Liam's fingers pause against my cheekbone. Feather-light. "You could have gotten seriously hurt."
"I'm fine," I insist. We both know it's a lie.
"He was punishing you, and you kind of let him. Masochist much? I thought I was the masochist here."
"It doesn't matter. I kind of deserved it for how I treated you."
Liam's hand moves to clean a cut on my lip, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth. The touch sends a current through me that makes me forget the pain. My hand comes up, catching his wrist.
"I can't think straight anymore," I say. Barely audible. "When it comes to you, I lose control."
"I know," he whispers. "Me too."
"It scares me." It kills me to hear myself say that.
"No need to," he says. "We're together now. Everything is good."
Chapter 22. Liam
Quiet Time is supposed to be for reflection, which means "sit in silence and contemplate your sins." But we have fun, sometimes. Most days, we just nap. We also talk, play cards, and read. Today, Harry is already dead to the world, face smashed into his pillow like he's trying to suffocate himself in his sleep, and Jack is reading a comic book in a rare moment where he's quiet for more than a minute. Miles lies on his bunk, staring at nothing. He's good at disassociating. I think it's how he survives. And I'm standing in the middle of the room like an idiot, trying to decide if I have the guts to walk to Ethan's bed.
He's propped up on one elbow, flipping through his nursing textbook, but I can tell he's not reading. His eyes aren't moving across the page. There's a butterfly bandage over his left eyebrow where Reed split it open, and the bruising along his jaw has ripened to a spectacular purple-green, like a fucking sunset painted by someone who hates sunsets. He looks rough. He also looks stupidly beautiful in a beaten-up way. I love it. I love that he was fighting for me.
I take a breath, shove my hands in my pockets, pull them out again. My leg bounces. I chew my cuticle.
"Can I… can I join you?"
Ethan looks up. Those green eyes, still slightly bloodshot from Reed's beating, find mine, and he smiles. He closes the textbook, sets it aside, and shifts toward the wall without a word, making a sliver of space on the narrow mattress.
I lie down there, and Ethan's arm comes around my waist, solid and warm, pulling me against him, and I know we're okay, I know we’re super duper okay, and I feel my heart speeding so fast I might die. I fit into the curve of his body, my chest against his chest, my head tucked under his chin. His ribs are wrapped under his shirt. I can feel the bandages through the thin fabric, and I'm careful not to press too hard, even though every cell in my body wants to burrow into him and stay there permanently.
"Your hands are freezing," he murmurs against my hair.
"I'm always freezing."
“It's because you're small.”
“I'm not small!” I protest, chuckling.
“Sure, buddy.”
He takes my hand and folds it into his, and I immediately feel sleepy listening to his heart beating and breathing, like a baby. His fingers trace my forearm, and my delusional mind believes he's doing the infinite symbol. Ugh, I've never been so pathetically in love before.
I could fall asleep here. I could fall asleep and wake up in a different life, one where we met at a normal school, or a coffee shop, or some other place that doesn't have razor wire and solitary confinement. But we didn't. We met here, in the worst possible version of reality, and somehow this still feels like the best thing that's ever happened to me.
"Sleeping, baby?" he whispers.
"No." I feel my cheeks burning. He keeps calling me baby and it fucking murders me in the best way. It’s the best word I’ve ever heard. "Ethan?"
"Hmm?"
"What are you going to do when you get out of here?"
The question surprises me as much as it does him. I didn't plan to ask it. It just fell out.
His fingers pause on my arm. Then they resume, slower now.
"Finish my nursing degree," he says. "Clinical hours. I want to specialize in psychiatric nursing, work in correctional healthcare."
