressed against me. We were all tangled messes, and I wanted the answer just as badly as he did. She’d sworn her feelings were real when we questioned her. We didn’t believe her.
“My name.” Lyra checked off a finger. “My past. The reason I moved here. I lied about so many things, but not how I felt about you all. I should never have let it get to where it was, but I couldn’t stop. What I used to feel in my heart wasn’t a lie.”
“Used to?” Beck stilled.
Lyra’s words dragged me through a concrete wall at high speed. My ears rang, my tongue was dry, and my thoughts rolled in loops. I’d never been more aware of my heart since Lyra claimed it. The organ ached as it smashed against my ribs, as if bruised from the inside out.
“You think love can survive in the darkness you put me in?” She gave us a small, resigned smile.
Beck’s knuckles went white as he tightened his hold on Lyra’s wrist.
“Yes.”
Lyra scoffed, shaking her wrist but not breaking his grip.
“I think all I am is darkness, and you loved me before. I warned you, Little Liar. My love chokes, it destroys,” Beck said.
A tear broke free and tracked down her blanched cheek.
“I know.” Another tear. “You gutted me from the inside out.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest, feeling my body in pieces. Muscle, bone, blood, veins. What did it matter if it had nothing to live for? I’d let my rage steal our chance at happiness. My feet froze to the shiny black tile.
“I don’t understand?” Ray shook his head. “Can we talk this out?”
“What is there to say?” Lyra’s voice broke.
“If you think we’re finished, you’re—” Beck narrowed his eyes, his words slashed to a grunt as Lyra shoved his chest.
His fingers uncurled, only to stop pulling Lyra to the ground.
“You made your choice, Beck. You all did. Now my focus is on The Unseen and destroying them.” She stalked from the room with more dignity than I could manage in a lifetime.
I felt all my rough edges like barbed wire, and they turned inward. I caught my tongue between my teeth. My most admirable quality was my loyalty. I’d spent years proving that to Adelaide. But I turned on Lyra the moment her lies were revealed. Was that the kind of person I was?
It felt like she’d taken clumps of me as she left, and my body was folding in around the mess.