Page 31 of Beneath the Mountain Sky

Not when Liam is a true master at getting under someone’s skin and making them open up, whether they want to or not.

Even as a child, when he would follow Connor and me around the mountain, trying to do everything his big brothers could, he never stopped talking.

Never stopped questioning.

Because he always cared about everything and everyone so deeply that he needed to know what made things tick.

“Look, Liam, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

His coppery brows rise. “How about that this situation is fucked up? Or that you don’t know what the fuck is happening? Or that you’re confused? I don’t know.” He throws up his hands, one clutching his axe, just like mine is. “Anything, something, because this not talking is really weird, Kill.”

“When have you ever known me to be a chatterbox?”

He releases an exasperated sigh. “That’s not the point. You have to have some feelings about this.” We keep walking, scanning the ground, the river, anywhere there might be a sign of where Willow could have come from or how she ended up in the water. “I saw the way you looked at her yesterday when you found her…and you didn’t leave the goddamn hospital at all.”

“Should I have?”

The thought of leaving her, of walking away like I did that morning she left me, never even crossed my mind as an option.

Liam sighs. “I’m not saying that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

He shifts his axe to his other hand, twirling it absently as we continue our way along the river. “Well, that it’s a little complicated, isn’t it?”

Understatement of the fucking century.

“Yes. It is.”

Liam looks to the other bank where Sheriff Briggs and Connor continue to scour—though, nothing has given us any clue up to this point. “She really doesn’t remember that you guys broke up?”

The annoyance and anxiety building in my body finally reaches the boiling point.

I pause and turn to face him, waiting for him to stop before I let myself go. “Are you trying to piss me off? Because you’re succeeding.”

He holds up his hands again. “No. Just trying to get you to open up a little bit, bro, because all the tension you’re holding onto? It looks like you’re about to snap.”

Snap.

That’s a much better analogy for what I’m feeling like—a rubber band pulled taut and then stretched even further until it finally lets go.

“I might.”

He offers me a genuinely concerned grimace. “I don’t want you to snap at her because you can’t process all your feelings. Isn’t that what got you into this position in the first place?”

“Fuck.” My shoulders slump. “You’re an asshole, Liam.”

I never should have told him what happened between us. Never should have told anyone. But a few too many beers and a broken heart did me in when it came to the man standing in front of me.

He always was the easiest to open up to, the easiest to talk to, unlike Connor, who’s always been emotionally shut down since the moment he came to live with us at age two.

Though, I think most people would say I’m that way, too.

At least, I am now.

It was always so easy with Willow.

To be around her.