Page 137 of Cruel When He Smiles

Nate’s entire body locks up, and he blinks twice, his body going still in a way that makes my gut tighten.

“What?” I ask. “Nate? What is it?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, but his shoulders tense even more, and when he finally speaks, his voice is quieter. “So, that’s why you knew that song.”

It’s my turn to freeze. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He meets my gaze, something heavy in his eyes. “Liam… you’re not the only one who grew up with a monster for a mother.”

I’m confused as fuck, so I wait for him to continue.

“When we were at that away game, the night I had the night terror,” he swallows, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “Before that, you were humming something. Just a few notes, over and over.”

I shake my head slowly. “I wasn’t humming anything.”

“Yes, you were. I heard it when I went to shower,” he says, and then he hums it—soft, the melody threading through the air between us. The sound knocks something loose in my memory so fast I almost flinch.

“That’s…” I trail off, my voice strained. “That’s what my mother used to hum when I cried.”

Nate nods once, his jaw set. “My mother used to say her hero—someone she aspired to be—would do that to calm herpatients.She said it was foolproof. That if you learned the rhythm, you could make someone’s body obey before their mind caught up.”

The room suddenly feels smaller. “Nate,” I say slowly, “are you telling me—”

“That your mother was her hero?” He doesn’t blink. “Yes. I’m telling you that she admired your mother enough to try and use her methods to turn me into one of her experiments, too.”

The floor seems to fall out under me. My pulse is loud in my ears, my head suddenly too full. “At what age?” I ask, my voice quieter now. “What age did she start conditioning you?”

“Eight,” he says, and there’s no hesitation.

I feel fucking sick. “Your mother started too late with you. At eight, I was already a perfectly trained puppet,” I say, and a tight,humorless sound leaves my chest. “She started on me when I was two. Ran her experiments until the day she died.”

The silence that follows is thick. I study him the way I would a threat, every detail memorized, not because I need leverage but because I need to understand what the fuck this means.

He doesn’t look away. “So, all this time… you thought I was just some stubborn asshole who wouldn’t break. And I thought you were just some controlling bastard who didn’t know when to stop. But the truth is…” His voice falters for half a beat before he finishes. “The truth is, we were both built by the same kind of hands.”

I can feel the weight of it in my bones—the realization that the reason I’ve been able to get under his skin so easily is because I know the map. I’ve lived it.

“You said once that I get inside without forcing my way in,” Nate says, softer now. “Maybe that’s why… Maybe I’ve always known where the back door is.”

My throat feels tight, my hands clenching against my legs. “And maybe that’s why I can’t fucking stay away from you,” I say, the words slipping out before I can pull them back. “Because you’re the only one who knows the shape of it from the inside.”

Nate studies me for a long time, then exhales slowly. He doesn’t reach for me this time, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s giving me space or because he needs it himself.

“So, we both grew up being bent into shapes that weren’t ours. Yours taught you how to manipulate the world, mine used the same methods and taught me how to disappear inside it. And now, here we are—two fucked-up products of the same poison, wondering why we keep finding our way back to each other.”

“Because the damage is familiar,” I say simply. “And because when you’re with me, I know exactly where all your edges are, just like you know mine. I get it, and I wish to fuck I didn’t.”

We don’t say anything for a while. The air between us is taut with a kind of understanding I’ve never had with anyone before. Not even Killian. And it hits me with the same force as everything else tonight—whatever trauma Nate is dealing with is because of me. Because his mother wanted to create what my mother perfected.

His mother.

“Is she the one who calls you? Is she the reason you shut down completely?” I ask, already knowing the answer, and watch as my Pup pales before nodding.

“Yes.” It’s quiet, almost swallowed by the space between us, and then the floodgates open.

As Nate talks, he tells me about the woman who gave birth to him, the woman who ruined him, the woman who pretends she didn’t do anything at all—and I burn.

It’s a slow burn at first, simmering low in my gut, until it spikes and catches fire in my chest. I burn with the need to erase her. To remove her from the equation entirely. To strip away every breath she has left until there’s nothing of her in this world to hurt him again.