No, it wasn’t any of those changes that stole away Liam.
It was the eyes.
The man in front of me may be alive, but the eyes told me Liam was dead.
It was with that realization that I jerked from my stupor and flailed out of his arms like his touch was acid to my skin. It was. It was acid to my soul.
He didn’t loosen his grip with my struggles, his arms only tightened.
“Let me go!” I screamed like a banshee.
It might’ve been the desperation in my voice, the animal quality to it that made him put me down.
It didn’t matter what it was.
All that mattered was that he was no longer touching me, and I was on shaky feet in front of him.
His eyes devoured me with agony. It was so visceral I could taste it. Poison on my tongue. Everything here was acid, even the air, burning away at everything, flaying the skin from my bones.
His hands were shaking.
I doubted it was because of the fact he’d just used them to pull the trigger on a gun that killed a man. No, I guessed he’d done that enough times to ensure that his hands were steady before, during and after such an act.
He was shaking because of me.
Because I doubted that he expected to be faced with me again.
Of course he didn’t.
Because you don’t go to the trouble of making everyone who knew and loved you think you were dead if you planned on seeing them again.
Funny thing was, I wasn’t shaking.
Not one bit.
I’d turned to marble.
I was oddly calm, a cold and awful kind of peace settling around me with the truth staring me in the face.
Liam was alive.
Breathing.
Heart beating.
He was right in front of me.
Like I’d dreamed of, prayed for, for years.
There was no elation at this fact. No heartbreaking joy.
Nothing.
He opened his mouth, to say what I couldn’t begin to imagine, but the loud and jarring bang of the door to the bar opening and number of motorcycle boots thudding on the concrete snapped his mouth shut.
He’d yanked me around so I was behind him as his brothers rounded the alley, guns drawn.
Interesting, he chose now to protect me.
Not fourteen years ago when it might’ve mattered.
Hansen was the first to lower his gun as he settled his gaze first on the corpse in front of Liam and then me behind him.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “This really what it looks like, Jagger?”
Jagger.
Liam was Jagger.
The man that everyone spoke about. That had been with the club for almost…
Thirteen years.
The pain almost brought me to my knees.
“Depends what it looks like,” Liam replied, voice saturated with faux laziness. The tension in his coiled body told me he was anything but lazy or relaxed.
Hansen shoved his piece into the back of his jeans. The rest of the men followed suit. “It looks like you killed the man we’re meant to interrogate, not only that, you did it in an alley where anyone could see you.” His eyes settled on me. “Where anyone did see you.”
Liam’s—Jagger’s—form stiffened, and I watched his grip tighten on his gun in the flickering streetlight.
I got it then.
I was a witness to a murder. One that implicated the Sons of Templar. I was a loose end.
Liam had positioned himself in front of me because he knew this the second after he recognized me. Because he expected his brothers to…what? Kill me immediately?
“I’ll take care of it,” Liam said through gritted teeth.
Hansen’s face was hard. “No, the club takes care of it.”
I stepped out from behind Liam because I wasn’t going to let him protect me. And because I honestly was more willing to face whatever the club was going to offer me instead of being faced with the reality of this situation. The reality was the patch on Liam’s back, staring at me in grim satisfaction.
Yes, the reaper had taken my fiancé from me.
Just not the conventional one.
He moved to try and grab my hand, I snatched it from his grasp.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” I said to Hansen, my voice even. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
He eyed me, gaze cold and probing. Gone were the easy smiles from before. This was the president of an outlaw MC gauging a threat and figuring out whether to eliminate it. This was death staring me in the face. I was used to the gaze so I didn’t falter.
“It is what I’m worried about,” he said finally. “You’re a smart woman, so I know you realize I can’t take you at your word.”
I nodded once. “I expected as much.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Respect.
His gaze flickered over me, I followed it.
I hadn’t been wearing much, and what I was wearing was covered in the dead man’s blood. I failed to have a reaction to this. I’d been covered in the blood of the dead before.