Chapter 42 Before
Before
It’s the middle of the day when there’s a knock at my door.
I don’t say anything, just wait for the lock to click open and Liam to slink in.
He’s carrying a bottle of wine by the neck, already open.
His gait is unsteady as he turns and shuts the door, and when he approaches, his pupils are huge.
He’s on something. He almost always is, but this is different.
“Brought you a present,” he says. His voice is slurred.
For an instant, I freeze. It’s always a gamble, dealing with people when they’re wasted like this.
You have to be able to sort the angry drunks from the weepers from the mischief--makers.
Some people get easier to manipulate when they’re under the influence. Plenty just get dangerous.
“Will you join me?” I ask, patting the bed beside me. Liam’s not one for rage, I think. My guess is a weeper. The kind you end up talking off the edge of a bridge while he cries until snot runs down his face.
He sits and swigs. Only then does he remember to offer it to me. He sits facing out into the room with his back bent over, the slouch of a defeated man. Somehow, I have to talk him into fighting for me, but it isn’t going to be easy.
“What’s going on, Liam?” I ask him. I take a small sip of the wine. Enough to get the taste of it, not enough to hit my blood with any kind of power.
“What do you think? I have to leave,” he says. He sounds miserable. I put a hand on his wrist. His skin is soft and smooth. It has a thinness to it.
“We can see each other again,” I say with a smile. “We can meet up someday.”
If he doesn’t look at me, I’m out of luck. But if he does look—-
He turns his sorrowful gaze on me, and my breath catches in my throat. He hasn’t given up entirely, then. If he had, he wouldn’t be able to look me in the face.
“What’s going to happen to me, Liam?” I ask in a whisper.
He holds the bottle in both hands, staring down at it. “Melinda has this plan.”
“What kind of plan?”
“She has resources. She works with women’s shelters, and she has contacts who do this sort of thing. Getting someone a new life, I mean.”
“So I can go be someone new,” I say. My heart beats fast. Could it be that simple?
“Someone who’s never met us,” he says. He drinks in a quick, frustrated movement. “Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?”
“Most of it,” I say. All of it. Give me a ten--second head start and these people will never so much as glimpse my shadow again, but I trail a fingertip up the bone of his forearm, skating along the skin.
He looks toward me again, his eyes swimming with longing and with mourning, and then he looks away again quickly. “I don’t think Andrew wants to let you go. He doesn’t trust you not to tell.”
“You can trust me. And I know you don’t want to hurt me,” I say at once, as if I’m not afraid at all.
“Of course not!” He grabs my hand. His grip is too tight; it makes my bones mash together. “I wouldn’t. But Andrew—-he’s dangerous.”
“I’m not afraid,” I say. My lips tremble as I smile. “I’ve got you in my corner, don’t I?”
“But I won’t be here,” he says.
“You’re here now.”
His eyes track away again. I’m losing him.
He’s going to walk out that door. He’s going to go walk outside to puke up this wine and whatever other poison he’s put in himself.
He’s going to spend the next thirty years thinking of these awful hours, and that’s all I will be.
Something to get out of his system, something to regret.
I don’t want to touch him. I don’t want to use the delicate pads of my fingertips to turn his face toward me, or to take the bottle from him and lift it to his lips and then mine.
I don’t want to slide myself into his lap and press my lips to his until the taste of me becomes indistinguishable from the taste of the wine.
“Liam,” I whisper, as if I don’t hate him. “Don’t leave me. Not tonight. Please.”
His touch is sandpaper against my skin, but, oh, I wish I could love him. I wish any of this was true. That this isn’t a trick, that there isn’t a knife to my throat and only this one hope.
I put the wine on the windowsill. His hands find the gap between my shirt and my jeans and steal their way against my skin, and I pretend.
I pretend that I want him.
That I love him.
That his cowardice is not every bit as monstrous as his brother’s cruelty.
I push him down onto the bed. He sinks like a drowning man, and I am the siren with her hands in his hair. We descend together, but I belong to the deep; I’m not the one gasping for air.
I don’t know what I expect, exactly, but this isn’t it—-this strange tangle of grief and guilt and hunger and claiming, a sharp and angry thicket of emotion that somehow translates into a slow and gentle movement between the two of us.
Something tips, rebalances, and each of us is asking the other for something we cannot hope to give—-some kind of healing, maybe, some kind of forgetting—-and neither of us can grant it, and in our lack is a trembling hum of connection.
I expect to hate him in the moments after, but instead, I hear his heartbeat under my ear and my own heart stirs with only pity.
I curl against him. He lies still, staring at the ceiling. “Liam,” I whisper. I wait for his touch, for his arm to tighten around me.
“I have to go,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
My breath seizes. No. After all of this, no. He stiffens, as if to rise. I brace myself on my elbow, looking down at him. My hair falls like a curtain closing the world off from the two of us. “Liam, please. If you leave me with Andrew—-”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, and shoves himself upward, sending me flopping back onto the bed unceremoniously. He grabs his boxers and his jeans, hiking them up to his slim hips. He doesn’t bother to put on his shirt or buckle his belt, just heads for the door.
He yanks it open, and Emily is standing there. He freezes. She looks past him, her eyes locking onto me as I grab for the sheet to cover my nudity. “What are you doing?” she asks, her voice gravelly.
“Em—-” Liam begins.
“You’re disgusting,” she grates out, face contorted in anger. “Get out of there.” She keeps her voice low, but she might as well be screaming it.
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. “I was the one—-”
“Get out,” she snaps, ignoring me, and all but drags him out into the hall.
“Emily, wait,” I say. She gives me one flat, empty look.
“He shouldn’t have done that,” she says. And then she slams the door shut.
The figure at the end of my bed looks toward me, her expression sorrowful. I haven’t seen them in days, my gossamer girls. But maybe now I’m close enough to death for them to return to me.
It’s over, she says.
It’s over, and I lost.