Page 142 of Cruel When He Smiles

That tone pulls compliance out of places I don’t admit to aloud, and the list lands before I can resent him for being right. “The car,” I say, still keeping my eyes closed because seeing isn’t always about looking. “The streetlamp. Your shirt.”

“Good boy.”

My body reacts to that praise like it was already halfway to kneeling. A shudder rolls through me so clean and involuntary, I have to grip his shirt harder to keep from floating away on it.

“Two things you hear,” he adds, not pushing or pretending we’re fixing something huge in a single afternoon, just moving the target a foot closer so I can hit it.

“Your breathing,” I answer, because it’s the truth, “and the wind.”

“That’s it,” he says, and the certainty in his voice makes the ground under my feet stop shifting for the first time since the phone started ringing. “You’re doing so fucking well for me, Nathaniel.”

The words fill the space where the panic was, and I feel the change instantly. When he calls me by my full name or evenbaby, I no longer feel the nausea as intensely. I just feel tethered. My lungs ache less, my hands aren’t shaking, and the burn under my skin softens into something that feels closer to human again.

“One thing you feel,” he says, and I don’t need to think about it.

“You.”

It comes out raw, quiet, stripped of all the armor I usually keep in place. He goes still, the way a predator does when it’s locked on something, all that dangerous focus aimed right at me. Then his hands tighten at my sides, almost too subtle to notice, and he leans back to look at me.

“That’s right,” he says, and there’s pride in his voice I can’t look at directly without risking something I’m not ready for. “Me. No one else. Just me, Pup.”

I nod instead of speaking, because words feel fragile again. The smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth tells me he knew this was where we’d end up all along, like he counted every step from the second he saw me losing it and built the path with his own hands.

“Now let’s get out of here,” he says, his thumb brushing my cheek with a tenderness that doesn’t quite match the words but lines up perfectly with their effect. “I’m not letting that fucking phone ruin our day.”

I let out a breath that finally doesn’t feel like a fight, and when he threads his fingers through mine and gives a tug, I follow. Because arguing right now would just be for the sake of arguing, and my body’s already made up its mind whose gravity I’m orbiting.

The docks are quiet at sunset, the kind of quiet that feels heavy instead of empty. The air smells faintly of salt and damp wood,the boards beneath us creaking softly every time the breeze pushes against the tide. It’s cool enough that my arms prickle, but I barely notice the chill.

Because Liam is next to me.

Because Liam hasn’t let go of my hand since we got here.

It makes my stomach do that thing.

I risk a glance at him without turning my head. His gaze is locked out toward the water, jaw tight, mouth pressed into a line that doesn’t look casual. Liam’s not the kind of guy who searches for words—he says what he means, and if it cuts, it cuts. But right now, he looks like he’s trying to work something out, and that’s the first clue something’s off.

“You brought me here to think?” I murmur, the words slipping out before I decide if I want to poke the bear. I’m not good at silence, especially not when his head’s somewhere else.

His fingers squeeze mine just slightly. “I brought you here because I like it.”

That’s not an answer.

“Didn’t peg you as the romantic type, Lover,” I say, letting the nickname hang there just to see if I can get a rise out of him, and sure enough, I get the look; the kind of glance that could knock the wind out of you if you were stupid enough to take it seriously. It’s the look that says he’s picturing shoving me off the dock just to shut me up.

I smirk anyway.

He exhales hard through his nose, like I’m exhausting him without even trying. “You really don’t know when to shut up, do you, Pup?”

“Not when you look like you’re about to tell me something you’d rather eat glass than admit.”

That one lands. I can feel it in the way his grip on my hand flexes, and his gaze flickers down before snapping back up, like he’s trying to decide something.

Then he sighs, looking back out at the water. “You make me happy,” he says finally, and it sounds almost like he had to force the words through gritted teeth.

I blink at him, sure I misheard. “What?”

“You heard me, Pup.”