"You home?" he asks.
"Didn't you hear? I'm always home," I say. "It's what happens when the whole world realizes you're the fucking devil." I almost ask if Brielle's okay or if something happened, only to remember that something already happened. I happened. And she hasn't been okay since she met me.
"Good. I'm on my way," he growls. "Don't fucking move."
He hangs up.
I look at the phone, my own reflection warped in the glass, and think about calling him back and telling him not to bother. My liver is bound to give up sooner rather than later, right?
Instead, I pour another drink and wait.
Two hours later, the doorbell rings, and then Liam starts pounding on the door hard enough to rattle it on the frame.
I sigh, pulling it open with my glass in hand.
He clearly hasn't gotten much sleep lately. The dark circles under his eyes rival those under mine. He's wrinkled and rumpled in a way he never is, his carefully put-together facade cracked. His usual smile is nowhere in sight.
"You son of a bitch," he snarls, decking me before I can even say hello.
The glass in my hand shatters when it hits the floor, leaving expensive Scotch all over the floor. My lip splits, blood running down my chin. My goddamn ears ring, spots swimming in front of my eyes.
"Fucking hell," I grunt. "Who taught you to hit like that?"
"You did, you arrogant prick." He pushes past me, his hands shaking with fury as he stares at me like he's trying to decide if he wants to knock me out now or make me suffer a little first.
"What do you want, Liam? I'm a little busy here." I gesture at the glass broken all over the floor. "The contents of my bar aren't going to drink themselves."
There's no humor in his laughter. "Fuck your bar and your self-pity, Blackstock. I want to know what you did to my sister."
That pulls me up short. Not because I don't know, but because I do. Because I expected she would have told him the whole uglystory days ago, now. If he's asking me, it's because she hasn't told him, at least not everything.
Why didn't she tell him?
I cross to the bar, pour a drink, and hand it to him. I expect him to refuse it, but he knocks it back like he's dying of thirst.
"She won't talk to anyone," he says. "She won't eat. She won't sleep. She wouldn't even answer my calls. I had to hop on a goddamn flight and break into her place just to get her to tell me anything. All I can get out of her is that she quit because you're an asshole." He eyes me critically, fury banked in his eyes. "Whatever you did this time, you fucking destroyed her."
"I paid her five million to sleep with me," I say. I'm not trying to shock him. We're past that. I'm just telling him what he needs to know so he can hate me free and clear, too. "I guess she finally realized fucking is all I'm good for."
He doesn't even drop his glass before he hits me again, hard enough to snap my head back. Jesus Christ. He has power behind that fist.
"I told you," he spits, grabbing me by the collar before I land on my ass. "I fucking told you to leave her alone if you were just going to pull your usual bullshit and act like she doesn't matter. You don't get to touch her and then pretend it means nothing, Asher. You don't get to break her just because you're—"
He stops, looking at me like he's trying to figure out precisely what I am or if any of the old version of me remains—the one he met before I saw Brielle for the first time and realized exactly what kind of man I really am. I think about how many times I swore to him that I'd never hurt her, not even once, not even by accident. And I realize that no, that old version of me doesn't exist. I don't think it ever did to begin with.
That version was a carefully crafted lie, created to reflect what the world expected me to be. But underneath that mask, I wasalways this. I was always the motherfucker who coveted what he shouldn't and hurt the things that deserved it least.
Liam shakes his head like he's having the same epiphany. "She's a fucking ghost," he says. "She walks around the apartment like she doesn't even know where she is. It's like you fucking—" His voice breaks.
"Say it."
He grits his teeth.
"Say it, you prick."
"Killed her," he snaps, glaring at me. "It's like you fucking killed her."
That is what I did. Not two weeks ago, but five years ago. She got into my car full of hope. She left it not breathing. And even when her heart started beating again, she wasn't the same. The light was gone from her eyes. She's been going through the motions ever since, pretending she's alive. He's only just now realizing that she lost the biggest part of herself that night. No, she didn't lose it. I took it from her.
