Page 25

Liam

The week leading up to Christmas was one of the worst of Liam’s life.

Not a minute went by where Jonah did not consume his thoughts, both sleeping and awake.

Twice, he had called in sick for his shifts at the diner in favor of staying under his covers. He couldn’t fathom the idea of walking into that restaurant and laying eyes on the corner booth where he’d spent an evening bumping shoes under the table with Jonah.

When he got his credit card statement, however, he remembered he couldn’t really afford to skip any paydays, debilitating depression be damned.

His behavior raised an eyebrow from his mother, who had watched him pick up hours relentlessly for the past several months, and who knew well what Liam looked like when he was spiraling. She was worried about him, and he felt bad for it, but every time she tried to nudge him toward a conversation, he pulled a little further into himself.

The isolation weighed on him. He felt like he was living a double life, and to some extent, he was. He was navigating this dark underbelly of a world that, a few months earlier, he hadn’t even known existed, and there was no one there to share the burden of his knowledge. Of his guilt. Even his mother, whom he trusted more than almost anyone else in the world, couldn’t know about this. If he told her everything that had happened, beyond being appalled at the danger her son had gotten involved in, she would undoubtedly tell him to go to the police.

Maybe that was exactly what Liam needed to do.

The temptation was there. Every day, he came a little bit closer to breaking. He would stand with his trembling hand on the doorknob of his bedroom, listening to the sound of utensils scraping in the kitchen, telling himself that she was right there, that he could walk out there and break the dam, let everything that beat against the walls of his chest pour out of him like it so badly wanted to. Because Liam couldn’t stand it. For as long as he lived, he would never, ever forgive himself if his negligence, his cowardice ended up being the reason Jonah...

There was still some part of him that believed there was a way out. Even after everything Jonah told him.

“I killed someone.” He could still hear the way Jonah expelled the words, like they were an illness his body was trying to rebuke. It wasn’t the confession of a cold-blooded killer.

There was no world in which Jonah should be held prisoner by an act of desperation he had committed while fighting for his life. Nothing he had ever done justified being blackmailed and abused. What was this man’s role in Jonah’s life that he could wield so much power? Make him so afraid that he wasn’t even willing to try and speak a word against him? Liam didn’t know. There were still so many unanswered questions, and even more unasked. He had tried to respect Jonah’s wishes, and in doing so, he was afraid that he’d wasted any chance of helping him. Now he was stuck in this miserable in-between, constantly pulled in two directions and fraying at both ends.

His performance was suffering at work, which he might have given a shit about if it was anything more pressing than delivering plates to tables, but getting screamed at by customers over a side of ranch dressing was doing no favors for his mental health.

“I want this meal taken off the bill,” a gruff middle-aged man barked at him on Friday evening, ten hours into a double shift. By that time, Liam could practically feel his eye twitching.

“Sorry,” he gritted out, long past the pleasantries of a forced smile. “I can bring you a new side.”

“No, I said I want it comped,” the man replied, speaking slowly as if Liam was too dense to comprehend it the first time. “My food will be cold by the time you get back. ”

It’s a salad, dipshit, it was served cold, Liam wanted to—but very bravely did not—say.

“I’ll get my manager,” he said, then turned on his heel toward the kitchen, not before the customer could make a poorly whispered remark about incompetent waitstaff.

The stainless steel counter rattled as he slammed down an industrial-sized tub of Hidden Valley, popping off the lid. His phone buzzed in the front pocket of his apron, but he didn’t bother reaching for it. It was probably his mom calling to check up on him, as she was doing with increasing frequency as he slipped deeper into his depression. He couldn’t handle lying to her right now.

As he poured a dollop of dressing into the side cup, he made a mental note to shoot her a text on his break.

“Kim,” he made his way to the corner of the kitchen where she was helping one of the new hires roll silverware. “Table thirty wants a free meal. Says the food is cold.”

She turned to glance out the square panel of glass on the kitchen door without pausing in her work. “It’s a salad,” she deadpanned.

“I’m aware.”

Letting out a sigh so put-upon that it could only have come from someone with years of customer service experience, she placed down the roll of silverware in her hand and turned to him. “Take your fifteen, kid.”

“I already did.”

“Take another one.” She raised an eyebrow when he started to object. “We’re dead out there, and you look like you’re halfway there yourself. Go. I’ll close out your table and grab your tip.”

Between his aching back and Kim’s unmoving stare, there wasn’t much room to argue.

“Don’t worry,” Liam said, already untying his apron. “There won’t be one.”

The air outside was too cold to be hanging around in short sleeves, but he needed a quiet space more than he needed warmth right now.

Liam sank down onto the overturned bucket the smokers used on their breaks. His lumbar throbbed as he relaxed his muscles for the first time in hours. He let his head thud back against the dirty brick wall, eyes slipping shut.

This was why he had objected to taking a second break. The exhaustion collided with him the moment he was finally able to rest, bearing down on his shoulders all at once. He probably could have fallen asleep just like that, sitting on a bucket behind the diner in the freezing cold. He might have, if not for his phone buzzing in his pocket again.

Peeling his eyes open took more effort than it should have, but the notification on his phone was unexpected enough to nudge him back to awareness.

One missed call, followed by a voicemail, both from the Marriott in Chicago.

He did a mental recount of all the hotels he and Jonah had stayed at over the past couple of months, but it was a pointless exercise. They had been confined to a strict budget, and the Marriott was firmly outside of it. Liam tapped a cold thumb on the screen, opening the voicemail.

The moment he pressed the phone to his ear, his body went numb.

“Hi, Liam. It’s me. Jonah.”

His voice was the only thing in the world. The scene around him fell away, leaving Liam anchored to the earth only by the tinny words coming through the phone.

“I know you’re probably working or...I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t have much time. I just... It’s Friday,” he said. “And I wish it was you waiting for me upstairs.”

Liam was going to shatter apart.

“Listen, I...I don’t know when— if —I’ll have another chance to say what I want to say to you, so I just... I saw the phone and I needed to call you and say I’m sorry that things ended the way they did. I never wanted you to get anywhere near all of that. Any of it. I hate that you did. I hate that I was selfish enough to let you.”

A pause.

“I only have another minute, but I need to tell you that I meant what I said the first night we met: that I don’t understand how you could possibly have a hard time making friends, because you are the best one I’ve ever had. And even if that last night I spent with you, at the park, and in your car, and in your room, I... shit. Sorry. I’m sorry.” There was a pause and a rustle of movement. “I don’t want you to ever think I regret a second of it. Because I don’t.

“I told you, once, that I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, like I did the first night. So I’m keeping that promise now.”

“No,” Liam whispered .

“I have to go now. Okay? But not before I had the chance to thank you. For everything, Liam. Goodbye.”