But I swallowed.
“I was just leaving,” I said coldly, skirting around him. Or trying to.
He snatched my wrist. The skin burned from contact. I even looked down to see if smoke was arising from where our bodies met.
Nothing but a hand covered in tattoos, tanned, weathered, foreign.
“You’re gonna have to face me at some point,” he said, voice gravely, still half clutched by sleep.
I glanced down and his wrinkled tee and worn jeans. It looked like laundry day was nearing for him too. Did he have one of the club girls take care of those needs? Like he did others?
I swallowed bile.
“I’m not the one who has anything or anyone to face up to,” I shot, my voice not full of the venom required to land the shot as I intended. I looked down to where his grip tightened at my words. It was real pain now, not just the stuff conjured up by my ruined heart. I liked it. His touch, no longer tender or reverent. It was a nice reminder of who he was now. Of who I was now.
“Let me go,” I said through gritted teeth, forcing the command out through sheer self-preservation.
“You’re not giving me a chance to,” he said, not letting go. “You’re determined to hate me.” His eyes shimmered, liquid emeralds that I’d gazed into a lifetime ago and jumped off a cliff with. Because I trusted him to know that I would have a soft landing.
It was torture looking into those same eyes knowing he was never going to give me a soft landing ever again.
I ripped my arm from his grasp, pushing past him and into the common room. I knew he was going to follow me even before the footfalls of his motorcycle boots echoed behind me. That was why I walked into the common room instead of his bedroom. I couldn’t have him in there, have us in there in such close proximity to that white feather hidden in his drawer.
I couldn’t run.
So I sat at the bar, setting my coffee cup on the surface covered in rings from bottles and glasses. A lemony disinfectant smell mixed with whisky, beer, and cigarette smoke.
It wasn’t unpleasant.
Liam situated himself beside me with a sigh.
I sipped my coffee.
He watched me.
I knew he was taking this for what it was, surrender. He was expecting the questions that Scarlett had urged me to ask. There was only so long that we could both tiptoe around this elephant.
But I still wasn’t ready. Still wasn’t strong enough to face my feelings. Face the answers.
So I did what I did best, I hid behind the story.
“The club runs guns,” I said. It wasn’t a question, though I expected a denial. Or silence. Or a lie.
No one, especially not reporters, should expect the truth when hard questions are asked. It’s figuring out how to find truth from the lies people tell, that’s where a good reporter is made.
“Yeah, we do,” he replied.
I’d heard a lot of things, was hardened to them. Truth from a criminal shocked me. Should I be shocked? Liam had always been honest with me. About the little things.
Little things like being a part of a club that runs guns.
He just wasn’t honest about the big things.
Like the fact he wasn’t dead.
“How long has the club run guns for?” I asked.
“Since before I started prospecting,” he replied.
I winced inwardly. Since before he came back from a war. Since before he chose not to come home to me.
But I was a journalist, I knew how to recover from hard answers, how to make it seem like they didn’t bother me.
“It’s rooted in criminal activity then,” I mused.
His eyes hardened. “It’s rooted in brotherhood.”
I regarded the room we were sitting in. The leftover bottles and dirty glasses from yet another party. Signals of disorder everywhere. But there were photos peppering the walls, separated by gun and motorcycle memorabilia. Grainy black and white photos of men with their arms around each other, grinning in front of motorcycles. More, in color, newer, with different men, but the cuts, the smiles, the bikes were ever present.
There were framed mugshots.
Another sign that they were an outlaw club.
Then there were photos of children.
Families.
It was a rich, bloodstained, and violent tapestry, weaving through the outskirts of society and the outskirts of the law.
I straightened, meeting Liam’s emerald eyes once more. They hadn’t moved from me. His attention was uncomfortable, because it was unyielding. Whenever I was in the room, he never took his eyes off me, as if he were terrified I’d go away and he was trying to make me disappear at the same time.
Or maybe that was just what I was doing with him.
“You haven’t had any convictions, despite numerous DEA operations,” I continued.
Something moved in his face. “You’ve done your research.”
I nodded. “It’s what a good reporter does.”