“Where are we going?”
“Home Depot.”
“Oh. That’s… not what I expected.” I drop my sunglasses on my face. “As far as punishments for rule breaking, this is milder than I expected from you. I’ve been scheming what I’ll do when you break mine.”
“Ah, I see. Let’s hear it. What do you have in store for me?”
I shake my head. “Nope. I’m leaving that surprise for when it happens. I can’t wait.” My voice is too excited.
“Because you want me to insult you or overstep the boundaries you set?” He turns onto C470 heading north.
“Of course not. But you’re very growly and you tend to just stop conversations without stopping them, you know? They just”—I use my fingers to weave an odd shape—“dissolve into nothing. Like smoke.”
“And that irks you so bad you needed a rule about it?” His head tilts, and he speaks to the windshield.
“Well, yeah. Also, I didn’t know I was only going to get three. I may not have used that one if I’d known the rules upfront.”
“The rules about the rules. How meta.”
“You’re very chatty today.” I search through my purse for my phone, just realizing I must’ve left it at home. Oh well. If something happens, we have his. When did I become a we?
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Why Home Depot?”
“The door to your garage needs repair and a new lock. And we need keys.”
“Oh. It’s a weird punishment, you know.”
“Who said it was your punishment?”
My mouth opens and my eyes bulge. “Wait. It’s not?”
He grins. The eye with the piercing through his brow crinkles at the corner. Who is this man? The one who said “She likes Madonna” to a stranger mere days ago has winked at me at least twice today, and he’s being playful. No. Just no.
I can deal with a surly, ornery Liam Murphy. But a playful one? I have no shield against that. I wasn’t lying when I said he was the full package. If he flirts with me, I’ll fall. I’ll fall fatally and be crushed under the weight of my own broken heart when he reminds me that I’m not his type, that he doesn’t want that kind of thing, at least with me, when he leaves because he no longer needs this little arrangement.
Liam
Somewhere before we exited the highway on Quincy, Lorien curls in on herself.
I don’t know if she even knows she did it, but her shoulders slumped, she hollowed out her chest, and she curled toward the window. Slight movements compounding into something unmistakable.
I saw the same in my sister, more so in the last two years thanthe rest of her life combined, as things were too big, too scary, too unmanageable surrounding her. Cian and I would see it when no one else was around… her closing in on herself.
Self-protection.
Fuck.
“Where’d you go?”
“What?” Her voice is false cheer and fake, fake, fake. “I’m right here. I must’ve zoned out.”
I throw the car in park and turn to her. “New rule. No lying.”
Her shoulders roll back. “You can’t just add new rules. And I’m not lying.”
“I just did, and that’s another lie.”
