—
Outside, the airis hot, oppressive. the concrete burns the soles of my shoes as I walk quickly down the hill toward the tennis courts at the bottom of campus.
I find Liam practicing at the courts, exactly where Zee said he’d be. An opponent waits across the net. Liam tosses the ball into the air, racket raised, and slams it down, firing the ball across the net.
His opponent sends the ball back to the far side with a loud grunt.
Liam lunges for it and misses, and to my surprise, he slams his racket against the ground, breaking it in two. I inhale sharply. Suddenly it’s easy to picture how Naomi could have gotten that bruise.
The coach and the other player disappear from the court, leaving Liam alone. Taking a deep breath, I cautiously approach. I watch from behind the fence as Liam sits on a bench, removing his knee brace and ripping off the tape and pre-wrap underneath it. He furiously tears the last of it and throws it on the ground. With another angry curse, he slams the bench before grabbing his broken racket and yelling out as if in pain.
His fist tightens on the racket, and I think he’s going to slam it into the ground again, but instead it slips from his hand, landing with a loud echoing rattle. He presses his hands to his eyes for a moment before his body goes slack. His head hangs low, forearms to his knees. I hold my breath, watching him, until, after a moment, he senses me and looks up, and to my surprise, his eyes are watery.
But then he blinks and narrows his eyes, his face confused. “What are you doing here?”
“Liam, hi,” I say, steeling myself.
He makes his way over, stopping short and eyeing me from behind the fence. He’s taller than I remember. Stronger too. I glance down at the broken racket, remembering how easily he’d cracked it a moment ago. Think of how he could break me, too, if he wanted.
Though the same age as Zee and Naomi, Liam strikes me as a fully grown man. He’s several inches taller than I am, lean and athletic, and there’s something about his eyes and the way he carries himself that makes me nervous, like he could snap any minute.
“Maya,” he says. “What are you doing here?” There’s a flicker of something unreadable in his expression, but as quickly as it appears, it’s gone.
“I wanted to ask you if you spoke to Naomi recently—”
“Why? You think this is somehow my fault, so you show up here, at practice?” He makes a sound that might have been a laugh and what he does next is so strange, it makes me draw back: he smiles, actually smiles.
It’s so alarming it takes me a minute to speak again. “I—”
“She was fucked up long before I met her,” he says. “There’s nothing I could have done to help her. If she did this herself, that’s not on me.” With a scowl, Liam turns away from me and begins packing up his things. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he mutters.
When he reaches down for his bag, I catch sight of something on his forearm. It’s small and easy to miss, but I zero in on it. The Greystone Society insignia. The tattoo I saw in Naomi’s photo. It suddenly clicks into place.
“Was she in Greystone with you?”
He stops. I take his silence as confirmation.
My heart beats fast as I find the opening in the fence and make my way over to him, keeping a good ten feet of distance between us. “Please,” I say, breathing hard. “I just want to talk, I’m just trying to find out what happened. Don’t you want to know too, or did you never actually care about her to begin with?”
He mutters something I can’t make out as he continues packing.
“Excuse me?”
“I said,I loved her.” He looks up, and I see the emotion twisting his face. Not bitterness or resentment but a deep pain.
He shoves the broken racket into his bag and hauls it over his shoulder. With one last look in my direction he says, “Have a nice day, Maya.”
He’s halfway across the court when my legs snap into action. “Wait.”
I’m at his shoulder when he stops, and what happens next happens fast: he whips around and his hand flies at my face. I think he’s about to hit me, but he grabs my wrist instead.
He spits out the next words like a threat: “You act like you’re somekind of saint, but I know you’re hiding things too.” He releases my wrist. “I’m not going to stand here and take any more of this shit. Leave me the fuck alone.”
Liam leaves the courts and disappears into the clubhouse, the door slamming shut behind him.
Chapter Fourteen
Naomi
