Page 103 of Cruel When He Smiles

And if Roman’s was worse…?

Killian’s voice drops a note lower, and he drags the knife across his thigh, edge turned out, absentmindedly.

“Roman was already drowning because of his father’s abuse, but it got worse after Caleb died,” he explains. “Everyone thinks he went numb after. Like it was just another story, another death in a line of bad ones. But he didn’t go numb.”

He looks up at me now, and there’s nothing mocking about it. “He shattered.”

I shift forward a little, tension winding tighter in my shoulders, but I don’t speak. Not yet. Killian doesn’t like being interrupted when he actually decides to tell the truth.

“He was slowly killing himself, and no one was noticing because he still smiled in public. Still showed up to the team dinners, still made everyone laugh, still let the coaches think he was just having a rough month. But I noticed.”

“So, what did you do?” I ask slower now because I know Killian’s never told anyone this.

“I made myself the center of his attention and challenged him at everything. I picked fights with him, made him race me to class, stole his protein powder. I fucked up his locker and left him stupid little puzzles to solve just so he’d get mad enough to focus on something that wasn’t grief. I got in his head, Liam, every single day. Not to ruin him,” his voice dips, “but to keep himhere.”

I stare at him silently. Killian—my brother, the one who taught me how to tear people apart without lifting a finger—is telling me he saved someone by becoming their anchor.

“That’s not your style,” I say eventually, trying to sound unimpressed, but it doesn’t land right. Not when I’m still reeling from the image of Killian dragging Roman back from the edge, not with fists, not with threats—but with strategy. With consistency.

“It was either that,” Killian says, “or lose him.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“You became his rival.”

“I became his fucking purpose.” He says it without shame. “Every morning, I made sure he hated me enough to show up. Every night, I made sure he was too exhausted to think about dying.”

“And it worked?”

Killian shrugs. “Roman is still here, isn’t he?”

My stomach twists. I understand what Killian’s saying, and it’s fucking with my head. “And you did all that without laying claim to him?”

“I didn’t need to,” he mutters. “He chose me every single day he got up to chase me down, and that was enough.”

I sit back, dragging a hand down my face, trying to reconcile the image in my head with the man in front of me. Killian King, who once broke a guy’s jaw for cutting in front of him at a bar. Killian, who has never once given the impression that he knows what subtlety even is.

“You used a soft method.”

His grin widens. “No, little brother. I used a personal method. You’re used to mind games. To whispering your way into someone’s soul until they forget they were ever whole to begin with. I don’t do that shit. I give people something to fight and someone to hate. That’s still power, just a different flavor.”

My brain spins. The thought of Killian choosing restraint, of all things, deliberately crafting a slow-burning survival mechanism instead of detonating Roman from the inside—it doesn’t make sense. But the evidence is right there since Roman’s loyalty to Killian is goddamn bulletproof.

“I don’t get it,” I say honestly. “You didn’t want him to break, but you also didn’t try to put him back together.”

He shrugs again. “He didn’t need to be fixed; he needed someone to make him feel seen. To make him feel angry instead of empty. I didn’t want to comfort him; I wanted to make him fight again. I gave him the only thing he could hold onto without it cutting him.”

I stare at the floor for a long second, the silence settling heavily in the wake of his words. Because I know what he’s really saying. He’s not telling me to manipulate Nate harder; he’s telling me to show up.

To make myself the one thing in Nate Carter’s life that never falters. The one person who never leaves—even when he begs me to.

Because that’s what Killian was to Roman.

A tether.

A constant.

A weapon he could fight against instead of turning it on himself.